This is the second part of a response to an Aeon essay by a Canadian philosopher
Unfortunately, the quest for those foundations makes things only worse. This is my third complaint. For one thing, they are so abstract as to be hard to assess, and certainly still less credible than the lower-level reasons or principles they are brought in to justify. More importantly, their credibility is inevitably undermined by the irreconcilable disagreements they give rise to.
There is nothing wrong with searching for 'univalent foundations'. Abstraction aint a bad thing by itself. If you can show a logical flaw in an abstract argument, you can spot the same flaw- and repair it- in any concrete context.
Credibility is not undermined by 'disagreements' which disagreeable people are constantly finding some excuse for. It is undermined by a thing's uselessness.
Consider again some examples. To warrant that a reason is a moral one, a Kantian, as we saw, will derive it from the categorical imperative, a wonderful device that is supposed to follow from the mere fact that you are rational, and both assumes that you are absolutely free and subjects you to an inescapably binding command.
Simply recast this as a Gentzen type sequent calculus (such that you get concrete categories with faithful functors) and the problem disappears. Everything is now a conditional tautology. Thus 'if you are rational then you can bind yourself to y' doesn't mean y isn't defeasible. We just say that we weren't fully rational when we bound ourselves to a silly y. Since we are free, we can change our conception of rationality so as to bind ourselves to z. We can also tell anybody who objects to fuck off and go eat dog shit. William Lawvere, whom Ronnie would know coz Canada is a small place, philosophically speaking, appeared to be always about to begin giving a sort of Hegelian sublation of Kant such that moral philosophy didn't have to be shite. On the other hand, Lawvere's objection to the War Measure's Act, if accepted and expressed mathematically, also explains why Canadians no longer have souls.
Ronnie speaks of 'warranting'- i.e. making a determination. Hegel took Spinoza as saying that all determination was negation whereas we are merely speaking of the difference between the angelic,' figure' in geometry versus the quite Devilish algebraic sequence. Thus 'deriving' a moral reason from the categorical imperative can be more modestly understood as a Muth rational solution or 'focal' solution to a coordination problem regarding a 'spread' of choice sequences which can give rise to an endomorphism on a concrete category. Considered dynamically, would this necessarily correspond to Hegelian 'Geist' understood as the 'spirit' animating the esprit de corps we would achieve if we felt we had really come together in a common cause? Fuck no. Ghosts may be needed, as Moh Tzu observed, to keep the peasants honest but ghosts don't really exist. Evolution explains why, to baffle a predator or parasite, we must never know our own 'spirit' let alone subscribe to a collective one- save as part of some explicitly co-evolving process with a narrow, protocol bound, range.
I was once involved in a dialogic relationship with a moral being who was my intellectual equal while also representing my irreducible alterity. The fellow tried to eat my nose. This happened repeatedly despite the fact that I'd always weep copiously and complain to the Mummy and gave her a very long and exhaustive explanation about how he'd leapt out of his crib and attacked me using lethal Ninja warrior techniques - which I parried with 'Kalari'- the original Tamil martial art which became foundational to Shao Lin Kung Fu- nevertheless baby bited my nose so I used Spock-from-Star-Trek's 'Vulcan neck-pinch' to immobilise him, but, that rascal dun Vulcan neck-pinch me simultaneously! That's how come we ended up collapsed unconscious on the sofa. It was definitely not the case that 'Daddy likes baby. Daddy sleeping the baby. How cute!' as certain fanatical Feminists (who shall remain nameless, despite being married to me at that time) had the unmitigated gall to aver.
My point is that every sad, Dad bod, loser like me knows we do too bind ourselves to what is moral by our own freest will. Love, for one moment, liberated us to make a choice calamitous to our previous oikos and oikeiosis, but then a new sequence began and we are only free to the extent that we are bound to it- albeit memoriously. Smarahara is the name of that God who, destroying Cupid, burning up memory, liberates us only to every afterwards, subsist as the aleatory slave of Freedom's lifted horizon. Baby bited my nose! And I didn't even have to send him to a posh private School or Ivy League college to get him to do so! No doubt, the fellow might go down that path to perdition. But, like mine, it might be punctuated by a baby wot bitediz his nose!
