[lit-ideas] Re: Univocal philosophy as the value of transcendental claims?
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 18:29:31 -0230
Quoting Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
> Phil Enns writes:
>
> "The moral prohibition is a structural component of stealing so that it makes
> no sense to question whether theft is or is not wrong. To assert that x was
> a theft is to also assert that x was wrong."
>
> The position I have been developing is that moral principles, judgments, etc.
> are always at best partial, i.e. incomplete, imprecise (I don't mean partial
> in the sense of 'supporting a particular interest'), in a way that might be
> suggested by calling them 'guidelines' (in the case of principles) or
> 'provisional' (in the case of judgments).
>
> I think that debates about this topic tend to get polarized in a way that's
> analogous to what happens in debates about the nature of truth -- either
> there's absolute truth or every asserted truth is just a power play by
> someone. I think that is a false dichotomy and similarly I think the notion
> that morality is either transcendental or culturally-bound is a false
> dichotomy.
>
> To explore that, I am comfortable with selecting a means of expressing moral
> principles, judgments, etc. I read Phil, here, as in part suggesting a
> terminological convention whereby the word 'steal' will be treated as
> intrinsically including 'morally wrong' as part of its meaning. The result
> of accepting that convention is that it is simply meaningless to talk in
> those terms about stealing that is not morally wrong. Anything that's not
> morally wrong must not be stealing.
>
> My general point about the imprecision of moral judgments, etc., can be
> restated using this terminological convention as an assertion about the
> uncertainty of application of the word 'steal'. Since I've agreed to accept
> that whatever is morally right cannot be stealing, then for my present
> purposes if some act appears to be stealing but turns out not to be morally
> wrong, it must not have been stealing.
>
> Phil asks, later, for just that -- an example of a theft (well, I assume he
> would accept the amendment: 'an act that in all other respects appears to be
> a theft') but is neither justified (i.e. by exculpating circumstance?) nor
> wrong.
>
> The simplest way to create an example is to assume that, legitimately, person
> A and person B live by two different sets of rules of ownership. A takes
> something which in A's view is public property and in B's view is B's
> property. From B's perspective, it's a theft. From A's perspective it's
> not.
>
> This needn't be some encounter between previously isolated cultures. Such
> questions arise regularly about intellectual property among individuals
> and/or companies both of whom/which are natives to the US. There was also a
> case I vaguely remember reading about recently in which the question of the
> scope of an easement (I think this had to do with using railroad rights of
> way for bike paths or something) was ambiguously settled by contract and
> precedent resulting in two at least apparently legitimate and clashing views
> of whether something was 'stolen'.
>
> I want to say that I can see how one might interpret my sketched examples as
> failing to be examples, apart from the flimsiness of the sketches. The
> shortest path is to say that the question is whether these are thefts
> precisely because there is a question as to whether there was a wrong
> committed. Alternatively, one could say they are thefts but may be
> exculpated by the extenuating circumstance of the stealing party not having
> known or recognized the rules under which the act was theft and the
> circumstances being such that ignorance is an excuse. Etc.
>
> The general strategy here would be to adjust the definitions of the key words
> ('theft', 'justified', 'exculpated', 'wrong') so that there cannot be
> examples of the sort Phil asks for, analogous to setting the meaning of
> 'theft' such that if something is morally right it's not a theft. I think
> there could be such adjustments in the terms, and I would again acquiesce in
> making such a terminological adjustment and re-state my point.
>
> So: assume that the meanings of 'theft', 'justified', 'exculpated', and
> 'wrong' are all adjusted so that there can be no example of an act that is an
> apparent theft but which is neither justified nor wrong. Upon fuller
> understanding of the facts and circumstances and applying the adjusted
> definitions, in each case such apparent examples would either turn out to be
> thefts that are either justified or wrong, or turn out not to be thefts at
> all, i.e. appearances were entirely deceiving.
>
> Then I would say the imprecision of such judgments is that while there are
> obvious examples of theft, there are also many and important circumstances in
> which it is not immediately obvious whether it is or is not a theft. Perhaps
> the word 'imprecise' would need to be changed here -- maybe I would do better
> to say the 'uncertain application' of such judgments, rather than their
> 'imprecision'.
>
> Before anyone can know whether something is a theft, in one those
> circumstances, we may have to ascertain quite a range of ancillary facts.
> And note: this is crucially not simply a question of whether a third party,
> an observer as it were, can know whether there was a theft -- i.e. these are
> not analogous to cases in which one guy stole another's cash, the victim is
> accusing the villain and the villain denying it. In the difficult cases I'm
> alluding to, the thief may legitimately not know he was a thief, or
> alternatively the victimized party may legitimately not know he was not a
> victim.
>
> In any case, the result is what I asserted some time ago in my exchanges with
> Walter (who I hope I've not put off with my relentlessness about this):
> knowing the truth of a moral judgment depends upon our knowing how it can be
> applied to (potentially) real circumstances.
>
> In other words, the following seem to me to come to the same point:
>
> (a) "Stealing is wrong" is a general guideline to be applied to human
> behavior;
> (b) Stealing is always wrong but it may not be easy to determine whether a
> particular situation is stealing.
>
> Phil goes on, in a subsequent post, to say: "What counts as theft will differ
> over time and cultures, but there is at least one thing that can be said
> about every case of theft, about what makes stealing wrong, namely the
> imperative 'don't'."
>
> He also, in yet another post, writes "...that there are moral cases is a
> subject of study that escapes anthropology and belongs properly to
> philosophy."
>
> A couple points about these comments. I for one can agree with the second
> assertion without thereby thinking that this means there must be some
> property all moral cases have in common -- even the "imperative 'don't'".
>
> The notion that "x is wrong" has some universal, unequivocal meaning is, in
> my opinion, fraught with uncertainty and subject to subtle edge cases just
> like I have been arguing 'theft' is. Different people even in my own culture
> seem to have a very different idea about what 'wrong' means.
>
> There's something negative about it, sure, and that negativity has something
> to do with one's behavior, sure. But just how negative and to what extent it
> is supposed to control one's behavior seems, in my experience, to vary all
> over the map, even among my acquaintenceship, the vast majority of whom are
> white, middle- to upper-middle class Americans, i.e. about as culturally
> homogeneous as one could want.
>
> Just as with "theft", "justified", etc., I can imagine there being some
> unambiguous, clear definition of "wrong" which we are to use in interpreting
> moral assertions. But again, I think the same questions of precision or
> certainty of application will arise in using the word 'wrong'.
>
> Did the person who truly unknowingly stole something (to use the terminology
> as above) do something 'wrong'? If so, how was he supposed to follow the
> imperative 'don't steal' if he, by hypothesis, could not have known he was
> stealing?
>
> I raise this to ask, sincerely and earnestly: what is the value of insisting
> that there must be some transcendental, universal, common meaning of moral
> terms? What is to be lost if we do not accept that?
>
> Regards to one and all,
> Eric Dean
> Washington DC
>
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