In 1989 Nussbaum and Sen published a paper about the ethics of development. They thought it had something to do with the promotion and expansion of valuable capabilities. However, such promotion and expansion may occur in the context of retrogression, not development, as well as be for a mercenary or unethical reason.
B.K Matilal, the philosopher, wrote a paper critiquing Sen & Nussbaum's approach.
The internal reflection process that assesses values gradually reveals hidden inconsistencies, unclarities and confusions, and pushes its way ahead, leading to self-discovery on the basis of shared and sharable beliefs. It will be a self-discovery.
The opposite is equally true. Internal reflection can immediately reveal consistencies and clarities or any other shit it likes. That's why most people don't bother with it and the few that pretend to do so tend to teach shite subjects.
One may worry about 'truth' and 'objectivity* in this case.
If one is paid a little money to do so- sure.
According to Nussbaum and Sen, this would be wrong, for 'Aristotle holds that all truth is in some sense internal and value-laden.'
but only in the same sense that they are dolphins working as actuaries in Shanghai circa AD 3000.
They refer to the Rawlsian view that Plato was correct about 'truth' in natural science while objectivity in human science would be more relevant to an account of
ethical inquiry.
Rawls knew shit about science. Subjectivity objectively exists because we are subjects. Objectivity does not except for some purpose where we are objects. I am happy walking in the park as the sun rises. That is my subjective feeling. The number of people walking in the park is an objective datum.
In fact, pure truth if it means a view from nowhere, is as mythical as the round-square. Here Hilary Putnam's argument that ethics and science share almost the same notion of truth is recalled, which leads to 'internal realism'.
Putnam was saying that some scientific theories are beautiful or elegant. There is also the view that some results are 'natural' or 'canonical'. However, we look in vain for 'natural' law or 'natural religion'. Why? Nature is a fitness landscape which features high Knightian uncertainty. Also, there's a good reason we should not know our own true preferences and should possess value plasticity. For every coordination game, it makes sense to hedge on a discoordination game. Also we should be able to change our beliefs to quaff 'Kavka's toxin'. These sort of game theoretic considerations can be found in the Mahabharata.
This is also not without a parallel in the Indian tradition. The Sanskrit term satya means 'truth', and elsewhere I have argued that the term has been ambiguously used for both factual truths and evaluative exhortations (cf. satya dharma, satya-raksa).
Truth was linked to the keeping of vows. But different people might make different vows. Truth could be plural.
When the sarvam duhkham thesis, that everything, be it pain or pleasure, is nothing but unhappiness, is regarded in Buddhism as the first 'noble truth' (ärya satya)—it is more a prescription than a description (Matilal, 1982).
If you make your living or gain prestige by curing an imaginary complaint- sure. Why not?
It is a truth which is value-laden.
Or it is a lie which is convenient.
An exploration of this notion of truth is necessary.
If you get paid for such bogus exploration- sure, why not?
Another important component of the internal critique would be a conception of selfhood in relation to which values are to be understood.
So, to do something useless you should first do something foolish.
The authors recommend that the self be understood as a relational entity and its own ends as shared ends.
In which case there is little reason to understand the thing at all. The problem is that this licenses people to talk bollocks about wholly imaginary 'relations'. Sen pretends that people have a tropism towards justice- they get really mad if they see any inequality of income- as strong as their tropism towards food and water. One could similarly say that people of a particular geographical area have a relationship with their supposed 'Race' which causes them to have a 'Race consciousness' and this is the most important thing in their collective lives.
For this will harmonize well with the communal goals and procedures of the reflective process that does evaluation and ranking in the developing nations.
No it won't. It will cause nations to do stupid shit- like trying to invade stronger countries or, in the case of India, becoming poorer and weaker for some high minded reason.
This view is certainly off-beat
It is mad.
with the rampant individualism that is dominant in developed Western societies today.
Rampant individualism? Fuck off! Western nations are ones where people play by the rules. Shitholes are ones where every body is as fucking individualistic as they like.
Here lies, I think, the root of a deep problem.
The deep problem Matilal's people faced was how to get the fuck away from shithole countries and gain tenure in nice Western campuses.
