intelligibility is socially constrained — Joshs

We need, in a word, hermeneutics.

I’m not trying to suggest that a single monolithic episteme underlies all forms of cultural creativity in a given era for a given community, but I am saying that these systems are interlocked, such that it makes sense to talk about Romantic painting, literature, music philosophy and science and mean more than just that these domains all belong to the same chronological period. — Joshs

Yes, with a heavy emphasis on your warning about simplistic "single monolithic episteme" talk. The interlocking is complicated, and the parallels are stronger or weaker from era to era. Also, the role of science here is, to my mind, by far the most problematic. "Romantic" science? I'd need to hear more about what that might be. We all remember the Sokal hoax . . .

More importantly, when we move from one era to the next a certain discontinuity and incommensurability is involved — Joshs

Put this carefully, I think you're right. . . .

An entire metaphysics of ethics is dependent on flattening and ignoring these discontinuities in intelligibility. — Joshs

. . . but this is very sweeping, and needs arguing for. Rather than simply assume these "discontinuities in intelligibility," why not put them in question? Again, a hermeneutical approach can help us understand the limits -- but also the strengths -- of interpretation across cultures. We need, at the least, a sophisticated understanding of the concept of intelligibility.

But if matters of fact depend for their understanding on systems of intelligibility which are contingently culture-bound, why should notions of the ethical good be any different? — Joshs

I think this is indeed the conclusion we'd be forced to draw, and I think it's the wrong one. So I'd want to go back to look more closely at the fact/system/intelligibility relationship. How much of this is cultural? Do all matters of fact really depend on such radically contingent systems? Is there no value in the distinction between the natural sciences and human sciences?

I think that Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Habermas have a lot to teach us here.

Why shouldn’t Socrates be able to understand Kant, the thinking goes, given a sufficiently thorough period of study? Why shouldn’t the Qanon -touting Trump voter sitting next to you be able to absorb the raw facts when conferences directly with them? — Joshs

The pairing of these two questions is a bit alarming! I think Socrates probably could understand Kant, if we could imagine the impossible situation of someone being magically transported back to Athens to explain it to him using the language of Greek thought. But the Qanoner is not in the business of trying to understand anything. Giving them "raw facts" (presumably about the lack of sinister conspiracies?) is not the same as introducing Socrates to the idea of the kingdom of ends.

According to this dualism of ethical value and matters of fact, the ethical disagreement between a neoliberal and a progressive socialist is based on considerations entirely different from those having to do with matters of fact. — Joshs

I've lost you here. I thought you were arguing the opposite -- that the problem is a lack of shared, mutually intelligible facts. Could you say more?

This flattening of discontinuities in intelligibility between eras, and between individuals, provides justification for the idea that there is such a thing a a universally shared notion of the ethical good that comprises not just the desire to be moral, but a shared conceptual content that is as transparent as matters of fact. — Joshs

This is interesting. The implication is that "the desire to be moral" can exist without some particular "conceptual content" -- that the desire can be present from era to era, but with a differing notion of the ethical good. Are you sure that's possible? What is this common denominator of desire? I'm not saying that there is no such common denominator, of course; I'm arguing, in the opposite direction, that in addition to such a common desire there is also ethical conceptual content that is translatable from era to era and individual to individual.

The other falls short of our ethical standards due to a failing of ‘integrity’, a ‘character flaw’ , dishonesty, evil intent , selfishness, etc. In doing so, we erase the difference between their world and ours, and turn our failure to fathom into their moral failure. — Joshs

To me, this describes the process of "othering," in which opponents or adversaries are assumed to be in disagreement with us due to certain traits they possess, rather than because there is genuine, potentially resolvable disagreement. Oddly, I see this as erasing the similarities between their world and ours, not the difference. But I think we may be getting at the same idea. Your point, perhaps, is that reducing ethical dispute to some sort of character failure makes the assumption not only that the other is wrong in ethical terms, but also that those terms are already quite clear to all concerned. And what would my ethical duty be, in such a case? Just as you say -- try harder, keep trying to stay in "communicative action" (Habermas), don't simply give up and start "othering."

The above, rather rosy description, has an important caveat: Some people really are hateful and cruel. There is such a thing as moral failure. An entire society can even approach such a dreadful state. But to begin from such a premise, when in disagreement, is foolish and unjust.

Good questions. To the first, yes, I think an interlocutor of Socrates (let's call him Kantias) could have posed theories about the moral value of motivation, and whether in order for an act to be virtuous, it would have to be something that anyone would do in the same circumstances. Those two questions alone would get us quite deeply into Kantian ethics. Kant's emphasis on freedom would, I think, be harder for Socrates to understand, but if Kantias laid it out in terms of physis and nomos, and then led the discussion into whether there is a law for humans that we may freely follow, Socrates would probably have some good insights.

To the second, I'm not entirely sure what it would mean to "think up something similar." Socrates was more of a dialectician than an armchair thinker, so let's switch it from Socrates to Aristotle. Could Aristotle have come up with the idea that an act is only virtuous if it can be recommended as a universal maxim? I suppose so. I'm not sure the question would have interested him very much, but that's not the same thing as saying it would be opaque to him. He might not have cared whether the virtues were applicable to all people in all (similar) circumstances. His emphasis seems to be on how I may live a good life, not so much on whether living that good life involves defeating selfish motives and willing a universal "kingdom of ends." I'm not really entitled to an opinion here, as Aristotle isn't my forte. If someone can point me to something like "A Kantian interprets Aristotle," I'd love to read it.

