Not Waving But Drowning
We’ve wandered into an interesting discussion here (here as in here below, Bound Together) about hand waving and value judgments, about whether moral and aesthetic judgments can be grounded, or rather (since I’m not sure anyone here claims they can be grounded in the same way that physics or mathematics can, or the way empirical inquiry can) what follows from the fact (if it is a fact, and do correct me if I’m wrong about what anyone claims) that they can’t. My colleague, if I understand him correctly, thinks that since in the case of a conflict between a well-grounded argument that would support, say, genocide, and ungrounded moral commitment, we would (most of us, one hopes) choose the moral commitment – therefore reasons are worthless, are just hand waving. And he makes the same argument for aesthetic judgments.
This is an old, old argument, of course, and one that philosophers have been brawling over for centuries. As Hume put it – It is not contrary to reason for me to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my little finger. Or words to that effect. It’s not illogical to be selfish, even grotesquely selfish, out of all proportion selfish. Nor is it illogical to prefer Kincaid to Rembrandt, or the latest Tom Clancy novel to ‘Hamlet.’ Granted. But does it follow from that that there is nothing more to say? Or at least, that anything we do say is just hand waving? I don’t think so. I’m also not entirely sure my colleague thinks so. As I said, we’ve been arguing about this for a long time (as he has with his other colleague – he’s an argumentative kind of guy), and he said something a couple of weeks ago about arguments (or perhaps they were facts) that are necessary but not sufficient – which would seem to indicate he doesn’t.
At any rate it seems to me like a false dichotomy. It seems to me there is plenty of middle ground – however fog-shrouded and swampy, however boggy and flecked with patches of wool – between unanswerable reasons and no reasons. And it also seems to me that there is plenty of useful work for those reasons to do, even if they’re not unarguable and absolute. One can use them to persuade people to read Hazlitt or Shakespeare instead of [insert favourite hack here], or to listen to Dream Theater instead of Take That. Naturally people are at liberty to ignore the reasons, or to use their own reasons to persuade one to read Favourite Hack or listen to Take That. But is that really a reason to abdicate? It doesn’t seem so to me. Just for one thing such discussion provides an opportunity to explore why one really does like Hazlitt or Dream Theater. It’s just a kind of thinking – and thinking is more useful than hand waving, surely? Unless you’re a particularly graceful, skilled hand-waver of course.
One of the problems here is that you are speaking of reasoned discourse and the arts are an obvious area where emotion is as important as reason. I’m certainly conscious that when it comes aesthetic judgements I often find it difficult to cite specific reasons. It usually seems to me that this is essentially an area where we are not so much rational animals as rationalising animals.
The relationship between art and the emotions is in itself a fascinating and unresolved debate. Why and how does a collection of colours, or musical notes, affect us so deeply and cause us to argue so passionately?
Er, I hope you’re not waiting for an answer…
Sorry to cross post from the original thread but doesn’t the below just show that the thought experiment establishes nothing, whilst it is an article of faith that because ethics are rationally grounded the thought experiment is impossible the converse is also an article of faith.
“Second objection: The thought experiment is impossible
This leads to the second objection: the thought experiment is impossible because ethics is rationally grounded, the holocaust immoral and therefore there can be no strong rational argument which says it isn’t.
The problem here is that this is no more than an article faith. Worse, since there are no compelling rational grounds for saying that a sound rational argument justifying the holocaust could not be constructed, it seems that our insistence that this scenario could not unfold is rooted not in rationality but a non-rationally grounded ethical commitment. This again suggests the ultimate ground of ethics is non-rational.”
Indeed, emotion is as important as reason in this area, if not more so. That is (I suppose) why my colleague’s position is called emotivism. But then emotion itself is susceptible to rational inquiry and exploration. Not always to definitive answers, but to inquiry – to non-pointless inquiry, to inquiry that does more than flap the hands. At least I think so.
