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Are You a Platonist, a Jeffersonian, or a Humean?

#169: Dec. - Mar. 2020 & #109: Jul. - Sept. 2012 (Non-Fiction)
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DWill

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Are You a Platonist, a Jeffersonian, or a Humean?

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In chapter Two of The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt lays out three possible views of the basic nature of our minds. He first cites Plato's amusing story in Timaeus of the creator god who created only souls, without physical form, but with perfect rationality. When that god needed a break, some lesser gods took over and designed vessels for those souls: first the heads (spherical, the most perfect shape), and then bodies to protect those heads from rolling around and injuring themselves. The bodies were also given "second souls" that were neither immortal nor rational, the source of all those "dreadful but necessary disturbances: Pleasure, first of all, evil's most powerful lure; then pains, that make us run away from what is good." To give the divine head a bit of separation from the gross passions, the gods invented the neck. For Plato, the purpose of living was clear: to make your reasoning mind exert control over your inferior passions. Actually, only philosophers could fully achieve this dominance of mind over body, and show lesser men how to get closer to it, which was job security for them. Haidt calls this view, which came down through the ages as a worshipful stance toward reason, the rationalist delusion.

Haidt chooses Thomas Jefferson to illustrate a middle way of shared responsibilities in the mind, "in which reason and sentiment are (and ought to be) independent co-rulers, like emperors of Rome, who divided the empire into eastern and western halves." Jefferson had embarked on a relationship with a married woman and so thought a lot about the proper roles of reason and emotions in areas of our lives.

David Hume wrote in 1739 that "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."

Haidt tells us of his own journey from rationalism to his enlightenment as a convert to Hume. Which view of human nature do you think is right? (You may abstain if you don't believe that we have a human nature!)
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Dexter

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Re: Are You a Platonist, a Jeffersonian, or a Humean?

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He makes a good case for the Humean position, although I think maybe he goes a little too far in disparaging reason (which is perhaps an unfair way of putting it).

I wasn't quite sure why Hume said reason "ought only" to be the slave of the passions, rather than merely describing that it is in fact the slave.
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Robert Tulip

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Re: Are You a Platonist, a Jeffersonian, or a Humean?

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I'm a pure Platonist. Ethics is about using evidence to improve the world.

Hume's statement that reason ought only to be the slave of the passions, considered without qualification, is extremely stupid. It makes ethics the task of rationalising desire, unlike Plato's view that intelligence provides a rational understanding of the good, and of how instinct and custom prevent us from doing good.

Our passions say we should consume a lot at no cost. Our reason says this is not possible.
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Re: Are You a Platonist, a Jeffersonian, or a Humean?

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Robert Tulip wrote:I'm a pure Platonist. Ethics is about using evidence to improve the world.

Hume's statement that reason ought only to be the slave of the passions, considered without qualification, is extremely stupid. It makes ethics the task of rationalising desire, unlike Plato's view that intelligence provides a rational understanding of the good, and of how instinct and custom prevent us from doing good.
Morality, considered descriptively, is about much more than ethics--one of the principles Haidt sets out in the introduction.

It may be hard to understand the "ought to" in Hume's prescription. Haidt believes there is scientific evidence that if the emotive center of the brain becomes disabled, everything--both feeling and acting rationally--is screwed up, whereas with a damaged rational faculty, the effect is limited to a certain kind of thinking. So we "ought to" realize which is the rider and which is the elephant. I think it's important as well that Haidt isn't saying that passion or emotion is equivalent to hedonism. He's saying that we have moral intuitions keyed to emotions that precede our rationalizations. We just "know" that something is either right or wrong, good or bad. When certain cases are put before people, they have an extremely hard time giving reasoned answers for their judgments, a phenomenon that Haidt calls moral dumbfounding. This doesn't mean that the person has only a self-serving or hedonistic reason for his belief. In the example of sex between a brother and sister, we can clearly see that emotion actually is the "reason" behind the judgment that this incest is wrong. Emotional doesn't equal irrational.
Our passions say we should consume a lot at no cost. Our reason says this is not possible.
The fact that we're so unsuccessful at following this bit of reason indicates the power of the emotional elephant. In this case, of course, the emotion is hedonistic.
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Dexter

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Re: Are You a Platonist, a Jeffersonian, or a Humean?

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DWill wrote: It may be hard to understand the "ought to" in Hume's prescription. Haidt believes there is scientific evidence that if the emotive center of the brain becomes disabled, everything--both feeling and acting rationally--is screwed up, whereas with a damaged rational faculty, the effect is limited to a certain kind of thinking. So we "ought to" realize which is the rider and which is the elephant.
That was the only example I could think of to justify that statement. Hume must have had something else in mind to make that "ought to" conclusion.

