[lit-ideas] Re: The Independent Moralist
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 1 May 2014 08:19:34 +0100 (BST)
>I wonder if Wittgenstein would say something on this. As I believe, he
trusted there was some thing as a 'form of life', which is reflected in
language, and it may well be the case that those notions apply here.>
The Wittgenstein of my understanding would not be interested in writing a work
on moral philosophy as these are written by so-called moral philosophers. Not
because W is not interested in ethics or thinks it unimportant; on the contrary
W is most interested and thinks ethics most important: Monk emphasises this and
almost makes the purpose of W's work an over-ridingly ethical one [hence the
subtitle "The Duty of Genius"]. But W's purpose is not to defend or preach an
ethics but to defend the status of ethics and its importance by way of a
philosophical account of the "logic of our language": in particular, W wants to
defend the ethical status of ethics i.e. defend "ethics" from any account that
reduces it by way of an explanation in terms of non-ethical categories [for
this reason alone W would not subscribe to utilitarianism as an account of what
constitutes ethics even if he would admit that considerations of 'utility' may
play a part in ethical
thinking].
So even the early Tractatarian W, who admits only the propositions of natural
science as having sense, offers a characterisation of "sense" that privileges
"science" but within a framework where what is most important (including
ethics) lies beyond what can be captured in this "sense" [for both the early
and later W there could never be a "science of ethics"]. And this touches on a
fundamental reason why W would not have anything much "to say" in terms of a
work of moral philosophy: not only does the philosopher have no privileged
position from which to say anything to others about morals [after all "nothing
is hidden" about ethical language anymore than any other kind], but the
philosophical character of "ethics" is something that is shown by (among other
things [actions would be another]) the ethical language we use and is not
something that a philosopher can capture in language by saying anything.
In the approach of the later W, the philosopher can at best say things that
show aspects of ethics that ward off both attempts to capture ethics by
(reductive) analysis and attempts to explain "ethics" in terms of non-ethical
categories.
In this light, the ethical debate as to pushing fat men and pulling levers (so
as to minimise the numbers who die), appears largely fatuous: and W might even
see it as a result of pernicious 'scientism' in our modern culture that
researchers found people to participate seriously in their study rather than
brushing them off with their umbrellas (I assume most people are more likely to
be carrying umbrellas than pokers when accosted by researchers).
Dnl
Ldn
On Thursday, 1 May 2014, 1:54, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
How foreign can morality get? When we read of a moral decision in an a
country whose language we don't understand, can we _join_ in the discussion?
Habermas would say: yes, we _can_ and we _should_.
Morality and Language
It is slightly ironic that it's THE INDEPENDENT that's running an essay on
morality DEPENDING on language!
But I guess there is a point in the research. It comes from Barcelona, from
what I understand, the capital of a notably BILINGUAL region!
I wonder if Wittgenstein would say something on this. As I believe, he
trusted there was some thing as a 'form of life', which is reflected in
language, and it may well be the case that those notions apply here.
On top of all that being discussed by O. K. and D. McE. in "Pitfalls in
understanding moral differentiations" there's the polemic amongst
philosophers. Take two examples:
i. The Romans thought they were aptly translating the Greek system when
they speak of 'mos' (the root of morality) as translating Greek 'ethos' (as
in 'ethics'). This important point is dismissed when the idea of a decision
being 'moral' is used in the title of the essays (reporting experiments)
being discussed.
When "The Independent" retitles the essays being discussed as being an
issue of 'morality' depending on 'language', one wonders...
ii. Grice thinks that Hare is wrong and that 'ought' is NOT the keyword
moral modal. Rather, Hampshire was closer to the truth when he suggested
'should' was. Grice prefers 'must'. Are these all translatable?
The large man must...
The large man ought to...
The large man should...
The large man WILL...
and so on. The intricacies of the ethical and meta-ethical vocabulary are
so complex in L1 that for philosophers to even start conceiving the
complications when L2 comes into the picture are vast. And still, THE
INDEPENDENT's wording reminds one of Sapir-Whorf.
For the record, the references being discussed here seem to be two, one
online.
The main item is:
Albert Costa, Alice Foucart, Sayuri Hayakawa, Melina Aparici, Jose
Apesteguia, Joy Heafner, Boaz Keysar. Your Morals Depend on Language. PLoS
ONE,
2014; 9
----- where Boaz is affiliated with Chicago.
The second piece mainly concerns Boaz and is
Boaz, K. "Using a foreign language changes moral decisions." Science
Daily. ScienceDaily, 28 April 2014.
None of the authors seem to have a philosophical background and their
degrees and teaching affiliations are with psychology, rather -- whereas some
of us would rather see the thing discussed not as per an allegedly empirical
laboratory experiment but in terms like Warnock's "Morality and Language"!
The references to 'emotions' reminds one of philosophers like C. L.
Stevenson, who, in "Ethics and Language" mainly stays at the 'imperative' level
of analysis of moral discourse (also adopted by Ayer, in "Language, Truth and
Logic" -- moral decisions as yielding imperatives which are 'emotive' in
nature).
Cheers,
Speranza
------
In a message dated 4/30/2014 4:20:33 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Or that 'the large man' might pull you instead.
A fairly large man,
On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 9:30 PM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/to-push-or-not-to-push-how-your-mo
rals-depend-on-language-9303510.html
"Would you push a stranger off a bridge? How your morals depend on
language"
>To clarify the role emotions play in mediating the effect between
language and moral decision making, the researchers included a second dilemma.
In
their alternative scenario, the lone man is on a different branch of the
railway track, and all you would need to do to save the five workers (and
kill that single man), is to divert the train by switching a lever. This is a
less emotional action, and regardless of language, the majority of people
would divert the train in this way (around 80%). The effect of language only
comes into play when dealing with a higher level of emotion, such as
imagining having to physically push the man off the bridge. In that unpleasant
scenario, only 18% of native speakers would sacrifice the large man,
compared to 44% of those questioned in a foreign language.>
The researchers fail to consider that the pivotal difference, between the
case of switching a lever and the case of heaving a fat man onto the track,
lies not in that the first case is "a less emotional action" but that in
the second case there is more risk of putting your back out.
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