Does ought imply can?

Some philosophers think so. After all, what would be the point of demanding someone ought to do something if he can't? But it seems to me that the story of Sisyphus at least interpreted by Camus challenges this. There are somethings you ought to do even if it is doomed to failure. Perhaps building a perfectly just society or becoming a moral sage are two of these impossible ends.

A bit of chauvinism

Philosophers often face the peculiar position in any discussion with another academic that they will understand far more about their interlocutor's discipline than their interlocutor will understand anything about philosophy. However, I see many philosophers of science be quite diffident in dealing with scientists even when the topic is more philosophical in nature in regards to some science. I will be advocating more confidence and maybe a kind of chauvinism. I do think philosophers of science often understand their respective sciences more than the scientists themselves. Scientists do understand what they do obviously quite well, but they often are mired in the details and do not have a comparative and general overview of just exactly what the fundamental nature of what they are doing consists in. Philosophers of science do have this overview and should not feel presumptuous when talking about the more philosophical aspects of some scientific domain as they are usually well informed about the discipline itself and the body of philosophical literature about the philosophical aspects of it.

I've seen interviews with many physicists such as Feynman and Susskind who shamelessly will pontificate on all sorts of scientific matters outside of their area of specialization. Feynman talking about social science, Susskind about morality and evolution etc. They clearly have no clue. Physicists generally seem to have fewer qualms about discussing things outside of their expertise proclaiming all sorts of nutty things about them. Philosophers of science should do the same but the difference now is that at least philosophers of science are usually well-read and competent in the science they philosophize about.

Here's an interesting related story: Once Feynman supposedly said (paraphrasing) of the philosophy of physics "a physicist needs the philosophy of physics like a bird needs ornithology." A well known philosopher of science famously responded "If a bird could understand ornithology, it would come very handy to him.

Consent

Julian Assange is charged with several sex crimes in Sweden one of which is a very serious charge of rape. He allegedly had sex with a woman while she was asleep. This constitutes rape in Sweden and I believe in the US (and other civilized places). One of the debates within current feminist theory is what constitutes (informed) consent. The classical definition is that someone consents if they are capable of denying consent but does not do so or explicitly does so. If she is incapable of rendering consent such as if she is asleep, underage or drugged, e.g., and a man takes advantage of her, that is de jure rape. But there are varying degrees of capability for rendering consent. Someone may be semi-conscious etc. In such a state, the perpetrator's intent (whether he is justified in an expectation of her to consent if she had been conscious) may play a role in whether or not it is rape. His expectations may be justified on a pattern of previous behavior from from their relationship or from explicit consent such as if she willingly tells him to drug her and render her unconscious to have her way with her. Why she would do this is something altogether irrelevant; perhaps she has a weird fetish but if she chose to give consent to this, it seems to me to be not rape even though she would be unconscious and unable to stop the act before it starts or mid coitus. This is because he would be given reasonable expectations that she would consent had she been conscious. This, of course, doesn't mean he could do anything he likes to her sexually, just what he has reasonable expectations that she would consent to.

In certain cases it may be better to have an intermediate category for crimes that are not as serious as rape but still sex crimes (such as sexual assault) which border vague cases may be classified as.

I think the charges very serious and I had always been angry at the "progressives" like The Young Turks, Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann demeaning these charges and dismissing them when the facts are not yet available. If true under the right circumstances, it is rape, it wouldn't even be a vague instance of rape in this case if she had been completely asleep, and Assange need to pay for that if that had occurred.

Daily affirmation

I wonder if people would be more forgiving of each other's transgressions if they realized that some of these transgressions are an escape from some kind of misery, if only momentary, rather than an attempt at an unfair advantage.

Conciliationism

This debate with Roy Sorenson and David Christensen is about the topic of conciliationism which Christensen defends. This is simply the view that if you hold the belief P and you also believe that another person who is your epistemic equal holds the belief ~P, you should update your belief so that it now has half the confidence it had before. I once read another quite good paper defending this view too I think by Adam Elga.

Many philosophers found this position hard to swallow as there are many philosophical views on any subject. Philosophers may rationally (with good justification) hold the mutually exclusive views P, Q, R, S,...on the same issue. Does that mean they should dilute their confidence by as many folds since presumably all their peers are equally (or roughly so) capable?

The position is very attractive to me but it has dawned on me that there is one way to make the position in practice not as hard to swallow. One mitigating effect which in practice will not reduce one's confidence as much even in the face of contrary points of views from one's epistemic peers is especially relevant to philosophical topics.

Many philosophical points of views though prima facie contradictory are not really so under close scrutiny because it is often shown that there was a subtle difference in underlying understanding of terms. In other words, many times two (or more) opposing sides are not really at odds at all but had been "talking past one another." Both sides could have been right all along; it's just that they had been right along different lines. The debate, for example, between evidentialism and some other contradictory view on epistemology might stem from different underlying conceptions of what a belief is. Therefore, on some conception of what beliefs are, evidentialism may be more accurate a view and on another slightly different understanding (which are not first apparent to the sides arguing) the other side's version is more accurate.

It would take conceptual analysis to expose the subtle differences responsible for the confusion and pseudo-debate. In practice, I would expect that the lessening of confidence may be mitigated somewhat by this but whether enough so to satisfy many of conciliationism's criticisms is doubtful. I do think that if this is so then they would just have to lessen their confidence in their beliefs in all their philosophical ideas including their stance against conciliationism.

Zhong 忠

All this talk of moral effort and conscientiousness (忠 in classical Chinese of the Warring States period) reminded me of a story of Wittgenstein. I consider his moral views to be a weird kind of virtue ethics. His moral virtues were unconventional and much like Nietzsche who also seemed to be an unconventional virtue ethicists (his virtues were strength, courage, integrity, playfulness, and creativity), Wittgenstein seemed to value the unconventional moral virtues of not bullshitting (remaining silent when one is outside one's proper domain of knowledge), epistemic integrity, correct usages of words as they were intended (unlike how philosophers use them which caused them plenty of confusion, he thought) and "being careful". In fact once when someone asked him what he wanted as an epitaph, he responded "He was careful". To be careful is the ultimate moral compliment to Wittgenstein.

Extended discussion on the moral effort post

In an earlier post about moral effort, I said that one passage which I could not remember the cite from the Analects was a good example of the centrality Confucius put on "doing one's utmost." Carl suggested one passage (17:20) that might have been the one I was talking about. That might not have been it and I can't seem to find it but I have found the character which denotes "doing one's utmost" and other passages suggesting the centrality of the notion within classical Confucian thought.

The word that Confucius uses to mean "doing one's utmost" according to Lau's translation is Zhong (忠). Some have translated it as "conscientiousness." Today zhong means "loyalty" but not in the classical Chinese apparently.

This passage (Analects 4:15) says

"The Master said, 'Ts'an, there is a single thread binding my way together.'

Tseng Tzu assented.

After the Master had gone out, the disciple asked, 'What did he mean?'

Tseng Tzu said, 'The way of the Master consists in doing one's best and in using oneself as a measure in to gauge others. That is all.'"

Notice that it's interesting that zhong should be used together with Shu (恕 or using oneself as a measure to gauge others). There are two other passages, I believe, that puts them together again. Since moral effort is best assessed from one's own first-person perspective, we seem to be our own best moral judges in many cases, if we can be honest with ourselves. And in judging others, Confucius seems to be saying that we should judge others according to whether or not they have accomplished the ideal of zhong. Many times, this is quite difficult to attain any sort of real accuracy and sometimes nearly impossible so that Confucius seems to take an inward position to moral assessment so that he is not saying that people like some of his students are not worthy of blame but that only they can really be relatively sure of it. This is a very non judgmental stance. But there are other passages which suggest Confucius was very demanding and critical displaying the morally judgment reactive attitudes towards others. But those instances always seem to be instances where there is more clarity and thus certainty that the instance really were cases of wrongdoing even from an outside non first-person perspective. Such a case is the story of Confucius hitting a student on the head with a cane for being purposefully ignorant and flippant in a serious moral matter. It seems to me that being such is much more clear an instance of not doing one's best because almost anyone can muster enough conscientiousness and moral effort to be more serious in grave matters but it is more indeterminate whether one can suffer under the demands of a rigorous, 3 year mourning period even with substantial effort and conscientiousness.