Returning to Ronnie, we read-
A utilitarian will remind you that life is made of pleasures and pains, and you should always endeavour to occasion the former and prevent the latter – for all existent and future conscious beings who might possibly be affected by your action.
Reading Ronnie is a pleasure. But taking pains with the mathematics that underlies category theory might yield, if not pleasure, then use.
Ronnie will now say something silly about Aris-turtle coz he has spent his life teaching shit and sitting on shite committees.
For Aristotle, the supremacy of moral reasons derives from the fact that they follow from what is ‘essential’ to you as a human being.
But only essential after all sorts of 'baser' needs are satisfied. The problem here is that Aristotle was a professional pedant. He had a motive to talk up his own wares. This may seem a cynical view. Yet cynics too need preceptors. Pyrrhonism may originate in the Punjab. But eusebia, pious veneration of the Guru, has reached its acme there.
For him, what is essential is both universal and unique to human nature.
The problem here is that, like Kant and Hume, Aristotle said some pretty horrible things about women and slaves and darkies and so forth.
Note, incidentally, that the more we come to know about ourselves, the harder it will be to find those essential properties.
Fuck off. The reverse is the case. The more we know about ourselves the more we know in which possible worlds we have 'conatus'- i.e. continue to exist- and in which possible worlds we don't at all. The reason 'Man' is not an essence is because he can't exist in all possible worlds. Aris-turtle was a fucking pedant- a successful one- and pedants talk ultracrepidarian crap which is inconsistent from lecture to lecture.
For science is making increasingly clear how much we share with the rest of our mammalian cousins,
but not our reptilian nephews and nieces who tell us to fuck off when we try to claim a share in their Daddy's or Mummy's estate.
and also how much individual humans can differ in what they experience as pleasures and pains.
How dare you! I have explained a thousand times that I was not pleasuring myself with my Dyson vacuum cleaner. There was an accident. It was very painful. No. I don't get off on that sort of thing at all.
Insofar as modern virtue theory allows value pluralism, your obligation will be to become the best that your singular nature can be. Which is hardly easier to discern, let alone to accomplish.
Virtue ethics must valorise Violence over non-Violence- because, the former, to be effective, involves discipline and learning difficult stuff and funding R & D.
These leading ideas – of rational action, of the value of happiness, and of achieving the best that our nature affords – are grand ideas.
They are ad captum vulgi shite.
In their grandeur, they can once again remind us of some of religion’s grand ideas.
Fuck off! Getting to heaven so as to be re-united with Granny and that puppy dog you wanted to play with when it came at you with foaming jaws and so on and so forth is the 'grand idea' of Religion.
I know Religion is true. Why? I've been kept alive to pursue my swinish, but supremely self-satisfied, life by peeps wot I have come to know are the fucking salt of the earth and sweetness of Paradise.
They will get their eternal reward and that puppy dog will lick their face as they sleep once more in Granny's lap.
If this were not the case, a worthless waste of space, like me, should simply top himself to make room for the good people.
For example: that the evil of the world is explained by the possibility of redeeming it by the sacrifice of an innocent God.
Ronnie dude! That's exactly happened within your own oikos! The Rg Veda depicts a 'snatak' (graduate) saying, 'God is higher than Daddy' and Daddy who is sitting there is greatly chuffed. His son has got edumicated. Then the budding 'Rishi' says 'God is higher than Guru' and the Guru is greatly chuffed. His instruction had not been invalidated by his tender concern and affection. What's next after Daddy and Guru? Mum, right? But, the 'snatak' can only say 'God is as high as Mother'. That's the truth. An 'innocent God' is sacrificed every time Men have Sons. But that god's God was God from her Mother's 'rahum'- womb- compassion, mercy- God. That's why Christ on the Cross quotes the psalm 'Eloi, Eloi'. His Mum was standing in front of him. There is latria and there is dulia. This is the object of latria personified doing dulia to us so we may all be saved by hyperdulia to Mum- under whose feet, Islam's Prophet said, verily is Paradise.
Why pretend Religion didn't do 'moral philosophy'? Ronnie, debunking an availability cascade under that rubric, does not revert to the 'last safe configuration' his type of Paideia afforded. But then Ronnie is a high IQ guy. Moreover, as I have argued in my as yet unpublished novel 'Minyan Murders', Canadians lost their souls when they enacted the War Measures Act, which Lawvere opposed, in response to the October Crisis.
