I am actively avoiding writing a commentary on a particular critique of ethical projectivism. Exciting, no?
Seriously, I have response in my head, I just can’t seem to figure out how, exactly, I want it to go. I know all about that “just write” methodology of breakin’ on through to the other side but I feel almost like I’ve done that too much already. Still, I suspect that in another sentence or two, I’ll launch into a discussion of it. I’d rather not, I’d rather start jibber-jabbering about whomever Dane Cook is dating these days but I can’t seem to hold that particular useless fact in my head.
Here’s the low-down. Naturalism is a species of belief that holds that all facts can be explained by the use of things like the scientific method. This belief presents a problem for ethics because it doesn’t seem that we can test the wrong-ness of burning cats in the same manner that we can test the speed at which objects in free-fall accelerate towards earth. So, it seems that ethical claims aren’t facts in the world. Except that doesn’t really account for the fact that ethics exists at all. I mean, if its not some kind of fact that purposefully burning a bag of cats is wrong, how do we recognize that it is (I’m not assuming that burning cats is objectively wrong here; even if we admit that this is a social constructed wrong what is it about the burning and cats that allows us to recognize the combination as wrong).
One way of dealing with this is to just deny that moral facts are anything different than natural facts, maybe really really hard to discover facts but facts nonetheless. Weirdly, Kant and Hume both do something similar to this. Kant talks about morality in terms of imperatives which are recognizable by reason alone. Okay, so that is not exactly the same as the naturalist position that facts are recognizable through experience (morality is a priori not a posteriori for Kant if it matters to anyone). But so are the rules of geometry and I don’t hear anyone jumping up and down trying to claim that geometry is not something about which science can learn anything. Hume, meanwhile thinks that the principles of morals can be discerned through experience. He uses many real world examples to show that those things we consider vices produce unacceptable social results. We could even, to continue the anachronistic chain, describe Bentham as a naturalist as well; his felicific calculus uses a quantification of numerous properties in order to decide whether more pleasure or pain is produce. Okay, so maybe privileging pleasure is to ascribe value where it does not exist independently but, come one, do you really want to argue that pain is good while pleasure is bad? And before you bust out the sadist or the masochist, remember that Betham can easily accommodate an individual that enjoys physical pain as engaging in a pleasurable activity.
But there is another way you can deal with our inability to find independent value in the world; call the world value-less and then admit that we project value onto that blank canvas. Welcome to the world of the projectivist naturalist. You get to keep your naturalism because you are a thing in the world. It is a fact that you think burning cats is wrong. I can test this fact by burning cats and watching how you respond. Hooray for the triumph of the scientific method!
Here’s the rub: as a projectivist you believe that all moral value is a projection of your subjective response. When you say to me “the world is value-less” and I disagree by saying “silly rabbit, things in the world have intrinsic value” we aren’t just having a disagreement about the facts. That is, we aren’t looking at something in the world and disagreeing about the fact of it, we are looking at the world in completely different ways. My view of the world has you missing out on what is important about the world; its inherent value. You’re wrong Billy! And that, my friend is a moral disagreement. Which, in case you missed it, means that your very perspective on the world has a moral component and since you believe that all moral value is a projection onto an objective world, your very position is a projection of value. Think about it, its one thing to believe that your assesent of certain things is subjective but another thing altogether to believe that your belief that being able to subjectively assess things is, itself, subjective. That would seem to require you to admit that moral objectivity is just as viable an option as moral subjectivity, which is precisely what subjectivity wants to deny.
I’m planning on giving a critique of that claim. That is, I’m going to defend the projectivist position as not a projection. I’m not married to the position, it just seems like the way to go about encouraging discussion.
OH, man. Maybe it’s because I overdosed on cuban coffee yesterday and stayed up ’til 5 AM last night (and am currently still up after 1 AM tonight), but the only discussion I’m encouraged to engage in concerning ethical projectivism is: wha??
Also, I know who Hume and Kant are, and I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of Bentham (UH, likely from YOU), but who the hell is Dane Cook?
You are such a dork. Dane Cook is a comedian. At the grocery store the other day he was on the cover of Sun or Star or The Enquirer or something because apparently, “sexy comedian Dane Cook” is dating person X. I just can’t remember who person X was. I think it was like Jessica Simpson or someone of equal caliber.
Basically I was making fun of myself for only talking about stuff that 99 percent of the population is completely clueless. Rather than these things which seem to be on everyone’s minds. But you trumped me. Time for you to read another copy of InStyle.
Maybe after Granny’s birthday/tea party this afternoon I’ll get the chance to catch up on the popular culture front. Sometimes, though, she pitches those rags in the trash pretty quickly.
Related, but not at all: who is this Zizek character who’s all over the internet?
Honestly, I don’t know much about Zizek. I think I have a copy of the Zizek Reader but my books are too disorganized right now to be sure.
From the Routledge
“In the late 1970s, Slavoj Žižek from Ljubljana developed a unique Lacanian psychoanalytic critique of totalitarian ideology and thought (see Lacan, J.). In his later writings, published in French and English, he applied this Lacanian approach to other ideologies, including the liberal-democratic one, and to popular culture and film. In his Looking Awry (1991) he advocated the maxim of psychoanalytic ethic ‘avoid as much as possible any violation of the fantasy space of the other’, and argued that nationalism is the way subjects of a given nation organize their collective enjoyment through national myths.”
LAZOVIC, ZIVAN and ALEKSANDAR PAVKOVIĆ (1998). South Slavs, philosophy of. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved April 09, 2006, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/N003SECT4
He seems to be the philosopher du jour; I’m finding reference to him everywhere. I suppose I can see it, what with the “fantasy space of the other” bit.
Oh, but any type of psychoanalytic philosophy makes my head cave in.
I would love to comment about anything here, but I feel that this particular thread passed me by long ago. Um, one of my coworkers gave me four mini bottles of Tabasco sauce today. They are really cool because each one is about 2 servings…maybe only one if something really needs help.
Man, go nuts and comment if you want. I gave my commentary on this over the weekend; its still fresh in my mind. Tabasco, huh? How did the hurricane last year affect Tabasco production?
OH! I got to check out a tabloid rag last Sunday, and now I know who Dane Cook may or may not be dating.
Consequently I now understand why the hell you may have been thinking about his potential love interest. Originally, I was like “why does he care so much about Dane Cook?”, and now I know it’s not that you were interested in Dane Cook so much as in his potential paramour, Pouty McBoobjob!
Sheesh! Is all that women’s studies good for nothing after all?
Moving on to the hotsauce front: Cholula is the best! Tabasco is for sucks.
Back to philosophy: how’d your commentary go?
Yeah, no idea who Pouty McBoobjob is, the reason it was on my mind is because I read the covers of all those rags when I go to the grocery store.
The commentary went fine, no body told me that I was an idiot when it was done and apparently I said something that the commentee thought he was going to have to seriously think about.
OH! That’s kind of funny. Maybe he’s going to seriously think about how he’d like to bludgeon you.
Was this also the conf. where you presented your pyschology findings?
P. McB is Jessica Simpson.
Also, I feel bad for ragging on Tabasco; I forgot that the production facility may have been blown/washed away. I repent.
One more also, I think the comment time tags are still on the other daylight time.