Free Inquiry has a series of op-eds on the is-ought problem. I think its faithful to this thread.
https://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/articles/8609
Mattering Matters; by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.
RNG " I'm excited by the approach mattering theory offers to the so-called 'is-ought' gap."
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Faith and Reason
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Re: Faith and Reason
It's a good discussion, but of course it doesn't bridge the gap between "is" and "ought". In fact she asserts, quite reasonably, that everyone ought to matter as much as everyone else, without at all getting into the problems with going from such a proposed principle to the "is" of how humans relate to each other.
At one point she asserts that only certain views of what matter are "admissible" but skips over the question of why, to whom, or for what purpose. I think my gut instincts on how mattering work are more layered than her propositions are.
The most interesting of her points puts this problem on display. She says our projects matter to us because they exemplify our sense of what makes people matter, and (interpreting her lead-up) this is "talentism" and therefore an inadmissible proposition about "ought" derived from "is." One could take it a step further and say, the person we choose to attach ourselves to for life (assuming we make such a choice) is an exemplification of an ethically distorted sense of what matters.
This is a rather shallow account of things. One major reason is that her idea of "categorically mattering" is a conflation of two "levels of need" on Maslow's hierarchy. What matters for purposes of self-esteem is not "categorical mattering" or, in other words, what we philosophically find ultimate about the source of anything mattering. That is an issue for the top levels of need, having to do with fulfillment or "mattering beyond the self".
The top level according to Maslow, known as self-actualization, has always left me dissatisfied on philosophical grounds. Essentially he says one finds oneself needing to be the best one can be after one has satisfied the general need to do things that "matter" (a need labelled self-fulfillment). This is unsatisfactory on a number of grounds: for example, being the best World of Warcraft player I can be, or the best street sweeper I can be, are not categorically "beyond" being someone whose life matters, but Maslow claims that being the best cello player I can be, or the best father I can be, are in fact "beyond" fulfillment.
This tension is resolvable, and Maslow's account is, in fact, correct, but you would never get that from the "mattering theory" account. (The result is what a Christian might call "incarnational theology" in the sense that it accepts that particular instantiations of the general good must be related to in order to be dealing with the actual general good. Interestingly, this is an important aspect of "ought" which derives directly from "the way life is.")
A second way of cutting into the spurious uniformity imposed in Newberger Goldstein's account is to ask if there is any difference between the "categorical mattering" of different groups of people, which she correctly asserts must be equal to be ethical, and the "comparative mattering" on which people base a justification of career or partner choice. And of course there is a difference, and the difference is illuminated by "relationality," that is, recognition of what kind of relationship we are in when we make use of one category or the other. I suspect she knows this, and has dealt with it in her real work, but you can't get it from this presentation.
I was hoping for some analytical richness along those lines, but as far as I can tell the author's only significant connection between the two realms is that "ought" is a given, and we don't need a way to "derive" it but only a satisfactory system for sorting it out. Okay, but I think we knew that without any philosophers saying it.
At one point she asserts that only certain views of what matter are "admissible" but skips over the question of why, to whom, or for what purpose. I think my gut instincts on how mattering work are more layered than her propositions are.
The most interesting of her points puts this problem on display. She says our projects matter to us because they exemplify our sense of what makes people matter, and (interpreting her lead-up) this is "talentism" and therefore an inadmissible proposition about "ought" derived from "is." One could take it a step further and say, the person we choose to attach ourselves to for life (assuming we make such a choice) is an exemplification of an ethically distorted sense of what matters.
This is a rather shallow account of things. One major reason is that her idea of "categorically mattering" is a conflation of two "levels of need" on Maslow's hierarchy. What matters for purposes of self-esteem is not "categorical mattering" or, in other words, what we philosophically find ultimate about the source of anything mattering. That is an issue for the top levels of need, having to do with fulfillment or "mattering beyond the self".
The top level according to Maslow, known as self-actualization, has always left me dissatisfied on philosophical grounds. Essentially he says one finds oneself needing to be the best one can be after one has satisfied the general need to do things that "matter" (a need labelled self-fulfillment). This is unsatisfactory on a number of grounds: for example, being the best World of Warcraft player I can be, or the best street sweeper I can be, are not categorically "beyond" being someone whose life matters, but Maslow claims that being the best cello player I can be, or the best father I can be, are in fact "beyond" fulfillment.
This tension is resolvable, and Maslow's account is, in fact, correct, but you would never get that from the "mattering theory" account. (The result is what a Christian might call "incarnational theology" in the sense that it accepts that particular instantiations of the general good must be related to in order to be dealing with the actual general good. Interestingly, this is an important aspect of "ought" which derives directly from "the way life is.")
A second way of cutting into the spurious uniformity imposed in Newberger Goldstein's account is to ask if there is any difference between the "categorical mattering" of different groups of people, which she correctly asserts must be equal to be ethical, and the "comparative mattering" on which people base a justification of career or partner choice. And of course there is a difference, and the difference is illuminated by "relationality," that is, recognition of what kind of relationship we are in when we make use of one category or the other. I suspect she knows this, and has dealt with it in her real work, but you can't get it from this presentation.
I was hoping for some analytical richness along those lines, but as far as I can tell the author's only significant connection between the two realms is that "ought" is a given, and we don't need a way to "derive" it but only a satisfactory system for sorting it out. Okay, but I think we knew that without any philosophers saying it.
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Re: Faith and Reason
Hello Taylor and Harry. Firstly thank you Taylor for reviving this thread which I was beginning to fear would fall adrift in the magnificent ether of forgottenness. Harry has made so many interesting responses that I felt bad about not having responded earlier. So now I will reply while it is fresh to Harry’s comments on Ms Goldstein, with a valiant plan to go back and continue this conversation.
I also read Rebecca Goldstein’s article. For me the name Goldstein conjures 1984, and his famous principles of oligarchical collectivism, a theory that is the very opposite of Ms Goldstein’s theory of individual mattering.
Christianity strongly presents the idea that everyone matters equally, through the core ideas of the Bible that God loves the world and has made humanity in his image, that the last are first in the Kingdom of God, and that Christ is found among the excluded. This Christian principle of equality of all before God flows simply through into the crucial virtues of faith, hope and love.
But Goldstein says “The laborious moral progress that we’ve made over the centuries has consisted in undermining, one by one, these ideological claims to comparative mattering.” This is a direct snub to the religious theory of equality before God, although perhaps justified by the hypocrisy of the church which also has too often ignored the gospels.
Unfortunately, my reading of Goldstein is that her agenda is to provide a rationalisation for liberal prejudice. This comes through in her assumption that the individual is the only legitimate moral unit and her condemnation of ‘talentism’ as an alleged fallacy.
If we favour the best, the overall talent pool grows, whereas if we favour the worst, the talent pool shrinks. That is a law of evolution. Reconciling this evolutionary principle of competitive success with the equality of all is explained in the Bible (Matt 25) by the duty of noblesse oblige, that privilege entails responsibility, that the king should be in solidarity with the meek.
Goldstein’s condemnation of Napoleon reminded me of these problems. The cruelty of emperors instils a general moral repugnance. However, both the Mongol and French Empires had underlying achievements behind their brutality, that they caused the unification of large parts of the earth, enabling subsequent interaction and evolutionary growth and advancement.
Many would say these ends don’t justify the means, but the other side of that coin is that without drastic political change people are left in timidity, stagnation, separation and poverty. Napoleon founded the modern secular state with its dogma of laicity, and therefore was essentially atheist as a follower of Laplace. However, he provided room for divine glory with his view that imagination rules the world, and his claim that to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Genghis Khan explicitly saw himself as an agent of God, a bringer of divine wrath shaking up and unifying a sleepy world under the mandate of the eternal blue sky.