This may be relevant on the emotion/reason divide:
“Descartes established the dichotomy of emotion and reason, where, for Antonio Damasio, Spinoza had argued the converse, that far from the mind being a reasoning machine, most thought and feelings relate primarily to the body and to emotions (conversely Descartes had separated mind and body with the ghost in the machine argument). Damasio has suggested that Spinoza was correct and that the division of reason and emotion is a fallacy, observing that damage to the prefrontal cortex, can leave a patient apparently intellectually unimpaired but incapable of making complex decisions due to the lack of emotional capacity permitting the weighting of differing choices.
As an example, Damasio cites the example of Phineas Gage, who had tamping rod blown through his skull by an explosion, thereby destroying much of the front part of his brain but leaving him alive and apparently unaffected. However, his personality was profoundly altered; from being a responsible foreman he became feckless and irresponsible.
One of Damasio’s own patients, ‘Elliot’, had a brain tumour successfully removed but his frontal lobes were damaged during the operation. Although his intelligence was unaffected, he could no longer carry on his professional work. He had to be prompted to go to work, and when he got there he might start on one task and persist with it even when it was time to change to something else, or he might spend the whole day pondering how to classify a paper he had just read. In short, he could manage isolated tasks well but couldn’t integrate them into a wider frame of reference. He lost his job, became involved in unwise financial speculations, and ended up bankrupt. In spite of being confronted with the disastrous consequences of his decisions, he was unable to learn from them. Much the same applies to the role of emotion (and empathy in particular) in ethics; recent evidence shows a causal role played by the absence of emotional centres in sociopathy. Our moral centre is also to some extent an emotional centre.”
Yup. I always think of Damasio when this stuff comes up – and it does come up often. I guess not surprisingly. B&W is essentially about epistemology, and the interaction of reason and emotion is obviously relevant to epistemology.
I’m not sure our ethical judgements are as simple as to have a single base. A lot comes from pure value-judgements, like a sympathy with others’ suffering- but I still think there’s a lot of scope for kantian thought along the lines of revealing a contradiction in selfish thought.
“unanswerable reasons”
If there really are unanswerable reasons, then that would be because they are not particularly good reasons. Reasons are designed to invoke assent. They can and should do so. But the really good reasons are of the “yes, but” variety; that is, they invoke responses and lead on to further moves. They open, as well as answer questions. Of course, with all the further moves and their reasons, sooner or later the dance card begins to fill up. (So many dancers, all impatient to dance!) Then suddenly this whole house of cards collapses. And we must begin to construct another one anew, perhaps in a bit more sturdy or more elegant fashion.
But there is no prior or final foundation for this indeterminate process of reasons. Nor is there a Platonically or transcendentally universal “view from nowhere” to decide on such matters, nor a dialectical trump-card to be whipped out on all occasions. No one possesses all the arguments, nor are arguments all that is needed. (And if someone did have all the arguments, then he simply would not know how to use them.) But the expansion of the scope of reasons is also their differentiation. Perhaps in all this there might be some sort of principle of “economy”, of equilibrating constraints. Perhaps some rational efforts should be directed and focused at attempting to discern such a principle of economy, and if it “exists”, whether it is a rational principle, and if so, whether it is a good rational principle.
Now to my on-topic comment. There is an intrinsic tie-in between reason and ethics. Reason is a giving of accounts. Ethical action is action motivated by one’s need to give account of oneself.
I’ve lurked for a while, now I have to stick my nose in.
If I mishypothesize about an event (say, these green beetles are the cause for the decline of evergreen trees in this area) and it turns out completely different (it was, ah, acid rain?), it was because of my incomplete data and/or a failure of my observations. It’s the price of the hubris of making rational decisions. I learn, I modify, others correct me, we get a better, clearer picture.
Valuing the world’s detriment as equal to or less than my finger’s cutting is a simillar mistake of shortsightedness (is a match as destructive as a forest-fire? Quantitatively, no).
One doesn’t have to understand all the aspects of something to hypothesize, nor even to be correct! Lots of scientists guessed right, lots seemed right for hundreds of years to be overruled later – but that might reverse again. Proving my point inarguably is yet another thing.
Evolution is not ‘proven’ yet my functional allowance for it is not illogical.
I can make hypotheses about actions others use morals/ethics to decide based on the data I have collected. I can test and retest them. I can even openly admit that they might be incorrect, but I dare anyone to call it illogical.