And the example of the disabled emotive center provides compelling evidence for why it is in fact important, but not so much what the role of reason should be in a normal brain. After all, he does concede that moral reasoning can sometimes change your mind.
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Re: Are You a Platonist, a Jeffersonian, or a Humean?

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Regarding the original question. Even after reading Damasio's "Decarte's Error" and half this book, my gut still tells me that I'm mostly Platonist while the rest of the world is Humean!
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Robert Tulip

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Re: Are You a Platonist, a Jeffersonian, or a Humean?

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DWill wrote:if the emotive center of the brain becomes disabled, everything--both feeling and acting rationally--is screwed up
I watched Haidt's talk, but have not bought the book.

This example of defective emotion seeks to prove the case by the exception, and continue Harris's error of seeing morality through the limited prism of neuroscience.

The core of morality is based on rational logic: we do not harm others because it is contrary to our own long term interests, and generally also against our short term interests. We support rule of law because that is proven to be the best way to maximise human well being. Morality is much more a matter of reason than sentiment. In fact, where sentiment infects our moral calculations we often end up making decisions that have worse consequences than if we weighed the evidence and consequences objectively. (Actually a main parable in World War Z)

I have never been able to comprehend Hume's line about reason being slave to passion, or his other mad ideas such as skepticism about causality. But that is because I start from a Platonist premise, like Kant's synthetic a priori judgments as necessary conditions for existence.

It is true in an ultimate sense that we cannot base values on facts, in that we cannot prove it matters if humanity goes extinct or not, but this sort of logical nihilism is irrelevant to real moral debate. Once we latch on to an initial sentimental premise, such as that we do not want humanity to go extinct, then any ideas which logically flow from that premise are entirely rational except for the initial synthetic axiom.

I also don't understand the distinction DWill made between morality and ethics. Although the words have some differences of tone and usage, at bottom they mean exactly the same thing, guidance for good action.
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DWill

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Re: Are You a Platonist, a Jeffersonian, or a Humean?

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Dexter wrote:
DWill wrote: It may be hard to understand the "ought to" in Hume's prescription. Haidt believes there is scientific evidence that if the emotive center of the brain becomes disabled, everything--both feeling and acting rationally--is screwed up, whereas with a damaged rational faculty, the effect is limited to a certain kind of thinking. So we "ought to" realize which is the rider and which is the elephant.
That was the only example I could think of to justify that statement. Hume must have had something else in mind to make that "ought to" conclusion.

And the example of the disabled emotive center provides compelling evidence for why it is in fact important, but not so much what the role of reason should be in a normal brain. After all, he does concede that moral reasoning can sometimes change your mind.
In my mind, Robert's post also came from the point of view of what "should be," rather than, descriptively and scientifically, what is (in the event that these are different). It'll be interesting to see how Haidt plays with that contrast in the book. Perhaps another part of "ought to" is the role that evolution has played (according first to E.O. Wilson in his controversial book) in determining our emotional constitution. If moral psychology is about evolved emotions, and we draw the reasonable conclusion that the emotions evolved ahead of our ability to reason consciously, then it might make sense to always keep in mind that our deliberate reasoning is piggybacking on our emotions, or at least being in important ways ordered by emotions.
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DWill

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Re: Are You a Platonist, a Jeffersonian, or a Humean?

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LevV wrote:Regarding the original question. Even after reading Damasio's "Decarte's Error" and half this book, my gut still tells me that I'm mostly Platonist while the rest of the world is Humean!
Well that is perfect! You capture the whole dilemma that Haidt speaks of. How incredibly difficult it is for us to believe that we, not just the other guy, are emoting as we offer our reasoning. Haidt attributes this trait to our being 90% chimpanzee. We're practiced tricksters.
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Re: Are You a Platonist, a Jeffersonian, or a Humean?

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DWill wrote: ... Perhaps another part of "ought to" is the role that evolution has played (according first to E.O. Wilson in his controversial book) in determining our emotional constitution. If moral psychology is about evolved emotions, and we draw the reasonable conclusion that the emotions evolved ahead of our ability to reason consciously, then it might make sense to always keep in mind that our deliberate reasoning is piggybacking on our emotions, or at least being in important ways ordered by emotions.
As I read your post I sat here trying to think of a situation were morality is not tied to an emotion - or the consideration of an emotion of someone else. I can't think of any. I think there is very little doubt that emotions emerged first and then reason - the part of the brain that is involved with emotion is a much older part of the brain than the frontal lobes which is responsible for the executive functions (reason).

Anyone want a side trip? Here is a link to E.O. Wilson's TED talk -
http://www.ted.com/talks/e_o_wilson_on_ ... earth.html
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