I raise these examples here because imperial power best shows the confluence of facts and values, is and ought. An emperor decides what ought to happen based on his views of what is the case. An empire, that most empirical fact, is held together purely by force of will, by the values of the transcendental imagination of the emperor, by the unity of spiritual confidence in duty.
While doubters will always claim that the emperor has failed to derive his oughts from his ises, that his values are not based on facts, the imperial assertion of the unity of is and ought is always the only basis for stability and prosperity. The absence of such moral vision is the source of decline and collapse.
I also read Rebecca Goldstein’s article. For me the name Goldstein conjures 1984, and his famous principles of oligarchical collectivism, a theory that is the very opposite of Ms Goldstein’s theory of individual mattering.
As often happens with atheist philosophy, Goldstein betrays ignorance of the religious framework of culture, of how philosophy is nested within theology, and of how old ideas of theology persist as subconscious implicit guides for philosophy. Keynes' mot about slaves of defunct influence comes to mind.Harry Marks wrote: she asserts, quite reasonably, that everyone ought to matter as much as everyone else, without at all getting into the problems with going from such a proposed principle to the "is" of how humans relate to each other.
Christianity strongly presents the idea that everyone matters equally, through the core ideas of the Bible that God loves the world and has made humanity in his image, that the last are first in the Kingdom of God, and that Christ is found among the excluded. This Christian principle of equality of all before God flows simply through into the crucial virtues of faith, hope and love.
But Goldstein says “The laborious moral progress that we’ve made over the centuries has consisted in undermining, one by one, these ideological claims to comparative mattering.” This is a direct snub to the religious theory of equality before God, although perhaps justified by the hypocrisy of the church which also has too often ignored the gospels.
What matters and why are the central problems of ethics. Charles Dodgson provided an acute whimsical description of what I call the Freddy Mercury nihilist conundrum (nothing really matters). In Alice in Wonderland, the King of Hearts cannot tell the difference between the concepts ‘important’ and ‘unimportant’. This illustrates the important moral principle that our values are based on assumptions which we consider axiomatic or self evident. If the King of Hearts has no moral axioms, he is left clueless about what is important.Harry Marks wrote: At one point she asserts that only certain views of what matter are "admissible" but skips over the question of why, to whom, or for what purpose. I think my gut instincts on how mattering work are more layered than her propositions are.
Unfortunately, my reading of Goldstein is that her agenda is to provide a rationalisation for liberal prejudice. This comes through in her assumption that the individual is the only legitimate moral unit and her condemnation of ‘talentism’ as an alleged fallacy.
Goldstein’s discussion of the alleged fallacy of 'talentism' is little more than an effort to justify liberal prejudice. Of course we should discriminate in favour of the talented, by providing resources and opportunities to those with the ability to make best use of them. That is the simple Biblical Matthew Principle, that God gives to those who have and takes away from those who have not.Harry Marks wrote: She says our projects matter to us because they exemplify our sense of what makes people matter, and (interpreting her lead-up) this is "talentism" and therefore an inadmissible proposition about "ought" derived from "is."
If we favour the best, the overall talent pool grows, whereas if we favour the worst, the talent pool shrinks. That is a law of evolution. Reconciling this evolutionary principle of competitive success with the equality of all is explained in the Bible (Matt 25) by the duty of noblesse oblige, that privilege entails responsibility, that the king should be in solidarity with the meek.
My view is that what matters categorically is evolutionary complexity, because biodiversity is priceless. Whatever sustains and enhances complexity is good, while whatever harms complexity is evil. That means the planet is the unit of morality, not the individual. Coherence requires system thinking, an ability to analyse the consequences of actions for the whole. Duty is action to improve the whole. Durable old stability is intrinsically good. The meaning of life is the good of the future.Harry Marks wrote: her idea of "categorically mattering" is a conflation of two "levels of need" on Maslow's hierarchy. What matters for purposes of self-esteem is not "categorical mattering" or, in other words, what we philosophically find ultimate about the source of anything mattering. That is an issue for the top levels of need, having to do with fulfillment or "mattering beyond the self".
I am writing a paper on Jung’s essay Aion The Phenomenology of the Self, to deliver at the Canberra Jung Society in May. Jung notes the distinction between self and ego, with self as a much deeper concept than personal conscious identity, instead partaking of a collective unconscious archetypal identity. Self-actualisation as distinguished from ego-actualisation is a good moral goal when the self is understood as a deep real identity. Jung explores these ideas in Aion through the theological framework of Jesus Christ as the archetype of the self.Harry Marks wrote:The top level according to Maslow, known as self-actualization, has always left me dissatisfied on philosophical grounds.
In my last comments in this thread last year I mentioned the Mongolian Empire, as an example from history that provides some challenging problems about the relation between is and ought. Since then I have been reading the excellent book The Mongol Empire: Its Rise and Legacy by Michael Prawdin.Harry Marks wrote: as far as I can tell the author's only significant connection between the two realms is that "ought" is a given, and we don't need a way to "derive" it but only a satisfactory system for sorting it out. Okay, but I think we knew that without any philosophers saying it.
Goldstein’s condemnation of Napoleon reminded me of these problems. The cruelty of emperors instils a general moral repugnance. However, both the Mongol and French Empires had underlying achievements behind their brutality, that they caused the unification of large parts of the earth, enabling subsequent interaction and evolutionary growth and advancement.
Many would say these ends don’t justify the means, but the other side of that coin is that without drastic political change people are left in timidity, stagnation, separation and poverty. Napoleon founded the modern secular state with its dogma of laicity, and therefore was essentially atheist as a follower of Laplace. However, he provided room for divine glory with his view that imagination rules the world, and his claim that to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Genghis Khan explicitly saw himself as an agent of God, a bringer of divine wrath shaking up and unifying a sleepy world under the mandate of the eternal blue sky.
I raise these examples here because imperial power best shows the confluence of facts and values, is and ought. An emperor decides what ought to happen based on his views of what is the case. An empire, that most empirical fact, is held together purely by force of will, by the values of the transcendental imagination of the emperor, by the unity of spiritual confidence in duty.
While doubters will always claim that the emperor has failed to derive his oughts from his ises, that his values are not based on facts, the imperial assertion of the unity of is and ought is always the only basis for stability and prosperity. The absence of such moral vision is the source of decline and collapse.
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Re: Faith and Reason
Thanks for your cogent remarks. You raise two interesting and related problems here. The first is her critique of the ideological claims to comparative mattering. Her claim is that religion offers (with no thought to the question of whether its most coherent forms actually do so offer) both "cosmic mattering" and "comparative mattering" in a way that is tasty but disguises its unhealthiness (thus, "cheesecake").Robert Tulip wrote: Christianity strongly presents the idea that everyone matters equally, through the core ideas of the Bible that God loves the world and has made humanity in his image, that the last are first in the Kingdom of God, and that Christ is found among the excluded. This Christian principle of equality of all before God flows simply through into the crucial virtues of faith, hope and love.
But Goldstein says “The laborious moral progress that we’ve made over the centuries has consisted in undermining, one by one, these ideological claims to comparative mattering.” This is a direct snub to the religious theory of equality before God, although perhaps justified by the hypocrisy of the church which also has too often ignored the gospels.
Modern theology, and religion informed by it (of all stripes, frankly: even Hinduism has qualifying forms), translates her "cosmic mattering" (the universe really cares about me) into relational ultimate mattering (a relationship with the potential to satisfy us on an eternal, unconditioned basis must be one which regards others as mattering equally with ourselves). That is, it finds "cosmic" mattering of me in metaphysical qualities of reciprocal regard, not in a theory about supernatural entities.
