If someone wants to claim that tout court inferiority is a thing, then it's up to them to provide a criterial account. — Janus

Like I said, you're the one who coined the term, initially in <this post> and then more definitively in <this post>. If "tout court inferior" doesn't mean anything, then why coin the term?

No positive reason in the form of an objective attribute can be given as to why a race should be treated or should not be treated as slaves. — Janus

This is a great example of attempting to shift the burden of proof. "You haven't been able to provide a reason for your position, therefore it fails. I don't have to provide a reason against it."

The reason not to treat animals or humans in ways that makes them miserable is simply compassion. — Janus

Okay, and this is a new argument that you have not previously given. <Racism lacks compassion; we should be compassionate; therefore we should not be racists>.

That's at least an argument, but it's worth understanding that some of the "racialism" that was pointed up earlier in the thread is compassion-based. An easy example is affirmative action, which is compassion-based racism. Similarly, the case of Charles Murray—at least to my understanding—is a case where someone is arguing that certain races are inferior in certain areas and therefore should be compensated accordingly by the social system. This too is compassion-based racism (and part of the question in these cases is whether such a thing should be called racism).

Even if someone could prove tout court inferiority that still would not justify treating them in ways that make them miserable. — Janus

Okay, so does your criterion of "tout court inferiority" matter at all, then?

You haven't demonstrated any such thing. You claim you have a purely rational (i.e. nothing to do with emotion) account that shows slavery is wrong. Present it then or stop your posturing. — Janus

.

The reason we cannot treat any race as sub-human is because each race is human. This is an a posteriori claim, not an a priori claim. The reason we treat "oxen and horses and cattle," as sub-human is because they are sub-human. Apparently you are some sort of vegan or vegetarian to whom this makes no sense, but that doesn't mean that I haven't provided an argument against racism. If someone cannot empirically understand the relevant difference between a human being and an ox then they will struggle with such an argument. But most people don't have trouble with that distinction.

- A misunderstanding on that score would be understandable. A subtle argument was being offered wherein one attempts to justify an approach that looks a lot like eristic but is supposedly different from eristic. Such things are bound up with what goes by the name of "the paradox of tolerance," as well as the question of when non-retaliatory coercion is admissible.

If this is opaque to you I wouldn't worry too much about it. There's a suspicion that you are not engaging in good faith, but I think such a suspicion is mistaken. You strike me as one of very best posters on TPF as far as "good faith" is concerned. I could cite numerous instances where you change your mind after rethinking an issue, and that's part of why I treat you as a serious interlocutor even on issues where we have significant disagreements (example 1, example 2, example 3). Heck, your first threads on TPF favored a form of moral subjectivism and argued against moral realism. That's where I met you.

Do you think an eristic is a legitimate way to discover truth? — Bob Ross

Eristic is something like fighting because one likes to fight, or arguing because one likes to argue. It usually connotes a desire to win for the sake of winning, without any regard for whether what one says is true or false, sound or unsound.

So no, I don't think it is a proper philosophical approach. My first thread was related to the topic. Actually, I think everyone generally agrees that eristic is problematic. @Jamal's post seemed to begin with that premise.

In order for an act with a natural faculty to be immoral, it has to be contrary to the ends of that faculty such that it inhibits the said faculty from fulfilling them. — Bob Ross

For those who are interested, in the philosophical literature this form of argument is called a "perverted faculty argument." A contemporary philosopher who has written about this topic both informally and academically is Edward Feser (<link to his related blog posts>).

- I suppose you would have to figure out how to justify exporting your cultural values to a culture where they are foreign. If you only think X is wrong because your culture says it's wrong, then it's hard to understand how you would be justified in causing other cultures to abide by your cultural morality. ...And I'll leave it there.

- I read a good portion of it many years ago when I had access to a theological library. I found it pretty interesting. As I told , I think it would make for an interesting reading group.

Rather, we can say about such acts that people are expressing a deep-seated human reaction to horror and a commitment to moral solidarity. — Tom Storm

Moral solidarity is directly contradictory to the sort of cultural relativism you just espoused. If one opposes harm only "because doing so reflects the values and sympathies of their community," then there is no moral solidarity with those outside the community. If someone opposes harm outside of their community, then obviously they were confused when they said that their opposition to harm had only to do with the values and sympathies of their community.

That makes it sound like Kierkegaard was fooled by various apologetic speech. — Paine

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

If we are going to speak of the Enlightenment, should that not also include the issue of rights as discussed by Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, etcetera? — Paine

I don't think rights are a function of the Enlightenment. For example, Aristotelian approaches to justice involve rights (which are the correlative of duties), and this surely precedes the Enlightenment.

I'm actually not really sure where this is going, or what your theses are.

I guess my comment on your point would be that in my understanding a pragmatist reduces harm not because it is true that harm is evil, but because doing so reflects the values and sympathies of their community. — Tom Storm

Okay, but on this approach you are committed to the conclusion that the society which favors harm is no better or worse than the society which reduces harm.

The problem I have here is that no one actually believes such a thing. No one says, "Oh they are butchering babies and raping women over in Xylonia, but that's not a problem at all because harm isn't really evil."

What is the substantive difference between a lowest-common denominator approach to morality and a legitimate approach; — Tom Storm

A democratic, lowest-common denominator approach does not favor human rights, especially insofar as human rights would be extended to minorities. That is why we find such an approach inadequate. Humans tend to act in their own favor, and if the laws are a function of the will of the majority, then the laws will favor the majority. Human rights and minority rights require the intervention of some non-democratic motive.

Firstly, even if that was true that some race was IQ inferior, it doesn't make them tout court inferior, just IQ inferior. — Janus

Again, this is not a principled response if you refuse to tell your interlocutor what would entail tout court inferiority. And this is what you refuse to do. You have set up an impossible, unfalsifiable standard. Among other things, this means that your counterclaim is sheer nonsense, namely the claim that, "No race is tout court inferior to any other race" (because you don't know what "tout court inferior" means, despite the fact that you coined the term).

Are we to assume that you think some races are all-in-all inferior? — Janus

I gave my position and you effectively ignored it, claiming that you are opposed to enslaving animals rather than addressing the substantive issue. If there is nothing about race X that requires us to treat them in a certain way, then they need not be treated in a certain way. I think there is something about race X which requires us to treat them in a certain way; you don't. That's the difference between us. I have a reason to oppose racism; you don't. Your only response is to effectively shift the burden of proof onto the racist. You effectively say, "I don't have to give you a reason why they can't be treated as animals. You have to give me a reason why they can be treated as animals! You must answer to me, I need not answer to you!" That's an effective tactic in a culture that opposes slavery, but it is not inherently rational, and therefore will be wholly ineffective in a culture that favors slavery. It is a form of begging the question.

If not, then why go on about it? — Janus

I am demonstrating the way that your opposition to slavery has reached the stage of mere emotivism. You have absolutely no rational account for why slavery is wrong, and you nevertheless hold that it is wrong. It is like a car running on fumes.

- See .

(This thread has largely been people jumping wildly from topic to topic, hoping to get their interlocutor to say something objectionable.)

A post?

In lieu of this, might it not be that we need a pragmatic approach to morality, given we are unable to get to truth or even agree upon axioms? Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good? I would take it as a given that anything human is going to be limited, imperfect, tentative, regardless of the era. Could we not build an ethical system acknowledging this, and put aside notions of perfection and flawless reasoning, focusing instead on what works to reduce harm? — Tom Storm

The problem with these sorts of arguments is that they amount to the following: <If we cannot know the truth with certainty, then we should try to know the truth in a less certain way. Therefore we don't need the concept of truth at all>. The "therefore" is non sequitur. Just because one wants to approximate X rather than perfectly identify X, it in no way follows that one can do away with the notion of X altogether. Approximating X requires a notion of X.

This so-called "pragmatic approach to morality" is just a variant of that form of reasoning. In this case the point can be seen by recognizing that forms of negative utilitarianism (such as the reduction of harm) are no less committed to moral truths than any other theory. One who wishes to reduce harm is committed to the truth that harm is morally evil, and this is true regardless of what they end up meaning by 'harm'.

What is at stake in (classically) liberal thinking is not a special "pragmatism" or an abandonment of moral realism, but rather a democratic, lowest-common denominator approach to morality and politics. The principle is not that moral truth is abandoned, but rather that only the moral truths that the vast majority of the population agrees with are to be enshrined publicly.

Just a quick note to say that the word means severely critical of the behaviour of others, like someone who polices public morality (like the Roman censor). It's not about wanting to silence people. — Jamal

That's fair. I actually think we could get a lot of mileage out of ' point about Aquinas' view on prostitution. I think a lot of fast assumptions are being made about Bob's views. Part of that is simply because @Bob Ross misunderstood the Overton window of TPF and did not anticipate the manner in which his posts would be received. If he were to go back in time he would probably understand his audience differently and write somewhat different posts. For example, going back in time, he might have anticipated the objection from some that what he really wants is coercive conversion therapy for all homosexuals.

Otherwise, I may respond to some of your interesting criticisms in the coming days. — Jamal

Sounds good. I am going to pile yet another (short) post on your head, given that I will be out for a number of days after tomorrow. :wink:

-

Assuming that MacIntyre's diagnosis is about right and that engaging Bob on his own terms would be yet another of those interminable debates, we're each free to engage in metacritique, examining the opponent's ideas in terms of their genesis, while ignoring their validity... — Jamal

I see these meta-questions about eristic and the like as extremely important, and I'm happy you began your post with that sort of consideration.

I think this move of yours is a case of the following: <Arguing dialogically is going to take too much time, therefore I will abandon dialogical argument and leverage some other means to my end>.

On the one hand, time management is important and because of this I favor strictures that help equalize differences of time-availability (e.g. #6 here). On the other hand, I think the pain of time-taking is part and parcel of philosophy. Lack of time is probably the cause of a great deal of the spats on internet forums (because on internet forums the fact that one is low on time is rarely disclosed).

It could of course be objected that I have misrepresented the argument. It could be said that the point is not that the debate will take a long time, but rather that it is literally interminable. First, I don't think the debate is interminable. When someone like MacIntyre says that a debate is interminable, what they usually mean is that it may take decades or centuries for the debate to be settled within a society, and I would suggest that the needle is always being moved towards a terminus even if one can't settle the entrenched debate in a week. Second, the notion of "interminable debates" is a prelude to misology. To say that a debate is interminable is either to justify some course of action outside debate, or else to justify doing nothing. Either way, it ends rational discussion.

Beyond that, I think there are three operative principles at play. Eristic is one of them. Another is ad hominem. A third is the notion of being "Beyond the Pale." A key point here is that there are certain cases where ad hominem is not fallacious, and I think those exceptional cases have everything to do with the notion of being "beyond the pale." The simplest explanation is to say that ad hominem is acceptable when someone is engaging in bad faith. Yet it needs to be emphasized that the ontology of "bad faith" and especially the epistemology of recognizing "bad faith" must be grasped. This is because it is extremely common to use ad hominem appeals to shut down legitimate debate (and this is itself a form of bad faith engagement). Similarly, all fallacious ad hominem is a form of eristic. It is only the exceptional form of ad hominem that is not fallacious and is not necessarily eristic. When that exceptional form remains in earnest dialogue with one's interlocutor, it is not eristic. When that exceptional form of ad hominem abandons earnest dialogue with one's interlocutor, then it is either eristic or it is a form of moderation/policing (i.e. an authoritative move by a kind of referee or someone acting in that capacity). That form of moderation/policing is coercive, but not objectionably so as long as the bad faith has been properly assessed and understood.

I realize that's a lot, but the crucial point is that claims of "bad faith" (or bad acting, or bigotry, etc.) must be taken seriously, particularly by those who utter them. Bad faith engagement is something that is contrary to the spirit of philosophy, but a proper understanding of what it is and what it isn't is crucial given the potential for manipulation.

You are nitpicking. — Pierre-Normand

If someone cannot weigh the meta-thesis that you are proposing, then yes, they must see me as nitpicking when I object to that meta-thesis. But if someone can question their own meta-thesis then they must at the same time consider the possibility that I am not nitpicking.

Let me simply put the question to you: Do you think an LLM would have an easier time passing itself off for Plato or Wittgenstein?

Maybe my use of "traces" was misleading, but the contrast I intended was between vitality that accrues from the production process (aimed at other participant in a world animated by live social practices, including linguistic/literary ones) from the different sort of vitality that accrues from private/personal cogitative exercises (akin to training), and that lose this vitality when their traces get extracted from the context of their initial production. — Pierre-Normand

And my point is that the contrast you are drawing cannot be as strong as you would wish. This is because the qualitative difference between lifting weights and playing rugby is much greater than the qualitative difference between writing philosophy in a private manner and writing philosophy in a public manner. I think your analogy limps too much.

It's true that Plato's texts can survive unblemished, as do say, Bach's cantatas, when consumed in a different cultural context, but that's because there are deep commonalities between the modes of acculturation of merely superficially different human cultures. — Pierre-Normand

This looks to beg the question by assuming that there can be no consideration of anything beyond cultural relativism. It's basically a hostile translation of Plato, given that he saw himself as mediating Forms that are not culturally relative.

Some degree of attunement to the relevant idioms, and understanding of the underlying projects, still are required. I have a very cultured friend who thinks very poorly of Plato's writings, but this is because he isn't attuned at all to their underlying philosophical projects. And many music lovers find J. S. Bach boring, mainly because they aren't attuned to the relevant musical idioms. — Pierre-Normand

In some ways you are right, but I think it comes back to idiosyncrasy, and in this case it comes down to the idiosyncrasy of the idioms. For example, someone might think mathematics makes no sense, but it would be a stretch to say that this is because "they are not attuned to the relevant idioms." It is rather because they do not understand what the speaker is saying. The very idioms that Plato uses reflect his philosophy that truth and philosophy is not reducibly idiomatic.

The introduction of Bach and musical taste strikes me as another stretched analogy. Beauty and truth differ to a reasonable extent in relation to the "idiomatic." But Bach is a very complex form of music. Does your friend prefer harmony to dissonance? (Music is also complicated given the way that trade-offs must be managed. For example, an Indian Raga uses pure intervals in a way that Bach cannot given his well-tempered scale. The more notes one uses, the less pure the intervals.)

Cultural relativism also results in the conclusion that no cultural form is superior to any other, and this is something that Plato would reject. For the classical tradition, some forms are better than others, and it may require education to understand and perceive this. Of course it also then follows that some education is superior to other education.

The LLM is cut off from the possibility of a Platonic approach. It weighs all opinions and words equally. It is a democratic instrument (except in those cases where it is hard-coded to reflect views within the Overton window).

I think my intended contrast also accounts, at least in part, for the reason why Wittgenstein's writings feel dead to you. They mostly are assembled (without his consent, posthumously in almost all cases except for the Tractatus) from notes that he jotted down for himself. — Pierre-Normand

I agree with you here, but note that the distinction is a bit different. Rather than a private/public distinction, we have an assemblage/unity distinction. One can privately philosophize a unified work which is not an assemblage of unconnected parts. Indeed, there are highly unified works that were only published posthumously.

I quite agree with this and that's one of the core reasons that animates my own "AI-skepticism" as I intended to more fully articulate it in my newer AI thread. LLMs only are "authors" of what they write by procuration since they lack conative autonomy. — Pierre-Normand

We definitely agree here. :up:

I would however surmise that the great artist who is indifferent to how his works will be received by the masses, say, or by the authorities, or guardians of the tradition, usually cares that they're worthy of being well received by whoever is worthy of receiving them... — Pierre-Normand

That's right, but this means that the great artist must judge worth in a non-democratic manner, and I'm guessing we would agree that the LLM cannot do this.

You are free to choose death, but you are not free to break the law. Choosing death may be a tendency formed by your personal, differentiated purposes and potentially erroneous cognition, but it is not a social norm that can be derived from the fundamental purpose common to all. — panwei

The point is that if someone is free to choose contrary to the "fundamental purpose," then your claim that the fundamental purpose is common to all is in jeopardy.

In other words, is this discussion necessarily just a fight rather than a shared quest for truth? — Jamal

I think that is the danger that MacIntyre was forced to take more seriously in his later work. Also, the fact that MacIntyre was not always sufficiently attentive to that danger is one reason I'm not his biggest fan.

Traditionally, going back to Socrates, you're either seeking truth or trying to win. But why not both? In the case of this discussion I think I can produce an argument with a dual function: (a) to be read by those who share my premises (e.g., that homosexuality is not immoral, degenerate, or mentally or otherwise defective), it strengthens our shared understanding or explores how we can understand these moral positions better; and (b) to be read by wavering opponents and fence-sitters, it is simultaneously a public demonstration of our moral framework's superiority to that of the Christian conservatives. — Jamal

Assuming that MacIntyre's diagnosis is about right and that engaging Bob on his own terms would be yet another of those interminable debates, we're each free to engage in metacritique, examining the opponent's ideas in terms of their genesis, while ignoring their validity — Jamal

I think Socrates' approach was straightforward: try to convince your interlocutor. The rest will follow. If one begins with the presupposition that they cannot properly engage their interlocutor's arguments, but must instead play to their own side or to some "neutral" party, then I think Socratic dialogue has been abandoned. In other words, it's hard to see how one can accept MacIntyre's diagnosis while avoiding eristic. For example, if @Bob Ross does not himself accept the criteria and validity of "genesis argumentation," then what is occurring is simply eristic. If a metacritique is to be legitimate, it must work within the bounds of mutual dialogue. If a "metacritique" involves turning away from Bob in order to start talking to other people about Bob (which is something we have seen often within this thread), then eristic has emerged.

Socrates would do something like this: "I think that if one can show that the genesis of an idea is faulty, then the idea itself must be rejected. Would you agree with me on this?" Namely, he would bring his interlocutor along with him so that the dialogue is not abandoned.

But remember that @Bob Ross is attempting to offer arguments that are sound and not merely valid. If one honestly does not see the force of one of Bob's premises, they must simply say so. Validity is not of much interest in any philosophical debate. Invalid argumentation should be rare among principled philosophers. Philosophical objections should almost always pertain to soundness rather than mere validity.

I mean, we could critique the position immanently by pushing its concepts to breaking point. For example, if all non-procreative sex acts are degenerate and morally corrupt, then heterosexual anal sex, oral sex, and even kissing and touching, are degenerate and morally corrupt. That diverges sufficiently from human experience that it strikes one as preposterous... — Jamal

This is a perfectly legitimate form of argument that remains within dialogue and does not move into eristic. Is it also the sort of argument that is most likely to convince an interlocutor, given that it retains the lion's share of their premises.

But ultimately there's little benefit in hashing out the telos of the rectum. — Jamal

But you are being glib, and also inaccurate. The argument you just offered was not about "the telos of the rectum," but rather about whether sex acts require a procreative condition. It would cash out in the idea that the non-procreative nature of the rectum is irrelevant to an analysis of sex acts.

Bob's arguments constitute a textbook case of this identity thinking: he must reduce the whole person to the act he finds disgusting to justify a coercive impulse to force everyone into his chosen norm of being. No attempt is made to understand the lived experience of gay or transgender people, to listen to their voices, to appreciate their diverse experiences of love and intimacy. That's all pre-emptively obliterated under the force of the categories of degenerate, defective, violation of nature, and so on, and the total person is reduced to the function of sex organs, the context of the act ignored in the act of imposing the category of non-procreative act. — Jamal

The irony is that this is exactly what conservatives tend to accuse progressives of. Progressives are said to reduce someone's entire personhood to their sexual orientation, such that their core identity must be equated to their sexual desires. Similarly, "No attempt is made to understand the lived experience of gay or transgender people," given that there are not a few such people who agree with Ross and disagree with Jamal. It is simply assumed, a priori, that one is speaking for all such people.

Still, this sort of argument remains at a properly dialogical level insofar as it relies upon reasoning that is shared by one's interlocutor, at least in part. Presumably it does achieve that, and I think this is a sign that the notion of incommensurable worldviews that MacIntyre flirts with is actually mistaken. Instead of seeing an opaque speech, the conservative can say, "I actually agree with a good portion of that, and I think it gets at a problem with the way the LGBT movement reduces persons to their sexual orientation. I would want to see personhood and human life in a much broader and more spacious context." At the same time, if one wants the conservative to be open to Adorno, then they must be open to conservative parallels.

(The Christian community has received this objection with a fair amount of sympathy, as can be seen in the work of someone like Karol Wojtyla.)

As it happens, even the categories of trans person, gay man, etc., are examples of identity thinking and therefore have this coercive potential, if we forget that individuals are more than that. — Jamal

That's right, but I worry that the word "coercion" is being stretched too far in sentences like these. It would require a fair bit of argumentation to conclude that an act of categorization is a coercive act, or is pregnant with coercive potential. The problem folds on itself, given that if an accusation of coercion is found to be credible, then what is justified in response is precisely coercion. This is why, I think, that remaining on the dialogical level remains so imperative.

The censorious impulse on display in Bob's more careless comments... — Jamal

I haven't seen a "censorious impulse" from Bob. I actually think a lot of people within this thread are desirous to see Bob himself censored.

But I don't want to reduce this to psychology: in its reliance on pathologization and its anachronistic demand for public priority... — Jamal

I think this is one of the many double standards at play. Does the LGBT lobby not use coercive means? Does it not rely on pathologization, for example by literally dubbing their opponents "homophobes"? Does it not demand public priority?

It is clearest in his least philosophical comments. Note the language: "disorder," "defect," "degeneracy," and "privation". — Jamal

Those are actually philosophical terms with the exception of "degenerate."

This allows the argument to present itself as compassionate (always the protestation "I don't hate them, I just want to help them") while its function is to negate the legitimacy of certain ways of being. — Jamal

Every moral and political position will end up negating the legitimacy of certain ways of being.

I admit that this was immoderate, in the personal nature of the attack. But I want it to be understood as a description of the ideological function of Bob's comments, rather than a personal accusation. In more detail, this function is the anachronistic use of Thomist Aristotelianism as the respectable-looking outward appearance for an attack on pluralism, an attempt to use the language of timeless nature to delegitimize a rival social vision and re-establish a lost cultural dominance---and along the way, to exclude, stigmatize, and pathologize people on the basis of aspects of their identity and of the private, consensual relationships in which they find human connection, and which produce no demonstrable public harm. — Jamal

By this point your charitable reading looks to have dried up. You are simply imputing malicious motives to Bob by focusing on certain parts of his posts and ignoring others.

The kicker for me is that I know lots of gay people who agree with Bob, and we have had great conversations about these topics. I realize it is very hard for the activist to reckon with such a fact, and of course when the fact is spied out coercion from the LGBT activist follows almost immediately. It would be hard to overemphasize the extent of bullying and coercion such people feel at the hands of LGBT activists, even to the point of falsely speaking for them and refusing to grant them any voice at all. They are subject to some of the most vicious attacks if they fail to fall into line with the cultural orthodoxy. Two of the people I have in mind are afraid to "come out" publicly because they fear the LGBT community. Their support meetings have been pushed underground after the meetings were infiltrated by reporters who doxed certain members, destroying their careers and lives.

Odd that Bob managed to misgender Philippa Foot. :razz: — Jamal

:lol:

Coming back to this:

The proponents of Thomist natural law no doubt have many elegant and logically consistent responses to all of the objections above, and we get another instance of interminable moral debate that doesn't touch what I think is interesting and important, namely the genesis and the social meaning of the ideas. — Jamal

This seems to amount to, "The whole tradition in question will rationalize endlessly, and what is therefore needed is a form of ad hominem (where one tries to show that the 'genesis' of the ideas in question is 'prejudicial feeling' and evil motives)." I didn't understand what you meant by "the genesis of the ideas," until finishing your post, but it looks to be a form of eristic. I don't think there are such short cuts to be had, especially if Socrates is our model.

I would suggest that if one wants to offer a tradition such as Adorno, then they must be open to the traditions that others bring to the table, especially when they are strongly represented. I think the avoiding of eristic is the correct criterion, but I think the "genesis approach" fails to avoid eristic (and it is worth noting that one can question another's motives dialogically, without moving into eristic - Bob himself surely wishes to avoid engaging in bad faith argumentation). Finally, Bob is someone who is still finding his philosophical bearings. I think it is unfair to criticize him for an eclectic approach. That's how everyone begins.

That's a fair point. I don't think there is an obvious "default." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the point goes rather deep. Substantive moral argumentation has dried up in the West. This is why, for example, some dismissed @Bob Ross by telling him that he is fallaciously drawing an 'ought' from an 'is'. The problem is that folks in the West are actually no longer capable of offering rational arguments for moral and political positions, and the anti-metaphysical and anti-religious slogans are part and parcel of that incapacity.

What occurs as a result is that one excludes moral and political positions that they don't like with reasons that they fail to apply to themselves. We see positions like the one taken in Beyond the Pale, "His slavery-claims are disallowed because they are not rationally valid," and the unspoken part reads, "...and because my position is the default position I do not need to offer any rationally valid arguments for why slavery should be disallowed." Or as we have seen, the only offering for why one's position should be maintained is because a democratic majority upholds it (and nevermind the question about why slavery was wrong when the majority favored it).

This is obviously the quandary that Anscombe, MacIntyre, et al. were wrestling with, but it really hasn't left us.

Sure, but I here just thinking through the traditional response "out loud." Traditionally, it has not been considered a "misordered love" to marry someone of the opposite sex who is sterile, or for elderly people to marry, no? — Count Timothy von Icarus

We could talk about such things, but given the example you provided, I would simply concede that one should prefer a fertile marriage to a sterile marriage (ceteris paribus). Or using your own language, if it is better to marry a fertile wife than a sterile wife, then it is more choiceworthy to marry a fertile wife.

As to the more general question, we would need to specify the proposition in question. For example, we might want to talk about the proposition, "A sterile marriage or a sterile sexual act is necessarily illicit." I would say this relies on modal reasoning in the same way that "moral obligation" challenges rely on modal reasoning, and I think there are good Aristotelian answers to be had, but I will postpone the question for now given the complexity of this thread. That's the sort of question that could perhaps benefit from a different thread altogether.

- If you think there is a different human right at stake, feel free to set it out. I simply took the one that you yourself provided at the outset of your quote.

- A substantive post. :up:

Can you see why this doesn't fly? — hypericin

Why doesn't it fly?

1. Supposition: It is bigotry to call an entire class of people mentally ill
2. Mental illnesses are categories based on classes of people
3. Therefore, anyone who believes in mental illness is a bigot (reductio ad absurdum)

The argument is surely valid. For example, if we say that the entire class of people with schizophrenia are mentally ill, then according to (1) we must be a bigot. (The vacuous case where one calls the class of mentally ill people mentally ill is not necessary in order to secure (3).)

The problem is with your claim in (1). Bigotry involves a mode of behavior or belief, and therefore cannot be identified by merely pointing to a behavior or belief. For example, if bigotry is defined as "obstinate attachment to a belief," then the holding of a material position can never be sufficient for bigotry. This is because obstinacy is a mode of belief, and no belief is inherently obstinate. If "calling an entire class of people mentally ill" were intrinsically bigoted, then the DSM-5 would be a book chock full of bigotry.

The word "bigotry" is being used in this thread merely as a slur, in order to undermine a person's reputation so that their claims might be found less persuasive. The reason it backfires with @Bob Ross is because we all know him. He is not obstinate. He changes his mind often, adding edits to his OPs or writing new threads where he disagrees with former positions. It is a credit that such a slur has trouble "sticking" to him.

Perhaps the prima facie objection to labeling homosexuality a mental illness has to do with the fact that mental illness tends to justify coercive action, and coercive action is seen as inappropriate with respect to sexual orientation. But not all mental illnesses justify coercive action. Depression, for example, generally does not.

But at this point, aren't we relying on more theological points? It's hard for me to see how this can be a purely philosophical argument. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Is the opposed view "purely philosophical"? This is one of the double standards at play in such issues, and like the slavery question in my thread, "Beyond the Pale," the double standard is most obvious when it comes to deciding the burden of proof. The anti-metaphysicalists tend to say, "Well if you can't demonstrate your position via purely philosophical arguments, then I guess my position wins by default" (i.e. such a person accepts no onus to provide arguments for their own position, and one manifestation of this within this thread is the emotivism).

The modern egalitarianism that secularity has become so reliant upon is deeply religious, as the historian Tom Holland and others have shown in detail. The struggle between modern egalitarianism and traditional Judeo-Christian morality is basically an internecine conflict about how to weigh different "theological" premises (such as the equal treatment owed in virtue of the imago dei).

The irony in this case is that the modern view is much more religious than the traditional view, and this can be glimpsed by noting that non-Christian cultures are not internally tempted by the positions that the West is now staking out. Egalitarianism is not a conclusion of natural reason. A culture guided by natural reason does not come to the conclusion, for example, that men and women are of equal athletic ability and should compete in the same sports leagues.

but it hardly follows from this that it is somehow wrong to marry some who is sterile when one could marry someone who is fertile, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Isn't this a bit like what you argue against in posts like <this one>? You seem to be saying something like, "Well it would be better, but it's not morally obligatory."

MacIntyre argues that all modern moral philosophies that drop teleology have ended up here, without always knowing it. And the problem is that emotivism cannot provide any rational justification for moral claims, expressing only preferences. It is not open to abuse because it makes no substantive claims that can be abused.

The notion of essence in neo-Aristotelianism, on the other hand, makes meaty claims about human nature and flourishing, so it gives us a framework for rational moral debate, one that unfortunately can be weaponized by bad actors. You might say that it is neo-Aristotelianism's richness that is the problem. — Jamal

Something I listened to recently, and which is also related to ' post on rationalistic morality in a different thread:

MacIntyre at first responded to Anscombe's call to provide an adequate account of human flourishing by developing a theory of virtue that rejected what he called "Aristotle's metaphysical biology." MacIntyre soon came to see, however, that he was wrong, and this on two levels. First, although there is much in Aristotle's biology that is outmoded, MacIntyre came to see that any adequate account of human virtue must be based on some account of our animality: human virtues are the virtues of a specific type of animal, and our theories of virtue must take this animality into account. Secondly, an adequate portrait of human flourishing must recognize that there are principles within us that are ordered toward this flourishing as toward their proper end. There is a dynamic given-ness to nature that we are called to discover and to respect, on the cognitive level and on the level of the spiritual desires of the will and our passions. Indeed, MacIntyre will affirm that the incoherence of contemporary culture is largely a result of its rejection of this causality. As MacIntyre explains in the prologue of the third edition to After Virtue, his subsequent reading of Aquinas had lead him to deepen his understanding of this aspect of human nature. And this is a quote from MacIntyre, "I had now learned from Aquinas that my attempt to provide an account of the human good purely in social terms—in terms of practices, traditions, and the narrative unity of human lives—was bound to be inadequate until I had provided it with a metaphysical grounding."

MacIntyre was nonetheless still committed to giving a non-rationalistic account of how we come to know these metaphysical principles and live according to them. Thus, he adds, "It is only because human beings have an end toward which they are directed by reason of their specific nature that practices, traditions, and the like are able to function as they do." What MacIntyre means here is that it is precisely because we are metaphysically ordered to flourishing on the level of the principles of intellect and will that A) communities of virtue that promote this flourishing are possible, and that B) barbarous communities that are ignorant of the true nature of human flourishing can also arise. Because this orientation exists on the level of principle, we can wrongly apply these principles and teach others to do so as well. Thus, like Nietzsche, MacIntyre offers a genealogy of the Enlightenment's failure. Unlike Nietzsche, who only discerns a path for the solitary hero, MacIntyre sees that nature offers another path—like Ms. Anscombe—a path for communities of virtue that, by promoting practices within a narrative of human fulfillment developed from within a tradition of inquiry, offer hope for an increasingly dark world. — Fr. Michael Sherwin, OP, Christian Virtue in America's Nietzschean Wasteland: Thomistic Reflections, 29:05

[For Kant,] No matter how the world is, all "rational entities" will share the same sterile goal, none able the affect the other's aims. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Cf:

MacIntyre at first responded to Anscombe's call to provide an adequate account of human flourishing by developing a theory of virtue that rejected what he called "Aristotle's metaphysical biology." MacIntyre soon came to see, however, that he was wrong, and this on two levels. First, although there is much in Aristotle's biology that is outmoded, MacIntyre came to see that any adequate account of human virtue must be based on some account of our animality: human virtues are the virtues of a specific type of animal, and our theories of virtue must take this animality into account. Secondly, an adequate portrait of human flourishing must recognize that there are principles within us that are ordered toward this flourishing as toward their proper end. There is a dynamic given-ness to nature that we are called to discover and to respect, on the cognitive level and on the level of the spiritual desires of the will and our passions. Indeed, MacIntyre will affirm that the incoherence of contemporary culture is largely a result of its rejection of this causality. As MacIntyre explains in the prologue of the third edition to After Virtue, his subsequent reading of Aquinas had lead him to deepen his understanding of this aspect of human nature. And this is a quote from MacIntyre, "I had now learned from Aquinas that my attempt to provide an account of the human good purely in social terms—in terms of practices, traditions, and the narrative unity of human lives—was bound to be inadequate until I had provided it with a metaphysical grounding."

MacIntyre was nonetheless still committed to giving a non-rationalistic account of how we come to know these metaphysical principles and live according to them. Thus, he adds, "It is only because human beings have an end toward which they are directed by reason of their specific nature that practices, traditions, and the like are able to function as they do." What MacIntyre means here is that it is precisely because we are metaphysically ordered to flourishing on the level of the principles of intellect and will that A) communities of virtue that promote this flourishing are possible, and that B) barbarous communities that are ignorant of the true nature of human flourishing can also arise. Because this orientation exists on the level of principle, we can wrongly apply these principles and teach others to do so as well. Thus, like Nietzsche, MacIntyre offers a genealogy of the Enlightenment's failure. Unlike Nietzsche, who only discerns a path for the solitary hero, MacIntyre sees that nature offers another path—like Ms. Anscombe—a path for communities of virtue that, by promoting practices within a narrative of human fulfillment developed from within a tradition of inquiry, offer hope for an increasingly dark world. — Fr. Michael Sherwin, OP, Christian Virtue in America's Nietzschean Wasteland: Thomistic Reflections, 29:05

If a trans people has a right specific to them, it has nothing to do with other groups of humans by definition. In this way, the phrase itself is senseless. It tells us, gives us, explains or illustrates nothing whatsoever. — AmadeusD

I think you are basically right, but I also think that, "Trans rights are human rights," is a rhetorical way of implying that trans people are being denied human rights, and that this needs to stop.

Yet this immediately raises the substantive issue of precisely what human right trans people are being denied. According to the ACLU from page 1, they are being denied the "right to be themselves." I suppose that's a start, but the putative human "right to be oneself" is going to require a great deal of elucidation. It certainly isn't something that we find in historical enumerations of human rights. What does it mean? What does it involve?

The way I’m reading ‘x should be chosen’ is that it implies a preference. The choice being recommended is preferable to the alternatives on some basis, and thus more worthy to be chosen than the alternatives on that same basis. One isn't making a blanket implication of the worth of the recommended choice, only that it is worthier than the alternatives on some basis. — Joshs

One of the reasons I wouldn't phrase things in quite the same way that @Count Timothy von Icarus does is because I think the relativistic model is sub-optimal. To put it concisely, I would rather talk about "good" or "worth" rather than "better" (and of course 'better' denotes a relation).

What this means is that if something is "more worthy" or "more valuable" than something else, then it does have intrinsic worth. So when I say, "Better than the alternatives," there must be some fixed rational aspect according to which it is better. In the coffee example that fixed rational aspect was taste, and this cashes out in the fact that one does not only desire something that tastes better than the alternatives, but one also desires something that tastes good.

This dance between 'good' and 'better' is always operative in the realm of practical reason (including morality). Each entails the other, and so your point is fine as far as it goes. Nevertheless, for Aquinas and Aristotle the good has a priority over the better, and this is because the precept, "Seek the better," already presupposes the precept, "Seek the good." This is presumably why Aquinas talks about good-seeking as the first principle of practical reason, rather than better-seeking.

It’s hard to imagine a circumstance in ‘the coffee should be chosen because the coffee should be chosen’ would be useful, except as a way of answering objections with ‘because I said so’. — Joshs

Yes, and that's much the point. Worth-based reasons are not tautologous in the way that @J likes to claim they are; they are not tautologous in the way that will-based reasons are. @J incorrectly claims that, "I chose the coffee because it has worth," is the same as, "I chose the coffee because I chose the coffee." When we appeal to worth of any kind we have moved beyond tautological, will-based "because I said so."

Traditional political philosophy often grounds its normative foundations in transcendent moral laws or abstract social contracts. However, the "must" argued for in this theory is not based on moral judgment or orientation, but rather on the efficacy requirement that a fundamental purpose imposes on action. It is an instrumental "must"—an internal, factual necessity based on the causal relationship between ends and means. It is analogous to saying, "If you want to stay alive, you must breathe." Its compelling force originates from the factual existence of the purpose "wanting to stay alive" and the fact that "breathing" is a necessary condition for achieving that purpose. I am not claiming that the "fundamental purpose" is a "good" or "bad" value orientation in a moral sense, nor am I asserting that we oughtto comply with this purpose; rather, I am stating that it is a factually given setting at the level of biological mechanism. — panwei

Good. You are describing teleological reasoning.

When we say, "A ought to do X," the compelling force behind it does not come from some mysterious transcendent law, but from a fact—for any agent of action possessing a specific fundamental purpose, doing X is a logical requirement dictated by that fundamental purpose. — panwei

Right, but the opponent of teleological reasoning will claim that they have no reason to adopt the fundamental purpose/telos that you identify. They will say, "I agree that I ought to eat food if my purpose is survival, but I don't grant that my purpose need be survival. I could choose to die instead of survive if I want."

The reason we feel the irresistible binding force of "ought" is that our rationality intuits this factual connection between the action and the fundamental purpose. — panwei

Yes, very good. :up:

Hume pointed out that it is impossible to validly derive an "ought" (a value or normative proposition) from an "is" (a series of propositions of fact that contain no value judgments). There is a logical chasm between them; any such derivation necessarily implies an unstated normative premise. However, this theory posits that the "ought" in the traditional sense is, in its essence, a specific type of "is." — panwei

Your point has been given in all sorts of different ways over the years. One of them would simply say, "I have such-and-such a purpose/telos/end, therefore I ought to undertake the means to that end," is a straightforward derivation of 'ought' from 'is'.

MacIntyre argues that all modern moral philosophies that drop teleology have ended up here, without always knowing it. And the problem is that emotivism cannot provide any rational justification for moral claims, expressing only preferences. It is not open to abuse because it makes no substantive claims that can be abused.

The notion of essence in neo-Aristotelianism, on the other hand, makes meaty claims about human nature and flourishing, so it gives us a framework for rational moral debate, one that unfortunately can be weaponized by bad actors. You might say that it is neo-Aristotelianism's richness that is the problem.

The solution, arguably, is not to discard neo-Aristotelian ideas of essence, but to show how it can be used well, setting out a more humane, and more inclusive teleology—like one that shows how the telos of a human being is fulfilled in relationships of love and mutual flourishing, which can take many forms. I want to say that abandoning the concept of human nature and purpose because it's open to misuse is to surrender the very ground on which we can build a progressive vision of the good life. — Jamal

I think this is insightful. :up:
There are Aristotelian progressives, such as Michael Sandel of Harvard, who go the exact route that you prescribe here.

I know we've been here before — J

Yes, and you still haven't addressed the problems with your view. "X should be chosen because X is worthy (or worthwhile)," is simply not a tautology. Your claim that it is a tautology requires equivocation and a redefinition of "worth."

It should be easy enough to see this by simply noting that an argument over whether something has worth is not the same as an argument over whether some course of action should be taken. For instance, "The coffee should be chosen because the coffee should be chosen," is not the same as, "The coffee should be chosen because it tastes delicious," and yet 'tastes delicious' is itself here understood as a relevant form of worth.

And as Count Timothy von Icarus points out, the discussion is the perfect specimen of the degenerate state of moral discourse described in the first chapters of After Virtue, in which (in my loose interpretation) Christian conservatives rely anachronistically on concepts that no longer have any shared social basis, and the liberals, leftists, and moderate conservatives (if they still exist) are largely emotive in their opposition. — Jamal

I actually think Simone de Beauvoir is perceptive in her general technological diagnosis, and that the whole phenomenon of contemporary sexual ethics has to do with technology rather than (traditional) religion. In a historical sense, cultural attitudes towards things like fornication, homosexuality, sodomy, masturbation, etc., are quite stable. Some cultures were more lenient towards such acts than others, but they were never viewed as positive goods, on a par with coitus within a stable relationship or relationships (note that the polygamy question is less clear). For example, in Roman society fornication of various forms was quite common and acceptable, but it was also understood as a sort of concession to the overwhelming sexual drive. There was a clear line of demarcation between the husband's procreative role vis-a-vis his wife and society, and his sexual acts outside of that context (which were often intentionally sterile). Women's sexual acts were generally more restricted given the uniquely female consequence of pregnancy.

The technology which most changed human social life in these areas was the birth control pill, which allowed women to engage in intercourse with a much smaller chance of becoming pregnant. When combined with the feminist movement, this led to a societal reconceiving of the sexual act. Sterile (or quasi-sterile) sexual acts were now available to both sexes, and insofar as the number of sterile sexual acts asymptotically approaches 100%, the sexual act itself becomes viewed as unconnected to procreation, sex (i.e. male/female distinctions), and in various senses, even biology. One can see the way in which many things logically follow at this point, such as abortion on demand, a separation of sex and gender, an indifference to one's sexed nature, an equality between heterosexual and homosexual sexual acts, a collapse of the traditional concepts of marriage and family, a slow collapse of monogamy itself, and ultimately dangerously low birth rates. It is the technology that makes all the difference, and it would be irrational for cultures—past or present—which lack Western sexual technologies to try to adopt contemporary Western sexual ethics.

But if the urge for men to procreate with women is found more in men, and is not merely a result of gender norms, then how can you claim that "group tendencies in no way determine individual proclivities"? — Leontiskos

Because, individuals can act in ways contrary to how groups as a whole behave. — hypericin

But that looks to be an invalid argument:

1. "Individuals can act in ways contrary to how groups as a whole behave."
2. Therefore, "Group tendencies in no way determine individual proclivities"

One can think of a "group tendency" in terms of a raw statistic (mere correlation) or else in terms of a causally grounded statistic (a causal correlation).