I do want to affirm something you don't come right out and say, but that I think is implied in your questions. Creativity is socially constrained; it has a history and a context; and to ask "Would X have understood A?" is not the same as asking "Could X have created A?" In one of my fields, music, we often kick around stuff like "What would Bach make of Stravinsky?" Well, given enough time and examples to acclimate himself to Modernism, Bach might well have loved Igor. But there is absolutely zero chance he could have written Rite of Spring in 1725. So I read you here as pointing out, rightly, that we mustn't engage in some sort of "leveling of history" and imagine that Socrates, Aquinas, and Kant all spoke essentially the same creative language. They did not. And I suppose, if that is all MacIntyre's thesis amounts to, then I don't really disagree. I'm just troubled by this idea of incommensurability and decline, which seems too strong.

OK. I still see problems with equivocation, and unless I missed it, you haven't addressed the use of "good for me" as in "beneficial,"* but I will definitely spend more time on this.

*Unless, once again, we just have to accept that being virtuous is the most beneficial thing for me. I still think this is being set out as a conclusion without an argument, and that one is entitled to ask how it can be that death by torture benefits me.

Even J's approach seems to challenge this continuity, for he thinks that Kant's view is uniquely correct. If Kant's view is uniquely correct and is not a continuation of earlier moral philosophy, then how could Kant be continuous with earlier moral philosophy?
— Leontiskos

I've been reading along but not that closely.

What say you to this J ? — Moliere

Nonsense. I've been at pains to say that I do not agree with all of Kant's solutions to ethical problems. Just for starters, I don't think the categorical imperative can be stated in such a way as to do the ethical job Kant wanted it to do. I said that he "offers perspectives that I believe are central." They certainly are. He is for me the most important and impressive "modern" moral philosopher because he framed the problems with enormous originality and insight, raising questions that have been impossible to ignore ever since -- not because he always gets it right. This idea of philosophers being "uniquely correct" is a fantasy.

As for the continuity question, I see nothing in Kant's ethics -- apart from the Christian aspects -- that Socrates would not have both understood and been eager to debate.

I think the idea is something like modern thinking broke us off from ancient thinking to such a point that modern thought has lost the fundamental truth of philosophy -- wisdom -- in place of whatever it is pursuing right now (the idea here being that the ancients have a kind of "time tested" wisdom) — Moliere

I wish I knew what "modern thinking" consisted of, that supposedly made it either so unique or so pernicious. Anscombe doesn't persuade me. When I read Plato, I feel as if all those arguments might be occurring among my neighbors, they are so vivid and contemporary. (Well, if my neighbors were a little more philosophical!) The things that concerned Plato and Aristotle are right at the top of my list too -- to say nothing of Christian thought. As for wisdom, it's true that Aristotle often sounds to me as if he believes he's achieved complete wisdom in all matters -- but not Plato. So this is perhaps another instance of how there was important disagreement between ancient and ancient. And I bet I'm oversimplifying Aristotle's complacency as well.

The problem with "time-tested wisdom," of course, is that we are still in time, and the wisdom continues to be tested, and you could hardly maintain that no one has raised any important questions about Greek philosophy, or about ethics in general, since. I suppose there is an illusion of "time-tested-ness" because it started earlier, and for so many centuries had no serious challengers in Western culture. But I am not a historian of philosophy, so I'm guessing. I also think, as I wrote somewhere recently, that the "loss of fundamental truths" picture is meant to go hand in hand with a picture of actual moral decline, such that Western society is now supposed to be much worse, ethically, than it used to be.

This view of a continuity between ancient and modern ethics is similar to what I’ve been saying to Count T, if you’ve been following that conversation. I agree that the disagreements among ancient ethical systems may be evidence for this view. Even more striking, to me, is the fact that ethical discourse—and disagreement— has gone on, right into the present. If ethical truth had indeed been achieved in the context of virtue ethics, the continued dispute about it would need some explaining. I don’t remember — does MacIntyre offer some account of why things went so downhill? Why did Western culture end up in this “Canticle for Liebowitz” situation?

Thanks for this. You've offered two suggestions I will take up: to question more carefully whether this is a case of wanting univocal predication when that is inappropriate; and to explore analogous predication more fully. The first I can spend time on myself. For the second, could you perhaps say briefly how analogous predication would apply here, in the case of what looks like two usages of "good"? It's quite possible I don't yet understand how that would work.

Is "I am here now" a logical truth? Intuitively, anyone who utters such a sentence is uttering a truth; yet it is not true in every possible world that I am here now - I might have been somewhere else... — Banno

Which would lead me to think that it's actually an empirical truth, a fact about this world -- which gets back to Nagel's question, "What kind of fact is it?" Because we want to say that empirical truths are verifiable in certain standard ways. "I am here now," it would seem, is irreducibly first-person, and yet it would make no sense for you -- or anyone -- to deny it about me on those grounds. You couldn't very well say, "Well, that's just your point of view." This is where some kind of formalism that could "translate 1st person" might help, I really don't know.

It is not always good for us to have what we "perceive as good." We can be wrong about what is truly good or truly best. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Fair enough. So my suggestion for Version 1 should have read, “If you are good, it will be good for you, in the sense that either you or someone else is able to identify it as such by experiencing or observing some particular thing about you.” This is starting to sound a little lawyerly but I’m working hard to avoid saying something that can’t be falsified. For after all, if I said, “. . . it will be good for you but no one can tell, we just know it must be true,” we’d be back at square one, with a merely asserted union.

I would say "it's good (truly better) for you to be good—to be a good person and live a good life," is circular in a sense, but the way an ascending spiral is circular. It loops back around on itself at higher levels, with greater depths beneath it, in a sort of fractal recurrence. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, this is the sort of thing we want to be true, and it’s very poetically expressed. But at this point one really has to stop and say, “But what do you mean? If you can’t explain what it means without images of spirals and fractals, aren’t I entitled to wonder if it’s actually (rationally) explicable at all?” For, when all’s said and done, I’m still left with what appear to be two quite different usages of “good,” and the desire, but not the means, to unite them. Simply asserting their union won’t do.

