We are trying to sort out how to live together. Impersonal reasons, insofar as they are impersonal, therefore lack all traction in what actually matters, ethically. — Welkin Rogue
But Cavell thinks the personal is essential. Our personal commitments - arising from our way of being in the world, our form of life - are the foundation of our ethics, if anything is — Welkin Rogue
On this standard view, it is not because I care about and am committed to my religious group that we ought to be allowed to practice our faith. It is because that's what duty requires (or some such thing). That is, I must give you an impersonal reason or criterion. — Welkin Rogue
Could indeed be a new way to be nice and upper middle class on the safe green front lawn, chatting with neighbors. — Zugzwang
Perhaps 'impersonal' reasons were always about appealing to the other's personal reasons. — Zugzwang
In any case I would even suggest that your questions about ethics - "what are we doing? What are we aiming at?" ought to be read back into ethics as the sine qua non of ethical practice itself: that the demands that ethics makes on us are demands to grope at finding whatever partial, workable, passable solutions to just those questions. And those are questions of life and practice that cannot be closed off by any theoretical investigation that would provide any kind of ethical guidebook from on high. — StreetlightX
But really, once you've read Cavell, most discussion of ethics - in a philosophical setting anyway - come off as unbearably stilted and artificial. It's great. — StreetlightX
Impressions: he seems reasonable, likable, decent. — Zugzwang
"rationality [of ethics] lies in following the methods which lead (...) to a knowledge (...) of ourselves." — Welkin Rogue
reason is not at the root of ethical wisdom. — Welkin Rogue
You can't shortcut a deficit in experience with the sheer power of reason — Welkin Rogue
It is about the giving and taking of reasons, in a fairly ordinary sense, and this in itself is part of its telos, if you like: it is about the respectful engagement with others at the personal level... The personal nature of ethical reasons and judgement is what distinguishes Cavell most, it seems to me. — Welkin Rogue
A moral reason must issue from our commitments - commitments which are proven as such when we show ourselves to be prepared to take responsibility for them, to defend them and their consequences to others. — Welkin Rogue
Cavell, I think, has a Kantian streak in that he gives reason a central place in ethics... Impersonal reasons, insofar as they are impersonal, therefore lack all traction in what actually matters, ethically. — Welkin Rogue
While ethics isn't just about coming to understand one another - at times Cavell places enormous emphasis on this aspect - it is surely an important part of moral reasoning, for all sorts of reasons. I take this as a substantive ethical point in itself. — Welkin Rogue
On the other hand, this view seems to make obscure the notions of moral progress and moral aspiration. ...And further, how are we doing whatever it is that we are doing? What are the 'methods' of ethics? — Welkin Rogue
We aren't even required to aspire to coherency or consistency (except as a moral stance in itself - wherever that stance might come from... as such it would call out for an ethical justification in this loose sense). — Welkin Rogue
I've been meaning to follow up some secondary/elaborative lit on the issue. In any case I would even suggest that your questions about ethics - "what are we doing? What are we aiming at?" ought to be read back into ethics as the sine qua non of ethical practice itself: that the demands that ethics makes on us are demands to grope at finding whatever partial, workable, passable solutions to just those questions. And those are questions of life and practice that cannot be closed off by any theoretical investigation that would provide any kind of ethical guidebook from on high. — StreetlightX
Elsewhere, he says something like “Let your experience of the object teach you how to think about it” (from memory). — Welkin Rogue
Without the sheer power of reason, how do I even know what an abominable moral act is? ...if I lack moral wisdom I have no reason to judge my act as immoral in the first place, which then tells me absolutely nothing about my moral constitution. — Mww
The alternative can only be, I must be informed from external sources what an abominable moral act is. If such be the case, it cannot be said I’ve followed a method of rationality, which contradicts the methodological necessity of obtaining ethical wisdom, insofar as mere information about a thing is very far from the understanding of it. * * * This isn’t moral philosophy, it’s empirical anthropology. — Mww
Witt's (and Austin)'s method of examining our expressions (or examples of those--even made up ones) — Antony Nickles
not empirically, but to learn what the implications are of what we say — Antony Nickles
What....method for me examining my own expressions, or methods for another to examine my expressions? — Mww
We "give and take" reasons because Cavell pictures a moral moment, an event where we are lost or conflicted within our culture so our acts carry from our aligned lives into a sort of extension to an unknown with each other. — Antony Nickles
And so we define ourselves by what we are willing to accept the implications for, what acts we take as ours, at this time, here, in response to the other, society, etc. And thus knowledge is not our only relation to the world (it is also our act). We do not 'know ' another's pain, we acknowledge it, react to it (or not). — Antony Nickles
So these interests and my interest most times align, but when they conflict, they do so reasonably, for reasons and from the everyday logic of each thing we do, or at least possibly, as we may fail to come together. This is the hope, and fear and dissapponment with the moral realm at all. — Antony Nickles
Elsewhere he specifically addresses what he calls Moral Perfectionism, but it is each individual, in a sense, doing what they find their duty is to themselves, with the same sense of accepting responsibility. And the methods would be, as well, to learn the makeup of the activity (it's implications, criteria, judgments) that we are involved in. — Antony Nickles
The consistency is our culture, all our lives, and, when it comes down to it, in a moral moment, me, who I am to be. — Antony Nickles
According to this....err, rationality, because I’ve never committed an abominable moral act, which is a particular deficit in experience, I lack wisdom with respect to what my judgement should be, given the occasion for the possible commission of such an act. But if I follow a perfectly rational method for obtaining sufficient knowledge of myself, what my act on the occasion of possibly committing an abomination, should already have been determined, which immediately presupposes reason is the root of ethical wisdom. — Mww
I can say that we form better judgements about some action A the more experience we have, without making it a necessary condition that we have experience of doing action A. — Welkin Rogue
reason is not at the root of ethical wisdom. — Welkin Rogue
the only possible way to do that, is by means of pure practical reason. — Mww
For instance, do you buy lock stock and barrel Kant’s metaphysics of moral reasoning? — Joshs
do you buy lock stock and barrel Kant’s metaphysics of moral reasoning? — Joshs
For instance, do you buy lock stock and barrel Kant’s metaphysics of moral reasoning?
