Monday, August 27, 2018

Inside Ethics

Alice Crary's Inside Ethics: On the Demands of Moral Thought is an excellent book, and I have no criticisms to offer. But I do have some questions about it. First, though, a summary of the argument, in the form of a series of quotations:
Human beings and animals have moral qualities that are, in a straightforward empirical sense, open to view. That is the thesis of this book. (p. 10)
I describe thinkers who take human beings and/or animals to lack all observable moral characteristics as situating human beings and/or animals outside ethics, and I describe those who in contrast take human beings and/or animals to have moral characteristics that are open to observation as situating human beings and/or animals inside ethics. (pp. 11-12) 
It is entirely standard to conceive of ‘moral’ values [...] as values that are internally related to action and choice, and thus far in this chapter I have simply assumed that my talk of human and animal ‘moral’ characteristics would be read as implying—as I intend it to imply—that the recognition that a creature has these characteristics is practically significant in the sense of being directly relevant to how it should be treated. (p. 13)
There are passages in his later work in which Wittgenstein gives expression to a view of mind of the sort I want to defend (viz., a view on which psychological categories are irreducibly ethical and metaphysically transparent), and his writings also develop interrelated lines of reasoning that, when brought together, can be used to make a compelling case for such a view. (p. 39)
Mental characteristics are only at home in human and animal lives in which some things matter in that they are, say, to-be-feared, to-be-sought, to-be eaten, to-be-protected, or to-be-befriended. Our ability to recognize creatures as possessing such characteristics presupposes that we have already at least imaginatively adopted an attitude toward them as beings who are caught up in such lives and who accordingly, in appropriate circumstances, merit specific modes of concern and attention. It is in this respect, insofar as they are aspects of the lives of creatures who call for particular forms of response, that the mental characteristics of human beings and animals are essentially practical. Given that they are thus both objective and essentially practical, it is fair to say that these characteristics present us with objective moral values. (p. 88)
[I]n ruling out conceptuality we commit ourselves to representing any natural or learned canine responses as operating on (or triggered by) particulars. We cannot talk about modes of conduct that involve the recognition of kinds of things or of individuals. This is what speaks for attributing conceptual capacities to dogs. (p. 113)
[I]f we are to bring human beings and animals empirically into view in ethics, then— without regard to whether they possess species-typical capacities of mind—we need to look at them in the light of ethical conceptions of what matters in the lives of members of their kinds. That is what speaks [...] for saying [...] that merely being a human or an animal matters for ethics. (p. 161) 
[L]iterary works can contribute internally to the kind of empirical understanding that we seek in ethics (p. 204) 
One striking feature of the book is its similarity to, and engagement with, regular philosophy. That might not sound striking, but Crary somehow both draws heavily on Wittgenstein and engages in what looks very much like the kind of philosophical theorizing that he rejects. I can't help feeling that this is a sign that something must have gone wrong, but I also can't see that it matters. This is not a good position for me to be in. So my first question is, what should I do about this? I'll attempt a kind of answer below.

Secondly, Crary distinguishes between two kinds of facts in a way that puzzles me. This comes up especially in the last chapter of the book. For instance, see these passages about Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals:
To arrive at this recognition we need to know some of the plain facts about what this system [i.e., the industrial food system] is like. These facts have in recent years gotten attention in, among other places, non-fiction best sellers, blogs, and the columns of major newspapers, and they are increasingly familiar to the reading public. Safran Foer takes it for granted that his readers will know the basics about factory farms, and he devotes himself to filling in some of the details. For instance, when he talks about the treatment of those chickens who are raised for meat—or, in the industry lingo, “broilers”—he tells us not only that the birds are packed together in close quarters but also that they are generally placed in windowless sheds by the tens of thousands at densities that allow each bird on average something less than a square foot of floor space; he tells us not only that these conditions quickly become filthy and produce illness but that they lead to respiratory disease, musculoskeletal injury, and enormously high rates of infections of different kinds (including some like E. coli that are caused by fecal contamination); he tells us not only that the birds therefore all get antibiotics in their feed but also that their bodies are routinely bathed in chlorine to decontaminate them after slaughter; he tells us not only that many chickens are injured when being packed for transport to slaughter but also that approximately 30 percent suffer broken bones, that they receive no further food or water once under way, and that they are slaughtered by a mechanical process that, when it works correctly, slits their throats while they are still conscious and, in the small but significant number of cases in which it doesn’t, scalds them alive; and so on and so on.
When Safran Foer discusses the treatment of broiler chickens, he isn’t merely concerned with these kinds of neutral facts. He is taking for granted the ethically charged image he develops of the significance of different animals’ lives and using it to get us to register the horror of what is done to the birds. One of his goals is to have us visualize what it means for a chicken to be crammed into a room with tens of thousands of its fellows, with no more than about an eighth of a square foot to itself. “Find a piece of printer paper and imagine a full-grown bird shaped something like a football with legs standing on it,” he instructs, “and imagine 33,000 of these rectangles in a grid.” He uses evocative language in talking about the kind of ailments from which many of these chickens suffer because he wants us to register the bodily significance of the fact that a small percentage of the birds “die writhing in convulsions from sudden death syndrome” and that three quarters have the sorts of walking impairments that are in all likelihood signs of chronic pain. He uses similarly expressive terms in talking about the ways in which the birds are treated during transportation to slaughter and during the killing process because he also wants us to register horrors here. Workers are, he explains, expected to crate chickens so quickly that they “will regularly feel the birds’ bones snapping in their hands.” Moreover, “often the screaming of the birds and the flapping of their wings will be so loud that workers won’t be able to hear the person next to them on the line,” and “often the birds will defecate in pain and terror.” It is in this way—by moving from his effort, early in the book, to get us to see that animals matter to evocative descriptions of the handling of broiler chickens in the industrial food system—that Safran Foer positions us to see the awful callousness of the birds’ treatment. (pp. 262-263)
Crary contrasts plain or neutral facts with ethically charged expressive terms and evocative descriptions. This sounds like a contrast between ways of saying what the facts are more than a contrast between two kinds of facts, and perhaps this is what she means. But I'm also not sure about where the contrast is. When she talks about "these kinds of neutral facts" does she mean both such facts as that "birds are packed together in close quarters" and that "they are generally placed in windowless sheds by the tens of thousands at densities that allow each bird on average something less than a square foot of floor space"? Or is the former a neutral fact while the latter is ethically charged? As these paragraphs are written it looks as though the stuff about birds having their throats slit while still conscious and in some cases being scalded alive are (supposedly) neutral facts while their dying while writhing in convulsions is either a different kind of fact (an ethically charged one) or else a different kind of presentation of a fact (an evocative one). I agree that there is a difference in kind between the bland statement that chickens are packed together in close quarters and the statement that the screaming and flapping of the birds is so loud that workers cannot hear the person next to them. But both, I take it, are equally facts. 

The first paragraph quoted above contains a series of "not only...but also" pairs of facts, and it seems to me genuinely unclear whether Crary means that everything in the paragraph is a plain or neutral fact (which is what the words "these kinds of neutral facts" in the first sentence of the next paragraph seem to imply) or whether the "not only" facts are plain/neutral and the "but also" ones are ethically charged. That would make more sense to me. But the difference seems more one of degree than of kind. One of the "not only" facts involves reference to filthy conditions that produce disease. That isn't as evocative as the fact about routine chlorine baths for decontamination, but it's at least somewhat evocative. And this matters because the inside/outside ethics distinction that gives the book its title has to do with this distinction between neutral facts and (what I think Crary never calls) ethical facts. 

A difference of degree is still a difference, but I wonder whether there's a tension, and whether this matters, between Crary's distinction between outside and inside ethics (between neutral facts and non-neutral facts) and her view that ethically relevant facts are empirically discoverable. Here's a possibility: those who situate humans and/or animals outside ethics believe that there are neutral facts, or perhaps rather that there is a space of neutral facts with no essential or internal connection to ethical facts; those who situate humans and/or animals inside ethics deny that there is such a space or, if there is one, that humans and/or animals exist within it. (The latter might think, for instance, that mathematics or physics is a kind of conceptual space in which the facts are neutral, but that in this space there are no people or animals.) In this case, from the inside ethics perspective, the distinction between neutral and ethical (non-neutral) facts is only relative at most. So in the passages quoted above about Safran Foer we need to read in words such as 'relatively' and 'supposedly' whenever anything is described as neutral or evocative or morally charged. Because all the facts mentioned there are morally charged to some extent. This, it seems to me, is in fact the case, i.e. it is the case, and not only "from the inside ethics point of view." 

I can't (be bothered (here and now) to) explain how or why, but I think this shows the outside ethics position to be not just false but nonsensical. It is a 'position' that is committed to the existence of a way of making sense of human and/or animal life that does not exist. And what I suspect is that all of Crary's book has to be read in a kind of as-if spirit. The various 'theories' that she shows to be 'wrong' are, in fact, not even possibly correct. But she talks about them as if they might be. And the 'theories' that she shows to be better are in fact a (possibly misleading) representation of the only way we can, or at least do, make sense of the phenomena in question. Thus, for instance, there is not really "a view of mind" to which Wittgenstein gives expression and which Crary endorses. Rather, there is the way (or ways) we talk about and understand the concept of mind (or a whole bunch of concepts related to mind). I haven't spelled it out, but somewhere in this, I believe, is the answer to my first question about theories and Wittgenstein. 

34 comments:

  1. Is to be emotively charged (prompting us to various kinds of revulsion) the same as to be morally charged? Can we not separate feeling horror or revulsion or even a marked distaste for some phenomenon from taking such feelings as justifying some sort of behavior on our part? While we may not be able to tease the moral out entirely from the fabric of our emotional lives, must we therefore presume they are just the same thing, that moral claims are fully grounded in our feelings? If so how do we distinguish when one feeling is a proper motivator of action, another not? Resort to more feelings about those or some sort of gauge as to which feelings we feel most strongly?

    On the point about eating animals, of course, the discourse is very powerful. If we keep that constantly in our minds many of us would have to stick with vegetable matter in some form or other (no guilt in ripping off lettuce leaves from their head and ingesting them, or devouring the occasional carrot). Could butchery be done in a more morally acceptable way (in this case one that is less offensive to our feelings)? Many argue that kosher slaughter with its injunctions to minimize animal pain addresses that but surely even kosher slaughter entails suffering for those creatures subjected to it. Perhaps the real solution lies with modern science and the new technologies being developed which produce a kind of artificial meat from vegetable matter, or as in some cases, "meat" grown in laboratories without the benefit of having first dressed the bones of living breathing creatures. But these options are still quite expensive (I recently spent $30 for a vegan burger made of the new "impossible meat" which did have a satisfying texture and seemed to "bleed" meat juices (courtesy of beets). Not bad but at those prices not likely to put the beef and chicken industries out of business!

    I wonder, though, the question of eating real dead animals or only faux dead ones aside, whether or not this is entirely a moral question and, to the extent it is moral, what makes it so. Surely it can't just be revulsion for sometimes moral claims on us would seem to oblige us to overcome our revulsion in order to act (caring for the very sick, perhaps plunging into a cesspool to save a drowning child)!

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  2. Crary does say this, which I quoted above but might be worth quoting again:

    It is entirely standard to conceive of ‘moral’ values [...] as values that are internally related to action and choice, and thus far in this chapter I have simply assumed that my talk of human and animal ‘moral’ characteristics would be read as implying—as I intend it to imply—that the recognition that a creature has these characteristics is practically significant in the sense of being directly relevant to how it should be treated. (p. 13)

    But that probably doesn't answer your questions. I'll have a go at answering them here:

    Is to be emotively charged (prompting us to various kinds of revulsion) the same as to be morally charged?

    No, for reasons you make clear

    Can we not separate feeling horror or revulsion or even a marked distaste for some phenomenon from taking such feelings as justifying some sort of behavior on our part?

    We can indeed

    While we may not be able to tease the moral out entirely from the fabric of our emotional lives, must we therefore presume they are just the same thing, that moral claims are fully grounded in our feelings?

    No

    If so how do we distinguish when one feeling is a proper motivator of action, another not?

    This is probably too crude, but roughly speaking: we bring our values to bear on the question. If I feel disinclined to do something because it would be unjust then that is a good reason not to do it. If I feel disinclined to do it because it would be messy then that is a less good reason. (Although, of course, it is sometimes possible to argue about whether a certain act really would be unjust, and some acts are more seriously unjust than others, and often something's being messy is a perfectly good reason not to do it--there is no moral requirement to get dirty, other things being equal.)

    Resort to more feelings about those or some sort of gauge as to which feelings we feel most strongly?

    I don't think it's all about feelings. Recognizing an act as unjust, for instance, is not primarily about feeling a certain way about it.

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  3. Being "unjust" then is perhaps what you have in mind when you speak of our bringing our "values" to bear on some question (presumably in order to sort through our feelings in order to ascertain which of them should motivate us and which we should ignore or suppress?).

    But what about justice? Is it a feeling, too, only of a different order? Do we take being just as a value (because it seems to qualify) because we feel it more strongly than other feelings we happen to have -- or because it is of a qualitatively different order which sets it above less glorified feelings (loving a good swim or certain sort of pizza)?

    Is to be just something that's rationally grounded in some sense (e.g., to see things from an ideal perspective as if from outside looking in or from a position of ignorance, or, say, based on some inarguable rule of reason)?

    Leaving aside the issue of deciding what "justice" amounts to, are we taught to be just by our elders or peers (through example or instruction) or is it some innate sense we all possess? If it is something we are born with or taught then it's not a matter of our own choice in which case neither are the judgments we ultimately derive from an inclination to act justly.

    If justice is a core moral value, what places it in that exalted category?

    And is it the core value or does it co-exist with others like itself (compassion, perfectability, etc.)?

    I know I'm a pain in the ass with these sorts of questions but the material you posted from Crary struck me as eliding the important distinction between what we feel in context and what reason(s) we have to feel one way rather than another and how they can count for us as reasons.

    As you know by now, I have come to the conclusion that moral claims (or ethical claims, since I am using these terms interchangeably for now) must be reasoned claims. That is they are of a different type than feeling claims, even if they are intertwined to some degree.

    Crary seems to be making the case that the moral is an indispensible category within which we operate at least in that part of our lives which deals with others like ourselves. I agree with that. But I am not sure I can agree that the moral dimension is fully explicated by speaking of how encountering others makes us feel.

    We do feel strongly or weakly about different things and feelings do motivate. But precisely because our feelings can motivate us in conflicting ways, there must be a reasoned dimension to all this (a way of sorting and prioritizing the motivating pressure of competing feelings). Why should I care about an animal's suffering if it's not mine, especially if I like the taste of chicken?

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  4. Let's see.

    Being "unjust" then is perhaps what you have in mind when you speak of our bringing our "values" to bear on some question (presumably in order to sort through our feelings in order to ascertain which of them should motivate us and which we should ignore or suppress?).

    I meant justice as merely one example of a value.

    But what about justice? Is it a feeling, too, only of a different order?

    I don't think it's a feeling at all. Although I suppose something might feel just or unjust, fair or unfair.

    Do we take being just as a value (because it seems to qualify) because we feel it more strongly than other feelings we happen to have -- or because it is of a qualitatively different order which sets it above less glorified feelings (loving a good swim or certain sort of pizza)?

    I don't think there's any such thing as the feeling of justice.

    Leaving aside the issue of deciding what "justice" amounts to, are we taught to be just by our elders or peers (through example or instruction) or is it some innate sense we all possess?

    The former, surely. Although I wouldn't therefore deny that there might be some more or less universal feeling or kind of reaction that gives rise to such instruction.

    If it is something we are born with or taught then it's not a matter of our own choice in which case neither are the judgments we ultimately derive from an inclination to act justly.

    I don't think we choose what is just. Certainly individuals don't get to choose what is just or unjust.

    If justice is a core moral value, what places it in that exalted category?

    I don't really know what this means. The idea of core moral values seems made up (talk of core values is fairly recent, as far as I know), so if I say that justice belongs in this category then it is me that is placing it in that category. But presumably you mean something like by what right do I claim it belongs there. And then I would remind you, if it really seemed necessary, that talk about justice is talk about such things as cutting off people's heads and locking them up. If you ask why that matters, or why it is so important, then I don't think I would understand the question.

    And is it the core value or does it co-exist with others like itself (compassion, perfectability, etc.)?

    There are other values than justice.

    I know I'm a pain in the ass with these sorts of questions but the material you posted from Crary struck me as eliding the important distinction between what we feel in context and what reason(s) we have to feel one way rather than another and how they can count for us as reasons.

    I wonder whether she might want to question that distinction.

    I am not sure I can agree that the moral dimension is fully explicated by speaking of how encountering others makes us feel.

    I don't think she would say this either.

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  5. Is it enough for a justice claim or a compassion claim to show someone a video of events going on in a slaughterhouse and then await their anticipated response? What if it's not like ours? What if it's closer to indifference or, worse, pleasure? Doesn't the moral dimension demand an argument from us, a citation of reasons for why we SHOULD be disturbed even if some of us aren't? Isn't this the point at which our moral claims diverge from our moral sentiments?

    Can the emotive expression of revulsion or dismay over what happens to the slaughtered as they wait their turn, and during the process itself, ever suffice as a moral claim?

    What reasons does Crary give to take such suffering, or our revulsion at its occurrence, as justification for urging care for the sufferers on others or even on ourselves if we are indifferent?

    But perhaps, as you intimate, I am simply not getting her point.

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    1. Is it enough for a justice claim or a compassion claim to show someone a video of events going on in a slaughterhouse and then await their anticipated response?

      Sometimes, yes

      What if it's not like ours?

      Then that isn't enough

      What if it's closer to indifference or, worse, pleasure?

      Then we will have our work cut out of we want to convert them to our point of view. It does not follow that we are wrong to take the view we do.

      Doesn't the moral dimension demand an argument from us, a citation of reasons for why we SHOULD be disturbed even if some of us aren't?

      I don't think so, no. All argument has to start from somewhere, as does all communication. If people's reactions, feelings, etc. differ radically enough then communication with them might be impossible. And I see no reason to suppose that the possibility of communication between any two people must be either 0% or 100%. We might be able to agree, to understand one another, on some things but not others.

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  6. I am going off topic from your's and Stuart's discussion, but I agree that from what you have quoted Crary does seem to do some entirely un-Wittgensteinian things. I'm having trouble putting my own thoughts together these days, but reading this I was reminded of two quotes that have been in the background of whatever clarity I manage to come up with. The first is from an interview on the BBC on Wittgenstein where Barry Smith says the following:

    "Science has got a perfectly good job of trying to describe the way the world is and how things work. Now what about all the things that we can't put into scientific speak? We might want to say that the world has a certain meaning for us or that things are valuable. And when we say that life has a value or a meaning, as Wittgenstein points out that's not just one more fact. Its not going to be found in the world alongside water boiling at 100 degrees Celsius and certain facts about chemical substances.


    So what are we to make of that idea that the world has value or that there's a meaning to our lives? Instead of it being something that we state in a another proposition or that scientists investigate it's not a part of the world, it's an attitude to the world. It's a way that we regard the world. So if you've got the facts in front of you, there's something else you can do other than just list them. You can take up a stance in respect of what you find there, and that's what gives the world its ethical value, that's what we have over and above."

    The next is from an essay by Dan Kaufman in which he quotes from Bernard Williams. Dan prefaces the quote with, "Beyond moral concern for animals, then, it is Williams’ view that ethical concern of every type and variety can only be understood in light of the human prejudice and ultimately, as an expression of it. It is people who have ethical concerns and we do so as a result of the things that we care about." https://theelectricagora.com/2017/12/02/course-notes-bernard-williams-the-human-prejudice/

    The quote from Williams is this:

    "We can act intelligibly from these concerns only if we see them as aspects of human life. It is not an accident or a limitation or a prejudice that we cannot care equally about all the suffering in the world: it is a condition of our existence and our sanity. Equally, it is not that the demands of the moral consciousness require us to leave human life altogether and then come back to regulate the distribution of concerns, including our own, by criteria derived from nowhere. We are surrounded by a world which we can regard with a very large range of reactions: wonder, joy, sympathy, disgust, horror. We can, being as we are, reflect on these reactions and modify them to some extent… But it is a total illusion to think that this enterprise can be licensed in some respects and condemned in others by credentials that come from another source, a source that is not already involved in the peculiarities of the human enterprise. (The Human Prejudice p. 147) "http://www.nyu.edu/classes/gmoran/WILLIAMS.pdf

    So I don't really see where Crary successfully differentiates between 'neutral' facts and facts with moral implications. The facts are the facts, and it is up to us to decide in which way they matter. Obviously the people engaged in what I call cruelty to livestock do not think of themselves as acting unethically. The difference cannot be narrowed down to what the facts are or are not but only to where they fit in our general sense making of our own lives. Caray seems too committed to making Ethics out to be some sort of factual endeavor. Perhaps that is the 'theorizing' you found un-Wittgensteinian and hard to swallow.

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    1. Thanks for this.

      There may be a difference between facts with moral implications and facts with no moral implications, but the difference seems contingent to me. I don't see that there are essentially neutral and essentially non-neutral facts. So yes, facts are facts. But I wouldn't say that it's exactly up to us to decide in which way they matter. I don't think I, or even we collectively, can just decide that something matters or doesn't matter overnight.

      And I think some people who treat animals unethically do think of what they are doing as unethical. They might feel bad about it but not too bad, or think that having a job requires some moral compromises.

      The 'theorizing' in Crary's book that seems un-Wittgensteinian is really simply its similarity with philosophy as usual. Positions are staked out, arguments presented and evaluated, and so on. But my hunch is that something deeper is going on, that this only looks like philosophy as usual. I haven't had time to work out whether this hunch is right though. If it is right, then the distinction between neutral facts and morally charged facts is only a distinction to be made temporarily (or treating what is a relative difference as if it were absolute is only to be done temporarily), for the sake of argument).

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  7. Value in the world?

    How can it not be, if we ourselves, are in it? To the extent value is what we ascribe to the things we think we ought to do or secure, aren't these, our doings, as much in the world as the things done or secured?

    Stokhof (in Life and World as One: A Study of Ontology and Ethics in the Early Wittgenstein) points out that the "I" (or we) that we take ourselves to be is just observer (constituted by the perspective from which things are seen) on the Tractarian view. It is, itself, never observed.

    In a sense this is true of course. Thus, what the "I" wants or thinks itself justified in doing is not in the world on such a view. It is part of the observer, on the outside, so to speak, looking in. But the problem remains that we are in the world aren't we?

    Even while looking at the world as such, we think about ourselves, refer to ourselves, act with respect to the impacts the things we do are likely to have on us. And we look at others and see them in the same terms as ourselves, fellow observers of a shared world. How then can the value we ascribe to things not be in the world with us?

    Aren't what we want and think about functions of ourselves, our cognitive activities, in the world -- not directed at the world from somewhere outside it? Certainly the self isn't a delineable thing the way rocks and trees, dollar bills and universities are, of course. These have observable features at various levels. And we don't take the actions we observe in others to be who they are in full (even if we suppose express at least an aspect of who they are). So this idea that value is somehow outside the world as such just strikes me as wrong.

    Yes, it is hard to say what it is. The word "value" seems to denote a something but there is nothing to get hold of when we look. But many words work like that. It doesn't mean they really don't denote anything so long as we can use them intelligibly, in a successful language game.

    As Stokhoff points out, correctly I think, there is an implied ontology in our language. The question is what are we to make of that? Are things like "value" real even if they have an abstract level of application? Values as beliefs we hold about what is right or wrong to do. Beliefs are real aren't they? We see them and talk about them when others act or when we do. Do we think our language needs to be purged of such terms? If not, if they serve a purpose, why doubt that they designate something even if they do not point to a tangible thing?

    Isn't it somehow wrong to say that value is outside the world? Oughtn't we rather to say it occurs as a different aspect of our world, reflecting the relation between the "I" and its objects just as we distinguish, and so determine, objects in relation to other observed phenomena (which we take to constitute other objects)? Perhaps this is the better way to secure a meaningful place for ideas like value in our discourse.

    (Sorry to take this farther afield than I think you intended Duncan but, as you can see, this post, as with so many in the ethical sphere, got me off and running again.)

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    1. That's OK.

      Value can't be outside the world because there's no such place. Or, anyone who says that value is outside the world must mean either nothing or else something non-obvious.

      Then again, value is surely an abstraction, and perhaps it would be better to talk in more concrete terms about love, justice, compassion, theft, babies, etc.

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    2. Thanks. But isn't the question really like this: Why justice? Why compassion? Why not steal? Why care about babies? . . . if in any of those cases we don't?

      Moral assertions call for reasons but it can never be reason enough to reply with statements like "well that's what it means to be compassionate" or "to care about babies." etc. One may know what it means to do any of those things and still not feel like doing them, acting thus, matters.

      Granted most of us do feel similarly on matters like these and sometimes we lose sight of that and then showing the situation, in a form that is comprehensible to us or that moves us emotionally, can help as a reminder. But what if we aren't reminded by that alone? And what if, reminded, we still reply with "so what?" Isn't the moral issue about whether we should act in a certain way (and actions, being prompted by feelings, require developing certain ways of feeling about these things, too).

      Being moral is fine and dandy (however we may define that term) and asserting that something is or is not morally right is also fine but insofar we are merely expressing how we happen to feel, it can exert very little force on others (or even on ourselves if we happen to be wrestling with a problem that partakes of that particular issue).

      I simply don't see how a purely expressivist account can work, nor how our feelings sort of can be thought to ground judgments meant to influence others.

      Yes we can influence others in non-rational ways: coercion, by example, subliminally, enculturation, instruction, etc.. But none of these have a rational implication (although they can appear to). One can, perhaps say, well, that's okay, we don't need the rational element here. Expressing and affecting is enough. But it really isn't because that goes against how we actually speak, how we use moral discourse. Is ordinary language wrong here? Is there a deeper logic beneath our words that's really about something else entirely? Is moral discourse, when deployed to make a case for doing or not doing something really just a facade, then, a way we have of kidding ourselves?

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    3. But isn't the question really like this: Why justice? Why compassion? Why not steal? Why care about babies? . . . if in any of those cases we don't?

      Moral assertions call for reasons but it can never be reason enough to reply with statements like "well that's what it means to be compassionate" or "to care about babies." etc. One may know what it means to do any of those things and still not feel like doing them, acting thus, matters.


      I'm not sure about this. Does someone really know what a baby is who does not see reason to care about them? Certainly you can dislike babies and want to have nothing to do with them. But a baby seems like a good example of what Crary means when she talks about things as to-be-cared-for, etc. Hence the verb 'to baby'. An important aspect of what babies are is those things that some people care about so much. Also: those things that grow into people. "Why care about them?" really seems pretty unintelligible to me. Coming from an adult human being, anyway. Questions like this only really seem to be intelligible when asked at a certain level of generality: why should I care about that kind of thing? But to that question one might give either a general answer or a series of particular answers. And I think the latter is a better way to go.

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    4. https://www.insideedition.com/convicted-baby-killer-charged-murdering-5-more-children-evil-evil-38794

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    5. I don't there is, or needs to be, a rational argument that would persuade such a person to behave differently.

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    6. But there is a need for a rational argument to persuade others that it is wrong and not just a matter of opinion. Otherwise there's no basis for making it unlawful or punishing such behavior.

      I agree that we probably can never persuade some people or reach everyone with reasons. But if we don't have reasons to offer, which most of us find convincing, then there can be no basis for rejecting some behaviors while endorsing others. Calling such behavior "evil" cannot then be justified. All we can say is we don't like it.

      If our reasons are merely to cite how we feel about the matter or how the social consensus feels about it, then those reasons lack any implications for the rest of us if and when we can get away with something.

      Moral judgment is about self-guidance while the law is about societal guidance. The two aren't the same, although self-guidance (however much we may be shaped by our social milieu) takes precedence in every individual decision (including whether we will follow a law or rule, or not).

      At the least examples like the one this links to show us that invoking presumably shared sentiments cannot function as a reason to act (and so serve as a behavioral guide) absent some incentive (like avoiding punishment or gaining the good opinion of others).

      But such incentives are never enough to establish a standard with the requisite force needed to distinguish a moral judgment from a merely prudential one. And the prudential cannot ground the moral without sapping it of its distinctive standing.

      Anyway, as you can see, I have become more fixed in my views on these matters of late (less tentative). Perhaps that is to the good (in the non-moral sense of "good" of course).

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  8. "So yes, facts are facts. But I wouldn't say that it's exactly up to us to decide in which way they matter. I don't think I, or even we collectively, can just decide that something matters or doesn't matter overnight." you may indeed come to such a realization overnight (tho it might in some sense be coming/building over time) certainly there has to be a day when we don't believe/value what we did before (and literally some day before) but more generally I don't see how the fact that we may take more time/effort to come to hold a new position changes the fact that we make such meanings/stances rather than discover them (they don't exist out in the world apart from us) not sure how this all isn't more of the old is/ought dilemma?

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    1. Oh yes, you can realize in a flash that you have been wrong about something. (At least, I think you can. No examples are coming to mind right now.)

      I wouldn't say that we make meanings rather than discover them, although there's probably some ways in which they are made and some in which they are discovered. The make/discover dichotomy might be misleading here. Consider slavery, for instance. It wasn't perfectly fine until someone decided to adopt a negative stance towards it. On the other hand, it would be misleading to suggest that some moral explorer or scientist one day discovered that slavery is cruel and unjust. Neither the language of making nor that of discovering seems really to fit the case.

      Talk of seeing and coming to see might be better, but we 'see' with concepts, which are human creations. And of course institutions are created, as are relationships. So there is a role for making in all this, but I don't think there's a neutral world onto which we just arbitrarily project made-up values.

      not sure how this all isn't more of the old is/ought dilemma?

      Me neither.

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    2. I don't really see what a third to making vs discovering could be for human-beings, and what does/could it mean for slavery to be wrong before it was wrong for/to someone?

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    3. True, it does seem as though things must be either made or discovered (if they are real at all), but maybe insisting on using these terms in this case is more misleading than helpful. Perhaps what we need is a complex story about affordances, etc.

      I don't know what it would mean for slavery to be wrong without being wrong to or for someone, but it is surely cruel to the enslaved people whether anyone realizes it or not. And, I would say, it violates their rights. Now, rights is a made-up concept, but it isn't just made-up. It's useful. And arguably helps us understand the world better, thereby discovering features we were previously blind to. Rights might not be the best example of an enlightening concept, but I suppose cruelty is another made-up concept. As made-up as it might be, it picks out a real feature of human life, and one that we might not see, or not see as clearly, without this concept.

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    4. "As made-up as it might be, it picks out a real feature of human life, and one that we might not see, or not see as clearly, without this concept"
      at risk of repeating myself I would say what could "real" mean here as such doings only exist in/for us and not out in the world, so yes these are real attitudes in that we do such valuings but surely we have assembled them. I go back to Rorty here:
      “In the Davidsonian account of metaphor, which I summarized in Chapter I, when a metaphor is created it does not express something which previously existed, although, of course, it is caused by something that previously existed. For Freud, this cause is not the recollection of another world but rather some particular obsession-generating cathexis of some particular person or object or word early in life. By seeing every human being as consciously or unconsciously acting out an idiosyncratic fantasy, we can see the distinctively human, as opposed to animal, portion of each human life as the use for symbolic purposes of every particular person, object, situation, event, and word encountered in later life. This process amounts to redescribing them, thereby saying of them all, “Thus I willed it.” Seen from this angle, the intellectual (the person who uses words or visual or musical forms for this purpose) is just a special case – just somebody who does with marks and noises what other people do with their spouses and children, their fellow workers, the tools of their trade, the cash accounts of their businesses, the possessions they accumulate in their homes, the music they listen to, the sports they play or watch, or the trees they pass on their way to work. Anything from the sound of a word through the color of a leaf to the feel of a piece of skin can, as Freud showed us, serve to dramatize and crystallize a human being’s sense of self-identity. For any such thing can play the role in an individual life which philosophers have thought could, or at least should, be played only by things which were universal, common to us all. It can symbolize the blind impress all our behavings bear. Any seemingly random constellation of such things can set the tone of a life. Any such constellation can set up an unconditional commandment to whose service a life may be devoted – a commandment no less unconditional because it may be intelligible to, at most, only one person. Another way of making this point is to say that the social process of literalizing a metaphor is duplicated in the fantasy life of an individual. We call something “fantasy” rather than “poetry” or “philosophy” when it revolves around metaphors which do not catch on with other people – that is, around ways of speaking or acting which the rest of us cannot find a use for. But Freud shows us how something which seems pointless or ridiculous or vile to society can become the crucial element in the individual’s sense of who she is, her own way of tracing home the blind impress all her behavings bear."
      dmf

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    5. But what does exist out in the world? What is given? I don't have time to go into this now, but Crary talks about this, and what she says seems right to me.

