C.S. Lewis - The Abolition of Man

I used to be quite fond of that passage too, and while I still think there's a lot of truth in it (equating "it's sublime" with "I have sublime feelings" is clearly wrong), I have to ask: Exactly how does Coleridge know that the waterfall is sublime rather than pretty? By what faculty do we "render things their due esteem?" I don't remember Lewis trying to answer that, other than reasserting the tradition that claims to be able to do so.

Oh, I see. So he's pointing out possible extremes of divergence from our human nature -- not literally "beast" and "god." Makes sense. Interesting, too, that it's partnership in knowledge of "good and bad, right and wrong" etc. that leads us from individual to household to city-state. The capacity for partnership must be realized in this particular way, not just any form of partnership or cooperation.

This fits with what I (think I) know about classical Greek culture -- there really wasn't a concept of "civilization" or "humanity" (as a non-scientific category). Presumably Aristotle didn't see any further wholeness to be achieved by, for instance, thinking in terms of a united "Grecian civilization," rather than the various city-states. That would have been so hypothetical as to be not worth taking seriously, I guess. Of course, many today still draw the line at the idea of a "United Nations" or even a "European Union." What I'm getting at is that the "part - whole" picture stops with the polis. There's no further whole to which a polis might stand in relation as a part, as @NOS4A2 says.

That quote about "either a lower animal or a god" is a bit tricky. Aristotle didn't think it was possible for a man to be either a lower animal or a god, right? So this is rhetoric. What he's really saying seems to be, "Since this is impossible, all humans are capable of entering into partnership; they are political animals."

Right. Or, in the opposite direction, aggressive cancer treatments might not be in your best interest (as you conceive it) but be medically helpful.

This is why I think that to classify these judgements as subjective just because they don't conform to the paradigms of objectivity just confuses them with questions of taste. — Ludwig V

Yes, that's a useful distinction. We've all run into the individual who seems to believe that their taste is the automatic arbiter of what counts as good. (Or, even less plausibly, that they like everything that is good!).

Out of tune notes can be detected by electronic devices. We all think some music is better (aesthetically) than other music, but it remains that there is no objective measure.
— Janus
The catch is in "objective". We all think we know what it means. Can we say that electronic devices provide a bridge between the objective and the subjective in this case? Or do they supersede the subjective opinions? Who's to say? — Ludwig V

Couple of things: Within a given practice or style, there are indeed objective measures of whether a piece of music is aesthetically better. But no doubt you mean aesthetic comparisons in which the stylistic "rules" differ.

Electronic devices can tell you whether a note is in tune. They can't tell you whether some degree of out-of-tuneness is desirable or not, aesthetically. So yes, a tuner can overrule a subjective judgment like "that passage was played in tune," but not a subjective aesthetic judgment. That requires some stylistic agreement about tuning in a particular genre.

BTW -- if you ever heard a piece of music, in any genre, played constantly and strictly in tune, you'd hate it! Robot music.

Ethics is better thought of as the study of human flourishing or happiness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As you know, this is the "virtue ethics" side of the coin -- the "good life for me" side -- while the "deontological ethics" side emphasizes the good for others. I'm assuming you agree that these really are two sides of the same coin -- that is, they don't actually represent two different conceptions of how to think about right and wrong. They are merely two different emphases, two different ways of describing the same project. And yet it is quite difficult to explain in a systematic way how the two descriptions complement each other. We want to say that there is no flourishing without altruism, and no altruism that doesn't result in flourishing. But why?

The question of ethical motivation looms large here: Which conception of ethics is more likely to motivate me to pursue the good life? Should I see it as an opportunity to do good for my fellow beings, leading to my own flourishing, or should I see it as an opportunity to flourish and be happy, which of course, on this theory, is impossible without doing good for my fellow beings? Selfish or altruistic -- which is the better motivator? I think a completely satisfactory ethics will be able to show how this apparent antinomy is dissolved. Perhaps we'll need to separate motivation as mere efficacy from correct motivation, i.e. the right reasons, the right sentiments.

An interesting viewpoint.

Bro lmao thats a fail at history. — DifferentiatingEgg

Sorry, could you translate that? :wink:

This passage suggests that, for Aristotle, the state is a "whole" with parts comprising households and individuals. Do you know whether he ever considers the question of how a state, in turn, might be a part of some greater whole? Or did he see the polis as both a practical and a theoretical limit point of social organization?

OK.