— Joshs
I do, though I make no claim in the direction of complete or entire understanding. Where exactly would you fault me for my purchase? — tim wood
An engineer, piqued at being told that 2+2=4, responded that 2+2 could approach six, for large values of two. — tim wood
They would instead point out that mathematical facts are empty without the qualitative relationships they apply to. The way we understand the genesis and nature of these relationships is the determinant of what reason is , how it functions, and what it’s limits are. This was Kant’s argument also , and so in this sense all philosophers alter Kant are Kantians. — Joshs
May I ask where you got your understanding of Kant? I assure you it's upside down and backwards. — tim wood
some have simply taken a different path from a different starting point. Hegel an example of that. — tim wood
no one has either displaced or replaced him. Or even, far as I know, thought any of his thoughts better than him. But many, not understanding him, have straw-manned their ideas of his ideas and claiming to have negated his, have only negated their own, his not even present for the battle. — tim wood
These philosophers stand i. the same relation to Kant as Kant did to Descartes, Aquinas Aristotle and Plato. — Joshs
Do you mean to say that if we trace a history of philosophy, figure by figure , leading from the ancient Greeks to today, the only ‘paradigm shift’ to be found would be from Kant’s predecessors to him? I do agree that within the lineage of Western philosophy , certain figures achieved greater leaps of thought than others, but I certainly don’t think that what Kant accomplished in relation to what preceded him was any more profound that what Descartes achieved in relation to medieval thinkers( or Nietzsche or Heidegger, for that matter). He almost single-handedly launched us into the modern world.Kant stands in relation to his predecessors as a complete and utter paradigm shift, as his successors did not stand to him — Mww
Now, even granting that every recognized philosopher after Kant accepted this paradigm shift in general, didn’t prevent a few of them from attempting to expand on it, because there existed a feeling Kant didn’t complete some task or other with respect to it. — Mww
He almost single-handedly launched us into the modern world. — Joshs
Why would you expect to see paradigm shifts in the sciences on a regular basis but not in philosophy? — Joshs
Kant believed , along with his predecessors, that there was a world whose existence was independent of the subject (...) Nietzsche rejected the idea of a world independent of the subject’s valuations. Whether you agree with this or not, would you say this constitutes a new paradigm? — Joshs
I appreciate you taking the time, Antony. It's helpful. — Welkin Rogue
I took the give and take of reasons to occur when there is a conflict between any two sets of commitments. This can take place even between people in different cultures. Nobody needs to feel lost or conflicting with respect to their own culture. — Welkin Rogue
knowledge is not our only relation to the world (it is also our act). We do not 'know ' another's pain, we acknowledge it, react to it (or not).
— Antony Nickles
I would have said 'knowledge is thus about our relation to the world, which includes how we act with respect to it. — Welkin Rogue
I take it this 'logic' is basically the same thing as 'grammar'. And then there's the negotiation of or coordination among our various grammars or logics. Considered broadly enough, this negotiation seems to be the whole of moral conflict. For example, we are negotiating (or affirmingdifferent conceptions of) the practice of promising, from our different personal commitments and reasons - when has a promise taken place, what are good excuses for failing to keep a promise, and so on. Not in the abstract, but in relation to some particular case of promising, I take it. — Welkin Rogue
But taken as an individual pursuit, [Moral Perfectionism] cannot simply be a question of aligning one's behaviour to one's authentic sensibility or some such thing, right? Surely, it is also a question of how to cultivate one's sensibility.
Could you help me make sense of how Cavell understands this question, given that there is nothing, no ideal, to aspire to which is not independent of the individual? Is it a kind of dialectical unfolding, where we aspire to cultivate new aspirations, which lead us to go after yet newer aspirations, and so on...? — Welkin Rogue
@mmw@tim woodDo you ever critique any aspect of Kantianism from the vantage of more recent philosophers, like Hegel, Kierkegaard or Schopenhauer? — Joshs
The words negotiate or coordinate make it seem like we decide, say, what an apology is, but that is of course already just a part of our lives, like choosing. We may have reasons for promising, but we individually don't conceive of what promising is (with reasons ). — Antony Nickles
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