It strikes me that there are potential pitfalls involved in reading books written by people. That is, it can incline us to confront the author, not the book (not the ideas). For example, upon reading, the competitive edge in me out, and I immediately see the book as something to be refuted; I don't even take its ideas under consideration (though I may think about them a great deal). I could go on in this vein for a while, but I won't. The basic point is that it might be better if I read a book as if I had written it myself, as if I were whispering the words into my own ear - as if they appeared in my mind from nowhere.
But this is not quite right either. After all, the point of all this has to do with what we believe, what we value, etc. To paraphrase Aristotle, the point of our inquiry, our reading and writing and discussing, is right action. So - if another person has made a mistake, then I would be well-served to tell them - or to show them - to help them realize their mistake. This is essentially connected with seeing a person (this person) as the author of the work.
Showing posts with label the adversarial conception. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the adversarial conception. Show all posts
Monday, January 19, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
kant on lying
on a related note
There is a famous argument in Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals which purports to show why the categorical imperative (act only on that maxim you can will as a universal law of nature) dictates that we do not lie. It tries to show that a world in which everyone lies to attain their ends is not a coherent one. That is, if I know you're going to lie to me, you can't lie to me.
But things are trickier than this. After all, the essence of lying does not consist in intentionally making false statements. If that were the case, then the world where we all lie would be straightforwardly pointless. But things are trickier. For example, if I know that you know that I'll lie to you (and you do not know this), then if I make a true statement, you'll believe it to be false and thus believe it's negation - and I will have succeeded in deceiving you.
Of course, if everyone knows that everyone lies, and we recurse this as far as it goes (forever), then things are much trickier. That is, there is no equilibrium. Consider: if I know that you know that I intend to lie to you and I also know that you know that I know that you know, but you don't know that, then telling a false statement will get you to believe the false thing. But if we never hit an item of knowledge that one of us knows and the other doesn't, then there is no straightforward answer as to what to do. It's a lot like playing rock-paper-scissors.
What all this means, actually, is that words would - at least from one perspective - lose their meaning (it is perhaps in this sense that the world is incoherent). After all, in such a situation, sentences would be treated as merely causal objects by everyone - we'd all know that everyone's utterances are responsive not to the truth, but to their causal effects on the world (e.g. us). And if that's the case, then sentences wouldn't mean anything.
This does not mean that such a world is incoherent - at least I don't think so. It just means that we'd all be treating each other as mere means, as merely causal objects. Meaning, normativity, right and wrong - well beyond merely moral matters - would drop out.
(This is as far as I've thought things through).
There is a famous argument in Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals which purports to show why the categorical imperative (act only on that maxim you can will as a universal law of nature) dictates that we do not lie. It tries to show that a world in which everyone lies to attain their ends is not a coherent one. That is, if I know you're going to lie to me, you can't lie to me.
But things are trickier than this. After all, the essence of lying does not consist in intentionally making false statements. If that were the case, then the world where we all lie would be straightforwardly pointless. But things are trickier. For example, if I know that you know that I'll lie to you (and you do not know this), then if I make a true statement, you'll believe it to be false and thus believe it's negation - and I will have succeeded in deceiving you.
Of course, if everyone knows that everyone lies, and we recurse this as far as it goes (forever), then things are much trickier. That is, there is no equilibrium. Consider: if I know that you know that I intend to lie to you and I also know that you know that I know that you know, but you don't know that, then telling a false statement will get you to believe the false thing. But if we never hit an item of knowledge that one of us knows and the other doesn't, then there is no straightforward answer as to what to do. It's a lot like playing rock-paper-scissors.
What all this means, actually, is that words would - at least from one perspective - lose their meaning (it is perhaps in this sense that the world is incoherent). After all, in such a situation, sentences would be treated as merely causal objects by everyone - we'd all know that everyone's utterances are responsive not to the truth, but to their causal effects on the world (e.g. us). And if that's the case, then sentences wouldn't mean anything.
This does not mean that such a world is incoherent - at least I don't think so. It just means that we'd all be treating each other as mere means, as merely causal objects. Meaning, normativity, right and wrong - well beyond merely moral matters - would drop out.
(This is as far as I've thought things through).
