Marc Susselman writes: “Prof. Wolff, I don’t want to be a nag, but I have raised this question several times, and it is one of the big questions to which you have alluded in the past: On what basis does one decide on what side one should be on? If one does not deduce it syllogistically, and one does not intuit it, how does one make that decision, and if it is based on one’s gut feeling, how does that differ from intuiting it?”
I hesitated to respond to this question because I have
talked about it so often in the past but if you wish, I shall repeat here what
I have said in various ways and in various places.
Let me begin almost 60 years ago. When I wrote In Defense of
Anarchism in the summer of 1965 (not published until five years later) I
assumed without much thought the truth of Kant’s claim that there is a
fundamental principle of morality knowable by reason alone and valid for all
moral agents as such. Having been hired by Columbia to teach ethical theory, I
lectured each year on the subject, devoting considerable attention to Kant’s
great work the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Having found – or so I
believed – an argument in the First Critique for the causal maxim, I searched
in vain in the bowels of the Groundwork for an argument for the validity a
priori of the fundamental principle of morality.
In the spring of 1968, when I was traveling to New Brunswick
twice a week to teach as a visitor at Rutgers University (it was there that
Marc studied with me), students at Columbia occupied several buildings to
protest both Columbia war work and her plan to take a portion of Morningside
Park to build a new gym which would not be open to the residents of Harlem
(protests that I strongly and publicly supported.) The next semester, I was
back to lecturing on ethical theory, struggling unsuccessfully with the
Groundwork. One day (a story I have often told) a student in the class who had
been active in the building occupations stopped me after class to ask why it
was so important to me to find that argument in Kant. I answered that if I
could not find such an argument, then I would not know what to do. As I have
often reported, he looked at me rather like a parent looking at a much loved
but not very bright child, and said “first you must decide which side you are
on. Then you will be able to figure out what to do.”
At the time, I dismissed this as undergraduate ignorance and
continued my fruitless quest for an argument in Kant’s writings that would
support his claims for his fundamental moral principle. Eventually, five years
later, I published a commentary on the Groundwork in which I acknowledged my
inability to find a satisfactory argument in Kant’s writings.
As the years went by, I came to recognize the deep wisdom of
the undergraduate’s observation. I came to the conclusion that each of us in
life is confronted with a choice – not a conceptual problem, but a choice.
Each of us must decide which side he or she is on. This is a genuine life
choice, not a temporary substitute while we search for an argument. Am I on the
side of the exploited or on the side of the exploiters? Am I on the side of
the oppressed or on the side of the oppressors?
The unavoidable and stark reality of this choice was brought
home to me forcefully in my 1986 visit to South Africa. During my six weeks
there, teaching the thought of Karl Marx to undergraduates at the University of
the Witwatersrand, I traveled one day to Pretoria and had dinner that evening
with Koos Pau, a professor of philosophy at Rand Afrikans Universitat
(RAU). Pau was on leave from his
professorship to serve as the number three man in the education division of the
apartheid government. He was intelligent, well read, knowledgeable – rather
like a sophisticated Nazi. It was obvious to me that there was no argument I
could give to persuade him that he was on the wrong side of the barricade and
it was equally obvious, in South Africa at that time, that which side you were
on was the most important decision you could make.
So it is, that for the last half-century or so I have
embraced the view that one’s fundamental political commitments are a matter of
life choice, not philosophical argument. I am sure there are many reading this
you will find what I say unsatisfactory and who will insist that if I have no
better argument than that, then I really have no argument at all.
So be it.
47 comments:
Prof. Wolff,
With all due respect I find your answer unsatisfactory because it is circular – you decide on what side you are on, and your convictions are thereby generated because they are the convictions of that side. But on what basis do you choose that side? Why not just state, “I choose the side whose convictions coincide with my convictions, the rectitude of which I cannot prove, do not have to prove, because their rectitude is self-evident to me.” The fact that others may not share your convictions, that perhaps they see their convictions, which are antithetical to yours, as self-evident to them, does not invalidate your convictions – your self-evident convictions are ipso facto correct, whereas their self-evident convictions are ipso facto incorrect, because they are antithetical to yours. Why is this a better explanation than just saying you choose the side you want to be on? Because it is an explanation, and thereby avoids being circular. (See my comment to Michael Llenos, on the previous thread.)
Thanks. That's one, if not the most, valuable lesson I've learned from you and it's so important that please repeat it whenever you feel called upon to do so without fear of repeating yourself.
By the way, the gym would have been open to Harlem residents, but with "a separate but equal" entrance and "separate but equal" facilities.
David Palmeter,
Why can’t a belief that something is true because it is self-evident be an exercise in using one’s reason, rather than one’s emotional sentiment? And if that is all one’s moral beliefs reduce to, like which flavor of ice cream one prefers, then why stand by it, why risk one’s life to defend it, why recommend that others risk their lives to defend it, e.g., in a civil war justified, in part, to free slaves?
Marc:
You pose a perfectly sensible question when you ask: "Why can’t a belief that something is true because it is self-evident be an exercise in using one’s reason, rather than one’s emotional sentiment?"
In our lengthy exchange on meta-ethics some months ago I did try to address this question by noting that the classic intuitionists (Moore, Pritchard, et al) had a very difficult time answering it because they had no coherent way to distinguish between veridical and non-veridical claims to self-evident truth. With respect, permit me to say that I do not think you have done any better in this regard than they did.
Dear Marc
Professor Wolff is answering like an existentialist: we are thrown into a situation in life, political and otherwise and have to respond to it. Do you need a logical answer from first principles why you love your wife and kids?
John Rapko,
I take it to be very Sartrean (rather than Humean) and since Sartre isn't much in fashion these days, we might say Beauvoirian, in reference to her little book For an Ethics of
Ambiguity.