The "comparative mattering" (e.g. I am worth more than a heretic because I worship God) that does, in fact, reside in most religious ideas and practice, then bifurcates in the same way that talentism does. There is an illegitimate version, which wishfully asserts that "the virtues I value are truly valuable", ungrounded in any reciprocal relations. But there is also a legitimate version, the one which regards people within a framework holding values discernment to be a common project between people of equal fundamental worth, and says, "this (e.g. restorative justice rather than punitive justice) I trust, this I commit to, without needing any sanction for that trust, and I find true worth in that commitment even if I have no ultimate grounds for knowing that everyone should." (If you know and love your Kierkegaard, this may sound familiar).
The second problem you raise is the historical presentation by Christianity of exactly the second (legitimate) approach. This is mediated by the principal Jesus taught of looking to our own sins first. Correcting others is cheap righteousness, and easily leads to marginalizing others. The sovereignty of God is a source of authority for this, but the experience of relation to God gives an existential grounding which removes the need for such authority. Goldstein seems to believe that any such authority (presumably including metaphysical) will inherently lead to abusive comparative mattering, but I will remain agnostic on that point until someone can demonstrate it to me.
I tend to think that "right and wrong" or "justice" inheres in the meaning of the term, rather than in some set of axioms, but that is a quibble. Deconstruction of the truth of right and wrong is a fundamentally flawed enterprise.Robert Tulip wrote:King of Hearts[/url] cannot tell the difference between the concepts ‘important’ and ‘unimportant’. This illustrates the important moral principle that our values are based on assumptions which we consider axiomatic or self evident. If the King of Hearts has no moral axioms, he is left clueless about what is important.
I am reading some Richard Rorty (Contingency, Irony and Solidarity) and it is amusing to me to see a similar project: use of "incontrovertible" truths to delegitimize the whole idea of incontrovertible truth in the realm of values.Robert Tulip wrote:Unfortunately, my reading of Goldstein is that her agenda is to provide a rationalisation for liberal prejudice. This comes through in her assumption that the individual is the only legitimate moral unit and her condemnation of ‘talentism’ as an alleged fallacy.
Still, I tend to see an individual as an irreducible moral unit, if not the only unit that morally matters, and so I believe we should be able to ground all propositions of justice in reciprocity, or moral equality between individuals.
Thus I tend to agree with her that talentism *** conceived of as a statement of true worth *** is a fallacy, a conflation of the instrumental (how much is that guy worth to me in potential income I can make from deals with him?) with the intrinsic (what worth assigns to that person which does not violate the reciprocity demanded by justice?)
And here is where we get into the interesting territory. The "is" of apparent instrumental worth is a legitimate input to the "ought" of arriving at "true worth." Rawls uses the example of market incentives providing a better life for everyone, including the mentally impaired, for example, and thus the inequality they generate being justified by a rule based on equality.
Well, I certainly agree that such a procedure is not "inadmissible" but I suspect it is best grounded not in a Rawlsian instrumental result or a relational freedom principle, but rather a relational principle of mutual objectives at the highest level of aspiration. I suspect that imposed equality of outcomes violates an intrinsic quality of a life lived for the sake of virtue. The finest presentation of this with which I am familiar is Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron".Robert Tulip wrote:Goldstein’s discussion of the alleged fallacy of 'talentism' is little more than an effort to justify liberal prejudice.
Of course we should discriminate in favour of the talented, by providing resources and opportunities to those with the ability to make best use of them.
You will not find me endorsing any principle of "ought" based on evolution. My view is that we have long since transcended our biology and that any principle of right which is worthy of the name cannot be derived from any principle of reproductive fitness.Robert Tulip wrote:If we favour the best, the overall talent pool grows, whereas if we favour the worst, the talent pool shrinks. That is a law of evolution.
She is actually on the track of something coherent here, which is that comparative mattering at the gut level, a self-esteem issue, easily conflicts with categorical mattering, the basis for justice. Identifying the one with "instinct" is probably right (see Haidt) but she does it in a dismissive way that takes a shortcut past vital questions of context.Rebecca Goldstein wrote:She proposes, "as an additional standard for evaluating the various responses churned up by the mattering instinct, the following: any that are grounded in a form of comparative mattering—including not only sexism, racism, classism, tribalism, nationalism, etc. but also the many versions of talentism—are just as inadmissible as those that are irreconcilable with empirical evidence, logical coherence, and compassion. "
I think there is some nice Kantian validity in this, but it still needs a larger, or at least deeper, context to be fully coherent morally. "Priceless" obviously is the key concept.Robert Tulip wrote:My view is that what matters categorically is evolutionary complexity, because biodiversity is priceless. Whatever sustains and enhances complexity is good, while whatever harms complexity is evil. That means the planet is the unit of morality, not the individual. Coherence requires system thinking, an ability to analyse the consequences of actions for the whole. Duty is action to improve the whole. Durable old stability is intrinsically good. The meaning of life is the good of the future.Harry Marks wrote: her idea of "categorically mattering" is a conflation of two "levels of need" on Maslow's hierarchy. What matters for purposes of self-esteem is not "categorical mattering" or, in other words, what we philosophically find ultimate about the source of anything mattering. That is an issue for the top levels of need, having to do with fulfillment or "mattering beyond the self".
This is very good. Jung grounds the relational depth of the "self that truly matters" in archetypes, which is at least a functional version of what might ultimately be the solution to these quandaries.Robert Tulip wrote:I am writing a paper on Jung’s essay Aion The Phenomenology of the Self, to deliver at the Canberra Jung Society in May. Jung notes the distinction between self and ego, with self as a much deeper concept than personal conscious identity, instead partaking of a collective unconscious archetypal identity. Self-actualisation as distinguished from ego-actualisation is a good moral goal when the self is understood as a deep real identity. Jung explores these ideas in Aion through the theological framework of Jesus Christ as the archetype of the self.Harry Marks wrote:The top level according to Maslow, known as self-actualization, has always left me dissatisfied on philosophical grounds.
The best I can say for them is that the alternatives were not particularly better. Our horror may depend on the number of skulls stacked up after the massacre, or the amount of death and misery caused by their warfare. That is not the same as an analysis of whether their conquest, an "is", can be justified, an "ought".Robert Tulip wrote:The cruelty of emperors instils a general moral repugnance. However, both the Mongol and French Empires had underlying achievements behind their brutality, that they caused the unification of large parts of the earth, enabling subsequent interaction and evolutionary growth and advancement.
Many would say these ends don’t justify the means, but the other side of that coin is that without drastic political change people are left in timidity, stagnation, separation and poverty. Napoleon founded the modern secular state with its dogma of laicity, and therefore was essentially atheist as a follower of Laplace. However, he provided room for divine glory with his view that imagination rules the world, and his claim that to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
You would have trouble convincing me that Genghis Khan, or even Napoleon with his re-made code of laws, had any moral vision worth noting. Pax Romana made the same claim: we bring peace by winning. But peace was not the goal, winning was. In this age of specialization it is more true than ever that military victory is created out of military virtues, and there is no reason even in people as smart as those conquerors, to suppose that those coincide with moral vision.Robert Tulip wrote:I raise these examples here because imperial power best shows the confluence of facts and values, is and ought. An emperor decides what ought to happen based on his views of what is the case. An empire, that most empirical fact, is held together purely by force of will, by the values of the transcendental imagination of the emperor, by the unity of spiritual confidence in duty.
While doubters will always claim that the emperor has failed to derive his oughts from his ises, that his values are not based on facts, the imperial assertion of the unity of is and ought is always the only basis for stability and prosperity. The absence of such moral vision is the source of decline and collapse.
Marcus Aurelius is supposed to be the great exemplar of the ruler who takes his duties seriously. And we know he ruined the best century of Roman rule by opting for biological succession rather than the adoption which had raised up the "benevolent" caesars before him.
Charlemagne gets my vote for most enlightened despot, (with an outside chance for Ashoka) but he is hardly the solution to the problem of squaring ought with is. Instead, the idea is that we are searching for a system which is better because it best solves the ethical problem of ruling justly. Whether "best solves" means "most durably solves" or "most justly solves" is more or less the matter on the table, but I would say that this is a matter of engaging moral instincts on a sustainable basis, not a matter of ignoring moral instincts out of fear of some practical threat.
