[lit-ideas] Re: On being called a Lyre

I take it that the crux of John's point rests in his final sentence below. If
that is the case, then I am no further enlightenend on his position as I find
the sentence unintelligible. Whatever it deals with, I fail to see what
significance such psychological and neurological matters bear for questions
regarding recognition of moral obligations and justifications of moral
judgements. (I don't deny there are neurological preconditions enabling the
possibility of moral reasoning, but I don't think we should identify 
conditions for P with assessements of the cogency of warrants for P.)

Walter O
MUN




Quoting John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>:

> On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 9:39 AM, <wokshevs@xxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> >
> > As an independent topic, I am intrigued by the notion of an "emotional
> > moral
> > approach." "Morality," I would have thought, concerns the obligations we
> > have
> > to others and ourselves in virtue of being rationally autonomous agents.
> 
> 
> I am glad that Walter introduces the qualification "I would have thought"
> into his assumption.
> 
> The attempt to separate "rationally autonomous agents" from the emotions
> has, I trust we all know, a long and honorable history in Western thought.
> But the last couple of centuries have produced a lot of evidence that
> separating reason and emotion is not only a difficult task but, at the end
> of the day, an impossible one.
> 
> 
> This is not, by the way, an attack on reason and logic. Both clearly have
> great utility, and there is every reason to believe that considering the
> question: "If rationality is possible, what are the conditions that make it
> so?" is a valuable thing to do.
> 
> One can always proceed like the fabled economist who trapped on a desert
> island with nothing to eat but a can of beans begins to consider his problem
> with "Assume a can opener." It may be more valuable, however, to proceed
> from the observation, being reinforced almost daily by all sorts of
> research, that pattern-matching and emotional response precede reason, which
> enters into decision-making as part of a feedback loop, a control mechanism
> that serves, when operating properly, to check the errors to which
> pattern-matching and emotional response are prone.
> 
> 
> John (in a mellow and philosophical mood)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> John McCreery
> The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
> Tel. +81-45-314-9324
> http://www.wordworks.jp/
> 



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