David,
Then where does that leave us with regard to risking our lives, and recommending that others risk their lives, in a fight to free slaves; to oppose Nazi totalitarianism; to urge Ukrainians, and others, to risk their lives to resist Russian aggression; and on and on.
See my response to your comment on the previous thread.
I am going to have to beg off continuing this discussion for the time being, because I have a brief due in the Michigan Court of Appeals by midnight.
Marc,
Do we really need a syllogism to know that the Nazis were wrong? Or that we should support Ukraine?
No doubt there is a strong case to be made that it is in our strategic interest to oppose Putin in his invasion of Ukraine. But I doubt that that case is paramount for the many who approve of our support of Ukraine. After all, the Soviet Union had them had them for decades and we were OK with that. I think it is more an emotional response: an admiration for a brave people who are struggling against a cruel and corrupt regime that is trying to conquer them. The strategic case is useful justification for a policy we support for other reasons.
Deciding whose side one is on may not *always* tell one what to do. Sometimes or often one needs to consider consequences not just commitments -- i.e., what Weber called an ethic of responsibility.
For example, both proponents and opponents of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq would have said that they were on the side of the Kurds and other Iraqis whom Saddam Hussein persecuted. But opponents of the invasion correctly judged that -- among other things -- the bad consequences of the invasion would outweigh, on balance, the benefits of forcibly overthrowing this particular oppressive autocrat.
Many judgments of this kind come down to a kind of exercise in applied ethics. It is fine to say that one's fundamental political commitments are a matter of life choice not philosophical argument, but one can't really operate in the political world armed only with a fundamental commitment to the oppressed and exploited. At some point that fundamental commitment has to come into contact with the messy stuff of actual political choices, which are sometimes going to be less clear and obvious than they were in South Africa in 1986.
David,
No, we do not need a syllogism. That's my point!!!
I'm starting to feel like Michael in Godfather III, every time I think I am out, they keep pulling me back in!
Not to be a pedant (or rather, to clearly be a pedant), but the sentence 'each of us must decide which side he or she is on' is wildly ungrammatical, for neither "he" nor "she" can co-refer with the phrase 'each of us' - it is obviously 'each (one) of us must decide which side WE are on', and that is certainly inclusive enough.
DJL:
You are quite wrong about the grammar. "Each (one)" is the antecedent of a singular pronoun ("he or she").
(Stupidly lengthy, so I've bolded some key bits!)
Marc, have you ever had a "sophisticated Nazi"-type encounter of the kind Prof. Wolff describes? If not, what's to prevent you from imagining such a figure: someone who strikes you as sane, intelligent, and experienced in the ways of the world, to degrees equalling or surpassing yourself - but who nevertheless does not share your basic convictions, and would be unmoved by your claim that they are self-evidently correct?
(You might be tempted to say: "That description is absurd, even self-contradictory; pro-Nazi beliefs would simply disqualify a person from being regarded as sane, intelligent, etc." Fair enough, but I'm not sure how far one could generalize this sort of reply: If it ends up being one's "go-to" in every case of disagreement, even the more minor ones, then it would seem dangerously close to regarding oneself as infallible.)
Also, maybe tangential, but do you have a view on the foundationalist-coherentist controversy in epistemology? I ask because you seem to think that circular reasoning is objectionable without qualification, and maybe this thought is worth questioning on some level; maybe some difficulties hinge on it. Maybe - what I'd associate with coherentism - the totality of our convictions forms a self-enclosed structure, with a "circular shape."
And in that case, maybe there really is something to the idea of philosophical disagreements as comparable to clashes of worldview - or clashes of personality (as mentioned in the previous thread) - in which case, we'd do well to temper our expectations of attaining a "God's-eye-view" from which to adjudicate them.
...
I've only dipped my toes into the foundationalism-coherentism controversy, but my feeling is that it might shed some light on the character of moral reasoning, moral disagreement, moral belief-revision - which might after all be a special case of reasoning (disagreement, etc.) in general. If you need a refresher, here's how it was presented to me:
Foundationalists are not content to simply believe-that-X (e.g., simply believe that the Earth is round); they require further support for any such belief. (E.g., belief-that-Y, where Y is the proposition "Earth has been observed spherical by astronomers"; and this belief is supported by belief-that-Z, where Z is "Astronomers are trustworthy"; and...)
But a key question for foundationalism is: "How much" further support - endlessly much (the infinite regress of justification)? Or, if not endlessly much, what are we to make of the idea that justification does come to an end? What (if anything) can be meaningfully said about the end of justification? Doesn't the appeal to "self-evidence" seem cheap, unilluminating, maybe downright mysterious?
Coherentists may step in to modify this picture by contending that in the larger scheme, our beliefs seem to form "web-like" systems, where no proposition is ever considered in isolation, but is located instead in an elaborate holistic network of mutually supporting propositions (cf. "A implies B, and B implies A"), and cannot be revised or replaced without affecting the status of some "neighboring" propositions: As this happens, the overarching structure must remain intact, and the "maxim of minimal mutilation" is something that guides the revision process. (Obviously just my patchy recollections of Quine.)
A standard intro-level objection to coherentism is something like, "Well, fairy tales are coherent, but clearly we know they're false" - and false for reasons X, Y, Z... (Hence, once more, the whole issue of foundationalist chains of justification.) This objection seems short-sighted...but I'm near the end of the character limit, so I'll stop here.
It's only *after* one arrives at one 's convictions or commitments -- either by making a Sartrean choice or by saying "these are my convictions and they're self-evidently correct" or by some other route -- that some of the most interesting questions arise. Those questions have to do with how to apply one's convictions to, or in, particular situations.