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Re: Faith and Reason
Harry, Taylor’s post about mattering inspired me to go back to the earlier conversation in this thread, which I would like to revive. Ken Wilber is one of America’s top Jungian mystics. I have some of his books but have not read them. This analysis you present of his views of the function of religion reminds me of Joseph Campbell’s four functions, which I could summarise as awe, reason, ritual and identity. Awe and reason are transcendent, while ritual and identity are personal.Harry Marks wrote:A new presentation of the process of development of faith has recently come to my attention, mostly from Fr. Richard Rohr and his Center for Action and Contemplation, but not entirely. A quote from Rohr:I think this encapsulates the source of the internal problems in religion very nicely.Richard Rohr wrote:Ken Wilber sees religion as having two primary functions. The first is to create “meaning for the separate self.” The second and mature function of religion is to help individuals transcend that very self.
Separation is all about instrumental interest, while transcendence is about inherent meaning. I don’t think there is religious meaning in looking at how we can use others as a means to an end, but rather, as Kant held, goodness consists in treating others as ends, so real meaning is about participating in goals that transcend our personal interests.Harry Marks wrote:"Meaning for the separate self" can come from a sense of belonging, from group solidarity and conformity to group norms, but it leads, as Maslow would observe, to a question as to what "meaning" means.
Restlessness about group loyalty is a key to religious integrity, avoiding the hypocrisy of appearing good while concealing corruption, like whited sepulchers. The function of transcendence is a key to the authentic idea of salvation, taking a higher view than personal interest to ask what is good for the world. There is a constant tendency for teaching to ossify into hierarchical dogma, since the unity of the group is perceived as a higher good than any transcendent ideals. And yet, only transcendence is redeeming for salvation, through the big ideas that persist through time as eternal truths.Harry Marks wrote:We are the thoughtful animal, and we are restless within a specific group context (or at least, some of us are) and we seek to understand the source and true nature of the sense of meaning which we find in a sense of belonging.
The golden rule of love is at the core of religion, but there is a tough issue in do as be done by, which in my last comments I raised in the description of the difference between the self and the ego. The ego demands compassion from others in situations where the interest of the self may well be better served by rougher forms of justice that build durable resilient character. The high ideals of transcendence, of justice, truth, equality, can be in tension with compassion as a primary value. Emotionally, the ego sees feeling for the suffering of others as a primary moral concern, even where the rational self can see that providing help may do more harm than good.Harry Marks wrote: The answer, both experientially and philosophically, has turned out to be the universality of responding to the other ***as if they were my self.*** And that leads us to embrace the transcendence.
Simpler terms for security and affiliation might be safety and belonging, or peace and identity. Who we are, our identity, is defined by affiliations of belonging, loyalty, trust and faith. Security, keeping our world safe and predictable, is a fundamental task of reason, for property, food, energy and wealth. We cannot maintain identity without security. And yet a delusional affiliation can destroy security.Harry Marks wrote: the key to overcoming the tension between the two functions… is found in a different tension: between power motivation, which is really security motivation, on the one hand, and affiliation motivation on the other. Affiliation and security are fundamentally complementary. However it was not so long ago that security and affiliation were not demonstrably complementary but seemed to compete. The threat of dominance was real, (to be fair it still is, but in obscure ways which are hard to give a persuasive account of), and the psychology and institutions built up in such a world are with us still. In that world, for example, dominance was the means to security. Today it disrupts affiliation without being integral to security at all.
Again, a rather complex idea. “Personal meaning” is about emotional comfort, assurance, direction and identity. Prosperity theology is a good example of how religion provides meaning at the personal affiliation level, while not necessarily having coherence at the security level. A sect can deliver identity and even prosperity while holding false doctrines, such as the Mormons. Your use of security motivation makes me think of eschatology, of how the big picture story of religion involves a cosmology that provides a long term collective meaning. But I am not sure that is what you meant. There is also the sense that apocalyptic visions of faith are used to bolster ritual magical practices, with the creedal claim that Christ will return linking in to and securing the whole Eucharistic celebration of community.Harry Marks wrote: The problem for religion is that the language in which religion has tended to settle is one which only does the job on providing a sense of personal meaning, while drawing energy from security motivation for this part of religious functioning.
That vision of family values can open up the hornet’s nest of gay marriage, and the emotional strength of traditional views as reinforcing social stability and power.Harry Marks wrote: The individual draws a sense of significance from being an important part of the strength of society's structure, and the power structure returns the favor by enforcing the rules which give significance to personal uprightness. For example I heard a lot of sermons, growing up, about the family being the "basic unit of society," and that certainly makes sense, but it also means that threats to family life are threats to the security of everyone.
Yes, and this opens the problem of the basic conservatism of faith, that social identity involves reciprocal agreement for conformity to social rules and expectations, which are highly resistant to change and to rational analysis. In evolutionary terms, conservatism has a durable robust stability from reflecting what is tried and tested, even where this is hurtful to the dissident and prophetic voices that seek rational grounds for beliefs and values. The idea that the messiah is despised and rejected shows the inherent tension in religion, that redemption comes from liberatory action at the margins while identity tends to value conformity.Harry Marks wrote: Conservative politics drinks deeply from this well, and derives its basic validity from the mutual reinforcement process at its heart. It is by no means unimportant, but it has inherent limitations.
[/quote][/quote]The national flag is a quasi-religious icon, representing in the case of the US the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So trampling Old Glory is an affront to the traditional ideal of liberty, even though it can be an act of liberty. Often the sense of affront at flag-burning is that the anarchists do not understand the values embodied in what they scorn.Harry Marks wrote: One is an inability to assimilate larger perspectives. Because it draws its validity from a sense of threat, anything which demands a deviation from its orthodoxies is experienced as a threat. So, for example, the idea that we should protect flag-burners because they demonstrate the liberty for which the flag stands is too paradoxical. Undermining group solidarity cannot possibly be what liberty is for, because then liberty will break up the solidarity which makes it possible.
Last edited by Robert Tulip on Fri Mar 17, 2017 7:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Faith and Reason
I like this very much. It says to me that "basic" religion (tribal, perhaps) can do a good job on ritual and identity, but that as we learn to pay more attention to the transcendent, awe and reason lead us to more mature, universal relating.Robert Tulip wrote:Richard Rohr wrote:Ken Wilber sees religion as having two primary functions. The first is to create “meaning for the separate self.” The second and mature function of religion is to help individuals transcend that very self.Ken Wilber is one of America’s top Jungian mystics. I have some of his books but have not read them. This analysis you present of his views of the function of religion reminds me of Joseph Campbell’s four functions, which I could summarise as awe, reason, ritual and identity. Awe and reason are transcendent, while ritual and identity are personal.Harry Marks wrote:I think this encapsulates the source of the internal problems in religion very nicely.
I don't think it is a matter of seeking ways to use/manipulate others. Rather the "meaning for the separate self" (i.e. ego) stages involve interacting with the group in the ways defined by the group to give the person status and belonging. The instrumental process is seeking out the individual, and the individual "buys into" the process. I hope you see the difference from actively trying to use others. Grades in school are one such process, (not religious), while shame shed on sexual transgressors is another (frequently religious).Robert Tulip wrote:Separation is all about instrumental interest, while transcendence is about inherent meaning. I don’t think there is religious meaning in looking at how we can use others as a means to an end, but rather, as Kant held, goodness consists in treating others as ends, so real meaning is about participating in goals that transcend our personal interests.
Because the individual person is relating mainly in terms of the system we talk of incentives, reward and punishment, and other manipulative modes such as aggression, judgment, exclusion, dependency and "getting away with" things.