Have you read the Gospels? — DifferentiatingEgg

Certainly. And have often preached them, though a philosophy forum isn't the place for that, IMO.

How much is his work inclusive of the apostles? — DifferentiatingEgg

Not quite sure what "inclusive of the apostles" would be. You can judge for yourself -- I found the book completely respectful of the Christian path, if that's what you mean.

I like a lot of Foucault but he wouldn't be my go-to guy for Jesus scholarship. Try Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan, very well researched.

Duh, Jesus was a Jew, but he flat out rejects Judaism. — DifferentiatingEgg

That would have been news to his followers! :lol: Many of his later interpreters, including Paul, could be read as doing that, but not Jesus himself. He evidently believed he was the fulfillment of all the messianic prophecies, and was always addressed as Rabbi or Teacher.

Do you remember the work? — NOS4A2

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 1989. He is hard, or at any rate not a brilliant stylist, but I've always found him more than worth the trouble. There's also a critique called Habermas and the Public Sphere (1993) in which other philosophers respond to him, and he replies with more optimistic reflections about the public sphere. That might be a good place to start.

Glad it struck a chord for you. And -- again, not to get too sidetracked on Habermas -- but he started out being very critical of the public sphere in contemporary life, feeling that the role of the state was increasingly intruding upon private life, turning "public (sphere) discourse" into public relations conducted by interested parties. This speaks to your concern that the political may often represent a forced indoctrination, thus in effect "replacing" a private realm where society can be viewed as apolitical. Habermas then tempered this a bit, saying that it was "too simplistic." He came to have a higher regard for the social animal's ability to resist politicization.

God knows what Aristotle would think of current Western democracies. Not much, is my guess.

Actually, I believe the Project 2025 citation puts "facts" in quotes.

I hope so! I wasn't sure how closely you wanted to adhere to Aristotle's conceptions here.

The public/private question is extremely interesting. You may know that Jurgen Habermas has suggested a different understanding of what a "public sphere" might encompass. Habermas sees the public sphere as a "third space" (in Hartmut Wessler's phrase) between the private world of family life (and, possibly, economic life), and the public world of the state and political practice. Broadly, the public sphere is meant to be the place where private citizens, qua private citizens, meet to discuss issues of common concern, up to and including questions of political and state authority in which they themselves may also participate.

Without delving too deeply into this, it suggests an interpretation of "political animal" that might have interested Aristotle. If there is indeed this "third space," then it seems to represent a co-dependence between the role of private citizen and that of participating member of the polis. Can these two aspects of human nature indeed "exist without each other"?

Further, the master/slave relationship is a matter of convention rather than of nature. — NOS4A2

I believe Aristotle said it could be either. There are "natural" slaves, and also those enslaved forcibly whose nature is otherwise. Probably in the Politics?

Facts about health do not fail to have any ethical valance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

At any rate, I think this distinction is only threatening to what I'm saying if one already assumes the premise: "ethical good is a sui generis sort of goodness discrete from other goods sought by man." I'd rather say that health, psychological health, etc., are principles, facets of the good life. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes to both of these, and I think this points a way forward. Our Smoker has, I'm assuming, taken into account the facts about health in arriving at their decision. Had they not, they'd merely be an idiot. And yet we find that the Smoker has made a life/best interest decision (i.e., an ethical decision) in contravention of the health facts. How is this possible?

It's just as you say: Health facts, and probably any other facts as well, are facets or factors that must be weighed in making ethical decisions -- or at least, that's how I'll interpret your term "ethical valance." But they do not, in and of themselves, determine the outcome. What you call "the good life" (which is as good a term as any) is more than this, broader than this.

So what we really want to know is how to make these decisions correctly. That's what I've been holding out for in this whole discussion -- we need to start by recognizing the gap between knowledge and value as a problem, not something that can be leapt over with false equations. Only then can we begin to ask what I think are the right questions: How do we come to understand ethical values (informed, to be sure, with practical knowledge such as medicine) and apply them to our own lives?

But I agree, and I don't think we would want to say that praxis removes the need for discourse or reason. Indeed, discourse can be seen as a sort of praxis. Praxis is rather an aid to reason, not a replacement. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I didn't want to ignore your other reply here. I certainly agree. We can imagine -- perhaps with difficulty! -- a kind of ideal human in whom rationality and praxis achieve a balance, revealing that the activity of philosophy (i.e., rational discourse) is indeed a praxis as well, moreover a praxis of a particular kind that is self-implementing. Philosophy doesn't merely lead to or delineate a praxis, but is itself that praxis, at least in part.