Are the theorems of geometry vacuous because they are already contained in Euclid's postulates? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Now here is a Kantian question! As I’m sure you know, Kant believed that mathematical truths were synthetic, and not contained in any premises. Dodging any deep debates on math here, let’s just say that if Kant was wrong, and arithmetic, geometry, and logic are indeed all analytic, I don’t think anyone has ever suggested that analytic truths are vacuous. But that’s just the problem here -- “It’s good for you to be good” is not being put forward as an analytic truth. It’s meant to inform us of something we didn’t know, or so I assume. Or perhaps you do mean it analytically? -- something like “To understand what ‛the good’ means is also to know that it is good for you to be good”?

. . . another "slide into multiplicity" whereby we have many sui generis "Goods" with "moral good" constituting just one good among a plurality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This, to me, is an important insight into the whole question. What I find interesting is that both you and I believe in the desirability of avoiding a multiplicity of goods. I very much want “the Good” to be univocal, and all the uses of “good” to be instances of the same thing, so that “moral good” would not be sui generis in a worrisome sense, any more than “aesthetic good” would be. But . . . the problem is that, IMO, you haven’t yet shown how it can be the case. Perhaps no one can, but we have to do more than assert what I’ve been calling a “metaphysical union of goods” but not explain how it works in a way that defeats the objections I’ve raised so far. How in the world can execution be good for Socrates? Better than the alternatives, sure, but good? You can’t just fold the two meanings of “good” together by fiat, and say that because Socrates has made a good choice, has done a virtuous thing, it therefore automatically becomes good for him. That is what we want for a conclusion, but we lack the argument.

Also, I do think that to stop the discussion before modern philosophy is to greatly decrease our chances of a solution to this problem. I mean no offense, but have you given a lot of thought to Kant’s ethics? This problem of avoiding a multiplicity of goods is central to his project. His solutions are very different from Plato’s or Aristotle’s or Aquinas’s, and offer perspectives that I believe are central. Moreover, he was a firm Christian believer and insisted that the truths of morality be consistent with the truths of revelation, so, again, I just can’t see this as some huge gap with the ancients – at least not the ancient Christians.

I’m sure TPF has done a thread on the Groundwork at some point in the past – maybe revisit?

Yes, this is more or less the way I (and I believe Nagel) see it. It's not a matter of contradiction. What remains concerning, of course, is the huge gap between these sets of facts that we're calling objective and subjective. Nagel presses home the point that the fact of my identity isn't trivial to me, it can't be ignored, or relegated to an unphilosophical minor level. And yet it isn't even a fact at all, objectively. What's worse, we place a great deal of emphasis, ordinarily, on the concept of a "fact" as being objective, something independent of individual viewpoints.

I'm not suggesting any solution to this concern. I think we should treat it rather as a koan, something we're aware is not comprehensible to us at this moment, but stimulates thought.

As for the idea that there might be a formal logical description of this: Would it involve handling statements like "It is true that, from Peter's point of view, 'I am Peter' is true" and "'I am Peter' is true IFF the extensions of 'I' and 'Peter' are the same"? Interesting idea. Someone must have done some work on this. We could also play around with whether it's possible to claim that "I am Peter" is an objective fact, odd though that may appear. If I'm in the room with Peter, and he says, "I am Peter," would I be likely to deny that he's stating a fact? No. Am I just taking his word for it, then? His word for what, exactly? I think there's more to it than that, but I need to think about it more.

This is an excellent question, and immediately takes me back to another excellent question first posed by Thomas Nagel: "What kind of fact is it -- if it is a fact -- that I am Thomas Nagel?" He means, is it a fact about the world, something that is objectively true? He then invokes the "centerless world" of objectivity, and says, "One very large fact seems to have been omitted from its description: the fact that a particular person in it is [my]self." Not "Thomas Nagel", you understand, but "myself".

I see you imagining a very similar situation. It appears to make no objective difference to anything whether you are Peter or Alexa. And yet, to you, it makes an enormous difference. Here you and Nagel part company, because he doesn't see this as a logical contradiction, but rather as a puzzle we haven't solved. It's an indication that we don't know what to do with terms like "objective" and "subjective" when changes of state, such as identity, appear to be merely subjective. Can subjectivity be viewed objectively? No doubt we'll understand this better if and when we understand how consciousness comes to be.

When people say "it is good for you to be good," in the overwhelming number of cases they are attempting to draw a contrast between apparent or lesser goods, and true and greater goods. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Ah, a light has dawned for me. I think what’s gotten confused in our discussion is the grammatical impact of “for you.” I’ve been reading “It is good for you to be good” as meaning “If you are good, it will be good for you, you will experience something that you perceive as good.” And you’ve been reading it as “It is morally more desirable for you to be a good person.” The difference shows up even more clearly in an example like “It is good for you to tell the truth no matter what,” which can be understood either as “If you tell the truth, it will be good for you, you’ll derive a benefit”, or as “It is a good thing, a morally correct thing, to tell the truth.” What seems key here is that the second version can be true even if the first version is not. It could be the case that telling the truth in a particular case will do you no good whatsoever – it is not a good for you -- but truthtelling is still important to our community, so we recommend it nevertheless.

I call this a grammatical question because you can analyze the “for you” as appending to “good,” (“It’ll be good for you!”) or as requiring the verb that follows it: “It’s a good thing for you to . . . [do X Y Z]” Both these usages are very common, and I’m not surprised we got muddled. Moreover, what we really want is for there not to be a difference, somehow, in these usages -- the metaphysical union of goods, again.

