[lit-ideas] Re: Moral Imagination
- From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 00:15:27 -0500
Walter writes (not surprisingly): "Universality is constitutive of morality
and as such is not itself open to decision, judgement or debate."
I'm glad that he's wrong. I would hate to think that what passes for
morality in the world, is universally true. My morality seems to vary quite
a bit from quite a few others. Standing in another's shoes is standing in
another universe -- oh, I get it now!
Mike Geary
not even universally himself most days.
On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 11:32 PM, Walter C. Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx>wrote:
> Well, since we all seem to be online while the turkey is on a low heat,
> here's a
> few thoughts and reminiscences inspired by Robert's final sentence below.
>
> I agree. Our affective responses to others' actions bake no epistemic
> bread.
> That I respond with indignation to your accusation says nothing about the
> justifiability of your accusation or the justifiability of my emotive
> response.
> (I once lost a lovely and promising French girlfriend in the days of my
> Montreal
> youth because I told her that she had no right to feel the way she did as a
> result of a comment I made. Her reply: "Who the hell do you think you
> are?!!
> You want to legislate how I feel and don't feel??!! It was all the more
> dramatic and slightly terrifying as she was yelling in French and
> everything
> sounds more dramatic and slightly terrifying in French. She then proceeded
> to
> grab the very nice bottle of Beaujolais she brought over - Nuit St. Jean,
> if
> memory serves - and stormed out the door, long brown hair and plaided
> skirts
> flying. Verily was it a dark and stormy night.)
>
>
> Returning from laments over lost prospects to philosophy:
>
> I think that when writers like Strawson and Habermas point to our passions
> as
> moral markers, they are primarily referring to the cognitive judgements
> that
> underly and animate our passionate responses. (I.e.: 1) No feeling of
> indignation possible without some conception of justice. 2) My resentment
> at
> your comment morphs into a different emotion once I see that I misread your
> comment.)
>
> But now should we not ask what we are to make of the dictum that "Reason is
> and
> ought to be the slave of the passions?"
>
>
> Living the Husserlian projective and retentive life in the present,
>
> Walter O.
>
>
> Quoting Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>:
>
> > Donal wrote
> >
> > > As to the argument that a problem with a clear-cut answer is less of a
> > > problem than one less 'black and white', it seems to me that ethics is
> > > the field where this is most dubious. If we take it as clear cut that
> > > genocide is morally wrong (for example, murdering people in the
> > > interests of ensuring racial purity) that may not make it less of a
> > > problem when we are forced to go to war to oppose such genocide. In
> > > fact, we might say that - for practical reasons - we should focus our
> > > ethical energies, especially in the public sphere, on the more
> > > clear-cut evils of the world rather than those where the ethics are
> > > much greyer. More generally, going beyond the field of ethics, it is
> > > often important to make sure we get the supposedly clear cut correct,
> > > for if we get the more simple and obvious case wrong we are not likely
> > > to get right more difficult cases [the legal expression "Hard cases
> > > make bad law" may be understood as expressing the wisdom of
> > > starting-out from the apparently straightforward and clear cut before
> > > addressing harder cases].
> >
> > I agree with most of what Donal says here (leaving open the possibility
> > of, once enlightened, agreeing or disagreeing with the parts that I
> > don't now understand). The clear cut, the obvious, cases are those that
> > make morality intelligible, and they are, moreover, those against which
> > moral theories are measured: if a moral theory---adhering to
> > one---allows the innocent to be tortured, e.g., it fails and adhering to
> > it makes one a moral idiot, or at best a poseur when it comes to ethical
> > questions. How one should tell one's lover in a sensitive and
> > understanding way, that it can't go on, may be harder than it is to
> > judge that Bernard Madoff did a lot of harm to a lot of people, or that
> > Stalin's 'Moscow Trials' were the work of a villainous man; but this
> > doesn't mean that the more difficult (the more 'intricate'?) cases are
> > thereby 'more important.' (I don't believe that there is a sort of moral
> > 'continuum,' although maybe if one reads comic books one will have a
> > comic book morality, and if one reads Henry James, e.g. The Golden Bowl,
> > one will have something else.
> >
> > > 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?
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > Robert Paul,
> > living a life
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
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