Sunday, January 4, 2009
the adversarial conception
I might have talked about this before; I'm not sure. I'll start with an example, drawn very closely from my life: say a friend of mine comes to me in class one day and asks me a logic problem (this is a good one). Now, I can take this problem as a challenge, as it were: if I win, I'll have beaten the person who asked me the problem. Or I can take it as a gift: there's a joy and a beauty to mathematics, and this is my friend trying to share a piece of that with me.
The idea of the adversarial conception of other people is that we treat others primarily as engaged in competition with us for various resources (prestige being one of them). The aim of the game is to pull others' levers in order to ensure the most advantageous outcome. (A lot of game theory examples demonstrate this way of living). I treat others as adversaries.
Basically what this is is one way of putting the Kantian distinction between treating others as mere means, and treating them as ends-in-themselves. As it happens, while a lot of Kantian ethicists will talk about this contrast, I don't think they spend enough time on it. It's a really worthwhile way of getting at the Kantian critique of non-Kantian ethics, especially things like utilitarianism. That is, treating others as mere means can involve being very nice to them. For example, working hard to satisfy another's desires can in fact involve treating them merely as a means.
Of course, understanding the ("the"?) alternative is the tricky part (and without an alternative, it's hard to see what's wrong with utilitarianism). Kantians talk about "respect," or "treating others as ends-in-themselves." I'm actually not a fan of the latter phrase. In general, too many Kantian ethicists seem to talk as if it is the unreformed desires of others to which we must respond. I'd rather say that the whole point of Kantian ethics, an ethics of freedom, is to understand that everyone else is, more or less, in the same boat we are: wondering what is true and what is worth doing. We work together insofar as we work together on figuring out what that is.
* I can't take credit for the phrase "the adversarial conception;" that is due to someone else.
The idea of the adversarial conception of other people is that we treat others primarily as engaged in competition with us for various resources (prestige being one of them). The aim of the game is to pull others' levers in order to ensure the most advantageous outcome. (A lot of game theory examples demonstrate this way of living). I treat others as adversaries.
Basically what this is is one way of putting the Kantian distinction between treating others as mere means, and treating them as ends-in-themselves. As it happens, while a lot of Kantian ethicists will talk about this contrast, I don't think they spend enough time on it. It's a really worthwhile way of getting at the Kantian critique of non-Kantian ethics, especially things like utilitarianism. That is, treating others as mere means can involve being very nice to them. For example, working hard to satisfy another's desires can in fact involve treating them merely as a means.
Of course, understanding the ("the"?) alternative is the tricky part (and without an alternative, it's hard to see what's wrong with utilitarianism). Kantians talk about "respect," or "treating others as ends-in-themselves." I'm actually not a fan of the latter phrase. In general, too many Kantian ethicists seem to talk as if it is the unreformed desires of others to which we must respond. I'd rather say that the whole point of Kantian ethics, an ethics of freedom, is to understand that everyone else is, more or less, in the same boat we are: wondering what is true and what is worth doing. We work together insofar as we work together on figuring out what that is.
* I can't take credit for the phrase "the adversarial conception;" that is due to someone else.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
gran torino, part three
part one
part two
Towards the beginning of Gran Torino, a dorky young Hmong boy is ambling along the sidewalk, reading a book. He is hassled from a car by a Hispanic gang, whom he totally ignores. A Hmong gang rides up, and drives off the Hispanic gang (a .38 just won't cut it when the other guys have Uzis). They then demand that Thao get in the car; he owes them, and the leader is his cousin, etc. This time, when they call his name, he pauses, dithers for a moment, before moving on. The gang continues to hassle him, trying to induct him (they show up at his house, etc.)
Christine Korsgaard writes, "If I call out your name, I make you stop in your tracks... Now you cannot proceed as you did before. Oh, you can proceed, all right, but not just as you did before. For now, if you walk on, you will be ignoring me and slighting me." And then later: "For [the act of calling out your name, more or less] to fail in that way, I would have to hear your words as mere noise, not as intelligible speech."*
The exchange in Gran Torino makes Korsgaard's point very effectively, though it does have its complications. In a way, I want to say that Thao does hear the Hispanic gang's taunts as mere noise, and the Hmong gang's words as intelligible speech (at the very least, there's a qualitative difference for him between the two). It's easy enough to give no weight to the Hispanic words, but because he has a certain connection with the Hmong (i.e. his is a Hmong), it is much harder in that case. (Korsgaard would say that mere humanity is sufficient connection, but history sometimes makes me doubt this).
