There seems to be a constellation of things that are lie-like and people may or may not view them as lies. There seems to be three elements of a traditional lie: deception, saying something the sayer believes false, and an element that is viewed as worthy of condemnation. If a speech act has at minimum any two of these elements, there is a chance it may be construed a lie.
Consider this scenario where someone says something he doesn't believe for the sake of hurting someone else but he does so without trying to deceive the person (or anyone else). If Bob gets angry at his wife Jean and tells her "You're a fat!" out of spite, even though neither he nor Jean thinks of Jean as fat, then has he lied? He said something he doesn't believe true and his act may be generally considered condemnable but it's not deceptive. We can think of other examples with any two of the elements without the other. It seems that there may be many things that are lies but have only two, but any two combination, of the elements to be a lie while traditional lies have all three elements. Where to draw a line between those that have two elements that are lies and those that don't is contingent. I doubt there is anything that has just one of the elements that people will consider a lie but I could be wrong.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
What's a lie?
It's not clear to many philosophers what a lie is. There are some definitions but all are problematic for one reason or another. The traditional philosophical definition defines a lie as something said which the sayer believes false with the intention of deceiving someone. There are problems where there are speech acts that don't seem to fall definitively in the lie category under any definition I've heard or thought up. Take "lies" involving the use of equivocations or implicatures as the most obvious examples. I don't know if these issues involving these speech acts will ever be resolved; that is I don't know if there is a fact of the matter about these speech acts that makes them lies or not. They may just lie (no pun intended) in some gray area.
However, philosophers have also debated whether or not bald-faced lies are really lies. Bald-face "lies" do not involve deception. Consider this scenario. A student who has been caught cheating is summoned to the dean's office at her college. It is the policy of this college that no matter how strong the evidence is for cheating, a student must explicitly admit to the act of cheating to be subject to disciplinary actions. The dean has conclusive proof that she cheated (perhaps he has security photos). Both she and the dean knows she has cheated. Moreover, she knows that he knows she cheated because he shows her the photos of her in the act. But she says that she didn't cheat so as to not be subject to those disciplinary actions. Has she lied to the dean?
Apparently, everyday people will say a definitive 'yes' as was determined in a study by an "experimental philosopher". This suggests that a true definition of lying that draw boundaries inclusive of bald-faced lies (e.i., without the deception criterion) will be the far more accurate definition. One of the authors (Don Fallis) favors his own definition which the study suggests is the one that best fits the responses from the study subjects among several rival definitions including the traditional philosophical definition (originally from Bernard Williams, I believe).
However, I am not so sure about that. I'm agnostic between the traditional definition and Fallis's. There is a possibility that people who classify bald-face lies do so not because they think of them in the same way as more straightforward lies but because they have some alternate notion of "lying" which they realize at some level are misnomers.
Take this example. If asked, most people will probably say that a killer whale (Orcinus orca) is a whale. But the term "killer whale" is a misnomer as these creatures (orcas) are not really whales at all (they are dolphins or members of the family Delphinidae).
Now if one were to show people a picture of different kinds of dolphins (something most people presumably don't think of as whales), next to a picture of different kinds of whales, say humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus)and right whales (Balaena australis), and show them a picture of a killer whale and let them "classify" where best the orca belongs, I think we'd get an interesting and more nuanced picture, one that is more accurate of people's concept of marine animals (cetaceans in this case). I think more people will cluster the killer whale with the dolphins than the (true) whales.
Just because people may think that killer whales are whales does not mean that they will have a non nuanced conception of whale-hood and may have even conflicting concepts of whales. They may use "whale" differently for different purposes fully but implicitly acknowledging salient differences. Likewise, I suggest may be the case with lies.
I say a better way to test people's implicit, intuitive understandings of the definition of lying and whether or not bald-faced lies are really lies in the same sense as straightforward lies is to set up a similar thing.
Have at one end, descriptions of scenarios where there clearly are lies (straightforward lies which involves deception) while at the other end, have scenarios describing intentional speech acts that the teller believes false but without the intent to deceive and are uncontroversially not lies (such as instances of sarcasm, telling of jokes, or instances of acting or mimicking). The later are clearly not lies and most people in the study above have attested to that fact. Then ask people where bald-faced lies best fit in that conceptual space. I think you'd get a much more conflicting picture with roughly equal numbers of people choosing one end and others picking the other end and many choosing somewhere inbetween. This may show that bald-faced lies are in some gray area much like equivocations and implicatures rather than clear instances of lies.
However, philosophers have also debated whether or not bald-faced lies are really lies. Bald-face "lies" do not involve deception. Consider this scenario. A student who has been caught cheating is summoned to the dean's office at her college. It is the policy of this college that no matter how strong the evidence is for cheating, a student must explicitly admit to the act of cheating to be subject to disciplinary actions. The dean has conclusive proof that she cheated (perhaps he has security photos). Both she and the dean knows she has cheated. Moreover, she knows that he knows she cheated because he shows her the photos of her in the act. But she says that she didn't cheat so as to not be subject to those disciplinary actions. Has she lied to the dean?
Apparently, everyday people will say a definitive 'yes' as was determined in a study by an "experimental philosopher". This suggests that a true definition of lying that draw boundaries inclusive of bald-faced lies (e.i., without the deception criterion) will be the far more accurate definition. One of the authors (Don Fallis) favors his own definition which the study suggests is the one that best fits the responses from the study subjects among several rival definitions including the traditional philosophical definition (originally from Bernard Williams, I believe).
However, I am not so sure about that. I'm agnostic between the traditional definition and Fallis's. There is a possibility that people who classify bald-face lies do so not because they think of them in the same way as more straightforward lies but because they have some alternate notion of "lying" which they realize at some level are misnomers.
Take this example. If asked, most people will probably say that a killer whale (Orcinus orca) is a whale. But the term "killer whale" is a misnomer as these creatures (orcas) are not really whales at all (they are dolphins or members of the family Delphinidae).
Now if one were to show people a picture of different kinds of dolphins (something most people presumably don't think of as whales), next to a picture of different kinds of whales, say humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus)and right whales (Balaena australis), and show them a picture of a killer whale and let them "classify" where best the orca belongs, I think we'd get an interesting and more nuanced picture, one that is more accurate of people's concept of marine animals (cetaceans in this case). I think more people will cluster the killer whale with the dolphins than the (true) whales.
Just because people may think that killer whales are whales does not mean that they will have a non nuanced conception of whale-hood and may have even conflicting concepts of whales. They may use "whale" differently for different purposes fully but implicitly acknowledging salient differences. Likewise, I suggest may be the case with lies.
I say a better way to test people's implicit, intuitive understandings of the definition of lying and whether or not bald-faced lies are really lies in the same sense as straightforward lies is to set up a similar thing.
Have at one end, descriptions of scenarios where there clearly are lies (straightforward lies which involves deception) while at the other end, have scenarios describing intentional speech acts that the teller believes false but without the intent to deceive and are uncontroversially not lies (such as instances of sarcasm, telling of jokes, or instances of acting or mimicking). The later are clearly not lies and most people in the study above have attested to that fact. Then ask people where bald-faced lies best fit in that conceptual space. I think you'd get a much more conflicting picture with roughly equal numbers of people choosing one end and others picking the other end and many choosing somewhere inbetween. This may show that bald-faced lies are in some gray area much like equivocations and implicatures rather than clear instances of lies.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Interesting debate between philosophers of biological science
There's an interesting debate going on in the comments section of a critique of Fodor's and Piatelli-Palmarini's new book on evolution and natural selection. It takes place among some other philosophers of science, some of whom are defending Fodor's Piatelli-Palmarini's work and other criticizing it.
Part of the debate touches on old debates between those who think that evolution is primarily driven by filters like genetic drift, and chemical and physical laws and those evolutionary theorists who posit that natural selection is the primary filter. This has been fiercely debated for over 40 years and there is no consensus yet.
I think philosophers have a lot to contribute here because I think ultimately it will be largely settled on conceptual reconfigurations and clarification. Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini seem to also levy much more broadly philosophical skeptical criticisms at natural selection which doesn't seem to be successful as the article and some of the posters in the comments section point out.
Part of the debate touches on old debates between those who think that evolution is primarily driven by filters like genetic drift, and chemical and physical laws and those evolutionary theorists who posit that natural selection is the primary filter. This has been fiercely debated for over 40 years and there is no consensus yet.