A good religious process leads us to support communal good even while operating at this ("Law") level. As soon as we have the motivation to evaluate to what extent a process actually does support communal good, then we are operating to some extent on the higher, fulfillment, level ("Grace") rather than the lower, self-esteem (personal significance) level.
Maslow's fundamental claim is that we have to have the lower level needs met, at least for some time, to be able to sense and respond to the higher needs. We have to have some basis for seeing ourselves as persons of worth and valid evaluators before we can begin to evaluate worth independently, for its own sake rather than to receive the reward of validation by the group.
Yes, this is exactly right.Robert Tulip wrote:The function of transcendence is a key to the authentic idea of salvation, taking a higher view than personal interest to ask what is good for the world.
I would say the problem is that the unity of the group is a more "urgent" priority (borrowing from Stephen Covey) but the ideals are the more "important" priority. It's a useful, if slightly vague, typology. The ego deals in the urgency of the inner clamor for validation and self-esteem, while the self dwells in the deeper waters of actually sorting out importance. Groups can also get caught up in the urgent.Robert Tulip wrote:There is a constant tendency for teaching to ossify into hierarchical dogma, since the unity of the group is perceived as a higher good than any transcendent ideals. And yet, only transcendence is redeeming for salvation, through the big ideas that persist through time as eternal truths.
Yes, I agree with this, and part of the function of reason is to help us recognize such manipulative systems. But of course we also have to be concerned about the opposite type of error, in which reason provides rationalizations to choose self-interest, and tribal or ideological religion functions as a system claiming to provide significance to the individual on the basis of group norms which are, in fact, coded self-interest. Compassion provides some defense against the latter. I think Christ informs us that we should choose methods (not values) which take the burden of suffering on ourselves as a way of avoiding the latter problem.Robert Tulip wrote:The ego demands compassion from others in situations where the interest of the self may well be better served by rougher forms of justice that build durable resilient character. The high ideals of transcendence, of justice, truth, equality, can be in tension with compassion as a primary value.
But there is almost always a way to transcend the manipulation relationally if one is willing to bear the emotional costs of doing so. It may be bearing the pain of acknowledging accusations which have some truth in them, or bearing the threat of loss, or bearing the inner cost of saying "because I said so." "Tough love" is often seen in terms of "being tough with the other" when what is really called for is inner strength in oneself, to construct the important in place of the urgent.Robert Tulip wrote:Emotionally, the ego sees feeling for the suffering of others as a primary moral concern, even where the rational self can see that providing help may do more harm than good.
The external constraints give "is" a role in "ought". As Kant observed, "should" implies "can."Robert Tulip wrote:We cannot maintain identity without security.
There is a lot of that going around. Conservatives often assume that martial solidarity is the key to security when it is not. Liberals often assume that institutions of social solidarity function for justice when they really open the doors to manipulation.Robert Tulip wrote:And yet a delusional affiliation can destroy security.
Yet if it is built on systems that consistently resist the quest for ultimate meaning, it will create a repressed "shadow" process that presents terrible danger to the use of reason and the experience of awe. I think this is what Goldstein should be looking at in trying to diagnose the "inadmissibility" of categorical mattering which is derived from comparative mattering. I think she will find the matter complex, but there is a vitally important kernel of truth in it.Robert Tulip wrote: “Personal meaning” is about emotional comfort, assurance, direction and identity.
"coherence at the security level" is an interesting way to put it. It sounds like you are suggesting that "congruence with actual sources of security, e.g. stability and peace" is a kind of coherence. I know we have had trouble with different understanding of the meaning of "coherence" before. Maybe you want to explain further.Robert Tulip wrote:Prosperity theology is a good example of how religion provides meaning at the personal affiliation level, while not necessarily having coherence at the security level. A sect can deliver identity and even prosperity while holding false doctrines, such as the Mormons.
I am afraid I think of eschatology, at least as preached in first century Palestine, as a process of displacing the group's commitment to justice into the realm of the supernatural. I tend to think this has always been a harmful process, and like some types of schizophrenia, represents a stress-induced breakdown in the ability of the group to use reason.Robert Tulip wrote: Your use of security motivation makes me think of eschatology, of how the big picture story of religion involves a cosmology that provides a long term collective meaning. But I am not sure that is what you meant. There is also the sense that apocalyptic visions of faith are used to bolster ritual magical practices, with the creedal claim that Christ will return linking into and securing the whole Eucharistic celebration of community.
Much of the prophetic literature, especially Isaiah, saw the Persian replacement of genocidal empire by tolerance for subject cultures as God's redemption of Israel. Israel's allegiance to its faith in the face of pressure to assimilate was vindicated, with Daniel and Esther capturing this vindication in narrative form. But Hellenism was culturally imperialistic, with Alexander and his successors seeing the obvious superiority of Greek philosophy and civic organization as reason to suppress the cultural institutions of the subject countries. This effort to enforce "reason" by Antiochus Epiphanes led to the successful battle for independence by the Hasmoneans, but also led to eschatalogical literature (other parts of Daniel, especially) in which the whole business of empire was found wanting and found vulnerable, with vindication by God being promised in actual military form.
As the Romans effectively stifled that hope, eschatology became entirely a supernatural vision, and one full of rage rather than hope, at that. What has been passed on to us is all shadow and no deep self. Or so it seems to me.
Well, exactly. And it most certainly has done so. I watch in horrified fascination as conservative groups refuse to use reason to process the issues, clinging to the "rock" of stability in traditional values despite the deep conflict with universal empathy.Robert Tulip wrote:That vision of family values can open up the hornet’s nest of gay marriage, and the emotional strength of traditional views as reinforcing social stability and power.Harry Marks wrote: it also means that threats to family life are threats to the security of everyone.
It is also resistant to the chaos of personal urges, and that is where it gets a lot of its value. We need a systematic process for bridging the gap between the need for structure and the need to move deeper into the process of discerning meaning. Traditionally that has happened within the clergy and monastic withdrawal, and the laity is only offered the process of gradually having its attention redirected over time, to adjust to social change. When the leadership also feels that times of change threaten to unravel the strength that comes from conformity, the churches become reactionary. When economic insecurity piles onto such ego-based reaction to change, the mix can be very volatile.Robert Tulip wrote:this opens the problem of the basic conservatism of faith, that social identity involves reciprocal agreement for conformity to social rules and expectations, which are highly resistant to change and to rational analysis. In evolutionary terms, conservatism has a durable robust stability from reflecting what is tried and tested, even where this is hurtful to the dissident and prophetic voices that seek rational grounds for beliefs and values.
Well, I rather think that the problem is the implied denigration of the sacrifices people went to for those values. If people really thought the anarchists "fail to understand" liberty, I think they would go to some effort to try to explain what is not understood. I don't see that from the anti-flag-burners.Robert Tulip wrote: Often the sense of affront at flag-burning is that the anarchists do not understand the values embodied in what they scorn.
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Re: Faith and Reason
That seems to imply that conservatives would only be interested in personal significance. That is a surprising claim, given the conservative focus on duty, which is all about transcending desire for personal significance, sacrificing individuality for the good of the group. By contrast, non-conservatives are more linked to the utilitarian ethic of happiness and pleasure, which has a strong focus on personal significance.Harry Marks wrote: transcending one's own desire for personal significance is actively resisted by this nexus of conservative energy.
Your description here of conservative ideology is mocking the dutiful group identity of traditional society with its subservience to authority. That picks up on the traditional theory of faith, with its focus on loyal duty and sacrifice, as opposed to reason, with its focus on critical doubt.Harry Marks wrote: Any such perspective in which the essential rightness of "us" is no longer an indispensable part of security must be dismissed, else our personal upright behavior loses the energy behind its cosmic significance.