So if this indeed clears something up, I can now say that on your reading of “It is good for you to be good,” I agree completely. It is always better to be a good person than to pursue apparent or lesser goods. I wonder whether, in turn, you can now agree that on my reading, “It is good for you to be good” is often, sadly, not the case. I suspect you may not agree, because I think you want to say that the tortured victim is deriving a benefit of some sort, but this remains obscure to me. Is it supposed to be good for his soul even while disastrous for his body? Or is the benefit he derives merely that he has not done evil, he has stayed true to his principles? But perhaps I’m wrong.

The next step would be to consider which of these two readings is the one that various ethical traditions intend.

Sample: A: “I don’t see what good will come out of exercising and eating a balanced diet.” B: “No, it’s healthy for you to be healthy.” A: “Oh, I see. Exercising and good nutrition will make me healthy, and being healthy is desirable and good for me.” I’m sure you can analyze this for yourself and see why it involves different uses of “healthy” to avoid vacuity.

The terms here aren't completely equivocal either though. They have an analogous relation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, the equivocation is a matter of degree. But if they meant exactly the same thing, the statement would be vacuous.

I cannot conceive of being maimed and tortured as not robbing someone of their flourishing – unless you arbitrarily make “flourishing” torture-proof, thanks to previous "patterns of behavior." It seems the very epitome of such a robbery to me. Does it make them a bad person? Of course not. Was it the lesser of two evils?

Again, this seems to be trying to make the case that it isn't evil to torture or maim people. Who is going to claim that? — Count Timothy von Icarus

 

You are pivoting from "'it is good to be good' is vacuous," to "executions and maiming are good." — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, sorry if I’m not being clear. I say that not only is torturing and maiming evil, but it is also an evil to be tortured and maimed, so much so that a concept of “flourishing as a person” that could include being tortured to death must be wrong.

Socrates is not saying that good men never stub their toes, or get the flu. He is focusing on what goodness is primarily said of. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But then there’s Aristotle. Surely he’s right when he says that a good life consists of all the many good things he names, with the highest being contemplation. Aren’t these things that “goodness is primarily said of” too?

Edit: Just thought of another way to paraphrase the 2nd version of "It's good for you to be good" -- "It's good that you be good." That eliminates the confusing "for you" entirely.

But the more general point would be that it is better not to flee, or more importantly, better to be the sort of person who will not flee. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, no question. In the circumstances in which Socrates finds himself, he’s made the right choice. But I believe we’re all familiar with the expression “the lesser of two evils”? This, to me, is a much more accurate description of what is happening to Socrates, than to say he has chosen something that is “good for him.” This should not be read as denying or downplaying how admirable Socrates’ -- or Carton’s, or any martyr’s – decision is. What he does requires enormous bravery and integrity. These are virtues of the highest order. But no, it hasn’t been good for him. He has done good, which I’m trying to argue is quite different.

I’m essentially making a point about language, about how people use words and the meanings they hold for us – not so much about deep ethical questions. I’m trying to persuade you that using “good for him” in the context of what happens to Socrates is stretching words past the breaking point.

It’s the same (though for different reasons) with “It’s healthy for you to be healthy.” This is simply not something we have occasion to say, so it’s hard to know what it would mean. Intelligent people are disagreeing about this here, so before writing this, I sat down, cleared my mind, and tried to imagine a circumstance in which the statement “It’s healthy for you to be healthy” might occur. I imagined person A saying something, to which B replies with the statement in question, and then A responds. I could not find any dialogue that didn’t involve some kind of discrimination among meanings or connotations of “healthy.” Sample: A: “I don’t see what good will come out of exercising and eating a balanced diet.” B: “No, it’s healthy for you to be healthy.” A: “Oh, I see. Exercising and good nutrition will make me healthy, and being healthy is desirable and good for me.” I’m sure you can analyze this for yourself and see why it involves different uses of “healthy” to avoid vacuity. In contrast, when I imagine the statement being simply asserted, say to a 10-year-old child, if the child is bright then I imagine their response to be: “But that doesn’t say anything. That’s like ‛It’s fun for me to have fun.’ ”

In the conversation with Glaucon, Plato distinguishes between those things that are good in virtue of something else, those that are sought for their own sake, and those that are both. It seems that you are afraid that anything in the "both" category is at risk of becoming either vacuous or else must actually be composed of two equivocal notions, but I don't totally understand why this is. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good, that’s a concise way of showing the problem. Let me see if I can clarify my position. You are arguing, if I’m understanding you, that ethical good is an example of the “third way” -- a good that is sought because it is made good by something else, and is also good for its own sake. I don’t think there’s anything vacuous about thinking this way. It’s an instance of what I called a “metaphysical union” of goods, and highly to be valued, if we can make a strong case for it. What I’m arguing is that the word “good” is necessarily doing double duty here; it has to be, otherwise there would be no issue of “union” at all.

Now you might accept this idea of some sort of union being proposed, but reply, “It’s not a union of two kinds of ‛goods,’ but of particulars and generals. I’m saying that when an individual does good things for their own sake, they are made good as a result. And the way in which they are now good is exactly the same as the way in which those good things are good. The concept of ‛good’ has remained the same; it’s the individual who has united themselves with the Good.”