See e.g. (whatever one thinks of the book generally) the preface to Walzer's _Just and Unjust Wars_.
I know what the intended co-reference is, Zimmerman; my point is that 'each of us' can't actually be the antecedent of either 'he' or 'she', mostly because they aren't in the same syntactic domain. The phrase 'each of us' agrees in number with the verb 'must' (implicitly, of course, as verbs in English are often ambiguous between singular and plural; it would have been 'has' in 'each of us has to decide'), but the pronouns 'he' and 'she' are the subjects of an embedded phrase (a new sentence, that is), and they do not have to agree in number with 'each', but with the "intended" target of the discourse (cf. "each of us has a task assigned, and we should just go and do it", which is clearly correct). Consider this phrase from one of Biden's speech, for instance (link below, but there are loads of examples online), where the right number is used: "the right of each of us to choose how to live our lives".
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/06/24/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-supreme-court-decision-to-overturn-roe-v-wade/
DJL
Personally I am much less bothered by the error you've identified here than by the inability of quite a lot of people speaking on radio or TV (or sometimes writing for that matter) to match singular subjects with singular verbs.
"But on what basis do you choose that side?"
Perhaps disposition and imagination? One recalls the distress of the fervent Trump supporter whose wife was subsequently deported. Some folks just figure they're special and they will never fall out of a window or just disappear while others prefer buffers.
One thing I took from reading the various Slave Codes is that while they created a totalitarian-like environment for Black folks, they also imposed an authoritarian-like society on whites. The last Fugitive Slave Act that was passed prior to the Civil War was quite unpopular in the North because it imposed that authoritarian governance on those states.
Lincoln realized that the logic of the Slave Power meant wars of aggression and the general loss of freedom.
"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe the government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South...We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State. To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty, is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation. This is what we have to do."
Of course different folks can have different self-evidences:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XUu3_pLPUE&t=6s
https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/house.htm
(A little imagination sees parallels with Shelby Co., Dobbs and 303.)
If a member of an all-male group is speaking, then "Each of us has to make his decision" is fine, right? Similarly if it's an all-female group: "Each of us has to make her decision."
The way this sort of thing was explained to me in my days as a journalism student: In the old days, a speaker would've said "Each of us has to make his decision" - even when there were women in the group. But gradually people realized that this was a bit of linguistic sexism, and so they substituted the singular construction "his or her" to be more inclusive - as if to drop the presumption that a person of unknown/unspecified gender is "standardly" or "probably" male. "Oh, someone dropped his keys over there" became "Oh, someone dropped his or her keys over there."
To be less clumsy and convoluted, some people are also okay with substituting "their" for "his or her"; others might object to the plural pronoun here.
(And some people even choose to replace the gender-neutral "his" with a gender-neutral "her" - a deliberate reaction against linguistic sexism and male privilege in general.)
Nowadays even this is arguably out of date. When in doubt, I just use "they/their" - people sometimes consciously choose that as a personal pronoun anyway, or as an all-purpose gender-neutral pronoun: The "his or her" construction seems unduly to imply that "his" and "her" are the only two possibilities.
It does get a little tedious to see so many authors preface their writings with explanations and disclaimers about their pronoun usage, and it gives me a bit of a "walking on eggshells" feeling when I write things myself, but eh, it serves an all right purpose.
Walzer on asymmetric war and its journalists:
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/asymmetric-war-and-its-journalists
n.b. I've only skimmed it as of yet. Not nec. endorsing, just passing it on.
Below is my effort to respond to the questions raised in this thread, and the prior thread, regarding my position on self-evident moral propositions and why I believe taking this position is preferable to saying one’s moral convictions are an expression of which side one is on.
David Zimmerman questions whether my assertion that I have self-evident moral convictions is no different than saying these are propositions which I really, really, really, … believe. My response was that saying I really, really, really believe proposition x is not the same as saying I really believe proposition x because the truth of proposition x is self-evident to me. And I offered as an example, the cogito. I don’t just really, really, really believe that I am at this moment have tactile sensations as I touch my keyboard, and that I have visual sensations of the characters on my computer screen, and that as I write this I am having thoughts about what to say, and in what order to say them. These sense perceptions and thoughts are self-evident to me, and not merely sensations that I really, really, really believe I am having them.
I really, really, really believe that the Earth is not flat. I do not have any immediate, self-evident sense perception which indicates to me that the Earth is not flat. I only “know” this by virtue of reading about Columbus and his discovery of the New World; seeing the glove of the Earth on my desk; and having seen photographs taken of the Earth by astronauts. I therefore really, really, really believe that the Earth is not flat. But this belief does not have the immediacy and degree of conviction that my belief that I am having, at this moment, certain tactile, visual and cognitive experiences, experiences which change from moment to moment. To even say that I believe I am having these experiences is misleading. They go beyond being beliefs, because beliefs can be erroneous. My belief that the Earth is not flat, as strongly as I believe it, could be erroneous. An omnipotent evil genius could be manipulating all of the evidence o which I base my belief that the Earth is not flat. However, even omnipotent evil genius could not deceive me into experiencing sense perceptions that I am not experiencing. It is possible that an omnipotent evil genius could implant these experiences in me, but this would not mean I was not experiencing them.
