[lit-ideas] Re: The universal applicability of moral judgments
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 17:45:16 -0330
Hanging on to his coat-tails, I offer the following eplies, responses and
ripostes to Eric D. --------------------->
Quoting Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Thanks to Walter for his extended replies to my lengthy note. Since I enjoy
> thinking and writing about this stuff, I'm going to reply to him at length
> too. Those of you who don't enjoy this sort of thing are forewarned...
--> Eric is very welcome. Surely anyone concerned with the nature of morality
and its incarnation into the form of governance and pedagogy we know as
"democratic" or "autonomous" will not switch stations. (The hockey game between
Montreal and Boston doesn't start for awhile anyway.)
> The core point I was making is that in my view the following make the same
> assertion just with different emphases:
>
> (1) A moral maxim is a universal assertion; applying a moral maxim to a
> particular situation always requires the exercise of judgment.
-------> Agreed.
> (2) A moral maxim may be a useful guide to decision-making in the real world,
> but it is not unequivocally true and therefore not universally true.
----> Maxims, when considered for their universalizability, cannot be "true" or
false." They are either fit for the status of moral law or they are not. That
is to say, a maxim may be permissible, impermissible or obligatory.
> I say this because I think that moral maxims are, inevitably, about human
> interactions.
-----> Yes, but I would like to specify that the distinct kind of interactions
morality is concerned with have to do with those that either respect or
disrespect the autonomy and dignity of human agents, where "human agents" are
understood to be citizens of a "Republic of Ends."
>Human interactions, unlike, say, the circles and triangles of
> geometry, are almost never unequivocally one thing or another. Therefore the
> assertion that a moral maxim is a universal assertion (i.e. is universally
> true) can amount to no more than: in all those circumstances in which the
> terms of the assertion apply without qualification, the assertion is true.
> In practice, I believe that ends up being no more than to say that when the
> assertion is true, it is true.
-------> The CI test is not a test that admits tautologies as morally
permissible/ impermissible. A tautology is not a maxim. In other words, it does
not provide a reason for the willing or the performance of an action in
specified circumstances. Rawls on Kant is very instructive here. (*Lectures on
History of Modern Philosophy*)
> Take Walter's example again: "Teachers ought to respect the autonomy of their
> students." I believe this assertion is unequivocally true in all those cases
> in which teachers are doing things which are best furthered by respecting the
> autonomy of their students and the students are those participants whose
> interests are best furthered by their autonomy having been respected. That
> is circular, of course, but its circularity isn't vicious because it calls
> for one who might be a teacher to consider whether in point of fact what
> he/she is doing is best furthered by respecting the autonomy...
>
> I do believe that in some cases it is worth asserting that a moral principle
> is a universal truth. I just don't think that such assertions constitute the
> only valid, reasonable or accurate descriptions of what moral maxims are.
---------> I'm wary of predicating "truth" of moral principles. Principles
specify the relevance of reasons for conclusions. (Stevie Toulmin is very good
on this in his *Uses of Argument*. Even Habermas cites him approvingly.)
Reasons (premises) and conclusions can be T or F, right or wrong. The cogency
and validity of principles, however, is a transcendental matter. That is to
say, principles purport to specify which reasons are epistemically relevant as
premises for conclusions. The justification of a principle is logically
different from the justification of a premise presupposing the validity of that
principle.
> Walter writes:
>
> > There's ethics as the philosophical (normative/conceptual,
> > non-empirical) study of moral judgement and principles. There's
> meta-ethics
> > which studies the transcendental conditions, limits and possibilities of
> moral
> > deliberation and rightness. And then there's applied ethics - i.e.,
> medical
> > ethics, jurisprudence, educational ethics, etc.) Only the latter is an
> applied
> > field necessarily. The other two may be studied as pure moral theory, akin
> to
> > pure mathematics or theoretical science. (Not all inquiry dealing with
> humans
> > is necessarily "applied.")
>
> I am completely befuddled about what a study of moral judgment and principles
> would be about were it not about how human beings actually interact with one
> another, which, imho, makes it "applied" in the relevant sense.
--> In the modern philosophical era, which is to say, since the time Kant wrote
on moral theory, moral judgement and principles never had anything to do with
how humans "actually" interact with each other. Philosphy, being a
transcendental form of inquiry, is logically distinct from empirical sciences
such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc.. What is morally permissible
or impermissible is not decided via recourse to what humans "actually" do. Nor
is a Constitution or a Charter of Rights and Freedoms predicated on what is
deemed socially or politically acceptable by extant groups or tribes.
