[lit-ideas] Re: Moral Imagination
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 01:29:24 -0230
I'm not clear on what it means to say that one "decides" that a moral maxim
must
be universal. This is not a case of judgement, by my lights.
Universality of willing is a necessary *presupposition* of rational agency, and
as such, of choice and judgement. I can judge that my maxim is a morally right
or permissible one but I do not choose or decide that moral rightness requires
accordance with universality - i.e., that all others in relevantly similar
circumstances could agree with my maxim (indeed, could themselves act on it and
legislate it for a moral order) and that my maxim must validly apply to all
rational agents in relevantly similar circumstances. Universality is
constitutive of morality and as such is not itself open to decision, judgement
or choice. That we can make judgements as to the rightness/wrongness of maxims
is only possible on the presupposition of such universality. Otherwise, we land
ourselves in the absurdity of believing that a maxim may be right for me but
wrong for you (or that a statement can be true for me but false for you.)
Consider as well the following examples which I think illustrate the same
point:
Judging that an argument is a bad one because it displays equivocation and
accepting that equivocation makes an argument a bad one.
Judging that this P has properties xyz under conditions C and accepting that
all
Ps will have properties xyz under conditions C if they are to be Ps.
Deciding or judging that one is free to act on the basis of one's choices and
recognizing that such freedom is a condition of possibility for any free
deciding and choosing.
In these cases the "acceptance" or "recognition" involved is made under the
compelling force of reason. There is no continuum here. In none of these cases
is acceptance open to choice, decision or judgement since the very rationality
of these acts presupposes that "acceptance." (That's why the better term here
is "recognition:" - since we are re-cognizing constitutive features of our own
rational natures, re-collecting a self-understanding necessary for practical
judgement and knowledge. What can I say? Some things are just transcendental.
Walter Okshevsky
MUN
Quoting John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>:
> The direction in which this conversation has evolved is quite interesting to
> me. I never took Wager's point to be that there are no moral maxims or clear
> cases. Those are easy to come by. I always took him to be talking about
> moral *judgment*, which comes into play when cases are hard, when, for
> example, the law allows mitigating circumstances. I see an interesting
> ambiguity here, between *judgement1, *deciding through philosophical
> argument that a moral maxim must be universal and *judgment2*, the usual
> kind, where the maxim is not in question but its application is.
>
> John
>
> On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 9:00 AM, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > 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
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> John McCreery
> The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
> Tel. +81-45-314-9324
> jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://www.wordworks.jp/
>
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