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  9. Carter Gillies writes (in a comment that I will have to split into several parts):

    "So there is a role for making in all this, but I don't think there's a neutral world onto which we just arbitrarily project made-up values."

    I think I sort of agree too. We don't just learn the neutral world separately growing up, we also learn how-to-value-it. It is part of the same education. We learn what is *and* how to feel about it side by side, hand in hand, in coordination with each other, facts AND what to do with them, where they fit in our lives. We learn not just the facts in isolation, but the ways in which facts matter. The world is preloaded with value in the ways we grow up learning it. (You can grow up learning to believe in God or not, that people who look different from you are somehow lesser or not, that eating meat is wrong or not, etc., etc..)

    So it is also true that different people learn the world differently. That the same things are not always appreciated even remotely similarly between all individuals and cultures. In that sense it seems we DO project our values onto things as-they-are (Racism, for example). It is not simply a personal projection from the depths of our own subjectivity but a projection of the concepts and institutions you referenced. The form of life in which these things are expressed.

    That is part of it for sure. But it is not either/or, invention OR discovery. Surely Crary is right that moral behavior is part of the evolution of sentience, and that it is also true that humans take some stances purely instinctively.

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    1. "Surely Crary is right that moral behavior is part of the evolution of sentience" not at all obvious, some forms of cooperation might have been part of it including say murdering fellow but now extinct humanish critters, that we gained some powers of abstraction/imagination are not for ethics (anymore that a duck's webbed feet are for swimming).

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    2. But just as a duck's webbed feet facilitate swimming and a bird's winged appendages make flying feasible, so the capacity to think abstractly and imagination make the sort of thing we call ethics possible. Does that mean that outcome was intended by someone? Of course not. But ethics as a mode of gauging human behavior employed by other humans need not be the result of anyone's intention that it be so. It just is. Ducks swim effectively on the water and fly in the air when they need to and humans see the actions of other humans in moral terms at least some contexts. And that's good enough to explain ethics and why we should care to be ethical. It's part of our form of life.

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  10. Carter Gillies II:

    A few quotes from On Certainty (There are four instances of the word 'animal' in the text. These passages include three of them):

    472. When a child learns language it learns at the same time what is to be investigated and what not. When it learns that there is a cupboard in the room, it isn't taught to doubt whether what it sees later on is still a cupboard or only a kind of stage set.

    473. Just as in writing we learn a particular basic form of letters and then vary it later, so we learn first the stability of things as the norm, which is then subject to alterations.

    474. This games proves its worth. That may be the cause of its being played, but it is not the ground.

    475. I want to regard man here as an animal; as a primitive being to which one grants instinct but not ratiocination. As a creature in a primitive state. Any logic good enough for a primitive means of communication needs no apology from us. Language did not emerge from some kind of ratiocination [Raisonnement].

    ------------------

    357. One might say: " 'I know' expresses comfortable certainty, not the certainty that is still struggling."

    358. Now I would like to regard this certainty, not as something akin to hastiness or superficiality, but as a form of life. (That is very badly expressed and probably badly thought as well.)

    359. But that means I want to conceive it as something that lies beyond being justified or unjustified; as it were, as something animal.

    -------------------

    This one is a bit different, but still relevant:

    284. People have killed animals since the earliest times, used the fur, bones etc.etc. for various purposes; they have counted definitely on finding similar parts in any similar beast.
    They have always learnt from experience; and we can see from their actions that they believe certain things definitely, whether they express this belief or not. By this I naturally do not want to say that men should behave like this, but only that they do behave like this.

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  11. Carter Gillies III:

    I just don't see where Crary's idea of neutral facts and ethically charged facts help this discussion more than to make the obvious case that we get worked up about some things and not by others. But is that a discussion about *facts*, or *types* of fact? Or is it a discussion of human (and sentient) behavior? About forms of life?

    For instance, if the same exact situation can be described both in terms of neutral facts AND ethically charged facts, I'm not sure exactly what 'facts' are supposed to mean any more. That the same world fractures into a multiplicity of contrasting and occasionally contradictory 'facts'? "Smoking is bad for your health" and "No its not"? The propositions of science and science denial?

    You were right to rein me back in when I suggested that "Obviously the people engaged in what I call cruelty to livestock do not think of themselves as acting unethically." I should have said "some folks at the chicken plant". Some do, and some don't. Some will ignore (turn a blind eye) to any ethical implications, others will be indifferent, some will rule out any connection of what they are doing to morality, others will acknowledge it but minimize the conflict, and still others will be fully aware of the conflict but override the difficulty with a superior value (I think this is what Williams was pointing to when he said "It is not an accident or a limitation or a prejudice that we cannot care equally about all the suffering in the world: it is a condition of our existence and our sanity"). Are all these of these stances FACTS, or something more akin to 'opinions'? In other words, does the same exact circumstance admit to multiple and inconsistent 'factual' content, or do different people simply feel differently about the same things?

    Facts are something we should be able to agree on. It matters in courtrooms and laboratories. But when we start talking about facts as though some were neutral and others ethically charged that agreement is cast to the wind. We end up with alternate facts and alternate truths. The line between fact and opinion not only blurs but disappears. Not everyone agrees which facts are ethically charged. Does that tell us anything about 'facts'? Or is the entire idea of 'types' of fact one more philosophical confusion to overcome?

    Running out of gas, but I think you were right in putting the idea of 'seeing' into the mix. Wittgenstein of course spent much time on the issues of 'seeing as'. I think this is important here. The examples of the duck/rabbit, the pointing arrow, and five lines as a human face all suggest that what matters is how such things fit in our lives. The drawings are what they are. There is only one fact of the matter. And yet seeing them AS something only means we are prepared to go on in a certain way.

