[lit-ideas] Re: lit-ideas Digest (editing) and Missouri)
- From: "Julie Krueger" <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:40:44 -0600
Not to split hairs here, but I'm still a bit hung up on the vocabulary
employed. John W. finds "concluded" more appropriate (?) terminology than
"decided".
Compare the following:
1.
I decided to believe X.
I decided that I believe X.
2.
I concluded that belief in X was most (appropriate, correct, fill in the
blank).
I concluded to (I concluded that I should ?) believe X.
(#2 seems in both cases to open entirely new cans of worms)
3.
I determined that I believe X.
I determined to believe X.
There's a relationship between the "that" and "to" statements that I don't
know how, exactly, to name, but that does seem seminal to the issue of
belief.
One is a description of my state of mind. The other is a description of
what I rationally think my state of mind should/ought be. Of course that
sentence in itself can be dissected a hundred ways.
Maybe one way to address this is by asking: given a specific, a) what have
you discovered that you believe? b) what have you decided to believe?
Having identified those, are they the same? If not, which has primacy? Are
you able to believe what you decide to? Or decide to believe that which you
discover you believe?
I can see that it does happen both ways -- individuals I have known have
forced their rational decisions re. what to believe so internally that they
only under some sort of regression or hypnosis might find what they really
believe, and individuals I have known who so stridently believe what they
believe that they will come up with the most cockamamie reasons for
justifying that belief.
But I don't get the sense that either of those really involve what we
consider "emotions".
Is there a place separate from rationality and emotion (intuition??) which
functions just as strongly as the others?
I would only add that I have purposely stuck with the word "belief" rather
than "faith" because I feel they are very different animals, although at
times crossing paths.
On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 4:27 PM, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> John McCreery wrote
>
> ...someone else in a similar position might come to a different conclusion
>>> or a different decision, either out of some kind of emotional considerations
>>> or just out of their superior rational abilities, but here is "my"
>>> conclusion or decision.
>>>
>>
> Walter replied
>
> But the philosophical question here is whether
>> it is at all rational for a person to claim that P is the judgement or
>> maxim one
>> should hold in situation S and also claim that other persons in situation
>> S,
>> possessed by differing (superior?) rational capacities or "emotional
>> considerations," ought to conclude otherwise. Such a judgement, in my
>> mind, is
>> wholly irrational.
>>
>
> Robert suggests that Walter has misread John's 'might,' as 'ought,' and in
> passing notes that it remains to be seen whether someone with different (?)
> emotional capacities than I and with 'rational abilities' superior to mine,
> will be in the 'same situation' as I with respect to certain facts and
> circumstances. Alice may see some state of affairs as being morally fraught,
> while I may not be sensitive enough or perceptive enough to see its moral
> dimensions. The notion of a brute 'situation' which each of us reads
> differently is an illusion.
>
> Robert Paul
> Director of Campus Safety
> Mutton College
>
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--
Julie Krueger
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