And now we return to the question of the “good” of Socrates’ execution. If what you’re saying is that Socrates has become a better person by accepting his death, we have no argument. If you’re saying that Socrates has united himself, as an individual, with something we can broadly capitalize as the Good, again we agree. My contention is now twofold: 1) We have to resort to something like capitalizing “Good” because we want to show clearly that we mean a special use of good, an ethical use which is of enormous worth; and 2) When we talk about something being “good for you,” this is not the sort of good we’re talking about. If it were, then we would be forced into maintaining that being executed is good for you. And this offends common sense.

Laying all this out, I’m aware that it’s partially an appeal to something I find self-evident among English language-users, and I hardly know what more to say to justify that. I don’t mean I couldn’t be wrong, and what I’d actually like would be for you to show me some usages of “good” that contradict this in a relevant way. And mind you, I don’t mean good as in “better than” in the “lesser of two evils" sense. I mean an actual, positive "good for me." Maybe there’s some way we speak of "good for you" that I’m overlooking or failing to see clearly. But I hope this gives you a better sense of why I think the “two equivocal notions” idea is important.

And this doesn't require the absurdity that someone like Origen or St. Maximus enjoys being maimed and tortured. Rather, the point is that even this, the height of bad fortune, doesn't rob them of their flourishing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I guess this is also a good illustration of the point in dispute. I cannot conceive of being maimed and tortured as not robbing someone of their flourishing – unless you arbitrarily make “flourishing” torture-proof, thanks to previous "patterns of behavior." It seems the very epitome of such a robbery to me. Does it make them a bad person? Of course not. Was it the lesser of two evils? Yes, but . . . and here the argument begins all over again.

There are actually several more points you made that I wouldn't mind taking up, but no doubt this is enough for one post!

PS -- I like the story of the unvirtuous Frenchman. Is that from Sartre? :wink:

Good stuff, thanks. I have to get offline for a period but I'll respond as quickly as I'm able.

Really? I find this dichotomy occurring constantly in the Platonic dialogues. If these two concepts were so inseparable, why do so many of Socrates’ interlocutors dispute it? It reads to me like the debate was hot and heavy then, as it is now.

BTW, this is absolutely true, but Plato is essentially the origin point of the classical metaphysical tradition. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That makes sense -- but do you read MacIntyre as saying that, as a result of the classical metaphysical tradition taking sway, it was no longer a "thinkable thought" that perhaps the good was not the same as what was good for me? Even limiting ourselves to the elite thinkers, or the "philosophically adept," or the ones with "better opinions," I find this a bit hard to believe. They could actually no longer put that forward as a position? But then, as you know, I take issue with MacIntyre's whole idea that there is a huge gap in ethical thinking between ancients and moderns. Considerable disagreement, yes, but not radical incommensurability of concepts. I could be wrong, but I think Socrates would have been able to follow our discussion here without difficulty. I think he might even have wanted to get into it!

I really feel fortunate to have someone like you describe the connections among these earlier philosophical views. You’re able to produce a world view that I understand and admire. I’m not sure whether this is a point in favor, or against, MacIntyre! Certainly what you’re doing is an act of translation, in part, but I don’t think I’d be reacting so favorably to it if there really was a deep incoherence between ancients and moderns.

So no, you are not explaining it poorly at all, quite the opposite.

Now perhaps it’s I who need to explain better. For you say,

When people say, "it will be good for you to study philosophy," "it will be good for you to start exercising," or "it's good for you to learn to appreciate Homer, Hesiod, and Horace," they certainly don't mean "you will enjoy those things." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I thought I had made clear that “enjoying things” is only one – and certainly not the most interesting – way of interpreting what I was calling personal goods. You can interpret “good for you” in the most ethically high-minded way possible (which some might criticize as “sensuously sterile” but shouldn’t; it merely takes a broader view of what one experiences as good). I only ask that you acknowledge the “for you” in “It will be good for you to study philosophy.” And it is a sensible and coherent thing to say. But again, consider “It will be good for you to [be good / do good things / live a good life – I’m not sure which way of filling this out you prefer].” What is being said here? That the good you do will also be good for you? But if, per Aristotle, the highest good is contemplation, then being tortured to death as a result of the good you do wouldn’t seem to qualify. The only way I can think of for “the good you do will also be good for you” to make sense with a single meaning for “good” is simply to stipulate an arbitrary meaning for “good” that excludes all our normal personal uses, and insist that, even though we don’t realize it, the virtuous person always experiences everything as “good for him.” I find this far-fetched and ad hoc.

I definitely see that your viewpoint is an attempt to create what I called a metaphysical unity between personal and universalizable goods. I also want to do that, I just don’t think this road is very promising.

I think history had to pull apart the concepts of "doing right," and this being "what is best to do 'for you.'" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Really? I find this dichotomy occurring constantly in the Platonic dialogues. If these two concepts were so inseparable, why do so many of Socrates’ interlocutors dispute it? It reads to me like the debate was hot and heavy then, as it is now.

Here’s a different way to talk about this that might help. The ends of virtue ethics and Kantian ethics are the same – good action that gets good results, and in turns “bounces back,” so to speak, on the doer, improving them as well. The difference is direction of motivation. This is a broad-brush picture, but: The virtue ethicist wants to achieve eudaemonia, and she realizes that she can’t do that unless she acts virtuously, which (let’s say; it isn’t always so clear in Greek philosophy) means acting with justice, compassion, and honesty towards others. The Kantian wants to act with justice, compassion, and honesty toward others, and realizes that in doing so he will necessarily also improve his moral character and live a flourishing life, but that’s not the point.

Do we see the difference? It’s direction of motivation. Even though both persons’ actions have exactly the same consequences, one proceeds toward eudaemonia, the other proceeds toward right action. Kant thought this made all the ethical difference. I don’t completely agree, but laying it out in these terms is helpful, I hope.

I'll add my welcome! and offer what I hope is a helpful clarification.

