Where I am
We now know from where you are coming on the issue of having a theory that you can both preach and practice. But how, then, does this affect whether you still consider these individuals to be worthy of study?
Well, I guess I'm just trying to re-orientate my meta-theoretical motives. At first, I was prepared to abandon the empirical theory of ethics due to the fact that I decided that I didn't need it in order to avoid hypocrisy. But I have now naturally found my way back into the theory through sheer personal interest. I find science very inspiring, a naturalistic approach to ethics is inspired by the success of science, and my original empirical theory could be seen as a kind of non-reductive naturalism. However, there is a difficulty with non-reductive naturalism, about what kinds of theories are non-naturalistic. I decided that those theories are ones that start from the theories rather than the observations. Yet because of the way that I have construed observations, such observations still allow the possibility of moral hypocrisy. So here I was, faced all over again with the problem of avoiding moral hypocrisy in some way.
This time around, however, things were a little different. I was thinking about morality in terms of idealism rather than straight utilitarianism, and this turned out to be fruitful. We get our notions of idealism primarily from four paradigmatic individuals, who represent four different meta-paradigms in philosophy.
I already find this notion to be of very great value. It still does seem pointless to me for ethical theorists to produce moral theories that no one may be expected to take seriously as worth living up to. I think that the appeal of various forms of utilitarianism is exactly what I saw in the people at my science fiction society that eventful day. They want the benefits of someone else's sacrifice without having to provide any sacrifice of their own. In fact, that's what Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged alleges is always the motive of people who espouse left-wing beliefs. They are thinking about how much they can mooch off of their superiors in productivity, and not how much they will be mooched off of. However, this fact would indeed be rubbed in their noses if they tried to practice and enforce this ethic. It is therefore noteworthy when someone else practices what she preaches. I think that we would tend to trust the idea more if it was tested "in the trenches," as it were.
Is this what Karl Marx meant by 'Praxis'?
I am here aided by a newsgroup posting by Peter Van der Biest in the moderated Karl Marx Discussion Deck:
That is exactly what I mean by my basic project! My supervisor once said that I would already have disturbed readers because of my practice-oriented approach, but that is not really a fair characterisation. I have always cared just as much about principle as I have about practice. I think that I might have mislead the reader a bit in one part of my thesis where I said that if ethics turned out not to be viable, then I would want to question its sanction. That is only one half of the story. The other side of the coin is that if current practice turned out not to be ethical, then that would at least prima facie give me a reason to want to change current practice to make it ethical. I would want both principle and practice to be honoured, and from Van der Biest's characterisation here, this sounds like what Marx is saying as well. Of course, it is ironic that I should be looking to Karl Marx for support, because I otherwise really hate the left wing!
Also very similar to what I am saying. Of course, the locus classicus for this conception is Marx's famous 11th thesis on Feuerbach: "Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it".
But there is an obvious difference between your approach and Marx's. Marx had a definite principled vision to which he was trying to change practice to conform. You, on the other hand, are simply taking society as it is, right here and right now, and then looking for a theory of ethics that justifies the majority of what it is already doing. Whereas Marx was a radical, you are a conservative. As such, your sociological mentor would seem to be Durkheim rather than Marx, because his notion of sociological functionalism seemed to be quite close to what you wanted to propose yourself.
Yes, except that various chapters of my thesis had to be understood as exploring problems with sociological functionalism. I do not dissolve ethics into such an approach, as my supervisor noted.
Yes, but I agree with your original reason for exploring sociological functionalism. It was likely to produce a theory of ethics that you could both preach and practise. It is simply that it could not be seen as the final arbiter of morality, due to all the obvious problems that you were investigating yourself.
However, it does seem to me that this part of your thesis could have been far more robust. You began it well enough, by asking the question 'Why be moral?' as the attempt to answer a question like that could well result in a theory of ethics. You then consider the answer by Lord Patrick Devlin, that an established moral system is an essential of social functioning. But if you were moving in the sociological direction, then you should have considered the other sociological approaches too.
A good point, which I'll have to address in another section...