> Mathematics, famously, has objects of study that are not in any meaningful
> sense 'about' the real world. The simplest example I know is from the
> century or so between the invention of non-Euclidean geometries (was it by
> Reimann?) and Einstein's application of such in his theoretical physics.
> During that time non-Euclidean geometries were intellectual curiosities, not
> about the real world.
------> I would say that morality has in common with pure mathematics the quest
for the determination of principles that are not falsifiable by empirical
facts, because they constitute the grounds of the possibility of "empirical
facts" in their respective domains of inquiry.
> But it seems to me that moral assertions have to be about the real world,
> i.e. about how real humans really interact with one another, otherwise they
> are entirely pointless. If they are about the real world, then it would seem
> to me that they are "applied" in the usual sense of the word.
-----> No. Moral principles have no necessary reference to "the real world."
Such principles are normative/prescriptive, not descriptive of the world. They
identify what we ought to do, not what we do do.
Must stop here. Daughter needs a ride to her biology class.
Walter O
MUN
> Walter goes on to say:
> > The application of a principle requires judgement. That a
> > principle applies here and now, and should be applied in such-and-such a
> > manner, is not identified by any property intrinsic to the principle
> itself.
> > However, some judgements are better than others.
Eric D:
> Mathematical logic defines two classes of abstract structure -- the terms,
> logical operators, sentences, and rules of proof which comprise the formal
> "language" in which a mathematical theory can be written, at least in
> principle, and the mathematical objects with their relationships, which the
> theory is about. It also defines the notion of "about" -- a theory expressed
> in the formal language is "about" a mathematical structure (known, in this
> case, as a "model" of the theory) just in case there is a particular
> mathematically definable relationship between the theory and the model. That
> relationship amounts to a mathematized version of the assertion that the
> provable statements in the formal language are "true" in the model. Any
> mathematical structure for which such a relationship can be defined is a
> model of the theory, sometimes called an 'interpretation' of the theory.
>
> The great lengths to which mathematical logic goes to define all these
> relationships is intended to guarantee that the principles of mathematics can
> be expressed in a way that does not retain any residue of the notion that
> mathematical principles are self-interpreting. The entire structure of a
> theory has to be fully interpreted or none of it is and therefore the
> interpretation can be entirely divorced from the particular expression of the
> language, and in particular no 'judgment' is required in interpreting the
> theory.
>
> Absent such a comprehensive denaturing of language, though, I'm not sure just
> what it means to say "that a principle applies here and now, and should be
> applied in such-and-such a manner, is not identified by any property
> intrinsic to the principle itself." Surely the words used to express the
> principle are 'properties intrinsic to the principle', and I would think the
> meanings of the words have a lot to do with determining whether & how the
> principle should be applied.
>
> Walter:
> > "Teaching" can occur only in genuinely educational contexts; "training"
> > can occur in any context of technical skill or prudence. We should also
> > remember that Codes of Ethics govern military personnel in their treatment
> of
> > each other as well as of the enemy. Moreover, unless one is enslaved,
> one's
> > autonomy as a soldier (and an officer) is retained. If you wipe out an
> entire
> > village of civilians, you remain morally responsible for the maxim you
> willed
> > and acted on.
>
> It seems to me this just substitutes a new term requiring interpretation --
> "genuinely educational contexts" -- for another, "Teaching". Moreover, the
> question wasn't whether the student retained his or her autonomy. In the
> sense Walter is invoking here, no one ever loses his or her autonomy unless
> they are comatose or dead. The question was about the teacher *respecting*
> that autonomy.
>
>
> Walter:
> > Restrictions upon one's own freedom, or that of another, are
> > permissible, and often required, on moral grounds. Such constraints seek
> to
> > preserve threatened autonomy and well-being precisely by curtailing wanton
> or
> > uninformed freedom.
>
> Yes, but my point is precisely that such constraints constitute exceptions to
> the universal applicability of "teachers should respect..."
>
> Walter:
> > I am ignorant of the mathematical reference, though I'd be interested
> > in hearing about it in its relevance to the matter of the distinction
> between
> > the "meaning" of a moral claim and its "interpretations."
>
> See above.
>
> >
> >
> > > The distinctions in law, plagiarism and semantics that Walter cites as
> > > illustration for our ability to recognize 'relevant similarity' seem to
> me
> > > far from perspicuous. The distinctions Walter cites -- between 1st
> degree
> > > murder & accidental homicide, between copying another's work and
> coincidental
> > > independent creation, and between the meanings of each word in various
> pairs
> > > of related but distinct words -- all operate within realms in which the
> space
> > > of possibilities is established in advance and the question is which of
> a
> > > pair or group of correlated attributes applies, given that one of them
> must
> > > apply (someone's dead by another's hand, so the law presumes the events
> fell
> > > under one of a list of possible headings, murder 1 and accidental
> homicide
> > > being two on that list).