Or that we are absolutely predestined to hell or to heaven, yet must strive to act as if what we do could change that. And very much like the debates over those theological topics, the debates among the foundations of morality are irredeemably insoluble.
If I didn't believe I was predestined to live without love, how could I now live? Ronnie takes an elitist view. Good luck to him.
That wouldn’t necessarily make them futile. Theoretical debates can have much to teach us, even if they are of no practical use. In a debate about ultimate values, we might get to ask when a reason is a good reason. We might be led better to appreciate the difficulty of weighing one reason against another. But each morality wants it all: only one ultimate value can be supreme.
This is not the case. In order to preserve conatus, each adopts a 'multiplicative update weighting algorithm' which can be shown to have certain macro properties- e.g. being Evolutionarily Stable or 'Hannan Consistent'. Otherwise they go extinct.
Ronnie is merely attacking careerist stupidity with the vocabulary of careerist stupidity which is how come that Credentialist Ponzi scheme burgeoned.
So the debate is on. No participant can avoid appealing to ‘intuitions’, a fancy word that just refers to what you believe in the first place without needing a reason.
Fuck off. It refers to a conditional tautology in a sequent calculus of a useful type. This has nothing to do with 'beliefs' because of Newcombe type problems.
But intuitions conflict.
No. Their relationship is dialectical. The Socratic 'palinode' is its, mimetics-without-dynamics, concrete model. Metanoia, Ronnie dude. Repent before it is too late. It may be that, like Bhratrhari, you too in your family tree have a Mum who sacrificed herself so the kiddies rose in Paideia. Your sham erudition is the axe which laid waste the flowering forest of your Mother's youth and beauty. My anti-erudition and programmatic, Socioproctological, stupidity arises from the project to restore the axe head's sandalwood scent to that vanished forest.
Ronnie complains eloquently of the manner in which this field has degenerated-
In defence of their different ‘foundational’ intuitions, each advocate can only resort to question-begging assertion. For these foundations are, by definition, the ultimate values, the rock-bottom first principles. When they compete, there is nothing deeper to which they can appeal to settle the disagreement – except everything else. But that everything else is what we have without moral theory: competing reasons of all kinds, without any privileged class of reasons to which all others must yield.
This is not a scandal- a stumbling block- because what happens next is horse-trading. The Feminist nutter concedes something so as to ally with the Green nutter and then the Marxist nutter pretends to go along with both while, on the other side of the aisle, everybody suddenly agrees that the sun shines out of Trump's asshole. Economia, a suave, discretionary, management may yet manage to make something good out of what would otherwise be the dog's breakfast of coalition formation. Yet, of such mysterious economy, is the katechon- which holds the eschaton- the end of days- at bay. There is still the 'akrebia' of a moral theory but it has a measure of elasticity and provides equitable remedies where it over reaches itself by reason of too great a generality.
The systems that sort reasons into moral and non-moral aim at identifying right and wrong.
Not necessarily. They speak in terms of 'kairos', timeliness- or auspiciousness as we say in India. Thus a moral- 'dharmic' or 'samskari' person in India- does things at the astrologically correct time. The thing itself is neither right nor wrong. The person doing the thing has shown he is pious and moral because of the scrupulousness with which he has consulted astrologers and seers. This can be translated into a bureaucratic or political context by a diligent adherence to procedural rules which, in some sense, answer to 'kairotic' considerations.
But those systems can themselves be bad. This is my fourth complaint.
This is a perfectly reasonable complaint. However, if those systems are defeasible and permit Tardean mimetics- i.e. have a rule such that imitating what the best people are doing is considered a superior alternative- then one can complain about the system while making it work better and thus incrementally purging it of 'badness'.
Surprisingly many philosophers have held that a person who is truly virtuous will have all the virtues.
Unsurprisingly, many philosophers think they themselves are truly virtuous- which is why we keep them around for shits & giggles.
