A weedy florilegium

Is moral absolutism our problem?

nerdfiles — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:55:50 +0000

Moral absolutists (Fundies, the Moral Right, my grandparents, old fogies, hyperdogmatists, pro-lifers (meaning “anti-abortionists”) are just silly! They’re unable to see the “gray area” in reality!

–the PoMo, the “Atheist/Agnostic”, the Relativist, the Rationalist, the Enlightened, the Philosopher
(The quotes are placed with purpose and precision.)

Gloss: Moral absolutism ain’t the problem, it’s moral realism. It’s the mistaken belief that we can talk about morality like we talk about (scientific) factual matters (first). And (second) that we can talk about those moral (factual) matters like they’re subject to truth-and-falsity.

The problem is that most, if not all, people think there are moral facts at all rather than moral facts they can be (absolutely) right or wrong about. The problem is that these people treat “right” and “wrong” like they’re semantically similar to “true” and “false.”

They’re wrong.

The problems cause is likely due to the problematic demarcation between talking about a topic and being involved with reference. When one refers, one thinks there is a definite, determinate, demonstrable object to be the referent, whereas when one (”merely”) talks about a subject, one is attempting to communicate a different definite object, an object that is the attempt at communication. The semantic value is not in the proposition, if there be any proposition at all, but it floats above it. Perhaps it is pragmatic, in that the context is the criterion for a “truth-value,” if it’s intelligible to talk about truth-value or anything like them as standing outside of the boundaries of “the proposition.”

There are no moral facts to be “relative” to a culture unless when one is speaking descriptively; that is to say, speaking about the cultural from behind the cloak of anthropology, where science belongs.

Postmodern (a)theism

nerdfiles — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 19:52:50 +0000

“I believe that God does not exist. Wait, wait, before you reject my claim. This is what I mean by ‘God’–how God makes sense to me. God is my toaster, and it blew a fuse yesterday. Therefore, God does not exist.”

All hail the Subjective. It justifies all.

Is God-as-big-brother just one’s feeble attempt to draw a square circle?

If so, atheists, who justify religious belief on psychological grounds, justify what? The justification is logically untenable. But why do atheists (a) justify such a thing (b) by such a procedure? What is the atheist afraid of? This psychological comfort justification sounds frighteningly similar to the claim that “Well, you’ll come ’round to understanding God when you’re older.” This is the kind of nonsense the familial Christian stands upon as he speaks to his fallen kin. But the question is not Is he, indeed, standing? The question, of course, is Why does he think that he is standing?

These are the questions with which I grapple. I seem not to be able to overcome them. Each that-clause presupposes a context, and that context itself presupposes another. Does the questioning end whence the answer is concerned with what, if anything, is said to be the Thought. Is the atheist thinking? Are we licensed to infer the assertoric on basis of (presumed) cultural problematic? Or does “the world” carry on apodeictic?

Quietism of Every Flavor

nerdfiles — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 08:14:26 +0000

What will you do with your degree? (Circle one. These options are exhaustive.)

(a) “Teach.”
(b) “Write a logic text book.”
(c) “Dissolve hip philosophical problems, showing them to be ‘ungrammatical.’”
(d) “Destroy eliminative materialism (and the spirit of reductive naturalismz).”
(e) “Make a living out of throwing blunt objects at ‘ethics’ professors who pose inane Game Show Ethics questions.”

The rise of the idiot quote

nerdfiles — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 08:02:27 +0000

Once, the idiots were just the fools gawping in through the windows. Now they’ve entered the building. You can hear them everywhere. They use the word ” cool” . It is their favourite word. The idiot does not think about what it is saying. Thinking is rubbish. And rubbish isn’t cool. Stuff & shit is cool. The idiots are self-regarding consumer slaves, oblivious to the paradox of their uniform individuality. They sculpt their hair to casual perfection, they wear their waistbands below their balls, they babble into hand-held twit machines about that cool email of the woman being bummed by a wolf. Their cool friend made it. He’s an idiot too. Welcome to the age of stupidity. Hail to the rise of the idiots.
–Dan Ashcroft (Julian Barratt) of Nathan Barley

A test of legal positivism

nerdfiles — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:38:38 +0000

“What they are saying is that if you pull someone out of a pool, if you provide CPR, you do have a defense,” said Torti’s lawyer, Jody Steinberg. “It seems to defy logic,” he said. “At a certain point anyone who instructs or educates [in emergencies] will advise that you must hesitate. Those split-second decisions will be gone and someone could die.”
–Woman Sued for Rescue Effort in Car Crash

Should we modify our Good Samaritan laws because of this case? Should we generally constrain the concept of intending to help to the concept of capacity to properly administer aid? Should people generally be held responsible for helping others, rather than being held responsible only for what positive consequences come from their actions? Seems like a one way street here. When we satisfy others with our help, we’re thought to be heroes and largely responsible for our actions. But our Good Samaritan “intuitions” suggest that when we act poorly, we are not responsible. Here, “intending to help” is meant to justify any action taken, for better or ill. Our Good Samaritan “intuitions” seem to function on a biased premise.