I think philosophers have a lot to contribute here because I think ultimately it will be largely settled on conceptual reconfigurations and clarification. Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini seem to also levy much more broadly philosophical skeptical criticisms at natural selection which doesn't seem to be successful as the article and some of the posters in the comments section point out.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Marilyn McCord Adams on god and rational optimism
In this podcast, McCord Adams claims that it is a necessary condition to be a "rational optimist" to believe in god. The first time I heard this podcats, I couldn't help but be impressed with this line of argument as it does have its appeal to me despite the fact that I thought it very much wrong. I was impressed by its originality and its odd perspective on things. I couldn't at first put my finger on specifically what was wrong with it but now I know. It's wrong for several possible reasons. Since I've never read her books or papers, I have to go on what she said in the podcats but it seems to me to be a wholly fallacious argument due to an equivocation on the word "optimism" or because it makes the fatalistic fallacy.
First of all, her argument doesn't purport to argue for the existence of God based on ontological or cosmological or even, strictly speaking, ethical considerations like most traditional theistic arguments (it's a "practical" argument much like Kant's). It seems that her argument is aimed at a charge of irrationality of holding both that one can be optimistic and atheist. So it's only directed at optimistic atheists and will not work against those who are pessimist about the chances for future human goodness and the reduction of evils. She says that it's inconsistent to both be rational and optimistic given the history of horrendous evils in the world. This history is supposed to count as evidence of the future state of things. She claims it's a necessary condition to believe in god if we are rationally optimistic because history has shown that things won't likely turn that much better in terms of evils committed. It will take a supernatural will to right all the wrongs and truly make a better world. That's what I take her argument to consists in. So if it is necessary to believe in god to be rationally optimistic in this world, optimistic atheists must abandon either their optimism or their atheism or else concede that their non belief in god is irrational! Since atheists aren't likely to abandon their optimism, to avoid charges of irrationality, they must bite the bullet and adopt a belief in god to justify that optimism.
My first response to her argument for God's existence is for "existential" reasons. She seems to equivocate on "optimism." I understand optimism to be either an affective attitude (or feeling) for a positive outcome or it could be a belief in the likelihood of that positive outcome. So she seems to argue that a rational and realistic atheist is forced to concede that since humans have not improved that much in our basic bad treatment of each other (which is a huge and largely unsubstantiated assumption), we must adopt a negative belief based on our history that we will not be able to improve and that our affective state of positive feelings about improvement and redemption of evils should follow our "pessimist" but wholly justified belief.
Now for the sake of argument, I won't deny that humans have not bettered themselves in regard to the evils we commit.
I also would say that for the most part our attitudes whether positive or negative on life should follow our (rational) beliefs. In other words, normatively, we should have affective states concordant or at least not at tensions with our beliefs. If I know that house cats are safe, tend to be nice, and make good pets, I should not fear them or have negative attitudes (or affective states towards them) regarding potential for harming me. If I know that the president is a mean, nasty and untrustworthy person, I should not still have warm gooey feelings of inspiration regarding his character traits. That much is clear.
But on occasion, we should not have belief concordant affective states associated with our beliefs (or the affective aspect of "aliefs") and in fact we should have discordant affective states.
Consider if your wife or husband had cancer and all the best doctors based on the latest scientific findings on the current state of his/her condition said he/she had little chance of recovery and will die soon. So even though we should, in some sense, have a pessimistic outlook on the chances of survival of our spouse, we should adopt a more roseate affective state towards their full recovery. We should have positive feelings towards their chances of recovery even though we believe (and it is possible that they will rationally believe too) that their chances are slim. We should have these positive feelings towards full recovery despite the justified beliefs. In fact, we wouldn't be good spouses, friends, family members, etc if we didn't adopt these feelings in just these kinds of circumstances.
Consider the concept of hope. I can hope that you, my best friend, will win the lottery the next time you buy a ticket despite the fact that I know you will have little chances of winning and I can be fully wanting you winning it. There's nothing irrational about this. In some sense, that's being optimistic about you winning the lottery. So the concept of hope involves a lot of these optimistic feelings (attitudes or affective states)without there even being a necessity built into the concept for an optimistic belief. Indeed, we hope for things all the time for ourselves and our loved ones without believing they are likely to befall us. We also sometimes hope that the wicked will get their just deserts even on occasions when we believe that there's little chances of it happening. Reality is simply irrelevant to this kind of attitude. The expression of the positive "optimistic" attitudes in hoping for the best is a gesture of good will and required for our being good human beings.
Even when there is no chance of a positive outcome, we may still have good reason to be hopeful. Consider the doctor protagonists in Camus' The Plague. He can work like he does and presumably have the same optimistic attitudes (despite his actual beliefs) as he does as if his situation had not been that dire without being irrational. We may have "existential" reasons to adopt such feelings despite knowing there is no chance of a positive outcome not because we know it will make a difference in the outcome but because we are doing what's required to be worthy of that positive outcome.
So I would argue that an atheist can be rationally optimistic because we can hope for much better even if we believe there's little chances of that happening. I'll call this kind of optimistic atheist the "hopeful atheist". So this shows that McCord Adams is wrong on the necessity part of her claim but maybe she is right that most or many atheists should revise their beliefs on god because most atheists optimism is based not on this kind of reality irrelevant attitude from hope but based on not being able to come to terms with reality? That is, if they fully embraced rational beliefs about reality, they would come to see that their attitudes had been wrong. I'll call these atheists "blinders atheists". Then her argument would only be aimed at these blinders atheists and would be ineffective against hopeful atheists. This then is a much more plausible albeit far less strong a claim (again, assuming that her claim that history shows there is no improvement in the perpetration of evils).
I think that McCord Adams also makes a fatalistic fallacy because we can argue that even though it's unlikely that there will be much less evil in the future, for that possibility to happen, it will be much more likely if we adopt a more optimistic attitude. So that will gives us rational reasons to adopt it because it will raise our chances to improve the world even if that improvement will not make it probable that it will.
First of all, her argument doesn't purport to argue for the existence of God based on ontological or cosmological or even, strictly speaking, ethical considerations like most traditional theistic arguments (it's a "practical" argument much like Kant's). It seems that her argument is aimed at a charge of irrationality of holding both that one can be optimistic and atheist. So it's only directed at optimistic atheists and will not work against those who are pessimist about the chances for future human goodness and the reduction of evils. She says that it's inconsistent to both be rational and optimistic given the history of horrendous evils in the world. This history is supposed to count as evidence of the future state of things. She claims it's a necessary condition to believe in god if we are rationally optimistic because history has shown that things won't likely turn that much better in terms of evils committed. It will take a supernatural will to right all the wrongs and truly make a better world. That's what I take her argument to consists in. So if it is necessary to believe in god to be rationally optimistic in this world, optimistic atheists must abandon either their optimism or their atheism or else concede that their non belief in god is irrational! Since atheists aren't likely to abandon their optimism, to avoid charges of irrationality, they must bite the bullet and adopt a belief in god to justify that optimism.
My first response to her argument for God's existence is for "existential" reasons. She seems to equivocate on "optimism." I understand optimism to be either an affective attitude (or feeling) for a positive outcome or it could be a belief in the likelihood of that positive outcome. So she seems to argue that a rational and realistic atheist is forced to concede that since humans have not improved that much in our basic bad treatment of each other (which is a huge and largely unsubstantiated assumption), we must adopt a negative belief based on our history that we will not be able to improve and that our affective state of positive feelings about improvement and redemption of evils should follow our "pessimist" but wholly justified belief.
Now for the sake of argument, I won't deny that humans have not bettered themselves in regard to the evils we commit.
I also would say that for the most part our attitudes whether positive or negative on life should follow our (rational) beliefs. In other words, normatively, we should have affective states concordant or at least not at tensions with our beliefs. If I know that house cats are safe, tend to be nice, and make good pets, I should not fear them or have negative attitudes (or affective states towards them) regarding potential for harming me. If I know that the president is a mean, nasty and untrustworthy person, I should not still have warm gooey feelings of inspiration regarding his character traits. That much is clear.
But on occasion, we should not have belief concordant affective states associated with our beliefs (or the affective aspect of "aliefs") and in fact we should have discordant affective states.
Consider if your wife or husband had cancer and all the best doctors based on the latest scientific findings on the current state of his/her condition said he/she had little chance of recovery and will die soon. So even though we should, in some sense, have a pessimistic outlook on the chances of survival of our spouse, we should adopt a more roseate affective state towards their full recovery. We should have positive feelings towards their chances of recovery even though we believe (and it is possible that they will rationally believe too) that their chances are slim. We should have these positive feelings towards full recovery despite the justified beliefs. In fact, we wouldn't be good spouses, friends, family members, etc if we didn't adopt these feelings in just these kinds of circumstances.
Consider the concept of hope. I can hope that you, my best friend, will win the lottery the next time you buy a ticket despite the fact that I know you will have little chances of winning and I can be fully wanting you winning it. There's nothing irrational about this. In some sense, that's being optimistic about you winning the lottery. So the concept of hope involves a lot of these optimistic feelings (attitudes or affective states)without there even being a necessity built into the concept for an optimistic belief. Indeed, we hope for things all the time for ourselves and our loved ones without believing they are likely to befall us. We also sometimes hope that the wicked will get their just deserts even on occasions when we believe that there's little chances of it happening. Reality is simply irrelevant to this kind of attitude. The expression of the positive "optimistic" attitudes in hoping for the best is a gesture of good will and required for our being good human beings.
Even when there is no chance of a positive outcome, we may still have good reason to be hopeful. Consider the doctor protagonists in Camus' The Plague. He can work like he does and presumably have the same optimistic attitudes (despite his actual beliefs) as he does as if his situation had not been that dire without being irrational. We may have "existential" reasons to adopt such feelings despite knowing there is no chance of a positive outcome not because we know it will make a difference in the outcome but because we are doing what's required to be worthy of that positive outcome.
So I would argue that an atheist can be rationally optimistic because we can hope for much better even if we believe there's little chances of that happening. I'll call this kind of optimistic atheist the "hopeful atheist". So this shows that McCord Adams is wrong on the necessity part of her claim but maybe she is right that most or many atheists should revise their beliefs on god because most atheists optimism is based not on this kind of reality irrelevant attitude from hope but based on not being able to come to terms with reality? That is, if they fully embraced rational beliefs about reality, they would come to see that their attitudes had been wrong. I'll call these atheists "blinders atheists". Then her argument would only be aimed at these blinders atheists and would be ineffective against hopeful atheists. This then is a much more plausible albeit far less strong a claim (again, assuming that her claim that history shows there is no improvement in the perpetration of evils).
I think that McCord Adams also makes a fatalistic fallacy because we can argue that even though it's unlikely that there will be much less evil in the future, for that possibility to happen, it will be much more likely if we adopt a more optimistic attitude. So that will gives us rational reasons to adopt it because it will raise our chances to improve the world even if that improvement will not make it probable that it will.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Definition of Genocide
What does 'genocide' mean? The legal definition (according to the jurist and legal scholar Raphael Lemkin) is
and includes
There are several conceptual difficulties in this interesting and ethically and politically important concept. Thus philosophers (political, language, social, and ethical philosophers) should be interested in this topic but there doesn't seem to be much.
Take forcible sterilizations of a group or the forced transferring and adoptions of a group to another. What happens if these sterilizations are not at all effective? Then is this an incidence of "attempted genocide"?
What about political "genocide"? Was the systematic extermination of the Kulaks during Stalin reign or the mass persecution of "counter revolutionaries" during the Cultural Revolution genocide?
What about the deliberate and systematic "destruction" of a group through cultural assimilation? The group's identity is lost but the group continues to exist qua some other identity.
I think racism is a fundamental aspect of what makes genocide evil and thus political/cultural "genocide," unless the political/cultural affiliation of a victimized group is also inextricably conflated with an ethno-racial identity in the eyes of the perpetrators and that this group is targeted because of their affiliation with that group qua ethno-racial group, it is not real genocide. The hallmark genocide of the 20th century is the Holocaust. It is a prototype for genocide. Jews were killed not because of their religion but because of their ethno-racial classification in the eyes of the Nazis. You can change your religion but your ethno-racial classification is due to your "essence" and is passed down through "blood" from generation to generation. So the intent (mens rea) has to be of a racist nature as depicted within the viewpoint of the perpetrators of genocide. Race and racialist thinking has to be part of the intent in a true genocide.
Additionally, genocide must be "systematic". But what does this mean? What if a non political body such as the entertainment industry suddenly decided to conspire against a minority group and portray individuals within that group as evil which then influences individuals in society to form mobs and lynch members of that minority group on a massive scale? Is that systematic enough? Does the "deliberate and systematic" nature of committing genocide have to be originating within a governmental body? What about racist grassroots organizations composed of nothing but ordinary citizens that happen to gain power and influence? What about a society that's a participatory democracy that has a referendum about whether or not to genocide one of its minority groups and then decides to do so?
There's lots of gray and ambiguity here.
Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.
and includes
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
There are several conceptual difficulties in this interesting and ethically and politically important concept. Thus philosophers (political, language, social, and ethical philosophers) should be interested in this topic but there doesn't seem to be much.
Take forcible sterilizations of a group or the forced transferring and adoptions of a group to another. What happens if these sterilizations are not at all effective? Then is this an incidence of "attempted genocide"?
What about political "genocide"? Was the systematic extermination of the Kulaks during Stalin reign or the mass persecution of "counter revolutionaries" during the Cultural Revolution genocide?
What about the deliberate and systematic "destruction" of a group through cultural assimilation? The group's identity is lost but the group continues to exist qua some other identity.
I think racism is a fundamental aspect of what makes genocide evil and thus political/cultural "genocide," unless the political/cultural affiliation of a victimized group is also inextricably conflated with an ethno-racial identity in the eyes of the perpetrators and that this group is targeted because of their affiliation with that group qua ethno-racial group, it is not real genocide. The hallmark genocide of the 20th century is the Holocaust. It is a prototype for genocide. Jews were killed not because of their religion but because of their ethno-racial classification in the eyes of the Nazis. You can change your religion but your ethno-racial classification is due to your "essence" and is passed down through "blood" from generation to generation. So the intent (mens rea) has to be of a racist nature as depicted within the viewpoint of the perpetrators of genocide. Race and racialist thinking has to be part of the intent in a true genocide.
Additionally, genocide must be "systematic". But what does this mean? What if a non political body such as the entertainment industry suddenly decided to conspire against a minority group and portray individuals within that group as evil which then influences individuals in society to form mobs and lynch members of that minority group on a massive scale? Is that systematic enough? Does the "deliberate and systematic" nature of committing genocide have to be originating within a governmental body? What about racist grassroots organizations composed of nothing but ordinary citizens that happen to gain power and influence? What about a society that's a participatory democracy that has a referendum about whether or not to genocide one of its minority groups and then decides to do so?
There's lots of gray and ambiguity here.
Friendship and moral luck
Think about how friendships are formed. They are highly contingent. If you had not gone to that party/class/mall-store, etc, etc at that specific time, you'd never have met that best friend. Friendships are very much serendipitous and dependent on the "accidents" of life. But many "falling outs" of friendships are also quite dependent on contingencies. They especially draw out this contingency in a very interesting way I think.
Most friendships of course breakup not because of bad blood or due to changes in personalities/values of one or more of the persons involved but because one friend will move away or get married or fall into a different social circle, etc. But I am interested in the falling out of friendships due to a fight and subsequent bad blood. It seems that people give excuses as to why they now do not wish to be friends with their former friend. They will say that their former friend is no longer the person they befriended or that they never had been that person but they mistakingly believed their former friends were and after the fight, it was revealed that there's not much to like about their former friends.
But it seems that many of these fights that result in these types of falling out are highly contingent and chance circumstances could have easily resulted in them not having the fight in the first place (e.g., they could have not had a particular discussion, not borrowed money at a certain time, not said a particular thing, in a particular mood or that it might not have been misunderstood because it was worded in some way, etc). If circumstances did not result in that fight, the friendship would have continued in its happy course, perhaps even indefinitely. However, once it happens, former friends seem to reappraise their former friend's qualities. Whereas before, they might have given reasons for liking their friends, they now see them as having negative qualities they did not "see" before.
The forming and reforming of friendships are also highly contingent (and thus the associated feelings of positive/negative evaluation). Do characters change that suddenly? Are we that easily deceived by our friends' qualities? No, likely not; it's our viewpoints that have changed and are so easily and contingently changed. The meaning of the relationship has changed itself.
Now since the fight that resulted in this falling out was sudden and contingent, it couldn't likely have been the person that changed that resulted in the different reappraisals. So people might say that "I was wrong about X. He's really a terrible person. Now I know better." Whereas just before the fight he would have had very good things to say about X. In other words, the person would have to say that he was wrong about his former feelings for X. But is he now right or is his former self right about X? The luck aspect of breaking friendships in the way I've described seem to render evaluation's of the positive/negative qualities of friends highly dependent on contingencies (luck). There's always some counter-factual that very well will reduce all friendships to a falling out of this sort in some possible world. Had your blond haired "Aryan" friend lived in Nazi Germany and you happened to have been a Jew, there's a real chance he could have been a Nazi and turned on you and persecuted you. Even knowing and contemplating this vividly could weaken the emotional bonds between you two. Little circumstances that result in "beef" and long-term bad blood usually get started by events far less dramatic but more mundane than this example.
So it seems that our appraisals of people such as our friends are highly contingent are perhaps not even subject to accuracy or truth evaluations as they seem to be. We just like many of the people we like and dislike many of the people we dislike not so much because they are, in reality, such and such but because of mere happenstance in a certain perspective that has evolved the way it has.
Most friendships of course breakup not because of bad blood or due to changes in personalities/values of one or more of the persons involved but because one friend will move away or get married or fall into a different social circle, etc. But I am interested in the falling out of friendships due to a fight and subsequent bad blood. It seems that people give excuses as to why they now do not wish to be friends with their former friend. They will say that their former friend is no longer the person they befriended or that they never had been that person but they mistakingly believed their former friends were and after the fight, it was revealed that there's not much to like about their former friends.
But it seems that many of these fights that result in these types of falling out are highly contingent and chance circumstances could have easily resulted in them not having the fight in the first place (e.g., they could have not had a particular discussion, not borrowed money at a certain time, not said a particular thing, in a particular mood or that it might not have been misunderstood because it was worded in some way, etc). If circumstances did not result in that fight, the friendship would have continued in its happy course, perhaps even indefinitely. However, once it happens, former friends seem to reappraise their former friend's qualities. Whereas before, they might have given reasons for liking their friends, they now see them as having negative qualities they did not "see" before.
The forming and reforming of friendships are also highly contingent (and thus the associated feelings of positive/negative evaluation). Do characters change that suddenly? Are we that easily deceived by our friends' qualities? No, likely not; it's our viewpoints that have changed and are so easily and contingently changed. The meaning of the relationship has changed itself.
Now since the fight that resulted in this falling out was sudden and contingent, it couldn't likely have been the person that changed that resulted in the different reappraisals. So people might say that "I was wrong about X. He's really a terrible person. Now I know better." Whereas just before the fight he would have had very good things to say about X. In other words, the person would have to say that he was wrong about his former feelings for X. But is he now right or is his former self right about X? The luck aspect of breaking friendships in the way I've described seem to render evaluation's of the positive/negative qualities of friends highly dependent on contingencies (luck). There's always some counter-factual that very well will reduce all friendships to a falling out of this sort in some possible world. Had your blond haired "Aryan" friend lived in Nazi Germany and you happened to have been a Jew, there's a real chance he could have been a Nazi and turned on you and persecuted you. Even knowing and contemplating this vividly could weaken the emotional bonds between you two. Little circumstances that result in "beef" and long-term bad blood usually get started by events far less dramatic but more mundane than this example.
So it seems that our appraisals of people such as our friends are highly contingent are perhaps not even subject to accuracy or truth evaluations as they seem to be. We just like many of the people we like and dislike many of the people we dislike not so much because they are, in reality, such and such but because of mere happenstance in a certain perspective that has evolved the way it has.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Moral luck and Moral appraisal of action
It can be argued (and has) that the moral worth of an action, that is, whether or not it is blamable or praiseworthy (or neither) is determined not just by the rightness or wrongness of the action but by the motives and the deepness of the concern for those motives. These are criteria by which actions are judged: motivation by good or ill will, whether there were moral reasons behind them and whether it comes from someone's moral character (instead of something out of the ordinary for the agent), and the degree with which moral effort is applied (the more effort applied to accomplish an act deemed morally praiseworthy, ceteris paribus, the more so it is).
