[lit-ideas] Re: The meaning of life
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:05:34 -0330
For Eric Y and all parties who have not abandoned the quest for philosophical
truth and purity for a mere sub-lunary plate of bassmati rice and tandoori
chicken .........(with nan bread and veggie samosas? A cool yoghurt drink to
wash it all down? Tiny licorice candies on your way out?)
Quoting Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>:
> Phil: Perhaps Eric could explain what he takes to be
> the implications of context-dependency? No one has
> denied the significance of context so I am not clear as
> to what Eric is trying to show.
>
EY:
> As a mere literary bloke, I see (or feel) a
> contradiction between statements such as Walter's that,
> "Ethics is....not an empirical discipline" and related
> statements summoned to buttress the claims, such as
> Habermas's that "ethical questions ... can find an
> answer only in context-dependent discourses of
> self-understanding."
>
> Everything empirical is context-dependent, nicht wahr?
----------> The reasoning here seems to be:
P1: All ethical questions are questions that have only context-dependent
answers.
P2: All empirical questions are questions that have only context-dependent
answers.
C: Therefore, All ethical questions are empirical questions.
It further follows that Walter is (felt to be) wrong in his claim that no
ethical questions are empirical questions because the conclusion flatly
contradicts Walter's conclusion. (Actually, those 2 statements are not pure
malt contradictories, since both may be false. But we'll move on ...)
The reconstructed form of the argument is:
All A are B
All C are B
Therefore, All A are C.
That form is invalid. The conclusion, even if true, does not follow logically
from the premises as given. Try some counter-exampling tonight with a tall,
cool lassie and see for yourself, if you don't believe me. (No, I don't mean an
Irish maiden from Riverdance; it's an Indian yoghurt drink. Maybe I got the
spelling wrong? Lhassie? Where is Peter Sellars when you need him?)
I might be misunderstanding Eric here somehow and, if so, I trust he will set
me
and the rest of us straight. (And if he or anybody else can tell me the name of
the movie in which Peter Sellars plays an Indian actor unintentionally invited
to the producer's swanky party I'd be much appreciative. Sellar's character
repeatedly speaks with a parrot ... to a parrot.)
Ever-looming, ever-lording and ever-wafting,
Walter O
Hovering Head Waiter and Occasional Philosopher in Residence
India Gate Restaurant
St. John's, NL
CANADA
> I take "empirical" to refer to Merriam-Webster's first
> definition of same, namely, "originating in or based on
> observation or experience."
>
> In my opinion, almost everything outside of mathematics
> that is "originating in or based upon observation or
> experience" is subject to uncertainty, limitation of
> individual point of view, multivalence, and transience.
> (Even Kant's treasured conception of space as a priori,
> in its transience, has been subsequently reassessed by
> science and mathematics.)
>
> So when Walter writes that, "if a maxim is
> universalizable (U) then it is that across all rational
> agents and it applies universally to all rational
> agents within relevantly similar circumstances. This is
> a normative claim, not an empirical claim," I tend to
> see (or feel) a prescriptive claim posing as something
> grander though it blushes to say so.
>
> It's like someone holding a stiff 3-foot length of
> string and claiming that it connects to a cloud
> overhead.
>
> Context-dependency, as such, seems only to muddle it
> further for me. What does context-dependency really
> mean? Interrelatedness of immediacy, as far as I can
> tell, which is almost a noun form of empirical, which
> by clearly indicating a lack of mediation, has yet to
> jump up into the sky and tie itself to that cloud.
> (Unless we are to call the air, water vapor, and any
> intervening migratory geese as part of the string ...
> just to be, you know, normative.)
>
> Where does the maxim retain its form? In the cloud? In
> the yard of string? In the claim that the string
> connects to the cloud? Or perhaps, and this is the
> possibility that really bugs me, in the underlying
> motive -- to be prescriptive. Hence "to lord it over,
> to loom," etc.
>
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>
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