The Abbot is Rude - Phillip Vo
The Abbot and the Learned Lady severely distressed me.
Mostly because the abbot is a very mean person.
However, in the midst of all the slandering and Magdalia explaining very common knowledge (to us of the modern era, that is), I thought of a philosophical question that I’ve previously encountered in a class with Dr. Mashburn.
For Moral Philosophy and Ethics class, we have been reading literary works coupled with philosophical ones to give many different perspectives to philosophical questions, one of which is, “Does life have meaning?” Here is a short excerpt from a passage entitled The Good Brahmin:
“The good man’s condition really worried me. Nobody was more rational or more sincere than he. I perceived that his unhappiness increased to proportion as his understanding developed and his insight grew….. Never in all her life had she reflected for one single moment on one single point of all those which tormented the Brahmin. She believed with all her heart in the metamorphoses of Vishnu and, provided she could obtain a little Ganges water wherewith to wash herself, thought herself the happiest of women.”
The basic question that arose from this section was this: Would you choose to live in unknowing ignorance if it meant you were always happy, or would you rather live in pursuit of knowledge though it brought you constant stress and even pain?”
The Abbot and the Learned Lady basically flips the roles and forces the two characters to have a conversation. While there is something to be said about the fact that the abbot is constantly saying it is not for women to seek wisdom or read Latin, I think the real argument is this: should people should seek wisdom at all? Why waste time straining for something that only brings you pain in this short life? Why not get drunk, go to social functions, hunt and do things that you know will give you immediate happiness in return? Magdalia then poses this beautiful question near the end of the passage:
Magdalia: Tell me, my dear sir: if you had to die tomorrow, would you rather die more foolish or more wise?
Antronius: If wisdom came without hard work-
Precisely the point. I think it’s safe to say that, for the one who has dipped his toes in the pool of knowledge and understanding, specifically from the lens of a fear of God, he will very soon jump in if he doesn’t find it too cold to withstand.
Commented on Cade's and Moriah's
Commented on Cade's and Moriah's
Last class, you mentioned that you don't get the naturalistic fallacy, which is something I know a lot about, and I think that a thoughtful person like yourself could really benefit from seeing this from my perspective, especially since you're in a moral philosophy class, so I'm going to argue why it's a valid fallacy and then tie it in with your post.
ReplyDeleteThe fallacy is thinking that (a) "you should not do X" necessarily follows from (b) "X is unnatural." In other words, thinking that (a) is always true if (b) is true.
It is important to think of the fallacy as a special case of the more general is/ought problem, which says that it's impossible to deduce a conclusion statement with an "ought" in it from premises without "oughts" in them. For example, you'll find that you can't deduce "you ought not to murder" from purely factual ("is" not "ought") premises; you have to assume some ough statement in the premises, like "murder is against the law," 'you ought not to break the law," therefore, "you ought not to murder." But now we run into a justification problem. If you always need a "ought" statement in the premises to deduce an "ought" statement, then it's impossibly to justify an "ought" statement by appealing to only "is" statements, so you have to take at least one "ought" statement as self evident. But there are no self evident "ought" statements. The only statements that we accept as self evident are observational facts, like "the sky is blue." But there's no observation that could ever tell us that "you should do X" is true or false.
Now you see why the naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy. If you're arguing that "you shouldn't do X" because "X is unnatural," then you're implicitly assuming "you shouldn't do things that are unnatural," and that statement isn't justified.
Also, we need to distinguish between statements like "you should do X" and statements like "you should do X if you want Y." Some standard philosophy terminology is to call he former categorical imperatives (CI) and the latter hypothetical imperatives (HI). CI are what I've been calling ought statements. Unlike CI, which are just arbitrary, subjective value judgements, HI are in the category of factual statements, so the is/ought problem doesn't apply to them. An example of an HI is "if you want to win the race, you ought to run fast." Obviously, this can be proven from self evident observations. HI are basically just advice about the best way to attain your goals.
I could explain this better, but this would become more of a book than it already is, but if you're interested don't hesitate to ask questions to clarify my argument.
Now all of this is extremely powerful. It turns every political problem ever into either a non-problem of basically arguing about subjective questions, like whether apples are better than oranges, or empirical questions, like "if you want to live in a society that looks like this or that, then what are the laws to get it?" So obviously, this doesn't answer questions like "are humans causing global warming?" or "do minimum wage laws have the capacity to improve the standard of living of the lower class?" But it shows that questions like the morality of abortion are silly squabbles because right a wrong are completely subjective questions. Sentences like "murder is wrong/right," "you should/n't enslave people," "women ought/not to be treated as well as men," and so on are neither true or false; they're "not even wrong." They don't have truth values. They don't predict anything about the way the world is. They basically meaningless from a philosophical standpoint. They have no propositional content, only some information about the psychology/emotions of the speaker. This is all especially cool because 99.9999% of people don't get this and waste massive amounts of time arguing about subjective questions, so once you do get it, you're totally red pilled!
