[lit-ideas] Re: The Independent Moralist
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- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 1 May 2014 07:26:25 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 5/1/2014 3:20:03 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
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).
Thanks. I was thinking more along the lines of this precisely quotation by
Witters in the Stanford, as per below.
Biletzki, Anat and Matar, Anat, "Ludwig Wittgenstein", The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/wittgenstein/>.
But again, we have these psychologists. One is working in Chicago and, I
think, thinks or wants to draw practical conclusions out of the experiments:
that members of the jury should better NOT have, say, English, as their
native language, since that turns them into 'emotional' beings when discussing
things. We should be recalled (i) that while national origin should not be
explicated, the researcher holds a BA from a 'foreign' university (by
Chicago standards), and that Chicago is a 'foreign' word originally, but
foreign-language sign posts are no longer necessary in the area! It is
different
with the other reserarchers in Catalonia, Barcelona, where foreign-language
sign posts ARE required by LAW and Catalonians are, by law, as I think,
also in Ireland, to learn something that we may term 'foreign' (Gaelic Irish
versus English, say).
Bilingualism is a problematic issue. At one point, the Italian community in
Buenos Ayres was prohibited to USE Italian (granted, they were also
displaying photographs of the Italian royal house in the classrooms) because
the
Argentine government had problems with 'bilingual brains'. By that time,
the Native Population had been mainly reduced to 'reservations', and their
language survives in a few toponyms.
But back to Witters, while I agree with all that McEvoy says about
different Witterses, this is the point about 'form of life'. We may need a full
report of 'large man', and 'hombre grande' (why not 'grand homunculus'?). It
seems that 'large' and 'grande' are not REALLY synonymous in the Carnapian
sense. But 'hombre largo' may trigger different moral decisions, granted.
Proficiency in a language is a matter of degree and the choice of those
taking part in the experiments may also have been controversial, even to the
point that McEvoy mentions regarding Witters reaction with the umbrella.
In the Stanford entry, the authors say, slightly adapted: "The grammar of
English and the grammar of Spanish are not abstract things, they are
situated within the regular activity with which language-games are
interwoven."
Then there's the quote from Philosophical Investigations, section 23:
"The word ‘language-game’ is used here to emphasize the fact that the
speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life"
----- Philosophical Investigations, section 23.
KEYWORD: form of language. The use of Catalonian by Catalonians is part of
the Catalonian form of life, not the Castillian form of life. The use of
English is Chicago is part of the Chicago English form of life. The use of
Native American in old Chicago is part of an old Native American form of
life. The use of Boaz's native language back in Jerusalem is part of a Hebrew
form of life.
The use of American English in America is a part of an American form of
life. The use of British English in America is part of another form of life,
that of a Brit in America. The use of English in Ireland is part of an
English form of life. The use of Gaelic Irish in Ireland is part of an Irish
form of life.
The use of Latin by the Pope is part of a Latin form of life in the
Vatican. And so on. The authors go on:
"What enables language to function and therefore must be accepted as “given
” are precisely forms of life."
KEYWORD: Form of life.
In Wittgenstein's terms: “It is not only agreement in definitions but also
(odd as it may sound) in judgments that is required" (PI242) and this is
"agreement not in opinions, but rather in form of life" (PI 241).
And you don't AGREE in form of life unless you lead THAT life, I suppose
the implicature is. Thus, a Castilian anthropologist (using Castilian) may
try to understand the Catalonian form of life, WITHOUT SHARING it.
Used by Wittgenstein sparingly—five times in the Investigations— the
keyword "FORM OF LIFE" has given rise to interpretative quandaries and
subsequent contradictory readings.
Forms of life can be understood as changing and contingent, dependent on
culture, context, history, etc -- but notably LANGUAGE -- as when we say
Irish is a different language from English, even if they share an "Aryan"
root.
Or when we say that American English ('theater') is a different language
(and entails a different form of life) from British English ('theatre').
This appeal to the keyword of FORM OF LIFE grounds a relativistic reading
of Wittgenstein -- hence my earlier reference to Sapir-Whorf, which is
emphasised by THE INDEPENDENT talking, alla the original essay, of YOUR
LANGUAGE
being THE FACTOR in "your moral" (whatever that is), or YOUR MORAL
(whatever that is) *depending* on YOUR LANGUAGE. Oddly, the original title
carries
the wrong slogan:
Your moral depends on language. It should rather be: Your moral depends on
YOUR language.
Or your dialect. There's routines in New York City (inner city) that, as
Labov noted, HAVE to be conducted in the DIALECT (AAVE, I think he called
it). The 'moral' of these activities may involve a dialectal-qualified form of
life.
The authors of the Witters entry in Stanford conclude by noting that, on
the other hand, it is the form of life COMMON to humankind, "shared human
behaviour” which is “the system of reference by means of which we interpret
an unknown language" (PI 206).
Note that here the INPUT is the form of life, and the output is
'interpreting an unknown' (or hitherto unknown, I would say) language. Which is
taken
for granted in the experiment being reported, when the MEANINGS of
passages are GIVEN as being synonymous, when perhaps they are not. The people
used
in the experiments were by definition NOT dealing with "an unknown
language" (to use Witters's phrase) but with a language they thought they know
(if
in relative terms). The conclusion by the researchers seems to be that,
given that input, TWO FORMS OF LIFE are derived: one when an utterer makes a
moral decision in his own lingo; another when he makes a moral decision in a
'furrin' one -- out of which bigger conclusions are drawn: such as the
anti-Roman idea that jury members should best NOT be members of the COMMUNITY
the where crime they are discussing took place!
The authors conclude that this might be seen as a universalistic turn,
recognizing that the use of language is made possible by the human form of
life. But it can also read less grandly as Witters's answer to the
inescrutability of reference and translation that was later going to interest
loads to
Quine and Davidson ("Radical translation").
Cheers,
Speranza
REFERENCES
Albert Costa, Alice Foucart, Sayuri Hayakawa, Melina Aparici, Jose
Apesteguia, Joy Heafner, Boaz Keysar. Your Morals Depend on Language.
PLoS ONE,
2014; 9
Boaz, K. "Using a foreign language changes moral decisions." Science
Daily. ScienceDaily, 28 April 2014.
Boaz, K. cited in
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"
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