(Continued)
So, the next question is, are there any moral propositions which I believe are self-evident to the same degree that the cogito is? I believe that, for me, there are. I believe. For example, that the proposition that one human being has the right to enslave another human being and force them to perform labor for an owner against the slave’s will, without any monetary compensation, is a self-evident moral proposition. I assume that most of the people who read this blog – and hopefully all who read this blog – share this belief. This belief is, for me, as self-evident as that at this moment I am experiencing certain tactile, visual, auditory, and cognitive processes. This is not something that I just really, really, really … believe. It is as immediate to me, and as self-evident to me, as my tactile, visual, auditory, and cognitive experiences. It goes beyond being a mere belief, since beliefs can be erroneous. My self-evident belief that slavery is morally wrong cannot be erroneous, even if it was implanted in me by an omnipotent evil genius. And I believe that those who share the belief that slavery is morally wrong of others, regardless their race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, is morally wrong believe it with the same sense of immediacy and self-evidence and unequivocalness as I do – even though they may not be willing to admit it. Let me ask those reading this comment and who share my belief that slavery is morally wrong, do you believe that this belief could be erroneous? Is there some evidence that you could conjure which would persuade you that this belief is erroneous? (As an aside, before I became a lawyer and was a philosophy graduate student during the 1970’s facing the prospect of being drafted into the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, I was convinced that compulsory service in the military was a form of slavery, and I could not understand why it had not been outlawed as a violation of the Constitution. Now that I am a licensed lawyer, I am aware that it is not slavery, and does not violate the Constitution, because even though many were drafted during the Vietnam War against their will, they were paid for their involuntary service by the U.S. government. Had they not been paid, it would have constituted slavery.)
I can hear my critics saying, “So what. Those who supported slavery and fought for the Confederacy would claim that it was self-evident to them that slavery was moral. How would you convince them otherwise – they would just say that you were wrong and should mind you own business.” I acknowledge that I would be unable to persuade John C. Calhoun that slavery is immoral. (I saw a news report this week that the City of Savannah, Georgia, has voted to rename its Calhoun Square to something else.) First, I doubt that even John C. Calhoun, or any other supporter of the Confederacy, really had a self-evident belief that slavery was moral. But I am willing to assume, for the sake of argument, that they did have such a self-evident belief. The validity of my self-evident belief does not turn on others having the same self-evident belief, or on my being able to prove to them that their self-evident beliefs were wrong, and mine was correct, any more than the self-evident belief that I am at this moment having certain tactile, visual, auditory and cognitive experiences turns on others having similar experiences, or my being able to convince them that I am having these experiences. I would simply maintain that my self-evident belief that slavery is immoral is correct, and that their self-evident belief that it is moral is incorrect.
(Continued)
What good is it, then, for me to maintain that it is self-evident that slavery is immoral if I cannot convince those who disagree with me, to come around to my point of view? It is important because the purpose of clarifying the status of the belief that it is self-evident that slavery is immoral is not to convince others who do not share this belief. The purpose of clarifying the status of this belief is to guide me regarding what actions to take, even though I am unable to persuade those who disagree with me that my beliefs are valid and theirs are not. If, as some have maintained, one’s moral convictions are simply an expression of one’s emotional preferences, and that my belief that slavery is self-evidently immoral is itself no more than an expression of my emotional preferences, no more valid or significant than my preference for chocolate ice cream over vanilla ice cream, then it would make no sense, if I have lived in the North during the Civil War, to be willing to risk my life, and recommend that others who share my belief that slavery is self-evidently, ipso facto, morally wrong. It would not make sense to go to war with those who believe that vanilla ice cream tastes better than chocolate ice cream. This is the case not just because I cannot convince someone who believes that vanilla ice cream tastes better than chocolate ice cream. It is because I cannot epistemologically say to someone who claims that vanilla ice cream tastes better than chocolate ice cream that they should believe that chocolate ice cream tastes better than vanilla ice cream. By contrast, it does make epistemological sense for me to say to a slaveholder that they should not believe that slavery is moral, but believe, instead, that slavery is not moral. When push come to shove, one should be willing to take a stand, even to the point of risking one’s life, in order to change the conduct of those whose conduct is implementing moral convictions which are antithetical to one’s own. Not because you are intent on persuading them that their beliefs are morally wrong, but to change their conduct, by force if necessary, so that they that they are unable to implement their convictions which are morally wrong. If one believed in the ante-bellum South that slavery is self-evidently morally wrong, then one should have been willing to use force to prevent the implementation of slavery – a “peculiar institution” which treated humans as cattle, dehumanized them, and caused them unspeakable pain, torment and anguish – regardless whether you could persuade them that slavery is self-evidently immoral. One would not be equally obliged to use force to change the conduct of those who preferred making vanilla ice cream rather than chocolate ice cream.
(Continued)
Are there other propositions which I believe are self-evidently true, without their being provable via a logical syllogism. Yes, I believe there are, and I have offered some of them in my comments in previous threads. I believe that it is self-evidently the case that every human being once s/he reaches adulthood – however one determines what that age is – has a right to autonomy over their own bodies, subject to the right of others to autonomy over their bodies, which includes the right to continue living, barring criminal conduct which endangers the life of other human beings. This applies to pregnant women, who have a right to control over their bodies, up until the point when the fetus has grown to a point when it is a sentient human being. When then point is is subject to the evidence of medical science, but it is not at the point of conception. This is a self-evident conviction for me, regardless what others may believe, and regardless whether I could convince others to this view. This is as self-evident to me as the fact that I am experiencing certain tactile, visual, auditory and cognitive experiences as I type this comment. And it is worth taking a stand on, and using whatever legal means, if necessary, to protect the right of a pregnant woman not to carry her pregnancy to term if she decides during at least the first trimester that she wishes to terminate the pregnancy, because at this point in time her right to autonomy over her body takes precedence over that of the fetus, which is not yet a sentient human being, and there is a valid, significant difference between being a potential human being and being an actual human being.