This doctrine of the ‘unity of the virtues’ is
Socratic. The suggestion is that there is some higher stand point from which disparate virtues- courage, generosity etc.- are univocal. If one could attain that intellection, one's character would display a rare perfection. Warriors would praise us for our courage. Priests would admire our piety. Savants would be wonder struck by our intellect. Wifey wouldn't beat us and our co-workers would not refer to us as 'that sad sack of shit'.
grounded in the idea that the exercise of a skill should not count as virtuous unless it serves good ends.
A skillful surgeon is not virtuous if he spends all this time amputating the limbs of his patients and reattaching their legs to their shoulders and their arms to their buttocks for his own amusement.
It implies that no one is truly virtuous for, as Christians are wont to remind us, we are all sinners.
But Christ takes on our sins so we get to go to the good place for ever and ever. That's a dynamite deal. All I have to do is admit I fart in crowded lifts- which isn't something I'm proud off, except that one time I shared an elevator with Amartya Sen- and I get an eternity of felicity up in Heaven while Sen- who is an atheist- is tortured by demons in Hell.
But despite its popularity among philosophers, this doctrine is repugnant to common sense, as well as indefensible in the light of recent empirical research on the piecemeal nature of moral development.
It is perfectly possible that some intellectual process enables us to gain mastery over our limbic system and to 're-wire' ourselves such that instinctive urges or deleterious habits no longer cause us to fuck up. There has been 'empirical research' on moral development in kids. There has been none on those who claim to have attained a higher moral plane. Either they get Me Too'd or, if their victims were too young or mentally retarded to denounce them, they die in an odor of sanctity.
As illustrated by many a caper movie, pulling off a major crime requires several traits traditionally regarded as virtues: prudence, courage, intelligence.
But that crime is clearly a negative sum game. Society is worse off because the criminal's gain is less than the victim's loss.
More importantly, a person’s life can be dominated by a devotion to evil goals every bit as fervent, and quite as dependent on prudence, courage, intelligence and especially ‘honour’, as that of the most admired paragons of conventional virtue.
There is no reason to believe that great intelligence is shown in rendering Society as a whole worse off.
The possibility of a bad morality challenges us to define what counts as a good one.
People who like defining things will do so regardless of any challenge. Those who know the project is foolish, won't do so at any price.
Unless you just assume that your morality is unquestionably the only right one, the term seems to fit any system of principles and values by which its adherents feel ‘bound’ – in some metaphorical sense that is both specific and hard to pin down.
Ronnie just gave an argument for re-ligio- i.e. a common creed which binds people together. Pious people in a religious society feel they are 'bound' by something unquestionably good and right. They can get on with doing 'first order good'.
When feeling bound by a moral rule in that special way, the rule’s transgression, by oneself or others, is liable to trigger ‘moral’ emotions such as guilt or indignation.
Which can easily be purged or assuaged by some Religious ceremony of a relatively cheap and ubiquitous type. The real problem is that nihilists are capable of greater and more destructive 'savage indignation'.
A Nazi might feel indignant at his colleague’s lack of zeal in persecuting Jews.
Thus putting them both in danger. But this is equally true of our indignation at a colleague's lack of zeal in a matter which puts all our jobs at risk. This does not make us Nazis nor can we equate a drunken lack of 'due diligence' on the part of the Head of internal Audit on the Fifth Floor with a desire to save Jews from gas-chambers.
A fundamentalist jihadist might feel guilty for secretly teaching his daughter to read.
Thus putting both her and him- indeed, the whole family- in danger.
Deciding between good and bad moralities will once again lead to a wild-goose chase after foundations.
Not really. There may be some people who are interested in the 'foundations' of Morality or Mathematics or making sweet sweet love to the vacuum cleaner, but- outside University campuses- such people are referred to as nut-jobs.
It can only add a distracting complication to the already difficult task of assessing the force of reasons.
Why assess the force of reasons? What good does it do? If the thing is 'difficult' it will only be done if it is well remunerated. But who will pay for it? And if you don't get paid why not yield to distracting complications- e.g. debating who would win in a fight between Dracula and Spiderman?
In their psychological profile, in the way that they structure a life and give rise to moral emotions, bad and good moralities are alike.
Are they though? It is certainly true that good and bad people have a similar biology. But do their psychological profiles really match? Is a surgeon who cuts up people to save lives really similar to a knife wielding maniac? Is the 'structure' of a life devoted to crime really similar to one devoted to the Church?
