[lit-ideas] Re: The meaning of life
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:47:51 -0330
Thanks to Omar for a very interesting post.
Just a remark on the universalizability of "survival of the fittest" for now. I
don't know whether Cicero would agree to the following argument, but Kant did
speak fondly of him at the private drinking soirees to which, believe it or
not, he was often invited. Whether he sipped single malt while offering his
witticisms and humorous stories, I do not know.
Formulated as a maxim:
In cases of limited resources and competition for these resources, only the
fittest shall survive.
It looks like this is a non-universalizable maxim because it displays
self-contradiction, Kant's first feature of a maxim unfit to model the form of
law. In other words, if everybody did it, nobody could do it. If everybody were
"the fittest," there would be no possibility for the application of the scalar
quality of fitness. Somebody's got to be "fitter than but not as fit as," as
others have to be "really not quite fit at all," etc.. The maxim thus "cancels
itself out," "negates itself," as the Master was wont to say.
As self-contradictory, the maxim is unfit for universal legislation, an
essential requirement for any Enlightenment ideal.
An objection often made at this point, is that the feature of
self-contradiction
is not a particularly moral one. (And, as Donal points out, it's not a strictly
logical one either - although there is a logical contradiction wafting around
here: the agent wills both that there be entities characterizable by the term
"fittest," and the agent simulutaneously denies the possibility for that in
negating the condition of qualitative increment (scalarity?) in the
universalized form of his maxim.) The reply, to return to the objection above,
is that that's precisely what Kant had intended: morality is grounded in
rationality. Same criticism is lodged
against such contemporary Kantian moral philosophers as Scanlon and Habermas.
Walter O
MUN
Quoting Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>:
>
> Several comments.
>
> --- On Mon, 12/8/08, wokshevs@xxxxxx <wokshevs@xxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > From: wokshevs@xxxxxx <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
> > Subject: Re: [lit-ideas] The meaning of life
> > To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Omar Kusturica" <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Date: Monday, December 8, 2008, 9:11 PM
> > I believe it is instructive to consider whether
> > "accordance with nature" may
> > operate validly as a criterion of moral rightness and/or
> > political legitimacy
> > in democratic states. I doubt that it can. The expression
> > would appear to be
> > the remnant of a culture innocent of radical cultural
> > pluralism of the kind we
> > find today and innocent as well of the ideals of the
> > Enlightenment we continue
> > to struggle to promote.
>
> *I doubt that Cicero was a stranger to political debate, though the terms of
> the debate were probably somewhat different. "The ideals of the
> Enlightenment" would need to be defined more precisely. Philosophically, the
> Enlightenment sought predecessors in the Greek and Roman cultures (and the
> less acknowledged Arab thinkers.) The concept of "human nature" certainly had
> a prominent place in the Enlightenment philosophy. (e.g. in Hume) However,
> modern science - which now becomes separate from philosophy - and technology
> seeks to control and / or repress nature. (in contrast to ancient science
> which was said to be "contemplative," i.e. sought to understand rather than
> change nature)
>
> > I find that claims regarding what is "natural" or
> > "non-natural" in moral and
> > political contexts typically express naught but the values
> > and traditions of
> > particular persons and those of the tribes into which they
> > have been
> > socialized. There doesn't seem to be anything
> > universalizable about appeals to
> > the natural.
>
> *I am not sure why, perhaps because it is difficult to establish what is
> really natural ? But appeals to 'human nature' were certainly meant to be
> universalizable, in contrast to appeals to culture which almost by definition
> are not. If, for instance, the only argument for legalizing homosexuality is
> that the Western culture nowadays permits it, then for example the Islamic
> fundamentalists only need to reply that theirs doesn't. (Though this may not
> be actually true.)
>
> (Is "survival of the fittest" a
> > universalizabale maxim?) As such,
> > there doesn't appear to be any possibility for
> > impartial and objective
> > judgement on such grounds.
>
> "Survival of the fittest" is I believe a concept Darwin imported from
> Herbert, who was an economist. (Previously he only used "natural selection.")
> It's unfortunate in that it mixes prescriptive with descriptive terms
> (survival with "fitness")
>
> > Does anyone know of any appeal to nature that can
> > justifiably and legitimately
> > carry the day in cases of moral or political disagreement?
>
> *It does seem to be true that "nature" no longer has a prominent place in
> modern (and postmodern) political and ethical discourse. But that may be
> because our lives are dominated by un-natural things. In debates over
> Internet censorship, for example, neither side would have much occasion to
> appeal to nature since neither the Internet not censorhip are very natural.
> Nature continues to pop up in somewhat marginal discourses like the
> environmentalist, then natural food, natural medicine etc where it continues
> to be seen as a source of value.
>
>
> O.K.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
> digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
>
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts: