Niklas Forsberg has helpfully posted a
non-final draft of his review of Wittgenstein's Moral Thought (eds. Reshef Agam-Segal and Edmund Dain)
here. Naturally you want to know mostly what he says about my paper, so here you are:
[I]t is a relief of sorts that only
two of the papers of this volume start off by noticing that Wittgenstein wrote
very little about ethics. [I'm pretty sure mine is one of the two.] One may even say that one of the most central
lessons one should learn from this book is that “what we had thought of as the
field of ethics is so vast and unbounded that we no longer recognize it as
a field at all” as Duncan Richter formulates it.
[...]
Richter’s text is something like a turning
point of the book. He focuses on later Wittgenstein’s more fluid conception of
language, which enables him to bring into view the multifarious ways in
which evaluative words – like good and beautiful – are meaningfully
used. One may see this as on a par Wittgenstein’s earlier thought, where ethics
is not about a specific something, and ethical difficulties may surface
anywhere and are interwoven with our lives in language. If we assume that
“good” means one thing, and one thing only, we will have nothing to say about
it. As a consequence, a notion like “good” must remain indefinable, but
not because it is ineffable or somehow out of reach. As Richter says: “An accurate
picture will not be neat, because the use of
the word ‘good’ is not neat” (154), falling back upon
Wittgenstein’s idea that one cannot really “sketch a sharply defined picture
‘corresponding’ to a blurred one” (PI,77). We need to think about more things
than moral code words such as good, evil, right, wrong, etc. One must also
think about “things such as people, their property, our relationships with them,
and so on. (…) There is far more to ethics than questions about what is
right and what is good” (168).
[...]
[T]his is a very helpful book. It should be,
and probably will be, one of those books that most philosophers who
think about ethics after Wittgenstein will have to read.
What are the fundamental principles that determine the possibility of ethical judgments and determine the validity of critical judgments about them? What is distinctive about ethical judgments, as opposed, e.g., to knowledge claims, what are they about? And where do these general ethical principles come from? What determines the relative valuation of the possible outcomes of human interactions, what are the general desiderata? The definition of terms such as 'good' and right' as used in natural languages, and clarification of their role in ethical judgments is one thing; trying to come up with explicit statements that accurately reflect our (evolving) understanding of these general ethical principles, the principles that determine the acceptability of ethical judgments, is probably more pertinent to the evolution of ethical understanding. There is much that is intuitive in the making of ethical judgments, but the critique of ethical judgment must make some attempt to get clear about (and thematize) the nature of the fundamental principles that are actually used. (I want to say that the explicit statement of an ethical principle is not identical to the principle that is intuitively used, but a description of it, and typically there can be alternative formulations.) As far as I'm concerned, no word is "indefinable", although I consider the more important idea to be description of the meaning of the word, including its open-ended "resonance".
ReplyDeleteWell, that's what the above post made me think of, even though it's not a direct response.
JPL
I'm glad it got you thinking. I'll try not to be too annoying in my response, although I suspect it won't be very satisfying.
DeleteWhat are the fundamental principles that determine the possibility of ethical judgments and determine the validity of critical judgments about them?
I don't know. Must there be some?
What is distinctive about ethical judgments, as opposed, e.g., to knowledge claims, what are they about?
Ethical judgments are generally about behavior, although they need not be, and generally about whether something is good or not, although they need not be. Unlike knowledge claims, which are all about knowledge, there is nothing that they need to be about. Or so I'm inclined to say.
And where do these general ethical principles come from?
Must they come from somewhere? If I answered Belgium that would obviously be absurd, which suggests (at least to me) that there is perhaps something wrong with the question. (Since it seems to ask for a location, but giving a location as an answer produces absurdity.) Can I get away with saying God? That probably does more harm than good as an answer.
What determines the relative valuation of the possible outcomes of human interactions, what are the general desiderata?
I don't know that there are any. Certainly I don't think there are any that would be at all surprising to anyone familiar with any of the great ethical, religious, or wisdom traditions of the world. (Which is not to endorse all the contents of such traditions.)
the critique of ethical judgment must make some attempt to get clear about (and thematize) the nature of the fundamental principles that are actually used
Must we engage in such critique? If so, why is thematizing necessary to it?
As far as I'm concerned, no word is "indefinable", although I consider the more important idea to be description of the meaning of the word, including its open-ended "resonance".
This sounds right, although of course much depends on what is counted as a definition. It (seems as though it) must always be possible to explain the meaning of a word, and the point of definitions (or dictionaries, at least) is to explain. But the meaning of not every word is to be explained by giving the kind of necessary and sufficient conditions that philosophers often look for.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply, which raises yet more questions for me. (I don't have answers to the questions I expressed, but I am optimistic that exploring them would be interesting and maybe useful.)
ReplyDeleteWhen I asked the question about where ethical principles come from I meant a causal source, not a locative one. (In many languages the expression of the initial condition in a causal relation is based on the locative expression for source; the basic case is one of movement, but is typically generalized to the initial state in a change of properties of an object regarded as invariant; the bridge is the logical notion of the function. Anyway, you hesitantly mentioned God as a possible source, which raises the ancient question of the "deontic source". I'm not an atheist, but I don't think God is needed as a causal source of ethical principles. WRT a related problem, the subject of your previous post, Kronecker said, "God made the integers; all else is the work of man." I think God didn't even make the integers; even they are the work of man. When Brouwer said that mathematics is a free creation of the human mind, I think he was on the right track, but it seems this free constructive activity results in the discovery of truths that could not be otherwise. So where did these truths come from? My hypothesis is that the fundamental ethical principles I was wondering about have a similar sort of existence in a similar sort of abstract logical realm. So yes, I think there are such fundamental logical principles, and that their necessary existence rests on a prior condition that is a contingent fact. What are those fundamental principles? I don't know either. (I'm hoping you'll tell me where I'm going wrong here.)
On a more concrete level, I have a "visceral" opposition to torture, e.g., waterboarding; I have no doubt that it is wrong. But what is it that makes the judgment, "Torture is wrong and should never be done to anybody for any reason whatsoever." justified, upon what does its validity depend?
A lot of people have attempted to give a complete explanation, but some people still seem to think it's OK. Can there be an explanation that convinces such people? Probably not, but I think there will come a day when torture will be regarded in the culture as a whole as "unthinkable".
JPL
When I asked the question about where ethical principles come from I meant a causal source, not a locative one.
DeleteI should have realized this, but I don't think it makes the situation any better. That is, "She made them, with the tools she keeps in her shed" is obviously an absurd answer. As would be, it seems to me, "She made them in her head" or "They evolved". To think of moral principles, such as torture is impermissible, as having (been) developed is to think of them as possibly wrong, or at least imperfect. And that is to stand in the wrong relation to them, because it treats them as something like hypotheses. A principle is not a hypothesis but a rule to which one is more or less committed.
We can wonder whether we should be committed to this or that principle, but this is to take a step back and suspend commitment temporarily. Such suspension is not always possible or good. Say I live by the principle "Women and children first". I could stop and wonder whether this might actually be a bad, sexist principle. But I don't think I could do the same with "Don't commit murder". Any putting of that principle on trial would either be a kind of sham or else would reflect very badly on me.
Asking where such principles come from also involves a kind of stepping back. It is a sort of sociological suspension of the ethical. It might be worth wondering how healthy this activity is--will it do anything for our ethics but undermine our commitment to the principles in question? It might also be worth wondering whether ethical principles, once suspended, remain ethical principles. That is, perhaps talk of ethical principles is (sometimes) convenient shorthand for talk of something more complicated than this shorthand suggests, and perhaps asking about the origin of these principles treats them as things when they are not really best conceived of as things, or at least, perhaps the attempted inquiry distorts or oversimplifies matters. Taking a fish out of water is not always the best way to study it, and there might be similar dangers in taking a sociological, or psychological, or historical approach to ethics. If you want to understand ethics qua ethics perhaps it's necessary to leave it in its natural habitat and not to (try to) step back.
On torture, I think the judgment that torture is wrong is justified by what torture is, by reality. I don't think there is any supporting principle that is more certain (than "torture is wrong"). And I think it more or less is unthinkable already, or about as unthinkable s it can ever be. Not quite, probably, but almost. Hence talk about "enhanced interrogation" and "animals," and the fact (I think it's a fact) that torturers are put through torture themselves as part of their training. It takes considerable deprogramming to enable most people to torture. To the extent that this is not true (there are sadists, of course, and people who will not admit the truth about what is done in their name), more philosophy, or better philosophy, is at most a tiny part of the solution.