[lit-ideas] Re: "Must We Mean What We Say?"
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:24:22 -0230
Donal's remarks below highlight an interesting philosophical theme: to what
extent are logic and conceptual coherence relevant to moral deliberation and
assessment? Who is the person of "practical wisdom" anyway? Must she be a
paragon of morality and logical coherence simultaneously? That ideal entails
that the idea of a moral person who cannot reason soundly to conclusions is an
oxymoron. And is that the truly relevant moral ideal? Could one be morally
virtuous without knowing anything about what makes an argument valid and sound?
Could I be innocent of norms of logical validity and still legitimately claim
to offer justifiable opinions on moral matters?
At first glance, any such connection seems forced and highly dubious. Errors in
logic are surely not in themselves moral failings. However, Kantians believe
that morality and moral virtue are internally connected to capacities for
rationality and autonomy. That is to say: acts of immorality have their source
primarily not in viciousness of character but rather in an ignorance of what
universal canons of rationality require. As Kant, Habermas and Tom Scanlon
(amongst others) have it, immorality is rooted in not understanding the nature
and significance of a justifiable reason for belief, judgment or action. Vice
has its origins not in limitations of character, lack of control over one's
natural impulses (Aristotle's "weakness of will"), but rather in the inability
to reason properly from premises to conclusions.
Walter Okshevsky
MUN
Quoting Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
> --- wokshevs@xxxxxx wrote:
>
> > Quoting Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
> >
> > snip
> >
> > Interesting. I wouldn't threaten Sir Karl with a poker but I would offer
> > the
> > following thoughts:
> >
> > Putatively, the verificationist criterion of meaning is meaningless
> because
> > it
> > itself is unproveable on its own terms. It thus contradicts its own
> > presciption. But isn't it odd that a meaningless maxim or prescription
> > could
> > still bear sufficient meaning to be identified as self-contradictory?
>
> It is odd - and this oddity is part of the problem: for the fact an
> unproveable prescription [that all meaningful statements are proveable] is
> itself meaningful (in that it can be understood), itself disproves the
> prescription.
>
> There is a way to try to get out of this apparent self-contradiction - a la
> the Tractatus:- but it is, I suggest, unsuccessful.
>
> >Think
> > of
> > other self-contradictory maxims: 1) All persons shall be slaves. 2) All
> > persons
> > shall buy bread but nobody will sell bread. These maxims don't appear
> > meaningless to me.
>
> Nor to me.
>
> >They are sufficiently intelligible for us to see that
> > nobody
> > could act on them. And the idea that nobody could act on a maxim is
> central
> > to
> > universalizability as a criterion of moral
> permissibility/impermissibility.
>
> It is not clear to me that the problem is that these maxims 'cannot be acted
> on' - rather it is that they are paradoxical, and this is what underlies why
> they cannot be acted on [there are perhaps (many?) non-paradoxical things
> that cannot be acted on?].
>
> (1) is paradoxical because slave and master are both assumed to be opposite
> and mutually necessary. However, we could surely conceive a circle of
> persons
> who are 'master' to those to the left and 'slave' to those to the right:
> such
> a circle could be complete and non-paradoxical: of course such a circle
> depends on the assumption that one can be both master and slave. It is the
> assumption that all persons can be entirely and only slaves [to others who
> are masters] that is paradoxical.
>
> This paradox is surely conceptual and not action-based, even if its
> conceptual impossibility means an actual impossibility [i.e. we could not
> put
> into action a circle where the persons in it were entirely and only slaves,
> without masters].
>
> (2) is even more paradoxical than (1) in that it is impossible to conceive a
> circle where everyone buys but no one sells bread.
>
> Still the paradox seems logical/conceptual, rather than action-based.
>
> So the suggested link to "universalizability as a criterion of moral
> permissibility/impermissibility" is here unclear me.
>
> Donal
> Apologising for the typos in my previous posts btw
>
>
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