However, I think there's another criteria. The effort in which the agent has towards finding out whether or not her moral reasons were, indeed, good ones (real morally good reasons as opposed to just what she believes morally good but really are not). I know many people that have deep passion for morality and doing good but may do the wrong things because they have bad reasons (though they may imagine them to be good moral reasons). Some people are very complacent and dogmatic in their "morality" (some very religious people might come to mind). They never stop to wonder if they really are doing the right things. This is a kind of epistemic hubris. They may do things behind reasons that are in some sense, moral reasons but just false moral reasons. I think most people who are this way (and they may constitute the majority of the population of even educated adult Americans) don't care about getting their moral conceptions right. They just care about acting on moral reasons (whether they are right or wrong reasons, whether or not they really do reflect true morality are of less concern to them).
But this brings up a question: Even if a person performs an action passing all these criteria, she may still not do the right thing if he doesn't do the right action. Say she is very motivated by a good will to do the right things in this case. She also has the moral character of a good person and tries very hard to dig at her own moral assumptions and thoughts questioning them often and rigorously to test for their quality and soundness. She does that in deliberating to do this action. But if in fact her actions spring from bad reasons (say she lived in 1920s Germany and supports the NAZI party thinking they are good people despite the signs of evil), it is reasonable to say that she has not done good.
But she may be limited by other factors like limited intelligence, e.g. There is nothing or very little that she could do to possibly raise her intelligence. She may not have the cognitive resources to evaluate the matter at hand despite the fact that ex hypothesii, she is motivated to do good, has moral reasons for doing so, is doing it out of her character and putting lots of effort to do what she takes to be good. Additionally, she cares deeply about getting her moral reasons right. Therefore, the blameworthiness of her action in the example here shows that her action's moral quality is (partly) decided on luck. She will not be blamed, perhaps, if she really is quite stupid and gullible for her support of the NAZI party but certainly, her actions are not good even though she tried very hard to do good things in this case.
But there is nothing she could have done for herself to make her actions any better in this case if she had good motives, reasons that for someone with her intelligence are good ones and she may even have a history of concerted attempts to question her own reasons and to arrive at the real morally correct motives if they so differ from her own. But now since she did about as much as she could towards goodness of action, her action is still not good (I don't think people will say they are indicators of the badness of her should but her actions are none the less blamable).
However, I think there's another criteria. The effort in which the agent has towards finding out whether or not her moral reasons were, indeed, good ones (real morally good reasons as opposed to just what she believes morally good but really are not). I know many people that have deep passion for morality and doing good but may do the wrong things because they have bad reasons (though they may imagine them to be good moral reasons). Some people are very complacent and dogmatic in their "morality" (some very religious people might come to mind). They never stop to wonder if they really are doing the right things. This is a kind of epistemic hubris. They may do things behind reasons that are in some sense, moral reasons but just false moral reasons. I think most people who are this way (and they may constitute the majority of the population of even educated adult Americans) don't care about getting their moral conceptions right. They just care about acting on moral reasons (whether they are right or wrong reasons, whether or not they really do reflect true morality are of less concern to them).
But this brings up a question: Even if a person performs an action passing all these criteria, she may still not do the right thing if he doesn't do the right action. Say she is very motivated by a good will to do the right things in this case. She also has the moral character of a good person and tries very hard to dig at her own moral assumptions and thoughts questioning them often and rigorously to test for their quality and soundness. She does that in deliberating to do this action. But if in fact her actions spring from bad reasons (say she lived in 1920s Germany and supports the NAZI party thinking they are good people despite the signs of evil), it is reasonable to say that she has not done good.
But she may be limited by other factors like limited intelligence, e.g. There is nothing or very little that she could do to possibly raise her intelligence. She may not have the cognitive resources to evaluate the matter at hand despite the fact that ex hypothesii, she is motivated to do good, has moral reasons for doing so, is doing it out of her character and putting lots of effort to do what she takes to be good. Additionally, she cares deeply about getting her moral reasons right. Therefore, the blameworthiness of her action in the example here shows that her action's moral quality is (partly) decided on luck. She will not be blamed, perhaps, if she really is quite stupid and gullible for her support of the NAZI party but certainly, her actions are not good even though she tried very hard to do good things in this case.
But there is nothing she could have done for herself to make her actions any better in this case if she had good motives, reasons that for someone with her intelligence are good ones and she may even have a history of concerted attempts to question her own reasons and to arrive at the real morally correct motives if they so differ from her own. But now since she did about as much as she could towards goodness of action, her action is still not good (I don't think people will say they are indicators of the badness of her should but her actions are none the less blamable).
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