tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post8951823426173027672..comments2024-02-20T12:26:24.682-05:00Comments on language goes on holiday: The relativity of reasonsDuncan Richterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-51920051361544637552011-07-07T12:05:08.435-04:002011-07-07T12:05:08.435-04:00You're right, it isn't an ordinary case at...You're right, it isn't an ordinary case at all. It's meant to be extreme, but I think it is so extreme that it is exceptional, and so not a good guide to the nature of ordinary moral discourse. I think Joyce wants to say that 'we' or 'the world' responded to Nazi crimes by condemning them and their perpetrators in the strongest possible terms. In doing so we did not regard it as at all relevant whether these crimes might have furthered the Nazis' interests. We thought they were just wrong. And this shows that we think in terms of categorical imperatives.<br /><br />So he really isn't talking about discourse, I think, so much as judgment or the practice of making judgments. The fact that moral discourse (in the sense you seem to have in mind, the normal and literal sense) can occur suggests that there is something wrong with this picture.Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-69097517490245068602011-07-07T11:18:04.178-04:002011-07-07T11:18:04.178-04:00Maybe I'm showing my ignorance about the detai...Maybe I'm showing my ignorance about the details of what went on at the Nuremberg trials, but it strikes me as odd to treat a formal legal/military proceeding as a paradigm case of moral discourse, rather than, say, Wittgenstein and Waismann discussing the case of a man who must decide to stand by his wife (and so leaving others to pursue his research) or abandoning her.<br /><br />It might be thought that one could press skeptical worries about the "absolutism" or categorical nature (Joyce thinks ordinary moral discourse assumes) of moral discourse by considering whether it is possible, say, for a neo-Nazi (and Holocaust denier, etc.) and someone opposed to all of that to engage with each other in anything recognizable as moral discourse. If one could make out the thought that these two people inhabit 'altogether different worlds,' then it becomes less clear how discourse (rather than a shouting match, etc.) could take place. Maybe this also depends on the distance between those 'worlds'...in any case, it seems then that someone like Joyce could raise questions about 'ordinary moral discourse' by pointing out that our own sense of what is absolute (etc.) cannot, it seems, touch those who live in pretty distant worlds (in this sense). I suppose that is, in a sense, what he's doing with the war trials example. (But then for that reason, I wonder whether he hasn't settled on a case of "moral discourse" that is not really very ordinary...)Matthew Pianaltohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.com