[lit-ideas] Re: "A right and an obligation"
- From: Julie Krueger <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2013 11:24:50 -0500
On a less strictly philosophical note, someone mentioned when the
expression "a right and an obligation" came in to frequent use, and not
only did that post not lodge in my memory although I thought it would (a
common occurrence these days), but it apparently did not lodge in my
computer either.
In any event, I think there's been a certain use of emphasis in that
phrase in that groups of people in this country, over time, have had to
fight and risk varying things (time, money, arrest, imprisonment, injury,
death) to be permitted what they deem to be their right. Once the law
accepts and decrees that, in fact, they do have the "right" to (vote)....
it is felt by some to be a moral obligation to act on that hard-won
"right", that the sacrifices may not have been made in vain, for nothing.
On the other hand, in those states where same-sex marriage is legal, it is
certainly not considered an obligation.
When women won rights in the work place it was (sometimes subtly) implied,
if not by converse, at least by the pragmatism of maintaining a
single-income household, that women in general were obligated to work
outside the home. It became a practical obligation to many, which I think
is a big disconnect for a lot of women. "They" didn't want to work outside
the home, didn't lobby for it, etc. (One might almost say there was a
societal implicature that women *should* work outside the home.)
Perhaps that's the line that's crossed when a legal right is on its way to
becoming a legal obligation, as John mentioned may be the case in Australia
vis a vis voting.
I've got to quit stalling on lesson planning, parent emails & listening
lists, etc.
Julie Campbell
Julie's Music & Language Studio
1215 W. Worley
Columbia, MO 65203
573-881-6889
http://www.facebook.com/JuliesMusicLanguageStudio
On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 10:38 AM, <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> In a message dated 4/7/2013 6:59:15 A.M. UTC-02, donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx
> writes:
> The claim that one has both a right and an obligation to vote makes sense
> where it is being claimed, in effect, that one has both a legal right and
> a
> moral obligation to vote. There is no contradiction between a 'right' and
> an 'obligation' where these terms are being used to denote, respectively,
> a
> legal position and a moral position.
> Whereas to claim one has both a legal right and a legal obligation to vote
> is more problematic: for to say an act is required as a matter of legal
> obligation seemingly implies there is no legal 'right' or legal 'power'
> not
> to comply with the duty, and so where there is a legal obligation we may
> say
> that precludes that obligation being a legal 'right', as a legal 'right'
> is not a legal obligation but a power in respect of which we have a choice
> as to its exercise.
>
> Omar K. should address McEvoy's points directly, but still.
>
> Interesting.
>
> There's also statements of the sort:
>
> "I have a right not to fulfil my obligation"
>
> which may be difficult to provide in terms of a theorem in deontic logic,
> say.
>
> Or something.
>
> I.e., it seems like something ODD to say. So the point would be that a
> statement, "I have a right not to fulfil my obligation" may become a
> contradiction in this or that system of deontic logic.
>
> I don't think Omar's first formulation of the paradox involves an
> "aequivocatio", as Grice calls it, of 'senses' of moral and legal
> right/obligation
> ("Don't multiply senses beyond necessity", Ockhamist Grice warns us).
>
> While it is fairly direct to reduce 'obligation' to 'interest' ("I
> self-oblige to do A"), it is less transparent how a 'self-right' is to be
> understood.
>
> To use one of Grice's examples:
>
> "I smoke" -- "I allow myself a right to smoke".
> "Yet, I know I shouldn't" -- "There is an obligation not to DESIRE to
> smoke".
>
> Similarly, Grice attacked Davidson's denial of 'weakness of the will'
> (Davidson: "Surely when philosophers speak of weakness of the will, they
> don't
> know what they are talking. If an action results, the will is never
> weak").
>
> As a matter of fact, while Grice was a chain-smoker (as his enemies called
> him, but I won't use scare quotes to minimise the damage, and call him a
> 'chain smoker') he progressed at the end of his life.
>
> At one point in his life (the year of grace -- or 'grice' -- 1980, indeed),
> Grice gave up cigarretes SUDDENLY and COMPLETELY.