Whether or not something being medically bad is actually bad for them is the question ethics needs to deal with. — AmadeusD

Being "bad for" someone, bare, is what you would need to show is self-evident. But it's not. — AmadeusD

This is more or less the same point I was making. "Being against my best interest" is an ethical term; "being medically bad for me" is a scientific term. The two almost always coincide. But if someone says they do not, in their particular case, they could be right. They could also be wrong, of course, but the point is that it's an open question that needs to be decided by some other means than an equation of medical with ethical terms that claims self-evidence.

I don't think it's the case that people have infallible judgement as to what is in their own best interest. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Quite right. We're trying to understand a case in which the person asks for a reason why they are wrong. What must we say to them?

I said your argument was question-begging because you appeared to start from the premise that the smoker had to be wrong, and then used that to show that they are wrong. But now that you've clarified what you meant, we can move on.

What we want to know now is, How can the fact of the matter related to this particular individual, Smoker, be determined? We'll need to know that, if we're going to answer their demand for a reason why smoking is not in their best interest. They say it is, you say it is not. (Or so I assume; I suppose you could be agnostic on the question, while still claiming that their reason can't hold up, but let's ignore that wrinkle for the time being.) And our ultimate goal is to discover whether it's possible to be both rational and wrong about a matter like this.

So . . . how would you propose to determine the fact of the matter concerning whether Smoker is acting in their best interest?

I hope it doesn't seem as if I'm quibbling, but . . . you've made a change in the terminology that needs to be brought out. You write:

there is a fact of the matter as to whether some particular individual would benefit from quitting smoking. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But my question concerned whether such an individual, in continuing to smoke, could ever be said to be acting in their best interest.

"Benefitting from something" is not the same as "acting in one's best interest," wouldn't you agree? It's important in this case because the smoker is going to want to say, "Yes, I'm quite aware that continuing to smoke isn't a benefit in the way you mean it. But nonetheless I consider to be in my best interest, because I don't rate the benefits the same way you do."

Once we get clear about that, we can look at the difference you're proposing between saying that we have reason to believe all people act in their best interest by quitting smoking, versus saying that we have reason to believe one particular individual does.

OK, let's take this step by step, if you don't mind, as the argument is somewhat complicated.

For starters, here are three statements (call this "the flat-earth analogy"):

1. There is a fact of the matter about whether using a dangerous and life-shortening drug could ever be in one's best interest.

2. And the fact is: That is not possible.

3. So anyone who asserts that it is in their best interest is wrong.

Have I understood you correctly so far?

And so long as someone is being "rational" they are infallible as to what is truly in their in own best interest? — Count Timothy von Icarus

But putting it this way begs the question against the individual. Let's call them the Smoker for convenience. You're assuming that avoiding the risk of smoking-related death is in the best interest of the Smoker, and that they don't or won't see this. Most people certainly see it that way. But by making that assumption, you don't allow the Smoker to hold the position they in fact do hold (at least this particular person I'm talking about, who is far from imaginary). The Smoker's position is, "Look, I know all about what I'm risking. I get it that most people don't see it my way. But it just so happens that I like smoking so much that I'll accept the trade-off. You say, 'That's not in your best interest.' OK, explain to me why living a life I don't want to live -- as a non-smoker -- is in my best interest, especially if I'm perfectly willing to die young in order not to do so." The example becomes more compelling with, say, opiates rather than tobacco.

I like that. So the alleged "pilot" self would receive information about a sense perception in order to assess it ("as a pilot perceives by sight if something in his vessel is broken"), whereas the Cartesian self, intimately connected to the body, is able to affirm the experience directly.

….."perceive" as in "correctly identify an object of the senses."
— J

Even if that were the case, isn’t it necessarily presupposed there is an object to identify, correctly or otherwise? — Mww

Yes. Philosophically, I prefer your way of understanding "perceive" to the more common usage in which we can be flat "wrong" about perceptual experiences.

Which leads to the question, how important is such "praxis" for doing philosophy (or theology)? Or ethics in particular? Either past practices were quite misguided or current ones are. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is interesting and of course contentious. I separate most of my ethical and spiritual practices from philosophy, precisely because it is very helpful to have a domain in which rationality has the last word, and we call this domain "philosophy." One can then bring one's specifically philosophical insights to bear on the other areas of one's life, and vice versa. But no two philosophers are exactly alike in this regard, seems to me.