    Gotta go myself, but I'll leave you with this, again from On Certainty:

    204. Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end; - but the end is not certain propositions' striking us immediately as true, i.e. it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game.

    The fact that people act differently in the same situations is not a fracturing of the world into different types of fact, it is merely that we care differently about the things we encounter.

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  12. I think the neutral/non-neutral facts distinction is there because other people make it. I don't think it's one that Crary ultimately wants to hold on to. Although there are, it seems to me, some facts that are relatively neutral in comparison with others, and some that may well happen to have no great ethical relevance.

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    1. I think it is the idea of 'relevance' that gets us looking at things in this way (of course facts are ethically *relevant*), but I still think the distinction is one mostly prone to those doing philosophy AND it ignores the special role of 'facts' in our language games and lives. In the end, using the word 'fact' as standing in for our ethical speech is fraught with the philosophizing W was constantly arguing against. An abuse of our language by an analogy taken too far. I guess Crary herself may not *want* to hold onto it, if you think so, but speaking *as* *if* such a role for 'facts' was somehow normal IS part of the problem.

      I think we ordinarily (non-philosophically) talk about actions, attitudes, and opinions as being 'ethically charged'. Actions can have implications for deontology or utility, for example. We can ACT out of duty and also virtuously. Attitudes can be for things or against them. "Boo!" for persecution, "Yay!" for doing the right thing. And our opinions can be about what things themselves are right and wrong. All of these ways of speaking ARE ethically charged (at least potentially). But facts? Who but philosophers think so?

      Situations can also be ethically charged. Of course we talk that way as ordinary human beings! But a situation is not reducible to 'facts' or replaceable with them. Ethically charged situations do NOT yield ethically charged facts. Or are produced by them.

      There is a category difference between situations and facts. The role of facts in our lives is why police officers insist on "Just the facts, Ma'am." It is why scientists exclude bias as much as possible from experiments: Because the facts alone are what matter..... A situation may be ethically charged, but the facts?

      Think of the film Roshamon. Who but a philosopher would imagine that each version simply relied on a difference in the 'facts'......

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    2. to the degree that situations register with/on us one way or another I think the distinction yer making isn't helpful/accurate here, better I think is the what is the case vs what should be the case, now of course sciences are in some sense for critters like us (in/of our interests) but just describing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere says nothing about whether or not we should make any changes, so a difference that makes a difference.
      https://soundcloud.com/instituteofartandideas/e103-the-tyranny-of-evidence-rupert-read

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  13. Hi. I'm not sure I have followed, but it seems to me the distinction being offered is one between the state of affairs (what is happening) and the way it is framed. The narrative regarding the chickens is trying to make objectionable images pop in the mind. And to make them objectionable, elements of story telling are used not unlike one could find in a human horror movie. So i think the issue between the two kinds of "facts" is that one is saying what is happening in the state of affairs and the other is framing it for dramatic human consumption.

    Note that I would not say this if it were talking about something other than chickens (animals). And i think that is exactly, exactly what the whole point is. In real life, a horror story is a genre precisely because it is just a "story" (or movie). If it were real, telling of the horror would not be imposing a horror "frame" -- it would just be like a documentary. (My mind just pictured the Manson murders and somethign else that I don't want to mention [terrible, terrible truthful things].

    And so what is my point? The story about the chickens is taking on elements of literary style that imposes a horror frame, without showing, at the same time, that this is the way we should frame it. (I want to be careful here. I am not saying the chickens shouldn't be treated better. I want you to understand that is not the argument I am making. What I am saying is that Crary, being familiar with Wittgenstein, knows a frame imposition when she sees it, and is not happy that imposion is being confused for ethics. I write about this in my forthcoming book).

    Part of what we do when communicating about politics and ethics is that we frame the state of affairs when discussing it. We very often push buttons. I am not saying that a framework is a bias -- in truth we cannot avoid framing of states of affairs (see Lakoff). And so I think the best read of the Crary excerpt is that she simply wants readers to see the frame separately from the state of affairs (to see them BOTH). For we often have great trouble seeing them both. It is quite common today for people to confuse a framework with truth (they think the frame is the truth).

    And perhaps Crary is also saying that the most decent way to frame any state of affairs regarding chickens is as consistently as can be with the form of life of the chickens, and not human drama. I might be misreading that--I haven't read the book. But Wittgensteinians generally hate the same things over and over again, and taking things out of context is one of them.

    States of affairs with regard to treatment of chickens should be framed consistently with how chickens are in their own lives rather than the things humans in their developing passions want to impose upon the matter. But this is only true for ethics. Note how this changes if we wanted to do something different. E.g., let's say that we wanted to do something called Pride. Imagine a movement based upon pride, not ethics. The goal would be to make ourselves feel proud. And so humans might talk about the chickens in terms of humanist horror drama and do things that made those humans feel better. You could do this. But strictly speaking, it would not be ethics.

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    2. ... yeah i could have all of this backward. Having looked at sources outside the blog, it appears to me that Crary is arguing the opposite of what I say. I think she is saying that imposing the literature-frame is actually good, which is why she speaks of it as another type of "fact." Sorry, I am not an expert on this. I just tried to pick up on what the distinction might be.

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    3. Sorry I wasn't clearer. That's one danger of trying to get someone else's view across by way of quotations removed from their original context. (Another problem is that to reply properly to all these comments I would have to re-read the book, which I don't have time to do.)

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    4. ... you should be thanked for getting us all thinking. 30-plus comments must have been a good issue.

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