We can have strong evidence for something without being certain about it. In fact, you could say that characterizes almost everything we believe to be true. But we sometimes forget this and instead create a binary, where "know for certain with absolute proof" is opposed to "have no warrant to believe true," with nothing in between. So, when you say:

If I were to tell a person that they do not have consciousness, they would not be able to give me evidence that they do, even though they can definitively prove that to themselves. Neither of us can prove, or have any way to know for certain, that the other has consciousness. The belief that others have consciousness, as we lack the evidence, is pure faith. — Reilyn

. . . I would reply, "Right, you can't have proof that they're conscious. You can't be certain. But a great deal of strong evidence could be provided to you. That being so, it isn't correct to say that we 'lack evidence,' and so believing in their consciousness is 'pure faith'. What we lack is certainty, a different matter."

When we speak of what health is for organisms generally and what health is "for you," why it is "healthy (for you) to be healthy," we are not speaking of two totally equivocal concepts, nor do I see how this analagous relationship would render "health" conceptually vacuous. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It doesn't render "health" vacuous, it renders the statement vacuous.

This is a good example, and helps me clarify why the use of "good" is different. Try to imagine a circumstance under which someone would actually say "It's healthy for you to be healthy." What sort of response would be appropriate? I could say, "Well, duh!" Or scratch my head and say, "So you're saying that it's a healthy thing for me to be healthy?" or . . . I'm not sure what else. The point is that we don't say such a thing -- it doesn't mean anything in our normal discourse. It just expresses some kind of redundancy. (Perhaps a person might be trying to say, "You'll feel good if you're healthy," but that's an entirely different assertion.)

Now compare to "It's good for you to be good." This is often said, especially in ethical contexts. Why does it have such a common use? I contend that it's because here, the first "good" has a different meaning from the second "good." We would paraphrase the statement, and commonly understand it, as saying, "It will turn out to be a good thing for you if you do good things." The difference in meaning that's being employed is: "good" as a personal experience of some sort, versus "good" as a quality of actions you perform. (Importantly, this personal experience needn't be selfish in the pejorative sense. It just needs to be about you. "Experiencing your telos through flourishing" is a good of the first, personal kind.) Understood this way, not only is the statement not vacuous in the way that "It's healthy for you to be healthy" is vacuous, but it raises profound and difficult questions about the relation of personal goods like pleasure, flourishing, esteem, etc. with ethical conduct toward others. Would it be handier if English had a more precise vocabulary for expressing this distinction? Sure, but we don't.

So, on this analysis, you're absolutely right to defend the tradition of the Good as not being conceptually empty. But that's because it really does use "good" in two different ways, while searching for a metaphysical way to unite them. It's perhaps the most important question in ethics -- whether this union of the personal and the universalizable is possible, and how -- and I believe it was Kant who showed this most carefully, though I don't accept his solution in its entirety. But let me stop here and see whether this makes sense to you.

These are all interesting and worthy points, and I want to go on to discuss them. But can you return to the question of "It's good for me to be good"? What I'm trying to understand is whether, when I'm being urged to "be good", we're using the same concept of "good" as the assurance that "It (will be) good for me". My contention is that they must not be the same concept, in order to avoid conceptual emptiness. When Socrates says, "No evil can happen to a good man," do you think he means, "Nothing evil [not-good] can happen to a good man because good men only experience good things"?

But - the process of learning does not exist separate from our neurological capability to do so. — Questioner

Yes, but what we're discussing is whether there's also a neurological capability to discriminate true from false, and right from wrong, in the same way we discriminate red from green, or high pitches from low pitches. That would be extremely useful, but given how often we humans are wrong (in both senses), I'd need a lot of convincing. Rather, it seems to me that, while evolution may give us the capacities to think and learn, we require reasons for saying and doing correct things. We have to find those for ourselves, and the method for doing so is entirely different from consulting hard-wired intuitions.

"Good" discussion! To start a reply, let's take seriously the possibility you raise, that this is an example, a la MacIntyre, of an ethical discourse that seems incoherent to a modern (me) but was sensible and important in an earlier tradition. So my first question would be, Can you take the statement "It is good for me to be good" and either paraphrase it or state it in other terms, such that it would resist my objection that it's either empty or equivocal? I don't think MacIntyre uses "incoherent" to mean some sort of Kuhnian incommensurability, whereby ancients and moderns will never be able to talk to each other no matter how hard they try. So you ought to be able to fulfill my request, or I hope so. (This would be for starters. We need to be very clear, I think, about the job "good" is doing in the target sentence, before we can move on to the other substantive points.)

To be sure, you might be able to attain some goods by acting unethically. An unethical businessman might cheat and manipulate his way into having wealth and status, the ability to procure all sorts of goods for himself. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So what ought we to say to the unethical businessman? Should we say, "You're being inefficient and improvident. You're not getting as many goods as you'd get if you behaved ethically, and furthermore when the hard winds blow, you won't do as well as the ethical person"?

That doesn't strike me as ethical discourse at all, and I'm fairly sure you wouldn't endorse it. The problem here is that you're still allowing "It's good for you to be good" to represent a coherent statement within ethics. But either each instance of "good" means the same thing, in which case the statement provides no information, or else "good" is equivocal, with each "good" meaning something different, in which case you could get a variety of interpretations, such as "You'll receive things you desire (= good1) if you are virtuous (= good2)" or "You'll flourish (= good1) if you are virtuous (= good2)" or "Being virtuous (= good2) will be pleasurable for you (= good 1)." But what you can't derive is a statement that says either "It is not virtuous (= good 2) to achieve good1" or "Good 2 does not refer to the things named as good1". Both of those require ethical argument of a particular sort -- an argument that shows why the goods of personal life (pleasure, success, honor, love, etc.) are distinct from right action. An appeal to any of those goods as a reason for right action takes us once more out of ethics and into . . . well, psychology, or power dynamics, or something.

