The end and the means

[shkrobius]

http://flying-bear.livejournal.com/763151.html?thread=13228047#t13228047

Exitus acta probat written by love sick Ovid's Phyllis in her letter to Demophoon is said to be the motto of the Inquisition, the Jesuits, or Machiavelli's demonic invention. The

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[shkrobius]

My music tastes cause endless grief to my wife because the line is drawn at Mozart. I like contapuntal music, Baroque, the Italians. She likes the Romantics. To me it barely qualifies as music, with few exceptions. So the music I like best stems from the period when music was considered applied mathematics. This dichotomy between music and physics that you feel so strongly, I do not feel it. To me it is two complementary averbal ways of thinking about the world, each based on its own harmonic rules. These are not meant to be different things, these were dissociated by tone-deaf and science-deaf people, like Rousseau. Ethics is there, too, in this fusion area. To me, the Scripture is this music crystallized, made into words and illustrated by poetry, history and lore. I can see I am not alone, it has been heard before, by people having better ear for it. But this transcribed music and the rules of composition that it dictates is not the same thing as composing music or coming with new physics. It can decide whether the tone is harmonius but it cannot produce a harmonius tone, and sometimes atonality is what is needed by the music itself. So I think that its purpose is developing the ear; much like the purpose of physical theory is, actually, the development of physical intuition. This intuition is much more important than any theory itself, because it is creative. The theory is dead. If you do not believe me (and I vouch it not only for myself by many much more talented scientists I know), ask "flying-bear". Strangely enough, he has asked me the same question: how close is chemistry to music composition?

May be it is scary to imagine that ethics is like music, but best physics is also like music.

[dennett]

если все так, как вы говорите, непонятно, отчего мы спорим.
делай что в голову взбредет, называй это моральной или музыкальной интуицией, и никто тебе и слова не сможет сказать - в музыке по крайней мере так - если не очень громко.

только вот в физике еще маленькое условие - надо чтобы экспериментам удовлетворяло и что-то объясняло.
а в этике - чтобы не было кровавой бани и газовых камер...

если это выполняется, называй как хочешь - теорией, интуицией, сном черной королевы, радостями белого кролика - мне все равно.

[shkrobius]

только вот в физике еще маленькое условие..

So it's in ethics: I have to be certain that everyone hears the same music. White rabbits and black queens do not come to everyone.

[dennett]

--I have to be certain that everyone hears the same music.
-Ага, видите, вы уже сделали первый маленький шажок от мелодии к теории. В музыке никаких подобных требований нет. Есть конечно пожелание, чтобы все слышали одно и то же, но в определении музыки это не заложено. В этике же - в самом определении есть идея, что все слышат одно и то же. Или у вас другая идея?

Вообще, из-за чего вам недостаточно требования, чтобы не было кровавой бани?

[shkrobius]

Или у вас другая идея?
No, it is this very idea of normativity.

из-за чего вам недостаточно требования, чтобы не было кровавой бани?
Because that's just the extreme case of a much more general pattern of disappearance. We've discussed it once before. Only a handful of ethical systems are compatible with long range survival and even fewer are compatible with civilization and survival. When it comes to preventing the bloodbath it is usually very late. You operate in the sphere were causes and effects are separated by hundreds and thousands of years, and these are very complex and nontrivial. Even observing these causes and effects is problematic, rationalizing these is more problematic still. We have some vague idea what works, we do not have the access to the countless abortive experiments in the moral sphere. Those that we witness today tend to become shorter and shorter. Ethics, among other things, is the rationality of our very existence and, in this sense, it is a law as objective as the laws of physics. But the Divine will is the rationality of all existence. The alternatives can be chosen and chosen freely, but those lead to annihilation, in so many steps, the very existence of humanity is not compatible with these alternatives. The effect can be slow or very dramatic, but the end is the same. Religious ethics, as I see it, starts from this premise: that human mind is fundamentally incapable of parsing through these causes and effects and arriving at the guiding principles underlying these causes and these effects. But inhuman mind can and in its goodness found a way of sharing these insights. These are most critical for our existence. How that is done is a separate matter. The important thing is that the normative character follows from the objective truth of one's knowledge of humanity which is greater than any knowledge we ourselves can produce about ourselves. It is the same sense in which your genes "know" more of yourself than you have knowledge of yourself. There is nothing obvious about the commandments and it always appears that cutting corners is a better way, and it is always preferred in a short run. The advantages accrue to slowly on the scale of human life to be recognized at all. It is like the question where babies come from. If you know the answer, it seems obviously correct. But nobody has arrived on this answer on one's own. That our existence depends on the commandments may appear obvious in the retrospect, perhaps the subject of some theory. But nobody arrived at this idea on one's own. The best proof of that is that even the benefit of hindsight and direct evidence of one bloodbath after another fails time and again. Arriving at these principles by mere watching and contemplation seems impossible to me. Indeed, what amount of observation do you need to conclude that, say, idol worshipping always ends badly for the idol worshippers. Always? Why always? What if we worship free markets instead of craven images? There are too many possibilities to arrive at these very general insights by trial and error.

[dennett]

ага, я со всеми этими аргументами согласен, и сам хотел вам их высказать.

и именно поэтому меня так удивила древняя ницшеанская идея об уравнивании этического и эстетического. я не ожидал услышать ее от вас.