Well, I guess I'm just trying to re-orientate my meta-theoretical motives. At first, I was prepared to abandon the empirical theory of ethics due to the fact that I decided that I didn't need it in order to avoid hypocrisy. But I have now naturally found my way back into the theory through sheer personal interest. I find science very inspiring, a naturalistic approach to ethics is inspired by the success of science, and my original empirical theory could be seen as a kind of non-reductive naturalism. However, there is a difficulty with non-reductive naturalism, about what kinds of theories are non-naturalistic. I decided that those theories are ones that start from the theories rather than the observations. Yet because of the way that I have construed observations, such observations still allow the possibility of moral hypocrisy. So here I was, faced all over again with the problem of avoiding moral hypocrisy in some way.
This time around, however, things were a little different. I was thinking about morality in terms of idealism rather than straight utilitarianism, and this turned out to be fruitful. We get our notions of idealism primarily from four paradigmatic individuals, who represent four different meta-paradigms in philosophy.
I already find this notion to be of very great value. It still does seem pointless to me for ethical theorists to produce moral theories that no one may be expected to take seriously as worth living up to. I think that the appeal of various forms of utilitarianism is exactly what I saw in the people at my science fiction society that eventful day. They want the benefits of someone else's sacrifice without having to provide any sacrifice of their own. In fact, that's what Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged alleges is always the motive of people who espouse left-wing beliefs. They are thinking about how much they can mooch off of their superiors in productivity, and not how much they will be mooched off of. However, this fact would indeed be rubbed in their noses if they tried to practice and enforce this ethic. It is therefore noteworthy when someone else practices what she preaches. I think that we would tend to trust the idea more if it was tested "in the trenches," as it were.
Is this what Karl Marx meant by 'Praxis'?
I am here aided by a newsgroup posting by Peter Van der Biest in the moderated Karl Marx Discussion Deck:
In Marx' perception Praxis is not the same as purely practical life, but the synthesis of theory and practical life.
That is exactly what I mean by my basic project! My supervisor once said that I would already have disturbed readers because of my practice-oriented approach, but that is not really a fair characterisation. I have always cared just as much about principle as I have about practice. I think that I might have mislead the reader a bit in one part of my thesis where I said that if ethics turned out not to be viable, then I would want to question its sanction. That is only one half of the story. The other side of the coin is that if current practice turned out not to be ethical, then that would at least prima facie give me a reason to want to change current practice to make it ethical. I would want both principle and practice to be honoured, and from Van der Biest's characterisation here, this sounds like what Marx is saying as well. Of course, it is ironic that I should be looking to Karl Marx for support, because I otherwise really hate the left wing!
It means: philosophy which comes out of its selfsufficient and non-practically oriented (and thus system affirming) isolation, and begins to bother itself with social change.
Also very similar to what I am saying. Of course, the locus classicus for this conception is Marx's famous 11th thesis on Feuerbach: "Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it".
But there is an obvious difference between your approach and Marx's. Marx had a definite principled vision to which he was trying to change practice to conform. You, on the other hand, are simply taking society as it is, right here and right now, and then looking for a theory of ethics that justifies the majority of what it is already doing. Whereas Marx was a radical, you are a conservative. As such, your sociological mentor would seem to be Durkheim rather than Marx, because his notion of sociological functionalism seemed to be quite close to what you wanted to propose yourself.
Yes, except that various chapters of my thesis had to be understood as exploring problems with sociological functionalism. I do not dissolve ethics into such an approach, as my supervisor noted.
Yes, but I agree with your original reason for exploring sociological functionalism. It was likely to produce a theory of ethics that you could both preach and practise. It is simply that it could not be seen as the final arbiter of morality, due to all the obvious problems that you were investigating yourself.
However, it does seem to me that this part of your thesis could have been far more robust. You began it well enough, by asking the question 'Why be moral?' as the attempt to answer a question like that could well result in a theory of ethics. You then consider the answer by Lord Patrick Devlin, that an established moral system is an essential of social functioning. But if you were moving in the sociological direction, then you should have considered the other sociological approaches too.
A good point, which I'll have to address in another section...
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