When we help others, we receive no legal benefits. Why should we be susceptible to legal detriments? Seems like a one way street to me. Here again, our legal system, though it utilizes the Good Samaritan principle, conflicts with our “intuitions.” It does not reward those who help satisfactorily, but it’s possible to punish those who help erroneously and clumsily. Does our intuition consider that help gone awry is deserving of punishment?

Practise #1

nerdfiles — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 11:50:19 +0000

Special noontime lullabies renovate failed returns
To pendulums droning dimpled empty tones tanning
But bastard bellows from angry man tremble terrible
Tremors to turpentine tethers teem together ten tows

Spilled milk splatter on quilts of feminists shouts shitting
Shackles onto those unto who and wrought whom hampered
Hagglers flake and share numerical banter before formless
Abstractions of bounded minds, masters meticulous to their ends

Often rhythms oft-shot to shambles by careful claims mistaken
For cries and solid pies to the face four, seven, nine times
We horrible children grip our guts gloriously ’til gory stories bend
Our speechless acts into heavenly sanctuaries–now today flows

Of the Importance of Rationality and Insanity

nerdfiles — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:59:43 +0000

This is a poem; on the other hand,
Read this as poem or as a text–what?
How might I judge this poem? And:
How will I cut its markings into symbols

Grasp all the symbols, discriminate them
Into logical types that fit or do not
Fit every claim into a container of virtuous
Sense willing to bankrupt the gutters of Minds

And refer to antipodals, building empty totals
To tell me just how human I am, Where
Can we escape into those worlds between
These dichotomous dialogues of wasted time

Speak carefully the hubris of your craft,
The craft of your living shall drain the integrity
Of every shoe you smell,–Then! Find God
Before the swollen step stumbling–interminably

The World as Event

nerdfiles — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 07:59:41 +0000

1 The world is a multiplicity of event. Wherein the world one perceives the event, thereof one deduces that the event is prior to itself within a medium which simplifies it. The extent to which the event may come into the world at all is the extent to which that event may be expressed. To deduce, to apply the a priori, is not to engage in the thought but to express what must be expressed of the event.
1.1 The event is simple. There exist no objects outside of the event. The event cannot be rightly understood as an object.
1.2 We are wont to say, now, that the event, so described, is a human description. We feign the notion of causation. We declare what is cause and what is effect to the extent that it pleases us. What does not please us is analytic and what does please us synthetic.
1.3 What does it mean “to please” in this sense? Earlier our kin called it “satisfaction.” This satisfies this. We bemoan that either the former or the latter must maintain at a “higher” level.
1.4 Why do we speak of foundations and levels? We reject coherence for it implies relativism of some sort. We claim that correspondence is the method, for there must be something that corresponds.
1.5 The world has no object that corresponds to anything whatever.
1.6 The world is composed of the event.
1.7 Each event of the world plays a part in a picture. And the world is mistaken for a picture. We argue that question must be meaningful. What is presupposed by a meaningful question? A model rests underneath the question, soaked in the filth of one’s method. We contrive method for we feel that the answer is best understood by a method. “What kind of question do you have for me?”–I have your answer, but you must suffer my method.
1.8 And the event; what does it presuppose? The event, so it is claimed, must be intelligible. Or else it is not an event. In speaking, not referring, there is an event. The event travels well within the discourse of science, and so to does it carry on in the discourse of conversation. “The belief is a cause so long as you understand me.” How might we go about understanding you? Here, I have reset the game. Meaning, if it is not grasped at first blush, is lost. Interpretation is the void of all reality. If you interpret, you do not “create” or “destroy,” but you become inert.

A past time

nerdfiles — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 03:26:27 +0000

A past time of mine is to read a philosophical text aloud to myself, as powerfully and with as much urgency as I can muster. It is exciting to read the greats as though I was performing before an audience. Whilst reading Ayer’s assault on religious knowledge (though the avenue of religious language) I realized that I engage in this activity quite often. Where I see a poetry reading, I imagine a philosophy reading.

This brings a markedly human quality to the austere and distant melodies of systematically placed premises, definitions, statements. These be notes to the sheet; syllogisms are the chords of communication.

The myth of dualism

nerdfiles — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:23:10 +0000

Now that Cartesian dualism is behind us (or so they say), we’re left with all kinds of property dualism (with identity theses) and wild reductionism. I’m reading “Strangers to Ourselves” and the author claims that our “… it [adaptive unconscious] feels.” But does he really claim this? First, it’s a popular psychology book (not in the pejorative sense). It seems that he’s aiming for something idiomatic, not aiming to ascribe conscious properties (of the whole human) to some one of its parts. He later claims “it generates those feelings.” Clearly, if taken literally, these two claims say very different things. The former is a philosophically ungrammatical misascription and the latter is a vacuous scientific statement.

But does the author even maintain such a thesis, that brains feel and one’s unconscious loves his daughter more than he? I think much of this debate springs out of authors want to sound punchy or idiomatic or to sell books. It’s alluring (to the science buffs) and captivating to think that your brain can do potentially all or most of what you do in your waking hours. Scientists take a grammatico-conceptual shorthand, which is likely the problem of the philosophy of mind.