Yeah, OK, I'm impressed by Kant's ethics, so sue me! :wink:

but this sounds more like a 19th century way of reading than 17th century.
— J

None of the quotes are from 19th century authors. — Fooloso4

I know. I meant that your reading of these contemporary comments is "19th century" a la Kierkegaard and the Romantics, full of mystery that (to me) isn't there. Admittedly, it's hard to tell because you give no context for them. I don't want to pursue this in great detail, but a for-instance would be this one from Leibniz:

Descartes took care not to speak so plainly [as Hobbes] but he could not help revealing
his opinions in passing, with such address that he would not be understood save by those
who examine profoundly these kinds of subjects.

What is the context? Which opinions is Leibniz referring to here? What are "these kinds of subjects"? I'm guessing this was about religious doctrine, where plain speaking in a Catholic country could get you in trouble.

It's hard to know how to respond to this line of thought. All I can do is read Descartes as carefully as I can, noting problems as they come up. If he was in fact playing a devious game of disguising his true thoughts, using inconsistencies as spurs to help us think more deeply, deliberately conflating "soul" and "mind" in contradictory statements . . . then perhaps he was a "cunning and abstruse genius" but this sounds more like a 19th century way of reading than 17th century. Neither of your quotes from Descartes himself seems to support such a reading. To say in one's unpublished Private Thoughts that one "goes forth wearing a mask" surely speaks to the difference we all experience between our private and public selves, no? Why would you think he was referring to his philosophical writings?

when a careful writer says things that seem contradictory . . . — Fooloso4

But that's just it -- on the basis of these contradictions, I don't think he was a careful writer. He just seems muddled about minds and souls -- understandably, since the theology of his era didn't give him much to work with, soul-wise.

I suppose it depends on how you evaluate Descartes' status as a philosopher. I grant his historical importance but have never found him especially deep or insightful. That said, the challenge to try to read ever more deeply is always appropriate.

Thanks for doing all this detective work in the Meditations -- it's very helpful and illuminating. A few thoughts:

- We see how conflicted Descartes is about what to say concerning essence, nature, thinking thing, etc. He wants "thinking thing" to be primary -- "nothing else belongs to my nature or essence" -- but he's aware that the mind's connection to the body is not merely like a sailor and a ship. Rather, it's an "intermingling". (I'd be interested to know the Latin here.)

-- He also clearly has trouble with using "mind" and "soul" interchangeably. If his own nature is a "totality of things bestowed by God," surely this is the soul, rather than a thinking thing. As you show, this results in a number of contradictions, both philosophical and theological.

-- All these represent criticisms of Descartes on his own terms, pointing out contradictions or inconsistencies. But what is most striking to me (and I think to Ricoeur) is that, for Descartes, the problem is a mind/body/soul problem: How can we best describe the capacities, natures, and overlappings of these three aspects of humans? Which is ontologically primary, if any? What depends on what? Whereas, for us moderns, the essential element left out of this analysis is the unconscious. I think Descartes might partially understand this as an aspect of the soul, an aspect not encountered by the thinking thing. This is in keeping with many spiritual traditions which describe the vital connections between unconscious processes and spiritual insight and experience. But I doubt if Descartes would have liked the idea that there are aspects of the soul (read "the self") that are not only different from thoughts and desires and sensations, but are actually unknown to him. Or, if he did grasp what this meant, he would probably dismiss it as unimportant: What counts is what we experience via the ego, the "I" (as he conceived it).

are not those second and third thoughts a result of our evolution, too? — Questioner

Then how do we know which to heed -- the first, second, or third thought? Is the idea supposed to be that there is yet another evolutionary capacity that indicates the correct choice among thoughts?

Because we are vulnerable beings who can feel pain and can be injured or killed by certain actions, which I do believe would have to be considered facts of evolutionary nature. It has its relevance. Do you see where I'm coming from with that? — Outlander

I do, and it makes sense to me. Many scientific stories, including evolution, can give us information about our species and help us decide what would aid human flourishing. But ethics is asking different questions. Can evolution instruct me in whether it's better for me to feel pain or to let my mother do so? How about a stranger? The idea is that no amount of info about us as a species can provide the answer to questions about right and wrong, except in a hopelessly broad sense.

"why should one value sustaining society more than one's self", as in possibly neglecting one's own well being for that of a neighbor's, — Outlander

That would be a very mild version. I had in mind the ordinary me-first situation where a person says to themselves, "Sure, it's better for society and all that if people don't cheat and steal, but I need money and I can get away with some cheating and stealing, so I'm going to do it." Would we say to such a person, "But in the long run, society can't function that way, if everyone took your attitude?" They would presumably reply, "And? First, what do I care about 'the long run'? Second, everyone doesn't take that attitude. I'm making an exception for myself."

As for the general point about a flourishing society leading to one's individual comfort or advantage, I see too many quite common cases where it simply isn't true. (Unless you're defining a flourishing society as a perfect utopia with no injustice or immorality.) I'm not saying it might not work out that way for some people, but the connection seems weak and unreliable. This is still trying to link ethics with "my own good," and I was arguing that we haven't even reached ethics as long as we're thinking that way.

At the moment of "cogito-ergo-sum" you're certain of your existence, but nothing else. It's a holiday from doubting, but little else. — Dawnstorm

Yes, we agree.