>
> Grice would insist to his wife that his LAST, unfinished, packed of one
> hundred Player's Navy Cuts stayed in the house, but he never did touch it.
>
> This drastic action was taken, ashe himself was in the habit of commenting,
> too late.
>
> ----
>
> In his paper on Socrates, in WoW (Way of Words), Grice attempts a
> neo-Thrasymachean position that allows to define right-m/obligation-m in
> terms of
> right-l and obligation-l, but he kept sceptical about the proceedings
> ("There
> are various senses of 'prior' to consider here, and while a legal right or
> obligation may be prior than a moral right or obligation in some
> ONTOLOGICAL sense, it is not clear the same applies to the EPISTEMIC
> sense").
>
> And so on.
>
> Palma ironised:
>
> "In fact I am not breathing waiting for the gricean principles that will
> and ought to lead the political outcomes in montenegro."
>
> Well, the rudiments are as follows.
>
> Omar was wondering if a right to do action A and an obligation to do
> action A are consistent. He felt they weren't.
>
> The Gricean strategy starts by reducing the ought to a will. So, to
> consider 'not smoke' as the action, we may have Grice smoking, but he NOT
> WILLING
> to smoke. Disallowing weakness of the will, we can turn the statement
> weaker and subtler by ascribing to Grice a will not to will to smoke ("He
> desires that he desires NOT to smoke -- In symbols,
>
> W(A) ---- Agent wills to do A
> W(W(A)) -- Agent wills to will to do A.
>
> For Grice, only those actions that allow for an endless (or infinite)
> iteration of "W" operators are 'moral'. "If I find myself that I don't
> will to
> will to will to will (and so ad infinitum) action A, then A is not the
> moral
> thing to do." In other words, if I find a scenario where I disallow myself
> a will that pertains to that Action, I should refrain from doing A.
>
> There is a sense in which a 'right' can be reduced, similarly, to a will or
> an intention.
>
> In the case of collective things, like Montenegro, indeed, we should
> proceed on a one-by-one case. What Grice calls 'casuistic'.
>
> Then there's the German lady Grice was obsessed with.
>
> While in Bielefeld, where Grice was delivering a lecture (on implicature,
> as it happens, "of deontic-conative operators"), he came across, in the
> "Grosse Garten" "an old English lady, standing, helpless and bewildered,
> in the
> centre of seven tracks."
>
> Each was guarded by a threatening notice, warning everybody off it but the
> person for whom it was intended.
>
> “I am sorry to trouble you,” said the old English lady to Grice, on
> learning he could speak English and read German, “but would you mind
> telling me
> what I am and where I have to go?”
>
> Grice inspected the English lady carefully. Grice came to the conclusion
> that she was a “grown-up” and a “foot-goer,” and pointed out her path.
>
> She looked at it, and seemed disappointed.
>
> “But I don’t want to go down there,” she said; “mayn’t I go this way?”
>
> “Great heavens, no, madam!”, Grice replied, as he caught the
> disimplicature of "mayn't" (which to Grice involved a 'clash' of a right
> and an
> obligation"
>
> "That path is reserved for children", Grice remarked.
>
> "“But I wouldn’t do them any harm,” said the lady to Grice, with a smile.
>
>
> Indeed, as Grice will late recollect, "she did not look the sort of old
> lady who would have done them any harm.
>
> “Madam,” Grice in the end replied, “if it rested with me, I would trust
> you down that path, though my own first-born were at the other end; but I
> can only inform you of the laws of this country."
>
> "For you, a full-grown woman, to venture down that path is to go to certain
> fine, if not imprisonment."
>
> "There is your path, marked plainly—Nur für Fussgänger, and if you will
> follow my advice, you will hasten down it; you are not allowed to stand
> here
> and hesitate."
>
> “It doesn’t lead a bit in the direction I want to go,” remarked the lady
> to Grice.
>
> “It leads in the direction you OUGHT to want to go,” Grice replied, and
> they parted.
>
> People sometimes dismiss the Gricean iterability of conative operators that
> come in handy when dealing with alleged paradoxes of rights and
> obligations.
>
> Or not.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Speranza
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