tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post4508120427825455642..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Pluralist Reasonableness Against Fundamentalist, Reductionist, and Relativist UnreasonablenessDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-70066936973596168792010-05-16T19:49:13.571-07:002010-05-16T19:49:13.571-07:00I distinguish morals from ethics, that is to say w...I distinguish morals from ethics, that is to say we-intentions deriving from <i>mores</i>, involving the policing of continuity within a normative community made continent through its exclusion of theys outside itself, and we-intentions that attain toward a formal universality -- eg, universal declarations of rights, commitments to nonviolence, considerations of the good opinion of sentient beings or posterity -- repudiating constitutive outsides. Although formal universality is always exposed retroactively as parochial, and hence takes on the character of the moral after all, it derives its character from the projection of an <i>ethos</i> toward the hearing of an audience radically more capacious than the moral communities to which one currently belongs (the dignity of such belonging is the key deliverable of morality), in fact potentially enormously subversive to moral(istic) normative deliberation, the practice out of which abstract legal subjecthood emerges as a substantial concern in fact. The point for me is that the standards of the moral and the ethical yield crucially different normative deliberations and rely on different warrants for their reasonableness in practice from moment to moment.<br /><br />Harris' moral realism seems to be battling against the menace of a relativism that I don't personally think has much life in it outside of abstruse cocktail party chatter in the philosophy 101 set -- I don't think the criteria of warrant that render moral and ethical beliefs reasonable are "purely subjective," I think they obey real rules and sustain real facets of actually flourishing human life, but I cannot say that I think much is clarified by trying to shoehorn these real rules or real benefits into the ways we talk about the different real rules and real benefits delivered in the way of confidence about our capacities for prediction and control connected to warranted scientific belief. Inasmuch as science gives us a reasonable confidence as to what outcomes to expect under certain circumstances we might have a hand in but cannot tell us which outcomes to prefer or how or whether we should have a hand in them, it has always seemed to me that the role of the normative as a motor of scientificity should be treated as at least as important as the difference (which I cheerfully grant) of scientificity <i>from</i> the normative.<br /><br />I can't ever make much sense of the charges of relativism I tend to hear when I say things like these. I have a feeling Sam Harris might be inclined to make them himself. I also know that Harris is one of the "new" or "militant" atheists, and even though I have been a convinced and cheerful atheist myself for twenty-seven years I don't exactly find the New Atheist line congenial. Just as my pluralism gets accused of relativism, I tend to want to accuse certain newly popular modes of atheist militancy as reductionist -- maybe neither of these charges are exactly fair or useful, I dunno.<br /><br />Sorry that this comment is probably a bit rambling, it's off the top of my head and I'm buried in grading at the moment!Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-68247532520095806702010-05-16T18:37:35.138-07:002010-05-16T18:37:35.138-07:00> I love that phrase: the vanity of human wishe...> I love that phrase: the vanity of human wishes. Sums up a lot<br />> of transhumanism and futurism.<br /><br />"Unluckily, it is difficult for a certain type of mind to grasp<br />the concept of insolubility. Thousands... keep pegging away at<br />perpetual motion. The number of persons so afflicted is far<br />greater than the records of the Patent Office show, for beyond the<br />circle of frankly insane enterprise there lie circles of more and<br />more plausible enterprise, until finally we come to a circle which<br />embraces the great majority of human beings... The fact is that<br />some of the things that men and women have desired most ardently<br />for thousands of years are not nearer realization than they were<br />in the time of Rameses, and that there is not the slightest reason<br />for believing that they will lose their coyness on any near<br />to-morrow. Plans for hurrying them on have been tried since the<br />beginnning; plans for forcing them overnight are in copious and<br />antagonistic operation to-day; and yet they continue to hold off<br />and elude us, and the chances are that they will keep on holding<br />off and eluding us until the angels get tired of the show, and the<br />whole earth is set off like a gigantic bomb, or drowned, like a<br />sick cat, between two buckets."<br /><br />-- H. L. Mencken, "The Cult of Hope"jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-21676980494393644712010-05-16T17:03:17.253-07:002010-05-16T17:03:17.253-07:00BTW, I don't know if you read Paleo-Future, bu...BTW, I don't know if you read <a href="http://www.paleofuture.com" rel="nofollow">Paleo-Future</a>, but it's an excellent study in the folly of futurism. In a <a href="http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/2010/5/16/the-vanity-of-human-wishes-1970.html" rel="nofollow">recent post</a>, they present a 1970 opinion piece by someone named Russell Kirk, who suggested that "If the people of the year 2000 ever bother to read our predictions for their time, probably they will acquire a lesson in the vanity of human wishes."<br /><br />I love that phrase: <em>the vanity of human wishes</em>. Sums up a lot of transhumanism and futurism.adminhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01020701980607126113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-35947743363149283492010-05-16T16:53:55.080-07:002010-05-16T16:53:55.080-07:00Or who would reduce other modes of reasonable beli...<em>Or who would reduce other modes of reasonable belief-ascription (the moral, aesthetic, ethical, political, among them) to the terms of the scientific</em><br /><br />What do you think of Sam Harris's moral realism?<br /><br /><em>It is actually important to grasp... that attention-economies, funding dynamics, reputation building, interpersonal organization in lab settings are often political through and through</em><br /><br />The Double Helix by James Watson is a fascinating and brutally honest exposition of the culture and politics of (at least 1950s) science, complete with Watson's own blatant misogyny. Although the science may be beyond most lay readers, I highly recommend it, since you can still get a lot out of it without understanding nucleotide base pairing.adminhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01020701980607126113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-29849914505006039422010-05-16T16:07:44.142-07:002010-05-16T16:07:44.142-07:00> . . .in order to manipulate undercritical mas...> . . .in order to manipulate undercritical mass assumptions<br />> and aspirations. . .<br />><br />> . . .transhumanist eugenicists. . .<br /><br />You know, there was a memorable episode of _The Twilight Zone_<br />from 1962 whose theme was the unacknowledged manipulation<br />of fear, narcissism, and technology by a self-styled<br />benevolent government to shepherd its unprotesting citizens<br />into a radical program of eugenics (or at any rate a radical<br />program of mental and physical homogenization). An effective<br />abridgement of _Brave New World_.<br /><br />It had only been 20 years since the Holocaust when that show<br />aired, and the story it was based on was written 10 years before<br />that. A lot of "thoughtful" TV shows from the time were very<br />conscious of those recent historical events (and I'm not talking<br />about _Hogan's Heroes_). In this Zone episode, there's a<br />German-accented "Professor Sig" ("Sigmund Friend", wearing a rather<br />alarming-looking bat-winged medallion) who lays out the<br />rationale for the "Transformation":<br /><br />"Many years ago, wiser men zan I decided to try and eliminate ze<br />reasons for inequality and injustice in zis world of ours. Zey saw in<br />physical unattractiveness one of ze factors which made men hate.<br />So zey charged ze finest scientific minds wiz ze task of eliminating<br />ugliness in mankind. . .<br /><br />Zere is more to it zan zat, of course. As we learned to reshape ze features,<br />remold ze body, we also learned to eliminate most of ze causes of<br />illness, and thus to prolong life. Before ze Transformation<br />you could have expected to live 70 or 80 or perhaps 90 years, but<br />now you can live twice zat long, perhaps three times. Zis is<br />a good thing, is it not?"<br /><br />What Professor Sig neglects to mention is that the Transformation<br />also alters the mind.<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_12_Looks_Just_Like_You<br /><br />"For lack of a better estimate, let's call it the year 2000. . ."<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpM8qC16tTU<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9s3bJXG3W4<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWKwcO_2GTo<br /><br />I guess these days that kind of stuff is considered just too much<br />of a "downer" to make good entertainment. On the other hand, there<br />was a Jockey underwear commercial a couple of years ago with<br />a similar theme (reduced to a 30-second vignette). There's<br />nothing that can't be co-opted to sell underwear! (Notice the narcissistic<br />spin the ad is given, though -- "Dare to be you." In other words, buy what<br />we tell you to buy.<br /><br />Commercial - Jockey Underwear - Factory Escape<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4o28_-B02Ejimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.com