[lit-ideas] Re: Moral Imagination
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2011 17:00:03 -0700
Donal wrote
I am unsure what is being denied in saying one doesn't believe in a
moral continuum: I confess I am quite a believer in 'continuum'
thinking and that most points can be, and even ought to be, located on
some kind of spectrum (or even spectra) in order to put them in
perspective: while I do not believe my dropping litter is an
inevitable slippery slope to my manning the gas chambers, I do think
we can construct a (long) continuum between one and the other.
Admittedly, this might appear wrong by appearing to put littering on
the same level as genocide, but it does not do that: the point of such
a continuum (if there is much of a point) is not that everything is on
the same level but that what is next to its neighbour is often not
that far apart. Continuum thinking has its abuses (the 'slippery
slope' fallacy being one) but it also has its uses (some day I may
publish how these may be arranged in a continuum).
Upon reflection, I'm not sure what is meant by a 'moral continuum'
either, even though I must have at one time thought I knew. (Argument to
the best hypothesis.) I was perhaps thinking in a hazy way about the
criminal justice system, in which offenses are more serious the more
certain elements are present in an act, e.g. assault, assault with a
deadly weapon, racially motivated assault; involuntary manslaughter,
manslaughter; manslaughter during the commission of a crime, etc. If I
did mean something like this, it was by way of suggesting that morality
should not be considered as analogous to it. I didn't have in mind
anything like the 'slippery slope' fallacy to which Donal calls our
attention. It's clear that we agree that this is the wrong model, even
though evangelical preachers often invoke it.
[Donal again] JLS's deprecatory remarks on the use of "imagination" are
also questionable: for philosophers like Popper "imagination" is a most
important requirement for understanding, in part because what is
understood is not a "given" but a construction, and a theoretical one at
that. Without "imagination", for example, how I can ever know that
genocide is wrong by imagining what it is like to be a victim of it?
Robert than comments:
>If this were really true, then I could not honestly say that I know
genocide to be wrong. It is as useless as a parent's saying to a
child, 'How would you like it if Sally pulled /your/ hair?' The child
has not been taught any sort of 'moral lesson in this drama. No more
does my shuddering at descriptions and depictions of life in Auschwitz
make that an important part of my knowing that to subject human beings
to such a life is wrong, was wrong, and will be wrong, no matter what
the casuist may try to say.>
This is somewhat unclear (at least to me), though I guess Robert to be
saying that if it depended on 'imagination' to know that genocide was
wrong (say by imagining what it was like to be a victim) then we could
not honestly say that we know genocide to be wrong on this basis. Is
this true?
My point was that I consider it to have been 'wrong' (a word that seems
far too thin to characterize what was done in the Nazi concentration
camps), even though I cannot begin to imagine what it would have been
like to have lived and suffered in one of them. Granted, Donal (via
Popper?) says that such a feat of the imagination is a sufficient
condition for being able to condemn the killing of millions of human
beings in such barbaric ways; yet, to repeat, I don't believe it is even
a necessary condition. I can't do it by means of any thought experiment,
and no more can I imagine what it would be like to be a twelve-year-old
girl dying of cancer.
Bear in mind my suggestion was only that 'imagination' is (or may be)
required here, not that it is, or could be, a sufficient condition for
something being wrong (after all, there are many things we can imagine
without [imagining] them being wrong). The argument about the role of
'imagination' I was putting forward is closer to the argument that
recognising others as persons, or as 'other minds' even, is something
not 'given' but something we acquire and which it requires a certain
imagination to acquire - and we might say without recognising others
as persons we can have no real sense of right and wrong. Of course,
this touches on large concerns, some of which I might address in
another thread on P's philosophy of mind by outlining his account of
how we _become_ selves.
I agree that one must see others as being like us but doing so, it seems
to me, doesn't require a special act of the imagination; we grow up
(most of us) surrounded by human beings who, to us (or to me) form a
natural class for which no explanation can be given. It isn't at all
obvious that one must see others as persons, in some philosophical sense
(for it's only philosophers who talk this way) in order to treat them as
fellow humans, i.e., to see that others are like me in uncountably many
ways and unlike me in uncountably many others. I have no word for what
one does see when one comes to see others as persons, except for Kant's
talk about autonomy and Sartre's talk about 'authenticity'—that is, such
things are mentioned in discussing 'persons.' Yet to invoke them by way
of explaining anything is to suggest that we find our way out of a swamp
by following a will-o'-the-wisp.
Robert Paul
High Dudgeon
Oxon
Other related posts:
