I'm having a little trouble parsing this. Correct me if the following is not a summary of your position:
1) There might be a code or mode of behavior that, if universally adopted, would result in the greatest benefit for all involved. 2) We can do this because benefit is a natural consequence of certain behaviors. I.e., it's all in the realm of 'is.' 3) We would expect be able to model the distribution of benefit and harm under particular codes or modes of behavior, especially one that distributes that benefit in an equitable, or otherwise appropriate, way.
I agree with all of these, pretty much. However, I've put in bold the points where I think this runs into the is/ought distinction. Specifically:
- What is benefit? - What is the appropriate way to distribute it?
Other questions I'd ask are:
- Once we've defined benefit--why should we feel like we ought to be accumulating it at all? - What's to say whether the thing that we ought to be doing ought to be dictated by some sort of consequence (that we would call 'benefit') and not something more like a duty that we ought to uphold, or maybe a virtue that we ought to exemplify?
Do you have a way of deriving the answers to these later questions from the same sort of natural inquiry that we produce 'is' knowledge from? I was under the impression that this was what the crux of the problem is.
I won't go so far as to say that there aren't terms specific to ethics that are only explicable through their interrelations with each other. Then again, I have absolutely no problem with holism and I don't see why anybody else would.
Benefit, biologically and psychologically speaking, is healthy growth.
The appropriate way to distribute it is to the greatest number of individuals, since that is a higher-order of growth, the growth of not merely an individual, but of a society or even a species, or, at its broadest, of life in general. A completely individual theory of action is, at best, a pragmatism; ethics is inherently interpersonal.
There's no way to non-holistic answer that question and there doesn't have to be. It's just an axiom that benefit ought to be accumulated; it follows from the meanings of the terms. The fact that somebody can fail to want to grow in a healthy manner is pretty irrelevant; I don't have to provide reasoning for why one ought not be pathological beyond pointing out the fact that being pathological leads to harm.
What's to say that we ought to be acting in conformity with some notion of duty that is totally divorced from the reality of situations and consequences and not concerned most about actually making things better? Kant? So what? Why should I grant pure deontology the benefit of the doubt and not require it to show how ethics is coherently separable, in principle, from consequences? Oh, wait, not even Kant can do that, because it was all related to some vague notion of a "Kingdom of Ends" where, if everybody acted in accordance with Kantian duties (which are provably inconsistent), then the consequences would be best for everybody in that "Kingdom of Ends"; so, not even pure Kantian deontology can divorce itself from the postulated consequences of acting in conformity with it. Why should I grant "pure" virtue theory the benefit of the doubt and not expect an argument as to how virtue is coherently separable from the consequences of acting virtuously? Oh, wait, Aristotle didn't even try that; part of being virtuous is exercising the ability to consistently secure benefits as consequences of ones actions. Neither duty nor virtue are coherently separable from the consequences of situations, just like truth isn't coherently separable from perspectives of reality (even an all-inclusive perspective is still a perspective).
In fact, my theory probably is eudaimonia (translating eudaimonia as "flourishing", not "happiness") virtue ethics, but without the presumption that it isn't expressable using any other internally consistent set of holistically interrelated ethical terms.
1. Benefit, biologically and psychologically speaking, is healthy growth. 2. It's just an axiom that healthy growth ought to be accumulated; it follows from the meanings of the terms. 2b. (Substituting from 1 into 2) It's just an axiom that healthy growth ought to be accumulated; it follows from the meanings of the terms. 3. The fact that somebody can fail to want to grow in a healthy manner is pretty irrelevant; I don't have to provide reasoning for why one ought not be pathological beyond pointing out the fact that being pathological leads to harm. 3b. (Substituting what I infer is your definition of harm) The fact that somebody can fail to want to grow in a healthy manner is pretty irrelevant; I don't have to provide reasoning for why one ought not be pathological beyond pointing out the fact that being pathological leads to unhealthiness.
I am very sympathetic to holism in justification--I think when I use 'coherentism,' I mean something similar to what you mean by 'holism.' However, that creates the problems I was making notes about in my post: whether or not people starting from different beliefs and then changing those beliefs through holistic/coherentist justification will converge on some point.
I recognize that you have established for yourself a moral system that has a lot of internal coherence. My challenge to you is to find ways to reach outside of that system and see whether you can convince others.
Two cases:
First, myself. I think that in your original definition in (1), you are conflating two terms, rather than casting one in terms of the other. So while I agree for the sake of argument with (2), I disagree with (2b). So I remain unconvinced.
Toxie, mentioned in the post above, would also disagree with your point (1). If I understand his moral system correctly, the good in the world is compassion--in the the sense of suffering-with--for the suffering, and especially for the world's poor, who are assumed to be the most suffering. Interestingly, alleviating poverty isn't necessarily important: in the past he has told me that if given the choice between two, say, governments, one of which allowed for a universally higher standard of living but thrived on self-interest, and the other of which put everybody suffering in poverty but with everybody feeling compassionate for each other, he would choose the latter.
I think Toxie would claim that his moral system is internally coherent. I think he would also claim that it is not analytically true that benefit ought to be accrued. Can you convince him of your position? From your argument above, it sounds like your response to this would be to declare him pathological, in the sense that his moral system is psychologically and biologically unhealthy for himself and everybody else. I might agree; but there's no reason why he should give a damn about that, since he hasn't put the axiomatic normative spin on benefit that you do in (1).
Here's the rub: if you're going to allow coherentist or holistic justification, then it's just mathematically possible to have several different equally justified systems of belief. So either we need to accept relativism (or skepticism, depending on how you want to play that), or you need another constraint that further narrows that set of maximally coherent belief systems.
I'll try to address your other points later, when I find time?
Re: Meet Toxieunnamed525February 23 2006, 17:32:37 UTC
Well, with (1), you're wrong. Biological and psychological benefit is healthy growth. What is the ultimate result of anything you would want to call "beneficial" in a psychological or biological context? There's nothing wrong with wanting to continue to grow in a healthy manner, which is precisely how you should interpret "accumulate benefit".
Toxie is wrong. Compassion without desire to alleviate suffering is hollow since real compassion creates the desire to alleviate suffering.
Do I have to be able to convince anybody of my position? Not really, considering that people can stubbornly refuse to be convinced by any argument, regardless of how sound it is.
I'm not using coherentist or holistic justification, but semantics. The set of ethical terms isn't justified coherently or holistically, but they are explicated in that manner, because that's the only way you can explain foundational terms and requiring strict definitional analysis of every term is nonsensical. What justifies them? Well, I'm beginning to understand that I'm a methodological pragmatist.
Re: Meet ToxiepaulhopeFebruary 23 2006, 17:57:04 UTC
Good lord.
Could you elaborate on what 'methodological pragmatism' is, and why your espousal of it should make me take you seriously when you claim that for some reason anybody that is using substantively different ethical terms than you are is 'wrong' and 'stubbornly refus[ing] to be convinced'?
The compassion systempaulhopeFebruary 23 2006, 19:48:38 UTC
Toxie is wrong. Compassion without desire to alleviate suffering is hollow since real compassion creates the desire to alleviate suffering.
Despite all sorts of personal reasons why I am a little repulsed at having to defend Toxie's position, intellectual honesty wins out. I can't let this slide....
This objection isn't really relevant to the compassion-based system that Toxie (I think--he'll have to forgive me if I misrepresent him, I guess) espouses. What makes you think that he thinks compassion does not include the desire to alleviate suffering?
All he needs is:
ARGUMENT 1
We should maximize the good in society.
Compassion is the only good.
Conclusion: We should maximize the compassion in society.
We can even replace "compassion" with "the desire to alleviate others' suffering":
ARGUMENT 2
We should maximize the good in society.
The desire to alleviate others' suffering is the only good.
Conclusion: We should maximize the desire to alleviate others' suffering in society.
Note that the conclusion of argument 2 does NOT entail that "We should minimize suffering in society." In fact, if we believe that the desire to alleviate suffering requires that there be suffering in the world, then we could reach a very contrary conclusion.
This latter point is ultimately why I object to Toxie's point of view, I think.
But the problems with this argument, I think, are similar to the problem in yours. He holds as axiomatic that "Compassion is good." You hold as axiomatic that "Psychological and biological health is good." (where 'good' is shorthand for 'some event or object that ought to happen or exist (a lot).')
If I follow you in shifting the locus of the problem to semantics, then it seems like you and Toxie are using different ethical terms. But, as I'm sure you can see, the problem I was talking about above remains until you settle whose language you ought to be using, if any.
Re: Meet ToxiepaulhopeFebruary 23 2006, 18:00:37 UTC
Just realized typos here. Might help to clarify.
2. It's just an axiom that benefit ought to be accumulated; it follows from the meanings of the terms. 2b. (Substituting from 1 into 2) It's just an axiom that healthy growth ought to be accumulated; it follows from the meanings of the terms.
My concept of healthy growth does not have a normative aspect--it's not analytically true, to me, that I ought to accrue healthy growth (however much I may want to)
My concept of benefit does have a normative aspect--it seems analytically true, to me, that I ought to accrue benefit, whatever that is.
The constructive work you need to do is show that benefit--with its normative aspect--is identical with healthy growth. So far, I've only seen an assertion to that effect.
1) There might be a code or mode of behavior that, if universally adopted, would result in the greatest benefit for all involved.
2) We can do this because benefit is a natural consequence of certain behaviors. I.e., it's all in the realm of 'is.'
3) We would expect be able to model the distribution of benefit and harm under particular codes or modes of behavior, especially one that distributes that benefit in an equitable, or otherwise appropriate, way.
I agree with all of these, pretty much. However, I've put in bold the points where I think this runs into the is/ought distinction. Specifically:
- What is benefit?
- What is the appropriate way to distribute it?
Other questions I'd ask are:
- Once we've defined benefit--why should we feel like we ought to be accumulating it at all?
- What's to say whether the thing that we ought to be doing ought to be dictated by some sort of consequence (that we would call 'benefit') and not something more like a duty that we ought to uphold, or maybe a virtue that we ought to exemplify?
Do you have a way of deriving the answers to these later questions from the same sort of natural inquiry that we produce 'is' knowledge from? I was under the impression that this was what the crux of the problem is.
Reply
Benefit, biologically and psychologically speaking, is healthy growth.
The appropriate way to distribute it is to the greatest number of individuals, since that is a higher-order of growth, the growth of not merely an individual, but of a society or even a species, or, at its broadest, of life in general. A completely individual theory of action is, at best, a pragmatism; ethics is inherently interpersonal.
There's no way to non-holistic answer that question and there doesn't have to be. It's just an axiom that benefit ought to be accumulated; it follows from the meanings of the terms. The fact that somebody can fail to want to grow in a healthy manner is pretty irrelevant; I don't have to provide reasoning for why one ought not be pathological beyond pointing out the fact that being pathological leads to harm.
What's to say that we ought to be acting in conformity with some notion of duty that is totally divorced from the reality of situations and consequences and not concerned most about actually making things better? Kant? So what? Why should I grant pure deontology the benefit of the doubt and not require it to show how ethics is coherently separable, in principle, from consequences? Oh, wait, not even Kant can do that, because it was all related to some vague notion of a "Kingdom of Ends" where, if everybody acted in accordance with Kantian duties (which are provably inconsistent), then the consequences would be best for everybody in that "Kingdom of Ends"; so, not even pure Kantian deontology can divorce itself from the postulated consequences of acting in conformity with it. Why should I grant "pure" virtue theory the benefit of the doubt and not expect an argument as to how virtue is coherently separable from the consequences of acting virtuously? Oh, wait, Aristotle didn't even try that; part of being virtuous is exercising the ability to consistently secure benefits as consequences of ones actions. Neither duty nor virtue are coherently separable from the consequences of situations, just like truth isn't coherently separable from perspectives of reality (even an all-inclusive perspective is still a perspective).
In fact, my theory probably is eudaimonia (translating eudaimonia as "flourishing", not "happiness") virtue ethics, but without the presumption that it isn't expressable using any other internally consistent set of holistically interrelated ethical terms.
Reply
2. It's just an axiom that healthy growth ought to be accumulated; it follows from the meanings of the terms.
2b. (Substituting from 1 into 2) It's just an axiom that healthy growth ought to be accumulated; it follows from the meanings of the terms.