That said, why do I take issue with the position of Prof. Wolff and s. wallerstein that all that is involved is deciding on what side one is on. Describing the process as just choosing what side one is on, without explaining how one chooses that side, makes the decision vulnerable to the claim by its critics that the side one chooses is simply an expression of one’s emotional sentiments, rather than a moral choice. It’s like choosing what football team one prefers to win the Super Bowl. It actually weakens the epistemological validity of the choice. One should first decide what one’s moral convictions are, and then choose the side which best reflects those moral convictions. The advantage of this is that it vitiates the argument of the critics that all you are doing is choosing which team you like better. If you decide what your moral convictions are first, and pick the team based on those moral convictions, then your critics cannot validly claim that you are just choosing teams based on your emotional preferences. But to do this, you first have to have moral convictions. Your moral convictions are self-evidently valid to you, not emotional preferences which drive your decision to pick one side over another. And it is irrelevant whether you can convince your critics that your moral convictions are correct, and theirs are incorrect. Whether you can convince them or not, your decision to join this side rather than another is an epistemologically defensible choice, not an emotional one.
(Continued)
Addressing some of the questions raised above, Howie asks if I need a logical answer from first principles why I love my wife and kids. I don’t see the relevance of this question. In loving my wife and kids I am not making a moral choice regarding what side I am on. If, however I was confronted with the threat of a tyrant that if I do not kill my wife and kids, s/he will have ten innocent people killed, I would have to choose which side I am on, and I would choose the side of my wife and kids and refuse to kill them. The blood of the innocent ten people would be on the tyrant’s hands, not mine. (See the movie Nine Day.)
Michael asks a slew of questions. (“Slew” looks odd, but that is apparently the correct spelling.) First, regarding the “sophisticated Nazi.” If I met a sophisticated, erudite, cultured, Nazi with a high IQ (and, in fact, there were many such Nazis, who listened to Mozart and Beethoven symphonies and read Goethe as they administered the gassing and incineration of concentration camp internees) who claimed that he believed it was self-evidently true that it was moral to invade countries in order to acquire more Lebensraum, to incarcerate, gas and incinerate people whose religion or ethnicity you believe are inferior to yours, I would deny that his self-evident convictions are moral, and would to everything in my power from implementing those erroneous convictions.
Michael then asks where I stand on the nature of circular reasoning and the foundationalism-coherentism controversy. I frankly do not see any conflict between the two schools of thought. I believe that any argument, to be valid, must be internally coherent, which means that it should not be circular, i.e., assume as true what the argument claims to prove is true as its conclusion. But a coherent argument, as the foundationalists point out, does not necessarily result in a conclusion which any relevance to reality. That requires that in addition to being valid, the argument must also be sound, i.e, its premises must be true in the real world. In order for this to be the case, ultimately the basis premises must be deemed true without proof. In the position I have outlined above, the basic premises are one’s self-evident moral convictions, which I maintain are true without proof. I cannot syllogistically prove that slavery is immoral. It is self-evidently true to me and therefore is the first premise in my moral argument justifying using force to change the conduct of the slaveholder.
(Continued)
By the way, while one would think that everyone, particularly judges, are aware that circular arguments are invalid and should be avoided, unfortunately this is not the case. I just received a decision by the Michigan Court of Appeals this week demonstrating that even judges do not appreciate when they are making circular arguments. In this case, my client is suing a Michigan public university (which I will not identify except to state that some of its football players decided to mug some of the football players from a rival Michigan team after they took a walloping on the football field). Since he is suing a Michigan public university, which is considered an arm of the State of Michigan, and several of its administrators, the lawsuit, which we filed in a Michigan circuit court where he was entitled to a jury, for which he paid the $150 jury fee, the case was transferred to the Michigan Court of Claims, where my client is not entitled to a jury. The purpose of a jury is to decide all disputed issues of fact. The judge advises the jury what the law is, and the jury is supposed to apply the law to the facts as they determine what the facts are. Now, I had named the administrators of the university in both their official and individual capacities. Being named in their official capacities was the same as suing the university itself, and therefore those claims against them had to be pursued in the Court of Claims, which would be tried by a judge, without a jury, which meant the judge would decide all disputed issues of fact. However, by also naming the administrators in their individual capacities, I was not suing the university, and therefore the Court of Claims should not have jurisdiction over the claims against the administrators named in their individual capacities. One of the claims, for example, was that one of the administrators deliberately interfered with my client’s efforts to obtain employment at the university by ordering the departments to which he applied not to hire him. I named that administrator in both his official and individual capacities, arguing that in his individual capacity he was unlawfully pursuing a grudge against my client and preventing him from obtaining employment at the university. So, I moved to transfer those claims against the administrators named in their individual capacities back to the circuit court, where he was entitled to a jury trial regarding all issues of disputed fact. The Court of Claims denied my motion, and then dismissed the lawsuit holding that all of the administrators who were named in both their official and individual capacities were entitled to governmental immunity, because, according to the court, when they acted, they reasonably believed they were acting within the scope of their authority.
(Continued)
I filed an appeal in the Michigan Court of Appeals and argued that the trial court judge’s position was circular. (As I have pointed out in a previous thread, the trial judge on the Michigan Court of Claims is simultaneously the chief judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals to which my client’s appeal was before. I believe this arrangement is unconstitutional and have a lawsuit pending in federal court requesting that the federal court declare that the Michigan statute which set up this crazy arrangement is unconstitutional.) The trial judge’s position, I argued, is circular because the question of whether a public employee “reasonably believes s/he is acting within the scope of his/her employment” is a factual question. Whether one reasonably believes that proposition x is true is always a factual question regarding whether the belief is reasonable. Therefore, while this factual question regarding the administrators being sued in their official capacities had to be determined by the judge, the same question with respect to the claims pled against the administrators sued in their individual capacities should be determined by a jury in the circuit court, not a judge in the Court of Claims. Therefore, by asserting jurisdiction over the claims against the administrators sued in their individual capacities, the Court of Claims was preventing my client from having a jury decide whether the administrators’ belief was “reasonable.” In its decision denying the appeal and affirming the trial judge’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit, the Court of Appeals entirely ignored my circularity argument, a decision which is illogical and rankles the hell out of me. My only recourse, aside from filing a motion for reconsideration, which will undoubtedly be denied, is to seek leave to appeal in the Michigan Supreme Court, which is discretionary.