It has been argued that rampant individualism is the price the West has paid for the growth of scientific knowledge and development,
The Soviets were no slouches in that department. Clearly, this was a stupid argument.
and it is also at the root of the society's malady and discontent.
Western society's 'malady and discontent' were highly attractive to those from shithole countries.
Enlightenment has spread disenchantment, loss of faith
in stupid shite- sure.
and scepticism, and with it individualism.
as opposed to starving quietly while muttering 'Ahimsa! Ahimsa!'
Hence the harmonious view of selfhood, which existed in developing nations,
which became less harmonious once the colonial power could no longer feed and protect them and wipe their collective bums.
may be completely undermined by the rampant individualism which development will no doubt foster.
Development is Tardean mimetics. You do what more successful people have done so as to get to live like them. Where there is no development, there will be dependency. Then, the nature of the game will be to prove yourself more abject and helpless than your rival. Is Haiti getting more per capita Aid? We must try to emulate Haiti.
Hence there will be the loss of a central value, to be sure, and the worst fears of the cultural conservationists will be proven to be true.
But they'd be alive. They wouldn't have starved to death.
In this way, the so called internal rational criticism will also be undermined.
It is useless. Why 'undermine' it?
In reply, it must be said that there is no easy answer.
Yes there is. The reply is 'fuck off you worthless vacuous tossers.'
Probably, the internalness of the critique will save it from being undermined.
The stupidity of the guy doing the critique can indeed make it bulletproof. But the guy himself will die soon enough.
Man is a self-conscious and self-interpretive creature, and so is a living culture or a living culture-family.
Man is a creature who defecates and micturates. Living cultures shit and piss all over the place.
Our poet Tagore once talked (1931) about an ontology of the 'surplus in Man', which he saw as an ontology of Hope to counterbalance the rampant individualism which has been the necessary precondition of progress, growth and development.
Tagore kept begging for any 'surplus' money folks might happen to have. Sadly, rampant individualists thought he was a boring shithead.
The 'surplus in Man' or the 'Universal in Man' is what accounts for, according to Tagore, the 'other-regarding' activities.
So, nothing to do with kin-selective altruism or the extended phenotype, then. If you won't learn about evolution, you are bound to start babbling about surpluses or deficits in the shite produced by living cultures or the Spirit of Man or some other such nonsense.
I believe this to be the poetic way of capturing the idea of self-hood as a relational social entity.
Why not just say 'people care about people'?
Though not dominant in post-enlightenment Europe, the idea nevertheless finds expression today in our concern for the environment,
Man and his ancestors have been degrading the environment for hundreds of thousands of years
for our future generations, for the health and survival of innocent children of poor countries.
Sadly, poor people who keep having lots of babies ensure that the 'health and survival of innocent children' will always be at risk.
Hence it would not be difficult to argue for a richer conception of selfhood
it would be easy but pointless. Having richer conceptions won't make us richer.
where both individuality (required for our drive to change circumstances) and community would harmonize together. And such a conception of selfhood would also be part of the internal critical method by which a culture should decide between values.
and also where to take a piss and what type of pizza to order.
My ignorance of Greek prompts me to pose a question: is the above conception of selfhood imbedded in Aristotle's writings?
Yes. But the Greeks rejected it because it was already out of date. Selfhood, it turned out, required a proper Creator God not a whole bunch of squabbling Olympians.
If so, then it seems to me that in the modern discussion of selfhood and of ethical theory, this point has not been properly emphasised.
Nothing sensible has been emphasized by that vacuous shite.
The Aristotelian method of Nussbaum and Sen departs in three other significant respects from the usual method followed in contemporary ethical discussion. It advises us to treat each of the values as qualitatively unique and incommensurable.
But if how we value value is qualitatively unique and incommensurable then there is no reason for us to take anybody's advise. Indeed, discourse would collapse
It emphasizes that evaluative choice cannot be made unless the particularity of each context which presents the dilemma is fully taken account of.
So, evaluative choice can't be made till 'the end of Time'.
And it underlines the essential role of emotions and imagination in our correct perception of values,
though there is no way of knowing if it is a totally mad or mischievous perception of values, banlieues or what-have-yous
and thereby seeks to undermine the pitfalls of the Platonic conception of rationality.
