[lit-ideas] Re: Moral Imagination
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 9 Oct 2011 10:46:31 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 10/9/2011 4:49:49 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"I guess Robert to be saying that if it depended on 'imagination' to know
that genocide was wrong (say by imagining what it was like to be a victim)
then we could not honestly say that we know genocide to be wrong on this
basis. Is this true?"
--- Yes. Which refutes your point, incidentally. In symbols:
"Don't kill!"
This involves a variable:
(x)(y) Kxy.
Moral principles can't (or kant) have rigid designation.
"Kill a people!" (Genocide)
requires a more elaborate formalisation, but the reference is to "x" and
"y".
------ Kant's point was that the universality (or universalizability,
strictly) of the moral principle will show that "Be a genocide!" does not allow
for it. (Hitlerians diverge; the case of the German moral officer, who, on
discovering he was not Aryan in blood, killed himself).
McEvoy:
"Bear in mind my suggestion was only that 'imagination' is (or may be)
required here, not that it is, or could be, a sufficient condition for
something being wrong (after all, there are many things we can imagine without
[imagining] them being wrong)."
Paul and my point is that imagination, while fine in the arts -- hence
'fine arts' -- is OTIOSE in ethics.
(neither necessary nor sufficient).
Moral Principle MP is a moral principle iff...
NO reference to imagination adds to what makes MP a moral principle.
----- I'm surprised McEvoy mentions necessary and sufficient conditions
('too strong', 'too weak' conditions) and fails to see this point.
"The argument about the role of 'imagination' I was putting forward is
closer to the argument that recognising others as persons, or as 'other minds'
even, is something not 'given' but something we acquire and which it
requires a certain imagination to acquire - and we might say without
recognising
others as persons we can have no real sense of right and wrong. Of course,
this touches on large concerns, some of which I might address in another
thread on P's philosophy of mind by outlining his account of how we _become_
selves."
------ This is better approached via the SYMMETRY, formal, of a moral
principle. In symbols, no rigid designation allowed. Moral principles are
reciprocal, and empty, in this regard. They apply to ANY HUMAN BEING
independent
of his or her imaginative powers.
x + 6 = 10
In this case, the reader has to IMAGINE that x = 4.
Similarly, when one is taught a moral principle
"Do not covet your neighbour's wife!"
one has to ask Paul's question, which does not teach a moral lesson:
"How would you like it if your neighbour coveted YOUR wife?"
----- To label this OBVIOUS formal principle of reciprocity and symmetry
-- general, applicational, and conceptual generality of moral principles
--- "imagination" is a blasphemy to Emily Dickinson who REALLY was
imaginative (or Verne, in novels, too.).
Cheers,
Speranza
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