Marc
Your opening arguments assume there are only 2 options: (1) slavery is "self-evidently" wrong just as someone denying that I am having sensory conscious experience is self-evidently wrong or (2) slavery is wrong because it is distasteful in the way chocolate ice cream is distasteful to certain people.
These cannot possibly be the only two options. Hence your argument is, imo, unpersuasive. But everyone's been round on this before, so I don't see much point in going through it again.
LFC,
“These cannot possibly be the only two options.”
What is your basis for this statement and what other options do you propose?
As to any proposition p which I claim is true, that proposition must either be deducible from some other propositions which I claim are true, or be true without the necessity of proof. It has been acknowledged by philosophers generally that propositions which have moral or ethical implications are not deducible or provable syllogistically. What, then, are the options regarding their basis and derivation? They are either true without proof; neither true nor false, because they are not truth-functional assertions; or they represent personal preferences, as Hume maintained. But a proposition which purports to express a moral truth cannot be either of the last two options if it is to have any moral force. If the statement “Slavery is morally wrong” is not a truth-functional statement, and neither true nor false, on what basis could Lincoln have justified engaging in a civil war, part of the purpose of which was to end slavery, and sending thousands of people into battle and to their death? The same is true if it represented only Lincoln’s personal preference.
Between tastes and self-evident truths there is a lot of territory.
For example, my tastes change every day. Some days I drink tea and other days I prefer coffee.
Between tastes and self-evident truths one can find commitments and convictions.
We might take Simone de Beauvoir as an example, the founder of contemporary feminism and an activist against the French colonial war in Algeria among other causes.
She wrote a little book, For an Ethics of Ambiguity, which more or less outlines the point of view held by Professor Wolff and others here, yet she lived her life committed to several causes. From reading her autobiography, I gather that she ate out in restaurants a lot and had very varied tastes in food.
s. wallerstein,
What the hell does your comment have to do with the issue in question?
That people like you, me, Prof. Wolff, S. Beauvoir, Sartre, Nietzsche, and on and on have/had personal tastes, like I don’t know that?
You know, I see a lot of people moralizing on this blog, who insist that they are not moralizing, and, like you, who can offer no coherent explanation of what they are doing.
Marc:
I did lay out -- at some length-- an option between your posited extremes, viz. an informed preference account of moral statements, which bases their rational authority on the prior rational authority of factual and logical constraints. It is a development of ideas to be found in Hume, Adam Smith and other meta-ethical "sentimentalists"
David,
And during our email exchange I argued, and I believe I demonstrated, that your methodology ultimately must rely on the assumption that certain moral propositions must be accepted as true without proof as the basis for your inferences. I did not receive any response from you regarding my last email stating this.
In any event, your methodology does not equate to just choosing which side one is on.
Marc:
Sentimentalist meta-ethics of the Hume/Smith sort (their 20th century heirs include Richard Brandt and Bernard Williams) do NOT "rely on the assumption that certain moral propositions must be accepted as true without proof...." They ground the claimed authority of basic moral statements on the prior claimed authority of empirical justification and logical consistency.
Of course, this sort of grounding will not convince a confirmed sceptic about induction and deductive consistency... but then nothing will convince such a sceptic about anything.
Just got up to start my day, and... Holy smokes, Marc, where do you get the energy for this? I don't even have to fill out two comment boxes to feel zapped.
Anyway, here's where I am for the time being.
I'm a "people pleaser," if that's the right expression here (?), by which I mean I try to avoid conflict by assuming that there's something legitimate - or at any rate understandable, possible to sympathize with - to every side in a controversy; and that people's differences are accordingly, in a sense, "superficial" - not unreal, but reflections of a common underlying humanity which manifests differently in different contexts (different situations, different backgrounds, different life stories).
In principle, I think this would mean that "enough" conversation (often far more than is practically possible) could always reaffirm people's sense of mutual understanding, and persuade them that the main impediments to this were not only their differences in experience, but also their differences in communication style - including their choice of words: So, to some extent, people's verbal differences can mislead them into imagining more basic differences (such as would make people truly alien to one another), and missing their common underlying character.
(Whether this stance is virtuous or just an expression of some neurotic insecurity on my part, I won't try to say. "A little from Column A, a little from Column B.")
That said, I'm going to make an effort to paraphrase the views of "both sides" here, and hopefully it'll do something to suggest that their differences are essentially verbal.
REALIST (AKA Marc): "My actions in day-to-day life are informed by my various moral beliefs. My beliefs are either justified by other beliefs, or self-justifying: If they are self-justifying, then I can see no need or possibility of revising them. People whose 'bottom-level' moral beliefs diverge from mine are, in other words, people whose actions are not informed by justified beliefs; to that extent, such people are a potential threat to me and to what I fundamentally value, and must be 'engaged' by means other than rational conversation."
NON-REALIST: "My actions in day-to-day life are expressions of various features of my psychology. Every feature of my psychology is either shaped by other features, or 'primitive' (i.e. basic and inherent to my makeup, as far as I can tell): If it is 'primitive,' then I can see no need or possibility of changing it. People whose psychology diverges from mine on a truly basic level are, in other words, people whose actions do not express (what I take for) the underlying character common to all people; to that extent, such people are alien and potentially threatening to me, and any appropriate response on my part will require me to acknowledge that mutual understanding is unattainable."