I think that's exactly right. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Glad you agree.

the tragedy is that none of these things we might say can have any bearing for the person who simply replies, "I couldn't care less about what's good for 'man' or the good life or what most people think is happiness. I challenge you, since you're such a fan of reasoning, to give me a single reason why I should. — J

Indeed, but I don't really see this as anymore of a challenge to ethics than persistent "flat-Earthers" are a challenge to geography. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think we can take that attitude. We're assuming that there are compelling reasons we can give a flat-earther that should convince them they're wrong, so if they aren't convinced, something else is going on that is ir- or non-rational. And I think that's right. But can we really say the same about the egoist? What are these compelling reasons we can give them -- not the reasons why behavior X or virtue Y is 'good for man', but the reasons why it should matter to the egoist, why they should change their mind about what they want to do?

You're hoping to box the egoist into the same corner that the flat-earther finds themselves in: the only way to deny the reasons is to deny reasoning itself. But what is the knockdown argument here? I wish it were as simple as "doing wicked things is bad for you, like smoking is bad for your lungs" but I hope you agree that the evidence for this, if any, is hardly knockdown. And besides, I've known many a smoker whose attitude is, "Yes, I know it's bad for my health but I enjoy smoking enough that I'm willing to pay the price." Are they being irrational? Is the egoist being irrational when they say, more or less, the same thing?

it certainly seems like it is possible to say some things with confidence about what is good for man, the good life, happiness, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure, but you and I have talked about this before, and the tragedy is that none of these things we might say can have any bearing for the person who simply replies, "I couldn't care less about what's good for 'man' or the good life or what most people think is happiness. I challenge you, since you're such a fan of reasoning, to give me a single reason why I should."

the demand that the unique "ethical good" be formulated in terms of universal maxims or "laws" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, this is a further step that need not necessarily be taken. Lewis' quote about courage highlights what I would say next: Universal maxims or discursive reasoning in general may not be what's required in order to transform the ethical egoist (or, I suppose, the emotivist, though I haven't given serious thought to them) into an ethically solid character. After all, a well-known authority on the subject urged, "You must be born again," and preached compassion and mercy, not rational ethics. In fact . . . metanoia is all about noesis, isn't it?

So if you perceive something, it is not certain you perceived it? — Mww

I think we're getting confused by different meanings of "perceived". What @Kranky seems to mean is "perceive" as in "correctly identify an object of the senses." So, for instance, when we fall victim to a mirage, then the answer to your question would be, "It is not certain at all that I perceived an oasis, although I seemed to." And this contrasts with entertaining a thought, which is supposed to be immune from that kind of mistake.

But I think you mean "perceive" as in "experience a sense-perception event", in which case the answer to the question is different: "Yes, it's certain that this has occurred, but -- see above -- I could be wrong about the nature of it." Here, as you point out, we're on the same basis with perception as we are with thoughts.

And we should remember that what goes for "objects" goes for the subject too. I can be certain of my subjectivity while holding in question what this "I" might be.

I never claimed that were the same. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Perhaps not intentionally. But it's the obvious conclusion to be drawn from this:

I said that "'stomping babies is bad for them ' is an obvious empirical fact of medical science." To say "I agree that stomping babies is bad, but this is only because of how I feel about it," is not to agree with the fact claim made. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Why would your interlocutor agree that "stomping babies is bad" unless they equated "stomping babies is bad" with "stomping babies is bad for them"?

But you're right, it's somewhat beside the point about emotivism. I wanted to flag it because the gap between "bad = destructive/deleterious/harmful/etc." to "ethically bad" is so often leaped over as if it didn't exist.

I don't believe there are any "scientifically verifiable facts" that will help here.

Why? Because it is impossible that there be facts about human nature that demonstrate that it is bad for an egoist to be an egoist? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Same question here. When you say "bad for an egoist to be an egoist," do you mean harmful/deleterious or morally bad?

"'stomping babies is bad for them ' — Count Timothy von Icarus

stomping babies is bad, — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sorry, not the same. The whole ethical problem resides in making that leap. Of course being stomped is bad for a living creature. But why should I care, asks the egoist, as long as it isn't me who's being stomped? I don't believe there are any "scientifically verifiable facts" that will help here.

That last paragraph in the article. Quine advertises it as "a final sweeping observation", but it seems to be claiming little more than that truth functionality requires substitutional opacity. — Banno

A typo, I think? You meant "truth functionality requires that there not be substitutional opacity," no? Or else I really got lost!

