[lit-ideas] Re: Malevolence (Was: The Evil That We Do)
- From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 9 Oct 2011 02:22:04 -0500
My primary interest in ethics or moral philosophy is in the conflict between
moral principles and necessity. Is it immoral to leave a newborn baby out
on a hill to die when there is not enough food to feed the family?
"Sophie's Choice" kinds of decisions -- I don't think that moral principles
can ever answer these kinds of questions. How culpable are Southern whites
in their racism when their society taught them to believe as they do? Was
bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki immoral? How many more might have died
otherwise? How are these hypotheticals to be aswered through moral
principles such as "Thou shalt not kill"? I am an atheist, but at the same
time a strong admirer of Jesus (whether he was real person or a symbolic,
literary creation) and Gandhi and King whom we know were real. Pacifism is
not only common to them all, but is central to their moral
principles. I believe in pacificism primarily as a tactic, but certainly not
as a moral imperative. Without a God, an absolute, I don't see how there
could possibly be any imperative. Logical conclusions, certainly, but
that's nothing more than following the rules of logic. Even I can sometimes
be logical. But logic has never seemed to be a real force in life outside
of Logic text books. But you know what? I could be wrong. Although I
don't believe in God, I do believe He works in mysterious ways.
So what is morality based on? One's culture. Hmmmm. Maybe God truly is
other people.
Mike Geary
God of my realm.
On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 8:11 AM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> There is another, non-definitional, way to look at this - and which says
> we have here a problem of substantive metaphysics [and not a merely verbal
> problem].
>
> Start with two terms (1) a 'will' (and surrogates/synonyms like
> 'intention', 'willing', 'volition','conscious aim' etc.); (2) movement (and
> surrogates/synonyms like 'bodily movement', movement of muscle etc.)
>
> The so-called 'philosophy of action' (while perhaps a pleasant way to while
> away an afternoon) supposedly examines the relation between these: a mere
> movement of my facial muscles is not my action if the movement is caused
> not by my 'will' but by some stranger poking me with some device carrying an
> electrical charge, nor is it my action if I have some kind of involuntary
> spasm. In the normal order of things, for me to act my 'will' must cause the
> movement, and to do this we might assume that the 'will' must precede the
> movement it causes. Conversely, experiments where the subject reports having
> 'willed' a certain movement, but we know that the cause [say, an electrical
> stimulus] preceded their 'willing', are cases where we may interpret the
> subject as being duped or deceived as to the causal efficacy of their
> 'willing'.
>
> It seems clear to me that what is of interest here is not defining action
> as consisting in a movement caused by some act of 'willing' but in
> understanding the relation between these volitional states and dispositions
> and bodily movements - in other words, what we have here is a version of the
> mind-body problem and how mental and physical processes relate or interact.
> This raises substantive and not merely verbal problems - which, insofar as
> the questions cannot be decided by observation, are metaphysical problems.
>
> Seen this way, the formulation of the 'philosophy of action' in terms of
> some putative, simple 'will' and some simple 'movement' is arguably far too
> simplistic: the 'will' in this sense is something of a will-o'-the-wisp. We
> should understand what we take to be an act of 'willing' to be constituted
> by a complex 'mental state' or disposition, and its perhaps complex relation
> to certain physical processes [in the brain for example]. Further, we need
> not assume a 'willing' is even fully or mostly or even partly a
> consciousmental state: we might leave open whether unconscious mental states
> cause us
> to move and behave in ways that might constitute 'action' - for example, the
> action of breathing - 'actions' whose regulation by unconscious mental
> processes may be altered if we attend to them consciously, for example by
> deciding to breathe more deeply or slowly. And we may differentiate
> breathing, insofar as this can be brought under conscious control, from
> other bodily movements [like the growth of cells or digestion] that cannot.
>
> The mind-body problem is of course multi-faceted and whatever answers we
> canvas all seem problematic in different ways: but this general problem is
> the right context in which to try to understand what is involved in human
> action, what makes 'action' something voluntary rather than involuntary. To
> approach the problem in the simplistic, tendentious and superficial terms of
> 'will + movement = action' is unlikely to produce worthwhile philosophical
> understanding, nor is some attempt to make analytical hay here with these
> terms and their relations by some specious, 'conceptual' argument.
>
> Donal
> Negating the anti-Popperian point
> Europe
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
> *To:* lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> *Sent:* Thursday, 6 October 2011, 16:43
>
> *Subject:* [lit-ideas] Re: Malevolence (Was: The Evil That We Do)
>
>
>
> 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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