3. The fact that somebody can fail to want to grow in a healthy manner is pretty irrelevant; I don't have to provide reasoning for why one ought not be pathological beyond pointing out the fact that being pathological leads to harm.
3b. (Substituting what I infer is your definition of harm) The fact that somebody can fail to want to grow in a healthy manner is pretty irrelevant; I don't have to provide reasoning for why one ought not be pathological beyond pointing out the fact that being pathological leads to unhealthiness.
I am very sympathetic to holism in justification--I think when I use 'coherentism,' I mean something similar to what you mean by 'holism.' However, that creates the problems I was making notes about in my post: whether or not people starting from different beliefs and then changing those beliefs through holistic/coherentist justification will converge on some point.
I recognize that you have established for yourself a moral system that has a lot of internal coherence. My challenge to you is to find ways to reach outside of that system and see whether you can convince others.
Two cases:
I think Toxie would claim that his moral system is internally coherent. I think he would also claim that it is not analytically true that benefit ought to be accrued. Can you convince him of your position? From your argument above, it sounds like your response to this would be to declare him pathological, in the sense that his moral system is psychologically and biologically unhealthy for himself and everybody else. I might agree; but there's no reason why he should give a damn about that, since he hasn't put the axiomatic normative spin on benefit that you do in (1).
Here's the rub: if you're going to allow coherentist or holistic justification, then it's just mathematically possible to have several different equally justified systems of belief. So either we need to accept relativism (or skepticism, depending on how you want to play that), or you need another constraint that further narrows that set of maximally coherent belief systems.
I'll try to address your other points later, when I find time?
Reply
Toxie is wrong. Compassion without desire to alleviate suffering is hollow since real compassion creates the desire to alleviate suffering.
Do I have to be able to convince anybody of my position? Not really, considering that people can stubbornly refuse to be convinced by any argument, regardless of how sound it is.
I'm not using coherentist or holistic justification, but semantics. The set of ethical terms isn't justified coherently or holistically, but they are explicated in that manner, because that's the only way you can explain foundational terms and requiring strict definitional analysis of every term is nonsensical. What justifies them? Well, I'm beginning to understand that I'm a methodological pragmatist.
Reply
Could you elaborate on what 'methodological pragmatism' is, and why your espousal of it should make me take you seriously when you claim that for some reason anybody that is using substantively different ethical terms than you are is 'wrong' and 'stubbornly refus[ing] to be convinced'?
Reply
Despite all sorts of personal reasons why I am a little repulsed at having to defend Toxie's position, intellectual honesty wins out. I can't let this slide....
This objection isn't really relevant to the compassion-based system that Toxie (I think--he'll have to forgive me if I misrepresent him, I guess) espouses. What makes you think that he thinks compassion does not include the desire to alleviate suffering?
All he needs is:
ARGUMENT 1
We can even replace "compassion" with "the desire to alleviate others' suffering":
ARGUMENT 2
Note that the conclusion of argument 2 does NOT entail that "We should minimize suffering in society." In fact, if we believe that the desire to alleviate suffering requires that there be suffering in the world, then we could reach a very contrary conclusion.
This latter point is ultimately why I object to Toxie's point of view, I think.
But the problems with this argument, I think, are similar to the problem in yours. He holds as axiomatic that "Compassion is good." You hold as axiomatic that "Psychological and biological health is good." (where 'good' is shorthand for 'some event or object that ought to happen or exist (a lot).')
If I follow you in shifting the locus of the problem to semantics, then it seems like you and Toxie are using different ethical terms. But, as I'm sure you can see, the problem I was talking about above remains until you settle whose language you ought to be using, if any.
Reply
2. It's just an axiom that benefit ought to be accumulated; it follows from the meanings of the terms.
2b. (Substituting from 1 into 2) It's just an axiom that healthy growth ought to be accumulated; it follows from the meanings of the terms.
My concept of healthy growth does not have a normative aspect--it's not analytically true, to me, that I ought to accrue healthy growth (however much I may want to)
My concept of benefit does have a normative aspect--it seems analytically true, to me, that I ought to accrue benefit, whatever that is.
The constructive work you need to do is show that benefit--with its normative aspect--is identical with healthy growth. So far, I've only seen an assertion to that effect.
Reply
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