Your claim is at least arguable on the former case, in the event that you define "determine" in a particular way. But my point is that we are in the latter case and not the former case with certain behaviors, such as fertilizing ova and becoming pregnant:

My species and gender determine the range and distribution of behaviors available to me as a human male. I can impregnate, but I cannot give birth. — hypericin

So we have a group tendency: males tend to fertilize ova. With regard to your thesis the question arises: does this group tendency determine individual proclivities, or not? Does the fact that males have a power mean that individual males will tend to exercise that power? The answer is actually "yes," and the instinctual drive to procreate is built in to such an answer. For Aristotle the fact that a species has a power to do X and a strong drive to do X means that the individual members of the species will in fact do X, and yet this does not mean that the act is infrustrable (i.e. it does not mean that every individual necessarily does X).

The only reason this is obfuscated is because much modern ethics has this bizarre fixation on "ought" as only applying to a sui generis sort of "moral obligation." Yet even after centuries of this, we still don't use the word "ought" in this way. "You ought to try the chicken," or "she likes you, you ought to ask here out," do not imply "you are morally obligated to eat this chicken," or "you are morally obligated to ask our friend out on a date." — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up:

I suppose, if we face objections here we can allow that it is an axiom of practical reason that: "it is true that one ought to choose the better over the worse, the more choiceworthy over the less, etc." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Aquinas:

Consequently the first principle of practical reason is one founded on the notion of good, viz. that "good is that which all things seek after." Hence this is the first precept of law, that "good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided." All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this: so that whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man's good (or evil) belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something to be done or avoided. — Aquinas, ST I-11.94.2 - What are the precepts of natural law?

The nub is whether predicates like "good" and "better" are truth-apt or can be "factual." What you've rightly pointed out is that, regardless of what one says when they are in their "philosophy mode," in everyday life we take it for granted that such predicates are truth-apt.

- No worries. There are many extremely antagonistic posters in this thread, so I am trying to write heavily syllogistic posts and then stick to what I've said. I will try to get back to this tomorrow.

In which case, my bad. — javra

No worries.

The thread considers gender in terms of social roles, and one of the theses I explicitly opposed in the post you responded to is the thesis "that differences between males and females do not flow out into the social lives of human beings."

So we can infer that one of the theses I was arguing for was: <differences between males and females do flow out into the social lives of human beings>. This involves the corollary that sex bears on social roles.

I already quoted you in the post I gave. — javra

Right, and as I already pointed out, I have no idea how your response is supposed to be a response to the quote you quoted. It's as if you were responding to a post that I never wrote, but that you instead created in your head and then imputed to me.

- I would suggest trying to find a thesis that I actually defend within the post you want to respond to, quote that thesis, and then respond to that thesis. That's a good way to interact with the ideas I am presenting. In other words: try arguing with things I've said, rather than things I've not said.

For example, look at the way I began the post:

how can you claim that "group tendencies in no way determine individual proclivities"? — Leontiskos

That's a telltale sign that I am going to argue against the thesis within quotation marks.

A little head’s up: Many (quite many, actually) of us men and women do not engage in sexual behaviors with others with the intend of procreation in the form of begetting offspring. — javra

A little head's up: I never claimed anything to the contrary.

Sure, although I am more familiar with Catholics criticizing that distinction to be honest. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's fair. Although I see a lot of Orthodox picking up de Lubac's thesis nowadays, it is still primarily Catholics.

I only brought it up because "natural" in the common, secular philosophical usage tends to exclude any sort of "transcendent" end (I do not like the term here, but it is how it is usually labeled). And this tends to simply exclude the rational appetites such that there are only "intellectual pleasures" to the extent that one finds "activities of the mind" (be they literature, philosophy, or video games) "pleasing."

But if we take "natural" in this sense and speak to the natural law we end up with a weird sort of mismatch because there aren't really higher and lower appetites anymore (or I would argue, rational freedom) but just a sort of plurality of "natural goods" that are natural just in that they are "things men enjoy." — Count Timothy von Icarus

True. I am familiar with Ungureanu's work, and he does make interesting genealogical arguments to this effect.

Or to put it another way, I'd say natural law presupposes a certain anthropology that tends to be not so much denied today as utterly unknown. I only meant to get at a mismatch in terminology because if you begin speaking about goodness and truth as formal objects, people nowadays immediately jump to "transcendence" often understood as "supernatural," which then seems to make the law primarily revelatory rather than immanent in being, if that makes sense. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It does make sense, even though Banno took it in the exact opposite direction. But presumably with a more generous interlocutor it may have been different.

Or to put it another way, I'd say natural law presupposes a certain anthropology that tends to be not so much denied today as utterly unknown. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'd say yes and no. Such was Ratzinger's thesis, and I think it works up to a point. Yet early in the thread my claim that women do not beget/impregnate in the way that men beget/impregnate was seen as contentious, and cases like those seem to be transparent to natural law. We see the same thing with social issues such as males competing in women's sports, where natural law really does seem sufficient to answer the question.

One would not be so desperate to get a thread shut down if they thought they possessed rationally persuasive arguments against the positions with which they disagree.

I think the nature/supernature distinction is one of the grave missteps of modern thought that has unfortunately attached itself to a sort of "Neo-Thomism" (although this strain has largely gone into remission in the 20th century following de Lubac and others). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would have preferred to leave such tangential topics to the side, but given that @Banno has jumped on the tangent, I will say something. What I find is that this focus on "the nature/supernature distinction" is a kind of canard in Eastern Orthodox circles: a form of polemic against Western theology. Whatever merit such a critique has is usually greatly exaggerated.

Beyond that, the reason such a move is usually a quibble is because it doesn't often amount to anything in the hands of traditional Christians, at least when it comes to questions of morality and politics. Avoiding the "Euthyphro" objection requires adopting the same sort of moral epistemology that a nature/supernature theory adopts, namely a moral epistemology in which non-Christians are able to recognize and follow moral truths. It only becomes more than a quibble in the hands of non-traditional Christians, who are desirous to leave that moral epistemology behind. In effect, the danger with bringing up such a rarefied theological debate is hair-splitting in relation to the context where anti-religious hobbyists are keen to try to turn everything into a so-called "Euthyphro" debate.

Aquinas' own position where the natural law is not the whole of the divine law is a very sound position, and it's not clear that @Bob Ross has deviated from this.