Perhaps, as Nietzsche argued, such emotions, rooted in fear and resentment, are what above all motivates us to believe in morality.
But it is even more likely that Nietzsche's syphilis had affected him mentally.
For morality licenses a right to blame that we are reluctant to forfeit.
Very true. Morality licenses my right to blame a muscular thug if he shoves me aside. However, prudence causes me to forfeit that right. Indeed, I mumble an apology. Suppose you loudly berate me for not exercising my right to blame and shame the thug. I will kick your fucking head in- unless you too are bigger than me.
This brings me to my last complaint: morality licenses ugly emotions.
Ronnie, babe, you have been displaying nothing but ugly emotions and an ugly misology during the course of this article.
It encourages us to feel contemptuous of others who fail to share our principles, or superior to those who fail to live up to them.
But we contemptuous of all sorts of people who are greatly superior to us. Had I been President Obama, I would have taken the opportunity to say 'ooga-booga' to the Queen. What is the point of being the first Black leader of the Free World if you don't pretend to be a cannibal from time to time?
It allows us a daily twinge of the pleasure that St Thomas Aquinas promised the elect, whose eternal bliss, he assured us, will be enhanced by witnessing the torments of the damned.
But Voodoo offers more immediate rewards. The Canadian Comedy series 'kids in the hall' featured Mr. Tyzik- the head crusher- who would cry, "I'm crushing your head, I'm crushing your head! That's what I'm doing, flathead!" at those he deemed better looking, or more successful. He'd squint and position his thumb and index finger so as to frame, from his perspective, the head of his victim which he would proceed to crush while emitting a cracking sound. Screw Aquinas. Tyzik got more jollies.
Furthermore, it invites us to wallow in a certain kind of regret we dignify as morally superior by calling it ‘guilt’.
Guilt is not regret. I regret not having studied harder in School so as to now be bigger than Beyonce. Guilt is what I feel for having voided the warranty on my Dyson. Look, it wasn't just sexual. There were emotions involved. Complicated emotions. I did join an online support group but things turned ugly when the Roomba running it returned to its docking station.
Guilt is the primary moral emotion.
Shame is primary. Guilt is secondary.
The benefit claimed for it is that it motivates you to behave better in the future. But simple regret is no less apt to inform and guide future choices. Unlike guilt, regret is not tied to the moral domain: I can regret missing a concert as readily as acting unkindly. We can learn from the past without laying claim to moral authority.
Regret is tied to Economics and the notion of opportunity cost. Guilt is tied to Juristic or other essentially epistemic processes. Neither are necessarily moral.
What do we lose by giving up morality? As an amoralist, I continue to prize what is beautiful, or good, or interesting, or virtuous – in the morally neutral sense of the Greek term aretē.
But Ronnie's discipline ceased to prize any such thing long ago. Indeed, this article is too well written to qualify as Philosophy which must now be written in either a brutalist or autistic style. It has no room for the belle lettrist ἀλαζών
I daresay I care about most of the things that many moral people care about. That includes the wellbeing of others, as well as my own.
But where has this caritas taken Ronnie? He makes a living in Canada in a manner marginally more cosmopolitan than a Moose but less so than a Mountie. This was not an inevitable outcome. The heart is the adjoint functor of the soul. Canada lost its soul- for reasons William Lawvere may well have clarified- when Trudeau passed the 'War Measures Act'. I'm not saying that Mounties, disguising themselves as Moose to penetrate Quebecois terrorist cells and then burn down Communist bookstores aint quintessentially Canadian but pushing anti-war activists into insane asylums was going too far. It was a case of Moose disguising themselves as Mounties to disguise themselves as Moose. That's so not Canadian. Fortunately, a Moose named Celine Dion learnt English and re-soldered Canada's soul around about the time that the War Measures Act was replaced by something less colonial. Alas, for Ronnie, it was too late. The Moose had overmastered the Mountie in him. I suppose this explains the elegance of his prose style. Still, metanoia is still possible for him. But he must first rid himself of his Mooseish fastidiousness when it comes to Morality. The thing is the heart of a heartless world and the fart of Terence & Phillip in a world grown grey for lack of laughter.
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