Why undermine pitfalls? Fill them in, instead. This is easily done. Having the right emotions and the right imagination and the right morality and the right self-knowledge and so on would cause rationality to coincide with the right evaluation. The reason the Greeks converted to Christianity is because this was more easily done by cleaving to Christ's path.
Value in Greek, Latin and Sanskrit is associated with 'moving towards', attaining, gaining supremacy etc. Perhaps there was an Indo-European root 'ar'- to move in order to get a result, credit or value- from which we have artha and arete and ars. Values are as various as goals or benefits or motivating factors. It is not the case that any civilization, ancient or modern, placed any a priori restriction on what these could be.
The most significant suggestion by Nussbaum and Sen regarding the methodology of the study of Indian values is that we begin by looking at a well-known and thoroughly studied case: the case of ancient Greek values.
Nonsense! We know there was considerable disagreement between Greek economists, philosophers, poets and everybody else. Some stupid pedants have talked bollocks about this or that value- which is merely a bee in their own bonnet- but this is because pedants got shit for brains.
It has been mentioned that the Greeks did not make or anticipate the Kantian distinction between two sorts of values; the moral and the non-moral.
Yes they did. If x is a predicate of y, then not x can be a predicate of y. In the case of values, it is obvious that some are immoral- e.g. your valuing shitting on me. How fucking stupid would the Greeks have had to be not to get this?
Neither did the Indians.
Fuck off! Which Indian didn't get that it was immoral to kill his Guru or fuck his Guru's wife?
There was plurality even within the Greek culture.
There is plurality even within the Actuarial culture of dolphins on Saturn because there are degrees of being actuarial or dolphins or on Saturn. I'm neither an actuary nor a dolphin nor do I live on Saturn but I conform more closely to that type than my neighbor's cat who is clearly a Management Consultant type. The thing is no big deal.
Several types of evidence should be taken into account in order to study the Indian tradition:
1. The vast body of Indian literature has already been mentioned, not only the two great epics, but also other poems, plays, kathäs (novels), bhänas (one-act plays where characters are usually courtesans, prostitutes, thieves or men about town).
Fuck that. Just watch some old Indian movies. They were based on those kathas and bhanas and upanyases.
2. Dharma, Artha- and käma-sästras: They all endorse a typically Indian division of values into the religious-moral, the economic-political and the one aimed at gratification of desire (sexual and other).
This is universal. The West has ethics, economics and erotic arts. So do the Chinese.
It was argued that the economic-political is only instrumental to the other two.
No sex means no econ which means no ethics or theology.
And various texts unanimously said that all three must necessarily be combined to ensure a good life. A fourth, moksa, entered into the discussion only later in history, and was regarded as the one with the ultimate value.
It was always there. What changed was a sufficiently developed economy to permit the existence of monastic sects.
But even Samkaräcärya re-emphasized that people in society are of many kinds,
Very true. Pimps aint policemen. Judges don't give beejays.
of whom only some would choose the path of renunciation and cessation, nivrtti-märga,
coz other people have to work in order for some to be monks
while the majority opt for the path of action and noncessation, pravrtti-märga. Thousands of epic stories and poems have illustrated this point.
Does it really need illustrating? It is obvious that if everybody becomes a monk, everybody starves.
3. Texts like Kuttanïmata (Damodaragupta, AD 800) which discussed with illustrative stories what sort of virtues and values prostitutes should cultivate. For example, they should not fall in love if they are to succeed financially.
Unless the dude is rich and wants to be lurved for his hot bod, not his money bags. I omit the rest of Matilal's essay which attempts to prove that ancient Indians were far looser in their sexual morals than contemporary porn stars. What he won't admit is that literature meant to titillate an elite audience does not give a realistic picture of the life of ordinary people. In real life, the pizza boy is not gang-raped by super-models. That's why I've quit my job at Domino's. Still Matilal does understand that to critique Sen & Nussbaum you must quote ancient texts describing the ethics of prostitutes. If you get paid for pretending to care deeply about the poor, you aint Mother Theresa. You are just a tart without a heart.
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