[lit-ideas] Re: Alice on Universalizability
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2013 21:30:35 -0500 (EST)
We are considering the Queen's maxim:
"Speak when you're spoken to."
Alice famously objected:
"But if everybody obeyed that rule, and if you only spoke when you were
spoken to, and the other person always waited for you to begin, you see
nobody would ever say anything, so that --"
"Ridiculous!' cried the Queen.
Walter O objects:
"Nothing ridculous here at all."
Well, let us be reminded that 'ridiculous', etymologically, means
'amusing'
(Latin, ridere, as in "Ridi, pagliaccio", the opera).
"Alice is saying that the Queen's maxim is
self-contradictory when universalized. (In a world in which everybody did
it,
nobody could do it, if you follow my Kantian drift. No rational being
could
will such a maxim to hold as a universal law, applicable to all.) Thus,
the
maxim is morally impermissible."
But I would think MORALITY deals with SERIOUS stuff. But a world, to
follow
Alice, where "nobody would ever say anything" does not strike me as
IMMORAL.
Q. E. D., ridiculous.
Cheers,
Speranza
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