[lit-ideas] Re: Waterboarding Bodies Mattered

One last point regarding Eric's reference to "multiculturalism" as a project
requiring "standing with one's culture."

The contemporary W. project of multiculturalism, across its myriad forms,
presupposes for its cogency and validity univeral claims regarding the moral
wrongness of exclusion and the moral probity of claims regarding the equal
rights of all persons (where gender is not a feature of personhood). Turning "a
blind eye to the treatment of women in Islamic culutres" is a maxim that is both
self-contradictory and one that displays illegitimate self-exemption as
delineated by the Categorical Imperative, in both its monologial version (Kant)
and it dialogical versions (Habermas, Scanlon). 

Walter Okshevsky
MUN



> Quoting Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>:
> 
> > WO: Intuitions regarding the moral probity of 
> > actions or maxims are being privileged without 
> > justification. Many men in Iran, for example, aver 
> > that rape within marriage is not possible [and 
> > marriage of 45 year old men to 12 year old girls 
> > is fine -EY] and any metaethical theory that 
> > authorizes otherwise is consequently defective. 
> > How is that view any different from RP's view? If 
> > you go with intuitions, independent of a metaethic 
> > or moral epistemology, how do you go about showing 
> > that your intuitions are any better 
> > (epistemically) than mine?
> > 
> > Doesn't this example show the necessity of 
> > "standing with one's culture"? Bernard-Henri Levy 
> > makes the point that Westerners have allowed 
> > Multiculturalism to trump Enlightenment Liberal 
> > Core Values. For example, Universal Equality is a 
> > cornerstone of Enlightenment values, yet 
> > multiculturalism would require us to turn a blind 
> > eye to the treatment of women in Islamic nations.
> > 
> > How does that fit with the stated need for 
> > "undominated dialogue"?
> 
> There are a number of different matters involved here. I can focus on only
> one
> of these at the present time. 
> 
> Metaethical accounts, or moral epistemologies, are not appropriately
> assessed
> for their cogency with reference to the intuitions informing and
> underwriting
> the judgements, practices and values to which individuals and tribes
> actually
> subscribe. That everybody on the planet insists that boiling babies is
> morally
> wrong constitutes an empirical claim having no relevance to the
> justifiability
> of the moral rightness of that claim. Conversely, an empirically universal
> agreement on its moral rightness is equally bereft of any moral
> justifiability.
> 
> 
> This is the difficulty involved in relying on our intuitions. We do not
> assess
> the justifiability of moral principles on grounds of their correspondence to
> our feelings and intutions; rather, we assess the moral probity of our
> intuitions and socially acquired values and ideals with reference to
> principles
> of universalization entailed by morality as a framework of rights and
> obligations applicable to all persons regardless of gender, sexual
> orientation
> (if any), religious affiliation, ses, and other aspects of our
> "situatedness"
> that define our individual particularities as irreplaceable selves.
> (Apologies
> for the Germanicness of the sentence.)
> 
> 
> Eric asks what Walter (and Jurgen) mean by of an "open and undominated
> dialogue."  Habermas's identification of the necessary and universal
> epistemic
> presuppositions/conditions of discourse seems right to me.
> 
> Walter Okshevsky
> MUN
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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