Bob Dylan made a rather withering political critique of the security mentality in his protest song With God On Our Side, saying “The Second World War Came to an end. We forgave the Germans and then we were friends. Though they murdered six million, in the ovens they fried, the Germans now too have God on their side.”
The German Army belt buckle inscription from the war, Gott Mit Uns, God with us, illustrates the old religious idea of Immanuel, equating faith in Christ with faith in the nation. Such group solidarity is easily criticized by reason, but it reminds me of an interesting debate in evolution theory, EO Wilson’s argument for group selection.
If we accept somehow that adaptivity evolves at the group level, including in cultural evolution, then participation in a social group where everyone surrenders personal will and condemns any exercise of autonomy as treason can turn the group into a powerful machine, able to coordinate its action to defeat other groups which lack such coordination.
Yes, agents of the state must support the moral legitimacy of the state through faith that the institutions they serve are good. The cynics who have no stake in state power may be free to criticize, but with the cynics having no responsibility to implement decisions, even their rational critiques can be discounted by leviathan.Harry Marks wrote: I take this very seriously, by the way. Public service by the police and by a volunteer military depend on a resistance to cynical accounts of the functioning of power. If they have no sense of ideals they become a threat to all of us.
The upshot is that faith in the state, although essential for power and prosperity, becomes morally tarnished by corruption, due to lack of transparent accountability.
The side of reason in this debate is about making the state good. That goal can be equated to the old religious ideal of atonement, finding a path to transform our worldly state of corruption into a state of grace. The rational question of how to achieve a practical evolutionary transition from corruption to grace is not well served by logical cynicism, but needs some respect for people working faithfully within institutions of state.
That is actually a very complicated claim, in light of Adam Smith’s astute observation in The Wealth of Nations that the baker makes your bread precisely because he is the moral center of his personal universe, and not from concern for your welfare.Harry Marks wrote: A careful inquiry into the nature of ethics is likely to displace the personal center-of-the-universe illusion at its heart.
One of our Australian politicians said always back the horse called self-interest. Ben Franklin said God helps those who help themselves. Jesus Christ said to those who have will be given. All these views involve what you call an illusion, but others would say is a reasonable construction of personal identity in accordance with the incentives for security.
Disrupting these natural moral incentives in the name of social ideology is a fraught endeavor, given how personal interests align to evolutionary drivers. But perhaps the point is that intelligence requires humans to evolve beyond instinctive moral drivers, and find ways to bring transcendent ideals into effect, as an objective of religion.
I like to read the Gospels as having a big theme about the need to rise above genetic instinct in order to base behavior upon rational ideas, such as universal love and objective truth.
ie doubt destroys the link between ethics and self-interest. Yes, because Christendom thinking had a specific historical account of ethics, which is no longer valid since the demise of Christendom under the force of globalization. But triumphalist Christianity likes to pretend that God’s in his heaven all’s right with the world, as the old Tories said, a line of thinking long obsolete, even though Browning had some irony when he wrote it.Harry Marks wrote:questioning of triumphalist religious claims to exclusive grasp on religious truth can unravel the link.
So the two reasons for hatred of universities, if I am reading you correctly, are that rational thinking destroys traditional authority without comprehending what it wrecks, and that the credo of conservative individualism finds it hard to mount a coherent response to the rational arguments of liberal collectivism. That looks like why Ayn Rand remains an important ideologue and pariah, because she provides such a robust conservative defence of individual freedoms.Harry Marks wrote: Those are two big reasons why conservative politics and conservative religion experience higher education as a threat.
That is a rather densely packed sentence, well worth trying to read carefully. The transition in question is from our selfish world of ruthless competition to a ruthful world of cooperation, love, trust and mutual aid. The possible theory of change to enable such a revolutionary transformation and utopian evolution of culture would have to be gradual, recognizing the embedded trauma within the psychology of culture.Harry Marks wrote: But for the transition to become a well-traveled road requires, in my view, a practical account of the functionality of alternative visions of security, visions which put on display the complementarities between security and affiliation motivations in a universalistic context.
Such a transition requires assurance that a universalistic context can deliver security, a proposition rejected by nativists. A universal vision would need to be accessible to adherents of existing main religions, so would need to integrate the true and useful aspects of traditional faiths into a new synthesis. My view is that the best prospect for that high objective is in reform of Christianity to place the story of Jesus Christ in a scientific framework.
Yet, in considering a universalistic vision of free trade and globalization, the Trump election shows the security and affiliation difficulties in this vision. US elites have not persuaded the masses that safe identity can be maintained in a world of open borders. I think this illustrates the need for respectful conversation aiming at gradual change, and at understanding the view of others. When a universalistic vision can be portrayed as promoting one world government, it will generate suspicion and opposition.Harry Marks wrote: If we can spell out the ways in which economic growth in other countries increases our long-term opportunities for prosperity and sustainability, for example, we can begin to see how the elevation of China out of poverty has made us better off despite loss of some particular jobs.
A key Bible text for this topic is Matthew 25:40 http://biblehub.com/matthew/25-40.htm "The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'” This means that solidarity with the excluded is a key to a trustworthy universal vision of security and affiliation, although that does not at all involve what was discussed recently here as ‘talentism’ since the very concept of rewarding people by their talents comes from this same chapter in Matthew's Gospel.
The global free trade arguments against mercantile protection run counter to popular intuitions that selfishness is the path to wealth. A similar idea to the selfish popular ethic is that justice means helping your friends and harming your enemies, as Polemarchus suggested to Socrates in Plato’s Republic. The intuitive and instinctive idea of Polemarchus is countered by the transcendent reason of Socrates, providing a model for how Jesus Christ countered the revenge model of justice with his theory of restorative forgiveness, which again places evolutionary salvation in the human capacity to transcend instinctive drives.Harry Marks wrote: We can actually begin to see in practical terms how self-defeating it is to attempt to base prosperity on excluding others from prosperity.
If we allow market forces to enable the most efficient producer to sell freely, the overall productivity benefits will vastly exceed the perceived advantages of exclusive regulation and protection. This is an interesting example where faith in the virtue of free markets can be supported by strong empirical logic.
I have to admit that everything I have said in this post supports the view that the Trumpites are wrong and dangerous. And yet, my emotional sympathy for conservative politics means that I like your point that flushing out the insanity by giving them power is a useful social purgative. The fact that Trump could be elected is an affront to liberal rationality, much as Hitler’s election was, although that comparison is strained.Harry Marks wrote: Perhaps Drumph will actually help this process along. By putting in place personnel who are paranoid and nativist, those views will face the requirement of accountability, and the weaknesses in that worldview will begin to become evident.
Trump is the vaccination America needs to generate antibodies against the emergence of a real tyrant in the future.
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Re: Faith and Reason
Don't know about the purgative value of Donald Trump for the U.S. The prolonged influence of the man might not be reversible on some fronts. But regarding Trump's value as a negative example for Europe, which is flirting with far-right candidates, maybe E.J. Dionne is correct that Trump may have tamped down the movement of the Dutch toward Geert Wilders, whom Dionne describes as "a more malicious version of Trump." They don't want to be like the U.S.! And I see that in Australia a far-right candidate has also been shown the door.Robert Tulip wrote:I have to admit that everything I have said in this post supports the view that the Trumpites are wrong and dangerous. And yet, my emotional sympathy for conservative politics means that I like your point that flushing out the insanity by giving them power is a useful social purgative. The fact that Trump could be elected is an affront to liberal rationality, much as Hitler’s election was, although that comparison is strained.
Trump is the vaccination America needs to generate antibodies against the emergence of a real tyrant in the future.