This may be the reason that wear headphones that make it impossible for me to hear what's going on around me. The odd thing is that they're just as effective at enabling me to ignore people when they're off as when they're on. What this seems to indicate is that part of the pressure comes from the knowledge that the other party knows that I've heard and understood them (intent can come through even across a language barrier): there's an element of mutuality that makes the whole thing work.
What all this indicates (this is another thing you can see throughout Gran Torino) is that even in nearly purely adversarial mattters, it can be hard (though not necessarily hard, not universally hard), it can be hard to get away from treating other humans as humans. The Hmong gang takes the actions it does because it feels it has a claim on Thao; in a way, this enables them to show up at his house and try to take him in. (And the other characters acknowledge the claim, as it were: if it were a different gang, one with no claim, they'd call the police). (Perhaps this accounts for why it's so hard to deal at all with, why it's so hard to react to, people who don't default to treating humans as humans).
* Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, pp141, 143. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
part two
Towards the beginning of Gran Torino, a dorky young Hmong boy is ambling along the sidewalk, reading a book. He is hassled from a car by a Hispanic gang, whom he totally ignores. A Hmong gang rides up, and drives off the Hispanic gang (a .38 just won't cut it when the other guys have Uzis). They then demand that Thao get in the car; he owes them, and the leader is his cousin, etc. This time, when they call his name, he pauses, dithers for a moment, before moving on. The gang continues to hassle him, trying to induct him (they show up at his house, etc.)
Christine Korsgaard writes, "If I call out your name, I make you stop in your tracks... Now you cannot proceed as you did before. Oh, you can proceed, all right, but not just as you did before. For now, if you walk on, you will be ignoring me and slighting me." And then later: "For [the act of calling out your name, more or less] to fail in that way, I would have to hear your words as mere noise, not as intelligible speech."*
The exchange in Gran Torino makes Korsgaard's point very effectively, though it does have its complications. In a way, I want to say that Thao does hear the Hispanic gang's taunts as mere noise, and the Hmong gang's words as intelligible speech (at the very least, there's a qualitative difference for him between the two). It's easy enough to give no weight to the Hispanic words, but because he has a certain connection with the Hmong (i.e. his is a Hmong), it is much harder in that case. (Korsgaard would say that mere humanity is sufficient connection, but history sometimes makes me doubt this).
This may be the reason that wear headphones that make it impossible for me to hear what's going on around me. The odd thing is that they're just as effective at enabling me to ignore people when they're off as when they're on. What this seems to indicate is that part of the pressure comes from the knowledge that the other party knows that I've heard and understood them (intent can come through even across a language barrier): there's an element of mutuality that makes the whole thing work.
What all this indicates (this is another thing you can see throughout Gran Torino) is that even in nearly purely adversarial mattters, it can be hard (though not necessarily hard, not universally hard), it can be hard to get away from treating other humans as humans. The Hmong gang takes the actions it does because it feels it has a claim on Thao; in a way, this enables them to show up at his house and try to take him in. (And the other characters acknowledge the claim, as it were: if it were a different gang, one with no claim, they'd call the police). (Perhaps this accounts for why it's so hard to deal at all with, why it's so hard to react to, people who don't default to treating humans as humans).
* Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, pp141, 143. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
doubt, part two; kantian ethics
part one
The second particularly striking aspect of the movie comes in two parts. The first opens the movie; it is a sermon delivered by Father Flynn on the subject of doubt. He preaches that "doubt can be a bond as strong as certainty;" that we can be united by the fact that we are uncertain about our faith, about whether we have judged correctly, about whether there is hope for the world, etc.
The second comes at the end of the movie. In this, Sister Aloysius, who has until now demonstrated an inquisitor's absolute certainty in Father Flynn's guilt and the appropriate way to handle it, confesses to Sister James "I have such doubts." These two moments bookend Sister Aloysius' relentless prosecution of Father Flynn; the two characters are systematically unable to find that common ground: they are strictly adversaries.