In general, I agree that Descartes's project can be accepted on its own terms -- he wasn't using the concepts of 20th century philosophy, and he wasn't asking the same questions. But the passage you quoted:

Well, then, what am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wants, refuses, and also imagines and senses.

does suggest that Descartes believed that being a thing that thinks was an identity. It is the answer to his self-posed question, "Well, then, what am I?" Perhaps Ricoeur would answer the question this way: "I do not know what I am, on the basis of the cogito. I identify a number of activities I can perform as a conscious ego (doubting, understanding, et al.) and am at the same time aware of many other aspects of myself that lie hidden. Maybe the question 'What am I?' will prove unanswerable, or maybe I will discover that I have an essence. But either way, the cogito shows me nothing pro or con."

So,

Is it unwarranted to conclude that he is a thing that thinks? Isn't thinking essential to being human? — Fooloso4

As to the first question, it's unwarranted if the "is" of "he is a thing that thinks" is construed as an essence or identity. (It doesn't have to be. To say "I am thinking" seems quite warranted, because it leaves open the further question, "Ah, but what am I?") As to the second: No, we have no basis in the cogito for concluding anything about what is essential to being human. Or, more liberally, thinking may be one of the essential items, but we have no way of knowing if there are not others equally essential. The cogito's epistemological value as a guarantor of existence doesn't extend that far, into ontology.

I would say the unwarranted conclusion has to do with an essential identity being attached to “thinking thing.” Again, Ricoeur’s criticism is coming through Nietzsche and Freud. Why may my self, my “I”, not just as well comprise the unconscious part of my being? Why assume that the thinking thing , and all its activities, is the most important and most characteristic part of being a subject? The cogito can’t say anything about that.

It tells me there is a thinker and I am it. And I am….what, exactly? — Mww

Yes. When I first read philosophy, the cogito seemed a miracle of cleverness and reliability. What a great result! -- I've discovered not only that I exist, but what sort of thing I must be. It does take a lot of reflection, and getting comfortable with some of the traditions after Descartes, to realize that this result is much less complete than it seems. I think, and thinking can be a special item for epistemology (it allows me to learn that I exist), but to go from that to any further knowledge about the self is unwarranted. Regardless of how one feels about Freudians, Freud himself made a huge contribution here by showing us the importance of the unconscious, which we are so loath to acknowledge.

Yes, exactly. Descartes has drawn what Ricoeur believes to be a false, or at any rate unwarranted, conclusion. In fairness, the idea that the self might be importantly different from the ego or the "conscious self" or the "false self" as criticized by Marx et al. was not really available to Descartes. You can see why it seemed natural to him to just seize on the "thinking thing" as constitutive of what he is. But I believe Ricoeur is right to question this.

But aims themselves can be more or less choiceworthy, more or less good. And we might suppose that in order to determine which aims are most choiceworthy we should seek to discover what is choiceworthy for its own sake and not for some other good or end. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But:

What is choiceworthy will depend on what one's goals are. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So the challenge is to explain how "choiceworthy for its own sake" isn't incoherent. I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm just pointing out the difficulty. You need a way of talking about aims that is significantly different from how we talk about goods. If "it doesn't make sense to choose the worse over the better," this would seem to apply to our aims as well -- we'll choose better aims rather than worse ones. But it's supposed to be those very aims that determine good choices, so how do we get out of the circle? What is the meta-level above aims that results in an aim being intrinsically choiceworthy?

That might be too strong. The cogito does tell me that an aspect of myself manifests itself in the act of thinking. I may not be a "thinking thing" in some definitional or essential way, but thinking is something I do. That's not "nothing." It just may not be as informative as we would wish it to be.

even if the cogito is represented as this kind of something from which can be derived that it does this other something, one could still be left to wonder what the “I” itself really is. — Mww

Paul Ricoeur also raises this question of the nature of the "I" of the cogito -- whether what it is is self-evident as a consequence of the cogito. Sample passage:

This impregnable moment of apodicticity [the cogito] tends to be confused with the moment of adequation, in which I am such as I perceive myself. . . . I am, but what am I who am? That is what I no longer know. In other words, reflection has lost the assurance of consciousness. What I am is just as problematic as that I am is apodictic. — Paul Ricoeur, 'The Question of the Subject' in The Conflict of Interpretations

Ricoeur attributes this problematic to Nietzschean, Marxian, and Freudian critiques of the identification of the conscious ego with the "I" or self. But it stands on its own as an important point, I think. We can all agree that "therefore I exist" says nothing about whether this thinking "I" is also the primal seat of my self, my agency, even my soul. What guarantees my knowledge of my existence, the cogito, may not necessarily reveal very much about that existence.

Yikes, really? We should have continued impregnating 12-year-old girls?

We are neurologically hard-wired to form bonds.
— Questioner
And it might well be that our moral duty is to fight against this supposed hard-wiring. — Banno

Consider the likelihood that human males are hard-wired to find girls (and often boys) sexually attractive from puberty on. What would the ethical conclusion be, here? Give in or fight against?

I had to look up "virtue signaling." Could you explain how it connects to meta-ethics? I'm not seeing it.

But I suggest we not worry overmuch about the truth/good parallel -- though you're right, it's interesting-- and instead look at the ways that reason does try to justify values"

"But that's the very point I was putting in question, — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sorry, this might be a silly query but . . . which is "the very point" here? And by "put in question," do you mean "call questionable" or "offer it as a discussion point"? I'm asking because I agree with just about everything you go on to say, so I'm trying to understand where my comments about the truth/good parallel represent a spanner (or monkey wrench; not sure of your nationality!) in the works.

And what is good for the individual cannot be divorced from what is good for the species. — Questioner

But can this be reversed: What is good for the species must be good for the individual? How would that follow? That's the doubtful premise.