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Re: Faith and Reason
Well, I didn't mean to mock at all, though there is something ironic in the mentality I was trying to analyze. Bob Dylan certainly brought that out, so thanks for quoting him. I meant instead to point to the primacy of what one might call "group self-esteem needs" in a conservative mentality. Liberals tend to find self-esteem in self-criticism, while conservatives tend to see this as a betrayal of solidarity.Robert Tulip wrote:Your description here of conservative ideology is mocking the dutiful group identity of traditional society with its subservience to authority. That picks up on the traditional theory of faith, with its focus on loyal duty and sacrifice, as opposed to reason, with its focus on critical doubt.Harry Marks wrote: Any such perspective in which the essential rightness of "us" is no longer an indispensable part of security must be dismissed, else our personal upright behavior loses the energy behind its cosmic significance.
Bob Dylan made a rather withering political critique of the security mentality in his protest song With God On Our Side, saying “The Second World War Came to an end. We forgave the Germans and then we were friends. Though they murdered six million, in the ovens they fried, the Germans now too have God on their side.”
Going so far as to declare "God is on our side" (which wars against Native Americans certainly did, as well as both sides in the U.S. Civil War) elevates the feeling of needing affirmation to a theological absurdity. Military analysts are unanimous in declaring that Hitler was defeated by Stalin, not by the other Allies, and yet it would be a bit strained to declare that Stalin had God on his side. Dylan was mainly interested in pointing out that, as the song says at the end, "if God is on our side, He'll stop the next war." That approach to security is no longer tenable.
Maybe, but soft power does not come out of the barrel of a gun. The fact that China can address climate change more effectively than the U.S. (but will they? it remains to be seen) is not really a good argument against autonomy. Europe has plenty of autonomy and they are taking on climate change right and left.Robert Tulip wrote:The German Army belt buckle inscription from the war, Gott Mit Uns, God with us, illustrates the old religious idea of Immanuel, equating faith in Christ with faith in the nation. Such group solidarity is easily criticized by reason, but it reminds me of an interesting debate in evolution theory, EO Wilson’s argument for group selection.
If we accept somehow that adaptivity evolves at the group level, including in cultural evolution, then participation in a social group where everyone surrenders personal will and condemns any exercise of autonomy as treason can turn the group into a powerful machine, able to coordinate its action to defeat other groups which lack such coordination.
Conservative ideology treats an exercise of autonomy as suspect, but in my view should realize that autonomous motivation is more compatible with innovation and initiative. The most effective fighting force in the world, on a per capita basis, is Israel's. Europe and America have sought training from Israeli officers on how to put their system of autonomy into practice. Israeli officers, down to the non-com level, are trained to take initiative to see that their objective is accomplished, even if not by the precise procedure envisioned by their orders. Obviously it helps if everyone realizes that group survival is at stake, a situation notably contradicted for U.S. soldiers in Vietnam (who were notably insubordinate, but not as a way of showing initiative).
"must...support...through faith"??? How oddly stated. My point would be that the state has to keep faith with its citizens (and its agents) by actually following rules of proper conduct. There is room for a certain amount of Ollie North subterfuge, and even some Richard Nixon betrayal, as long as they are held accountable. Many police officers, notably the big city cops of the Prohibition era and the proverbial big-bellied sheriff of the old South, were cynical within their small domain, and it was disastrous for public belief in the rule of law. We are moving toward a kind of politics-based impunity now in America, and the foreseeable consequences are disastrous. Fortunately not all conservatives confuse image with reality when it comes to moral behavior.Robert Tulip wrote:Yes, agents of the state must support the moral legitimacy of the state through faith that the institutions they serve are good. The cynics who have no stake in state power may be free to criticize, but with the cynics having no responsibility to implement decisions, even their rational critiques can be discounted by leviathan.Harry Marks wrote: I take this very seriously, by the way. Public service by the police and by a volunteer military depend on a resistance to cynical accounts of the functioning of power. If they have no sense of ideals they become a threat to all of us.
The practical implementation of this philosophizing is the "whistle-blower law". When those who divulge improper secrets are protected from the powerful, who naturally do not want to be held accountable, then those secrets are more likely to be exposed. I realize it is not always easy to tell if the secrets are improper, but if the main reason for keeping them secret is to allow impunity for improper behavior, then it is an easy call.Robert Tulip wrote: The upshot is that faith in the state, although essential for power and prosperity, becomes morally tarnished by corruption, due to lack of transparent accountability.
The side of reason in this debate is about making the state good. That goal can be equated to the old religious ideal of atonement, finding a path to transform our worldly state of corruption into a state of grace. The rational question of how to achieve a practical evolutionary transition from corruption to grace is not well served by logical cynicism, but needs some respect for people working faithfully within institutions of state.
With all that reviewed, we are ready to return to:
I think you make a fair point about the conservative emphasis on duty. Since about the time of the Vietnam war, U.S. liberals have been openly skeptical of the use of duty as a concept. Essentially, we saw a graphic demonstration of its abuse, at the expense of many thousands of lives, without accountability for those summoning others to their "duty." The same thing happened in Europe with World War I, an even more colossal waste of lives and abuse of duty. However, note that liberals are still willing to sacrifice self, including happiness and pleasure, for a cause. That was the ethos of the Spanish Civil War, for example, which remains an iconic struggle between cynical exploitation of naive ideas of order and duty, on one hand, and autonomous bravery for the perception of justice on the other.Robert Tulip wrote:That seems to imply that conservatives would only be interested in personal significance. That is a surprising claim, given the conservative focus on duty, which is all about transcending desire for personal significance, sacrificing individuality for the good of the group. By contrast, non-conservatives are more linked to the utilitarian ethic of happiness and pleasure, which has a strong focus on personal significance.Harry Marks wrote: transcending one's own desire for personal significance is actively resisted by this nexus of conservative energy.
So I would argue that conservatism does a good job of motivating people to do their duty, but not a good job of questioning what that duty really is. I still think that matches up well with the notion that authoritarian religion aims at satisfying people's desire to feel personally significant (because I am doing my duty to my family and my country, I am a good person who will be personally vindicated by God) but a rather bad job of moving them up to the higher level effort to integrate the good of the whole into their sense of duty.
This talk of levels makes it sound like I think an honest inquiry into the good will always favor liberal politics. That is not my position. My position is that an honest inquiry into the good must start with reciprocity, and that means institutional systems such as property are to be supported (if at all) on the basis of their fairness as a system, not on the basis of their personal advantage to me. I do not think any political system short of democracy can be justified, but economics is much more complex.
I think that is an abuse of the term "moral center". Yes, a person naturally feels that "I matter" more than others matter. But when Adam Smith actually took on morality, in his theory of moral sentiments, he did not justify self-centeredness. His point in Wealth of Nations is that free markets will liberate great gains in productivity, but he correctly bases this as much on the division of labor (which is limited by the extent of the market, his first great observation) as on selfish motivation.Robert Tulip wrote:That is actually a very complicated claim, in light of Adam Smith’s astute observation in The Wealth of Nations that the baker makes your bread precisely because he is the moral center of his personal universe, and not from concern for your welfare.Harry Marks wrote: A careful inquiry into the nature of ethics is likely to displace the personal center-of-the-universe illusion at its heart.
It is certainly possible to give a moral account of economic behavior which is quite compatible with free markets and unequal outcomes. But this is based on assessment behind a veil of ignorance, as Rawls puts it, so that one is assessing based on benefit to all rather than on the impact on myself. When we make the mistake of arguing that capitalism (in the sense of free markets) is justified because it lets me make a lot of money, then we have in essence concluded that if I can get away with cheating customers and suppliers to make money, I am acting morally. (Remind you of anyone?)
Robert Tulip wrote:One of our Australian politicians said always back the horse called self-interest. Ben Franklin said God helps those who help themselves. Jesus Christ said to those who have will be given. All these views involve what you call an illusion, but others would say is a reasonable construction of personal identity in accordance with the incentives for security.