ReplyDeleteNote also that religion doesn't save anybody from this conclusion. The statement that "you'll go to hell if you do X" is an "is" statement. God doesn't provide anybody with CIs, only HIs. God can tell you not to kill. But that doesn't provide any inherent (outside of the consequences, temporal or divine) reason why you shouldn't kill.
Now, applying this framework to the meaning of life, we find that there is no reason that anybody should do anything for some inherent reason. There are only ways that attain what you want, given your goals and the objective state of the world with all its causal relations. To be more precise, out of all possible actions you can take, you can order these possible actions in terms of which ones satisfy your goals in the best ways. The one that best satisfies the the best possible combination of number of goals and the most important goals is the one that you choose, but there's no reason that your goals should be one way or another in the first place. Ultimate ends are subjective and arbitrary from philosophical standpoint. Again, religion doesn't offer a solution. It may be true that "if you do X, then you'll go to heaven," but people who don't care about heaven won't find this to be a convincing argument for why X should be the point of their lives.
I'm not a believer of the "subjective truth" idea you've basically submitted to me, but I did understand the natural fallacy idea. While, in argument, it is not fair to simply something is right because it is natural, as a thinker in general I'd like to believe there is a truth we are all seeking after, even if we mask it as our own. As a Christian, I live with the conviction that God created all things and designed them specifically for a purpose, and as a result of sin we have tainted them, using them for other reasons. It is seeking the truest nature of these things, and returning back to our original purpose that is my pursuit of truth or wisdom. Yes, I am unique and different from all others, but we all seek the same general things in life. It all depends on whether or not you believe humanity has an "original state" of which we are returning too, or perhaps even a "new state" we are being made for. I think we disagree on the nature of truth in and of itself, but thanks for your comments!
DeleteIt's impressive that you type that response up in class so quickly!
ReplyDeleteI don't think we disagree on the nature of truth at all. I don't think truth is subjective (exists only in the mind and, hence, can vary from person to person) only values. In general, "truth" refers to the objective state or configuration of the world. The statement "it is raining" is true if and only if it is raining. In order for a statement to be empirically meaningful, there has to be at least one possible observation that would signal that the statement is true or false. In the case of "it is raining," looking outside and seeing no water droplets falling would signal the statement to be false. If you agree with all this, then we don't disagree.
Since Christians (by definition?) think that the probability of the statement "God exists and is Jesus" equals 1, you have to reject any statements that contradict it. But there's nothing in my argument about subjective value that conflicts with the idea that God creates the world and determines what's true, nor is there a conflict with the observation that most people tend to have similar subjective values. None of that changes the fact that there's no inherent reason that we should adopt any given values, including the pursuit of truth and wisdom! Valuing truth is still a subjective goal, and that is true outside of the fact that loving truth tends to help people attain goals that are generally considered subjectively desireable. I welcome your refutation if you disagree! If you don't have a refutation, then I expect you to give my position a non-zero probability of being true. Preferably, you'll even give it the highest probability out of all ethical hypotheses and, therefore, adopt it!
Haha, great stuff! Then we don't disagree on the nature of statements that are simply observational, but my point is I live with the conviction that Christianity is true (while it is certainly impossible to prove it). Because of that, I believe it also true that God desires we pursue wisdom and truth, and that, because my worldview is so, we were made to return to an original state. So, my view of the world is that within Christianity lies the only objective truth, and that it is the only true religion. I do not think you can be a Christian and say that within that belief system there we can adopt any set of values we want, mostly because God commands we adopt a specific set, which, I am convinced, lies within wisdom and truth. So, for me, the inherent reason is God created us and commands us to, as well as we have the natural inclination towards it.
DeleteHope this clarifies some? Thanks! This is really interesting.
Also, when I say prove it, I mean leaving no doubt whatsoever.
DeleteYes, I understand what you're saying.
DeleteSo here is my question: assuming everyone believes in the "is" statements of Christian doctrine (like "God exists," "Jesus is God," "humans have souls and will go to heaven only if they accept Christ," etc.), is there any inherent reason to adopt the values that God commands? I don't currently think that there is because, in general, there is no inherent reason to do anything, as I think I showed with my initial argument.
Remember what I mean by "inherent." Statements like, "you ought to do X, Y, and Z if you want to follow God's command" are not about inherent values; they are "is" statements; they say that IF (emphasizing if!) you want to follow God's commands or go to heaven or something else, then there is an objectively best ("best" isn't a value judgement; it has to do with compromising your other goals; if you only have one goal, then all possible ways that can attain your goals are equivalently good) way to get what you want, but they say nothing about why you should want those things in the first place. Statements about "inherent" values tell you why you should want what you want for its own sake. I say that these "inherent" statements (CI) are meaningless and lack any sort of justification whatsoever (for a little more depth here, also see the final paragraph in this post https://umhonorsblog1819.blogspot.com/2019/02/reminiscent-nate-strum.html ).