This is an example, a fictional illustration, of something that I've been mulling for a while now, a certain issue in neo-Kantian ethics. Here's the short version: most Kantians think that the basis of their moral theory is something variously called freedom, autonomy, reflectivity, etc. The way I would have of cashing this out is with the thought that any of our commitments are subject to revision; we need to realize that we might be wrong - very wrong - concerning the things about which we feel the greatest certainty. (To steal a bit of deep wisdom from Donald Rumsfeld, there are unknown unknowns.) What this enables is a certain kind of relationship between people: a relationship of inquiring together after what the good is.
Now, most Kantians think that this sort of relationship is necessitated by our freedom; they also think it is one in which there isn't so much conflict between people. The way in which we work together prevents essential conflict from coming between us. Put another way, these Kantians think that from this formal fact about ourselves (freedom) certain substantive conclusions follow (morality, as it is traditionally understood). I am starting to wonder about whether this conclusion actually follows from the premises.
One way of putting this is: the argument itself doesn't make so much sense. The original point was that we can question any values; the conclusion is that there are certain values we can be absolutely sure of. If we really can put any commitment to the question, then you and I may very well wind up with very different moral views.
In other words, while I think it is possible for freedom to underwrite a very specific kind of relationship, one that I think is truly valuable, I don't think that freedom necessitates it. After inquiring together, you and I may go our separate ways; we may even be enemies. In a way, this is what happened with Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn: despite both being free, doubting creatures, they held to radically different conclusions, and were in that way adversaries.
(another way of putting this discussion is that there is a difference between the sort of possibility for doubt that constitutes freedom, and the specific doubts we may entertain about a certain possibility - such as whether or not the Krispy Kreme in Chatham is open tonight).
see also
The second particularly striking aspect of the movie comes in two parts. The first opens the movie; it is a sermon delivered by Father Flynn on the subject of doubt. He preaches that "doubt can be a bond as strong as certainty;" that we can be united by the fact that we are uncertain about our faith, about whether we have judged correctly, about whether there is hope for the world, etc.
The second comes at the end of the movie. In this, Sister Aloysius, who has until now demonstrated an inquisitor's absolute certainty in Father Flynn's guilt and the appropriate way to handle it, confesses to Sister James "I have such doubts." These two moments bookend Sister Aloysius' relentless prosecution of Father Flynn; the two characters are systematically unable to find that common ground: they are strictly adversaries.
This is an example, a fictional illustration, of something that I've been mulling for a while now, a certain issue in neo-Kantian ethics. Here's the short version: most Kantians think that the basis of their moral theory is something variously called freedom, autonomy, reflectivity, etc. The way I would have of cashing this out is with the thought that any of our commitments are subject to revision; we need to realize that we might be wrong - very wrong - concerning the things about which we feel the greatest certainty. (To steal a bit of deep wisdom from Donald Rumsfeld, there are unknown unknowns.) What this enables is a certain kind of relationship between people: a relationship of inquiring together after what the good is.
Now, most Kantians think that this sort of relationship is necessitated by our freedom; they also think it is one in which there isn't so much conflict between people. The way in which we work together prevents essential conflict from coming between us. Put another way, these Kantians think that from this formal fact about ourselves (freedom) certain substantive conclusions follow (morality, as it is traditionally understood). I am starting to wonder about whether this conclusion actually follows from the premises.
One way of putting this is: the argument itself doesn't make so much sense. The original point was that we can question any values; the conclusion is that there are certain values we can be absolutely sure of. If we really can put any commitment to the question, then you and I may very well wind up with very different moral views.
In other words, while I think it is possible for freedom to underwrite a very specific kind of relationship, one that I think is truly valuable, I don't think that freedom necessitates it. After inquiring together, you and I may go our separate ways; we may even be enemies. In a way, this is what happened with Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn: despite both being free, doubting creatures, they held to radically different conclusions, and were in that way adversaries.
(another way of putting this discussion is that there is a difference between the sort of possibility for doubt that constitutes freedom, and the specific doubts we may entertain about a certain possibility - such as whether or not the Krispy Kreme in Chatham is open tonight).
see also
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