Yes, these are reasonable doubts. But I think @Wayfarer makes the right response:

So to try and tackle your question as to why these insights elude discursive analysis, I think it's because such states require a deep kind of concentration and inner tranquility which is removed from the normal human state. Hence the emphasis on askesis and self-training in the contemplative traditions. — Wayfarer

It isn't quite accurate to say that it's "a tiny percentage of people, who claim it cannot be described." Again, the Western bias -- for us, it's a tiny percentage, but in cultures that take this kind of experience for granted, it's seen as remarkable but not at all unusual, and it's been going on for millennia. Not many people get to have these experiences (according to this view) because the self-training is so rigorous and time-consuming. Compare being in the top 1% of tensor algebraicists. That's what, maybe 100 people? But we don't doubt they really have the experiences they have, because in theory anyone else can have them too, if they have a natural gift and are willing to put in the many, many, many hours of practice.

As for claiming it can't be described, I would say, Yes and no. Such experiences put us at the limit of what words can say. But make the comparison with esoteric math again: If you asked such a mathematician to "describe the experience" of having a mathematical insight, I wonder what you'd get. Similarly, reports about ego-loss or enlightenment states are hard to understand, but we can say something about them -- for instance, that the experience is usually described as blissful and beneficial, as opposed to painful and destructive. Notice here that language has moved from discursive rationality to descriptions of emotion and value -- that may be a clue.

There's an interesting character, rather obscure, called Franklin Merrell Wolff. — Wayfarer

I'll have to check him out, thanks.

Of course, such states of pure consciousness are exceedingly difficult to realise in practice, but in Eastern lore, they are amply documented. The difficulty being, from a philosophical perspective, that they're all well outside the bounds of discursive reason. — Wayfarer

I started to write "Yes" but then I asked myself, "Well, why exactly?" What's so exceptional about such a claim that puts it outside anything we can reason about? Is the experience itself seen as so esoteric as to defy description, and perhaps credulity? This may be a Western bias.

I'm somewhat surprised that you attempted to answer ↪Count Timothy von Icarus's question, at your accepting the presumption that being red is an "experience". — Banno

I thought you'd be on board with that:

I suppose you agree that, if I ask you to close your eyes and imagine "red," and then "green," the two color patches or whatever you come up with will look different in your imagination. That is because (I would say) "red" and "green" have different meanings, at least as far as "meaning" is commonly understood. Are we on the same page so far? — J

Ok. So you are looking to divorce "red" and "green" from individuals that are red or green — Banno

But maybe your "Ok" wasn't assent. I agree about not prolonging this with color phenomenology and Mary the Color Scientist and all that, but . . . do you assent that the imagined red and green are different experiences?

Do you think it is possible today to give an accurate (if perhaps still imperfect) account of why different people experience all red objects as red? — Count Timothy von Icarus

No. This problem has been around for a while, as you know. "Maybe Jesse's 'red' looks like my 'green'?!!" But that doesn't stop us from being able to define "red": "the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–750 nanometres," according to our friends at Wikipedia. This is what I meant by a phenomenologically irrelevant definition. We can accept the definition and still be unable to use it to judge the quale. So, what we can't "define" (if that's even the right word) is the subjective experience itself.

Fortunately, it only matters if we require absolute certainty here, which we shouldn't. It seems to me wildly unlikely that evolution would have selected for "personalized qualia" while retaining the same mechanisms for brain processing of the same available wavelengths for each person. That would be expensive and useless. Like the sun rising tomorrow, we can stop worrying about it, despite lack of certainty.

The challenge is thus: "Show me an observation of a 'language community' that cannot be explained in terms of stimulus and response and mechanistic causation? You cannot."

This would give us conclusions like "LLMs use language appropriately, so LLMs are language users," etc., and "LLMs are conscious so long as their behavior makes us refer to them as such. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Actually, I'd be comfortable with the first conclusion, precisely because being a "user" tells us nothing about what's going on mentally. (In the case of the LLM, nothing.). The second conclusion would never be made by a "full eliminative materialist," though! They're not interested in what might or might not be conscious. For us, assuming we believe in consciousness -- then yes, we'd reject the notion that simply referring to something as conscious because it appears to pass all the tests is the same thing as being conscious. We'd also raise two eyebrows at the idea that we know what these tests are, anyway.