Marc,
Where you go wrong (or part of where you go wrong) is in thinking that moral truths only have moral force if they are "truth-functional" assertions.
I'd suggest that moral truths can be thought of as a special category: they are neither personal preferences on the order of "I like chocolate ice cream" nor are they are "truth-functional assertions" on the order of "the earth is round."
If moral truths are neither merely personal preferences nor truth-functional assertions, then what are they? They are the results of a process of moral reflection that, when carried out thoughtfully, is capable of organizing a number of moral truths into a broader picture or worldview.
The abolitionists believed that slavery was morally wrong, but they could not prove it in the way someone can prove that a chair is made of wood. Nonetheless, their belief that slavery was morally wrong (when it was not purely a result of religious belief) derived from a process of moral reflection.
The process of moral reflection involves, I would argue, what Rawls refers to as "considered judgments." He describes considered judgments as follows in A Theory of Justice (1st ed.), pp. 47-8:
"...those judgments in which our moral capacities are most likely to be displayed without distortion.... [w]e can discard those judgments made with hesitation [i.e., with uncertainty, is what I think he means], or in which we have little confidence. Similarly, those given when we are upset or frightened, or when we stand to gain on way or the other can be left aside. All these judgments are likely to be erroneous or to be influenced by an excessive attention to our own interests. Considered judgments are simply those rendered under conditions favorable to the exercise of the sense of justice.... [O]nce we regard the sense of justice as a mental capacity, as involving the exercise of thought, the relevant judgments are those given under conditions favorable for deliberation and judgment in general."
[continued next box]
David,
Of course I am aware that Hume and his doctrinal successors do not believe that there are self-evident moral truths. Hume was more of a moral anthropologist than a philosopher of ethics, who equated moral convictions to expressions of personal taste. I assume that you are aware that Hume was himself a racist, and financially benefited from the slave trade. In fact a letter he wrote was recently discovered in which he encourage one of his patrons to purchase a slave plantation in Grenada. He was more interested in the practice of slavery in ancient Rome than in its inhumane practice among his contemporaries. I am not one who is wont to worship at the pedestal of Hume, regardless how highly regarded he may be as a philosopher.
I assume that you believe that the practice of slavery is immoral, and not just the enslavement of Africans, but of humans of any ethnicity, race, religion, gender or age. If memory serves, you offered a methodology to demonstrate the irrationality of enslaving Africans, but in that exercise you relied on proving that certain empirical beliefs regarding the inferiority of Africans were incoherent. I have not seen you demonstrate that the practice of slavery, generally, is immoral, but I assume you believe that it is. Consequently, I would be interested in seeing you justify your generalized opposition to slavery as immoral utilizing “empirical justification and logical consistency.” I do not believe it can be done without resorting, ultimately, to moral convictions which you believe are self-evident, without proof.
If you wish, we can continue this discussion by email, since it appears we are the only ones interested in the subject.
P.S.: I just learned that the U of M vs. TCU football game tomorrow is only broadcast by ESPN, so I will have to go to a sports bar to watch it, since I do not intend to purchase a subscription.
[continued]
The abolitionists' view that slavery is morally wrong was a considered judgment that involved the exercise of their sense of justice, i.e., the exercise of thought, and (at least in most cases) was not corrupted or distorted by "excessive attention" to their own material interests.
By contrast, Johnny's preference for chocolate ice cream does not involve moral reflection, or thought, or the exercise of the sense of justice. A seven-month-old infant can like chocolate ice cream better than vanilla, but a seven-month-old infant is probably not capable of any moral reflection on slavery, because a seven-month-old infant probably cannot grasp the concept of slavery, and certainly cannot articulate it.
What your perspective does is it reduces adults to the status of infants. It assumes that adults are not capable of moral reflection -- indeed, it assumes that moral reflection and considered judgments don't exist.
So are you left with two options forming a false dichotomy: either, according to you, one accepts that slavery is morally wrong without thought, without moral reflection, without the exercise of any mental capacity, or one says that it is wrong because, just as an infant doesn't like vanilla ice cream, "I don't like it."
If these were indeed the only two options, there would be no need for the entire body of writing on moral and political philosophy. There would be no need for reasoned moral argument. We could just toss everything that's been written about moral philosophy since Aristotle (or whenever) into the garbage.
Recently I had occasion to look up a fairly well-known journalist/commentator on Wikipedia, and discovered that this person had studied "social and political thought" in college. What do you think that involves? Do you think that he and his fellow students sat around for four years and asserted what they believed were truths "without proof," or asserted that they preferred chocolate to vanilla ice cream? Somehow I doubt it.
LFC,
What you have written above does not differ from what I have been maintaining. The process of moral reflection you refer to yields moral convictions which have the force of being self-evident. The fact that they are self-evident means that they are true. This is vastly different from saying that one decides what side one is on. Choosing what side one is one must be preceded by the moral reflection which reveals the moral convictions, and then one chooses the side which best reflects those moral convictions.
Marc,
Well, I am glad that you acknowledge that there is such a thing as moral reflection.
LFC,
I don't know what made you think that I did not believe in moral reflection.
Isn't it possible that in the real world different people decide which side they are on in different ways?
I decided at age 16 or 17, not after deep moral reflection, but rather more as a pre-rational process of identification and above all, of deep dislike for what was then called "the system" or "the establishment". I identified with the protest movement because I saw them as people like me, outsiders, rebels, etc.