Humans have the capacity to ask themselves, "what kind of person do I want to be?" If their best answer is "a rich one, with few constraints on my personal urges," then they do not have an account of "worth" which holds up to systematic inquiry. It may satisfy them, but we have good reason for concluding that people who act this way do not have any claim on our sense of duty.Robert Tulip wrote:Disrupting these natural moral incentives in the name of social ideology is a fraught endeavor, given how personal interests align to evolutionary drivers. But perhaps the point is that intelligence requires humans to evolve beyond instinctive moral drivers, and find ways to bring transcendent ideals into effect, as an objective of religion.
There is nothing wrong with being rich, or having few constraints. That is simply not a satisfactory account of what makes life "worth the effort" in the context of a society with mutual obligations. It can be a wonderful path to doing things which are themselves worthy, or a way of keeping score in a competition to see who can do the most worthy things. But as a definition of what is worthwhile it will not do.
Now you are talking sense.Robert Tulip wrote:I like to read the Gospels as having a big theme about the need to rise above genetic instinct in order to base behavior upon rational ideas, such as universal love and objective truth.
Well, the link between ethics and self-interest can still be re-constructed, but not on the old basis of "fire insurance." I think the idea of eternal punishment for the evil has played a largely constructive role, but it certainly has its downsides, and we are capable now of constructing a society more capable of restraining evil than that supernatural idea was, and without the nasty side-effects.Robert Tulip wrote:ie doubt destroys the link between ethics and self-interest. Yes, because Christendom thinking had a specific historical account of ethics, which is no longer valid since the demise of Christendom under the force of globalization. But triumphalist Christianity likes to pretend that God’s in his heaven all’s right with the world, as the old Tories said, a line of thinking long obsolete, even though Browning had some irony when he wrote it.Harry Marks wrote:questioning of triumphalist religious claims to exclusive grasp on religious truth can unravel the link.
Well, you have re-stated my points in a rather tendentious fashion, in my opinion, but lets go with those. Rational thinking does undermine (hardly destroys) traditional authority, and it is not yet clear how much support individuals need to be able to function effectively when their self-esteem is under persistent attack and they lack traditional authority. It may be that traditional authority is the only workable mode to hold off chaos for low status people and communities.Robert Tulip wrote:So the two reasons for hatred of universities, if I am reading you correctly, are that rational thinking destroys traditional authority without comprehending what it wrecks, and that the credo of conservative individualism finds it hard to mount a coherent response to the rational arguments of liberal collectivism. That looks like why Ayn Rand remains an important ideologue and pariah, because she provides such a robust conservative defence of individual freedoms.Harry Marks wrote: Those are two big reasons why conservative politics and conservative religion experience higher education as a threat.
Ayn Rand is extreme, and, by steamrollering nuance, undermines her own persuasiveness. There is a very robust and coherent response to collectivism, and it fares well in academic circles (if not as well as the Koch brothers might like). Even, for example, Paul Krugman, often considered a liberal firebrand, does not advocate collectivism or try to cast doubt on market capitalism as an organizing system.
By my actual original points stand unchallenged: higher education undermines both the notion that morality is to be justified by its personal benefits to me (the center-of-the-universe illusion in moral reasoning) and the triumphalist claim that the true nature of supernatural things has been supernaturally revealed to my particular tribe.
You have certainly understood my point. As to whether a new faith synthesis is required, I have my doubts. Going back to the version in first century Christianity (or rabbinic Judaism!), to the extent that is possible in a rationalist framework, seems to be sufficient to strip away toxic accretions of authoritarianism and triumphalism. I like your emphasis on the embedded trauma. PTSD is a good image for a culture that has trouble moving up to fulfillment needs.Robert Tulip wrote:That is a rather densely packed sentence, well worth trying to read carefully. The transition in question is from our selfish world of ruthless competition to a ruthful world of cooperation, love, trust and mutual aid. The possible theory of change to enable such a revolutionary transformation and utopian evolution of culture would have to be gradual, recognizing the embedded trauma within the psychology of culture.Harry Marks wrote: But for the transition to become a well-traveled road requires, in my view, a practical account of the functionality of alternative visions of security, visions which put on display the complementarities between security and affiliation motivations in a universalistic context.
Such a transition requires assurance that a universalistic context can deliver security, a proposition rejected by nativists. A universal vision would need to be accessible to adherents of existing main religions, so would need to integrate the true and useful aspects of traditional faiths into a new synthesis.
However, the main point I wished to make may not have gotten through. I believe that universalistic ruthfulness (thanks for that phrase) is quite rational, and delivers security better than any alternative on offer. This has yet to be properly explained (or implemented, at a policy level!) That is, I am not arguing its moral superiority but its practical superiority. Collective security is strictly superior to mutual armed truce, and demonstrably so. Market economics (with pragmatic social safety nets) dominates collective or nativist economics.
Liberal belief in open borders is a conservative myth. Even in Europe, with borders open for poor Eastern Europeans, there are border restrictions against the outside. Yet I do think that liberals have failed to make the general case that security is enhanced by rationally implementing affiliation motivation universally. It is a strong case, in my opinion.Robert Tulip wrote:the Trump election shows the security and affiliation difficulties in this vision. US elites have not persuaded the masses that safe identity can be maintained in a world of open borders. I think this illustrates the need for respectful conversation aiming at gradual change, and at understanding the view of others.
I would not go so far as to argue that Jesus' point was supportable on pragmatic grounds. I think our moral quest is ultimately more important, but aligning social institutions with it requires a critical mass of people operating at the self-fulfillment level.Robert Tulip wrote:A key Bible text for this topic is Matthew 25:40 http://biblehub.com/matthew/25-40.htm "The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'” This means that solidarity with the excluded is a key to a trustworthy universal vision of security and affiliation, although that does not at all involve what was discussed recently here as ‘talentism’ since the very concept of rewarding people by their talents comes from this same chapter in Matthew's Gospel.
There are several counter-intuitive knots in the practicalities of these issues. And we are not guaranteed that the successes of the past will be repeated by the same principles in the future. Yet, as far as we are able to tell, there is a much stronger case to be made for open markets and collective rule of law than for gut instincts of economic protectionism and tribal self-defense for security.Robert Tulip wrote:The global free trade arguments against mercantile protection run counter to popular intuitions that selfishness is the path to wealth. A similar idea to the selfish popular ethic is that justice means helping your friends and harming your enemies, as Polemarchus suggested to Socrates in Plato’s Republic. The intuitive and instinctive idea of Polemarchus is countered by the transcendent reason of Socrates, providing a model for how Jesus Christ countered the revenge model of justice with his theory of restorative forgiveness, which again places evolutionary salvation in the human capacity to transcend instinctive drives.Harry Marks wrote: We can actually begin to see in practical terms how self-defeating it is to attempt to base prosperity on excluding others from prosperity.
If we allow market forces to enable the most efficient producer to sell freely, the overall productivity benefits will vastly exceed the perceived advantages of exclusive regulation and protection. This is an interesting example where faith in the virtue of free markets can be supported by strong empirical logic.
We can only hope you are right about this, in my opinion.Robert Tulip wrote:Trump is the vaccination America needs to generate antibodies against the emergence of a real tyrant in the future.
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Re: Faith and Reason
The premise that faith and reason are mutually exclusive is a canard which is frequently deployed on BT, but it is wrong. In countering said premise I recommend the following books.
Faith With Good Reason by Ben Butera amazon.com/Faith-Good-Reason-Finding-An ... ood+reason
Particles of Faith by Stacy Trasancos, Ph.D.amazon.com/Particles-Faith-Catholic-Nav ... s+of+faith
Faith With Good Reason by Ben Butera amazon.com/Faith-Good-Reason-Finding-An ... ood+reason
Particles of Faith by Stacy Trasancos, Ph.D.amazon.com/Particles-Faith-Catholic-Nav ... s+of+faith
Last edited by stahrwe on Sat Mar 25, 2017 3:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.