> >
> > -----> Eric loses me here. It's a potentially important point though, since
> the
> > claim is that the examples I give may not be completely relevant or
> > appropriate to the question of the application of principles. Perhaps Eric
> could
> > unpack his above comments a tad.
>
> What I was saying, to use the homicide example, was that discriminating among
> which of the various degrees of homicide applies is a different task from
> determining whether one is a teacher in the sense relevant to the maxim's
> applicability. In the case of the degrees of homicide, the presumption is
> that the act was in fact a homicide (i.e. a human is dead at another human's
> hands) and that all homicides must fall under one of a fixed list of category
> headings. The classification of the situation is given in advance (it's a
> homicide) and the choices of type within the class are fixed.
>
> In the case of the teacher maxim, the question of whether one is a teacher in
> the relevant sense is, I was tacitly hypothesizing, not something given in
> advance, but rather is something to be ascertained at least in part by how
> well the maxim fits the situation one is in (e.g. to the extent one thinks
> one should not respect a student's autonomy, one is not a teacher).
>
> Walter:
> > Here, Eric laments the fact that judgement is required for the cogent
> > and justifiable application of moral principles. There is no alternative.
> (Note
> > that the universality of a maxim needs to be differentiated from the
> generality
> > of a maxim. The class of teachers is less general than the class of human
> > beings; however, maxims may be specified to be universalizable across all
> > teachers, without risk of "qualification" in a sense that leads to
> relativism.)
>
> I certainly don't think it's lamentable that judgment is required; I think
> instead that it's forlorn to think that there can be a universally true
> assertion that can be understood without the application of judgment and
> therefore forlorn to think that the exercise of judgment can be relegated to
> discerning whether the current circumstances are of the sort to which the
> maxim applies. I understand that the fact that 'teacher' is a subset of
> 'human' doesn't mean the maxim is less than universal.
>
>
> Walter:
>
> <snip>
>
> > The moral order is not an order which is obliged to answer to
> > interrogations of prudential or strategic value or relevance -
> interogations
> > that cannot but unjustifiably privilege the values and rituals of some
> cultural
> > or religious tribe. Indeed, all "practical" or instrumentalist
> justifications of
> > morality are self-contradictory. All we can say is that morality is a
> function
> > of our capacity to engage in rational discourse, and this possesses itw
> own
> > intrinsic worth.
>
> I basically agree with Walter's last sentence -- "morality is a function of
> our capacity to engage in rational discourse, and this possess its own
> intrinsic worth." What I disagree with is that the way to preserve that
> intrinsic worth is to pay homage to moral maxims as "universal assertions".
>
>
> I'm not sure I know what the moral order is, but I certainly think that any
> human institution must absolutely be available to "interrogations of
> prudential or strategic value or relevance," and it was the human institution
> of insisting on the possibility of an unqualified moral truth expressible in
> human terms which I was objecting to and calling to account.
>
> I do not see why objecting to that is objecting to the notion that morality
> is a function of our capacity to engage in rational discourse. I think
> rational discourse is advanced when we attempt to engage each others'
> understandings without insisting that either of us has access to, or ever
> will have access to, an unqualifiable truth.
>
> Regards to one and all,
> Eric Dean
> Washington DC
>
> P.S.
>
> Walter adds:
> > --> The CI is not itself a universal law. Maxims are judged, as per the
> CI,
> > regarding their possible status as universal laws. (There's no point in
> asking
> > whether the CI is itself a universal law.)
>
> I'm no Kant scholar, so perhaps I am missing something important, but it
> seems to me that the categorical imperative is most definitely a universal
> law. Kant writes (as translated by Abbot, quoted from Gutenberg.org) "Act so
> that the maxim of thy will can always at the same time hold good as a
> principle of universal legislation." That seems to me pretty unequivocally a
> law ("Act..." it says, in the imperative voice, like laws do). The buildup
> to it has been at pains to distinguish maxims, which are infected by the
> empirical, from practical laws (that word again), which are the only true
> laws per se and which, to avoid the contamination of the merely empirical,
> are forced only to deal with the form rather than the substance, the logic of
> which leads Kant implacably to the CI as *the* one law of pure practical
> reason. I don't get why Walter would say it's not a law...? CI screens
> maxims so that actions can be permitted insofar as they conform to maxims
> which can be made universal without contradiction -- but note, it says "ACT
> so that..."
>
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