After that, life becomes a process of confirmation of that original decision. All the friends I have are more or less on the same side and expect me to be there too. My partner too. And the person I've become is the result of that original pre-rational decision and there's no going back to that moment, 60 years ago.
That's life. You may have experienced your life differently, Marc, but why do you negate that others live it as they say that they do?
Declaration of Independence: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident' etc. With the response from David Hume's exact contemporary Samuel Johnson: 'how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of negroes?' One might think that claims to self-evidence are highly context-specific.--On one line of thinking, one that begins with distinguishing theoretical and practical reason, talk of 'proof', 'self-evidence', and '(timeless) truth' is misguided in the context of ethical or moral deliberation. It seems to me that one resorts to this vocabulary of theoretical reason in practical contexts in the vain hope of finding something, anything, that will compel the likes of Thrasymachus or Koos Pau to see the light.--And moral and political judgments in their typical contexts share a feature--a forward-looking concern with possibilities, 'what am/are I/we to do?--that sharply contrasts with the backward-looking legal concern with guilt or innocence and assessment of past responsibility.
Let me just answer Marc's inevitable question while I have the leisure to do so.
Why, he will always ask (we've been through this 77 times already), if you (s.w.) are not morally certain of your position do you moralize in this blog?
To be honest, Marc, your position, your militant liberal conventionalism, irritates me so much that I reply to it, at times in moralistic terms because that's the playing field that you insist on playing on it, but it's basically irritation at what you stand for.
I'm out of this now for today at least.
s. wallerstein,
There is a difference between feeling a camaraderie with a particular group of people or a cause, and proceeding from that sense of camaraderie to claiming that those who take an antithetical position are wrong. When that line is crossed, of claiming that others are wrong, I expect the person who is making that claim to offer a rational defense. And, despite your claim that you have not done this, I believe that you have in many instances, claiming, for example that Lori Smith is wrong for maintaining that she has a right not to be compelled to engage in speech which is antithetical to her religious beliefs, religious beliefs which I myself do not share. But I am firmly opposed to compelled speech.
Regarding my personal experience in choosing sides, I have, as long as I can remember, resisted bullying, especially when it involved minorities. At the age of 6 or 7, I remember standing up for a Puerto Rican boy who lived near me, and being castigated by an older woman for doing so. I did not have to engage in any long reflection to decide to stand up for him, and I cannot even remember what I was standing up for him about. I just remember the venom with which this older woman reacted to my doing so. I have done this sort of thing throughout my life, even going so far as standing up to the Michigan Education Association when I was representing a teacher who was being threatened with termination. I insisted on making an argument that his due process rights were being violated by the Michigan Tenure Commission, because it had hired a lawyer who was not an employee of the Commission to read the hearing transcript testimony and recommend a decision. I argued that this was a violation of the teacher’s due process rights – that the Commission could not delegate its responsibilities to an independent contractor. The union forbade me from making this argument, because it would piss off the Commission, with which the union had a comfortable relationship. I told the union that even though it was paying my legal fees, it was not my client, and could not tell me how to represent my client, and I made the argument anyway. The union sued me for allegedly breaching my fiduciary duty to the union. That lawsuit dragged on for several years, during which time I was blacklisted, when my daughter was just an infant. I eventually won that lawsuit, and sued the union for attorney fees, for having filed a frivolous lawsuit against me, which I also won. In each instance I chose my side based on my convictions, not on a sense of camaraderie.
Marc,
If you stood up for a Puertan Rican boy at age 6 or 7, then we might suppose that it was your conscience or your upbringing which led you to do that, rather than philosophical
moral reasoning.
One's conscience or superego in Freudian terms is basically the internalized moral principles which one learns from one's parents and I don't see much difference between following the principles of one's parents and following the principles of whatever political group or movement one identifies with. Ditto with following the conscious principles which come from one's upbringing.
That is, for many of us identification with a certain group of others, be it one's parents or be it a political movement, is an important factor in motivating our so-called "ethical" or "moral" behavior.
As one gets older, one sorts out unconscious or conscious principles which come from one's upbringing and translates them into "philosophical" principles, but in reality they
come one's identification with others.
I'm not criticizing the fact that at a very early age you stood up for the victims of racist bullying, but rather pointing out that one's principles generally come from one's socialization.
John Rapko’s comment induced me to re-read the text of the Declaration of Independence. The self-evident truths cited in that document explicitly include knowledge of the reality of a Creator (who, I suppose, is God—either of the Christian sort or a Deistic variant thereof). Jefferson et al were thus saying that the existence of this Creator/God was one of the self-evident truths that the Declaration enumerated or implied or somehow or other recognized as being beyond reasonable doubt. Whether they really meant this, and if they did mean it just what they meant by it, I don’t know. But it’s there, and this ought to trouble anyone today who wants to invoke self-evident truths (or the very concept of self-evidence). I realize that this suspicion may be a matter of engaging in epistemological guilt by association but so be it.
I knew it was only a matter of time until someone would point out that Jefferson (or Benjamin Franklin, or whoever) referred to a Creator in the opening passage of the Declaration of Independence and would claim that this reference somehow devalued its assertion of unalienable rights being possessed by all humans. I deliberately deleted the reference, because I expected this claim would be made, a claim which I believe is meritless.
The actual wording of the passage is as follows:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed[.]”
The introductory clause asserts the existence of self-evident truths, including that all men (i.e., humans) are created equal. This precedes reference to a Creator It then proceeds to identify life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as among the unalienable rights. How it is that we have them – whether endowed by a Creator or by Mother Nature or whatever is irrelevant to the point that we possess them, by virtue of our having been created, regardless how we were created. And I am not in the least “troubled” that the reference to a Creator is there, when the far larger point is that it is self-evident that we are entitled to certain unalienable rights.
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