[lit-ideas] Re: Malevolence (Was: The Evil That We Do)
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 11:43:07 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 10/6/2011 11:17:53 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Doesn't will (thought) precede action? What am I missing here?
Julie Krueger
I hope others will help me with Julie's conundrum and jump in with help.
I guess I was trying to be polemic, and challenge Helm's point, which I
think was, that
thought----action
proves indeed a dichotomy. If Julie is right that will precedes action, the
point can be made anti-Popperian, as McEvoy may agree:
I.e.
if we take 'action' to be DEFINED in terms of 'willed' manifestation (i.e.
a manifestation of the will), then indeed,
'thought (will)' precedes action
is tautological.
The point about precedence is subtle. Are we talking 'chronological'.
I wanted to do A.
I did A.
---- When I am doing A, am I not WILLING to be DOING A?
---- The functionalist point is to argue that all the evidence that we have
for an agent DOING action A is our evidence that that agent indeed wills
to do A. But upon WHAT BASE do we judge that an agent WILLS to do an action,
if it's not other than A's actually DOING it?
("He willed to do it, but never did it").
----- R. Paul may argue that when it comes to HIS willings and doings, it's
all subjective, rather than functionalist. I.e. a willing may be said to
be a first-order, first-person phenomenon. Thus, R. Paul may claim that he
WILLS to do A, while he does not manifest (to anybody else, including
himself, or his self) about this willing. This would be anathema for the
functionalists and behaviourists. It would be part of Wundt's project that
Watson
meant to refute. And so on.
------ The point about the will in ethics (deontology, teleology) and what
defines an 'ill will' are thus central concerns that perhaps Helm was
presupposing in his first recent post on the book he was reading.
If action and will (or thought) ARE independent (as perhaps they are not)
then the topic of ethics, unlike the Greeks desired, is not the study of the
ethos or the social custom (moralia) but the Kantian idea of a free will,
which can be good, or bad (i.e. evil -- the Greeks failed to distinguish
these rather otiose lexemes).
Cheers,
J. L.
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