me [original post]:

To speak of an obligation to behave in a particular way so as to reflect the duty-bound agenda of a deontological approach to human ethics becomes equally problematic.

you:

Problematic in what sense?


me:


Problematic in the sense there is an important distinction to be made between passing laws and expecting citizens to obey them and positing moral truths and insisting men and women are duty bound to behave in accordance with them.

In the first context, laws are the product of democracy. Democracy [ideally] revolves around folks with differing moral values coming together and legislating an agenda that reflects this. Thus laws regarding abortion in America reflect things all sides in the moral debate find both acceptable and objectionable.

In other words, democracy and the problematic nature of moral conflicts go hand in hand.



you:

....concepts of duty are the same thing as concepts of morality, more or less. But then maybe we're not on the same page right now when it comes to the concept of morality.

me:

Concepts are abstractions. They are words that define and defend other words. That is all well and good until we start attaching the words [the definitions, the meanings] to discussions of actual human behaviors that precipate conflicting
assessments of moral and immoral deportment. Then what? That's my own interest here.by and large. The part where words and worlds collide.

For example: a man flew a plane into a building to protest the IRS today. This has generated much discussion about the role of government in our lives; and about the duty of citizens who find that role to be oppressive. How does "the concept of morality" fit into something like this?


me [original post]:

Out in the real world it is political and economic power that establishes the parameters of moral hazard, not the philosophies of Kant or Rand.


you:

Maybe, but I don't know what moral hazard is. And talking about what the nature of our ability to judge rules is, isn't to explicitly talk about whether particular wrongdoing must derive from general wrongdoing, which is the theory of radical evil.

me:

Moral hazard is the risk all of us take whenever we interact. In part it revolves around the willlingness of others to mislead us, or to provide false information, or to stack the deck in their own favor in any number of ways. And sometimes this is not done self-consciously at all. Sometimes it is even done with the best of intentions. From my perspective we are all inherently at risk here because there are so many variables intertwined in our transactions and so many differing and conflicting ways to rationalize them. Virtually any behavior can be justified.


Out in the real world human behavior is impossibly labyrinthian at times. And this rest in large part on the fact that human behavior is never just a rational assessment of things. It is embroiled in turn in enormoulsly complex and convoluted emotional and psychological states. And in the extent to which the frontal lobes are enterwined inextricably with the more primitive functions of our brains.


For example, the CEO of Goldman Sachs has convinced himself that unregulated financial transactions are the work of God. Capitalism is a religion to him. He is duty bound to run his company so as to increase the compensation for his shareholders. Once that sense of obligation is internalized he pursues actual policies that can destroy the lives of millions. But what really roils around inside his mind? To what extent are his rationalzations just a psychological defense mechanism to make all that complexity go away?

But it's all just a matter of perspective, right? How would a "Kantian" react to this?

Please give me an example of "general wrongdoing". And from what font would [could, should] it be derived?

<strong>neither/nor wrote:</strong>
Problematic in the sense there is an important distinction to be made between passing laws and expecting citizens to obey them and positing moral truths and insisting men and women are duty bound to behave in accordance with them.

I don't see much of a difference. I mean, there is the question of whether we ought to comply with the laws of the land. How is this question NOT one of morality/duty?

In the first context, laws are the product of democracy.

This doesn't strike me as necessarily true.


For example: a man flew a plane into a building to protest the IRS today. This has generated much discussion about the role of government in our lives; and about the duty of citizens who find that role to be oppressive. How does "the concept of morality" fit into something like this?

Well, that depends on what the concept of morality *is*. If it means "that which is unconditionally practically reasonable," then the issue would be one of whether (a) some goal, set by us independent on our reason in itself, has for one of the means to it conforming to the role the government gives us to play or (b) some goal that reason sets for us by itself involves such conformity. If (a) then to alleviate the rational pressure to do what the government says, all we have to do is give up on that goal; if (b) then it's reasonable to obey the government, no matter what our goals.

Moral hazard is the risk all of us take whenever we interact. In part it revolves around the willlingness of others to mislead us, or to provide false information, or to stack the deck in their own favor in any number of ways. And sometimes this is not done self-consciously at all. Sometimes it is even done with the best of intentions. From my perspective we are all inherently at risk here because there are so many variables intertwined in our transactions and so many differing and conflicting ways to rationalize them. Virtually any behavior can be justified.

Excusing an action is not the same as justifying it. And what makes moral risk *moral*?

But it's all just a matter of perspective, right? How would a "Kantian" react to this?

I would start to react by asking him how he knew that capitalism was his duty.

Please give me an example of "general wrongdoing".

I mean "general" as in general vs. particular. Another description of it might be in second-order vs. first-order terms: we can make a decision about how to make other decisions, and if when we make that second-order choice wrongly, it corrupts our first-order choices, too. Or Kant says that it's a matter of atemporal action vs. action in time; the most unrestricted-in-scope adoption of a maxim is transcendent, and if when forming the relevant maxim, we prioritize inclination over the pure will, this moral failure determines us to impurity for the rest of our lives unless (somehow) we reset our transcendent personality. That is radical evil.

Sorry for the "you", "me" format. I can't figure out how to generate quote boxes at this venue.


you:


"...there is the question of whether we ought to comply with the laws of the land. How is this question NOT one of morality/duty?"


me:


We may believe a law [a tax law for example] is unjust. We may believe a law sanctions behavior we think to be immoral. Our "duty" to obey it then is predicated largely on our understanding that not to will precipitate punishment. That is very different from embracing a duty to obey because we feel it reflects and facilitates a moral narrative.

In particular, laws that prescribe or proscribe social behaviors [embraced by, say, value voters] reflect democracy precisely because of that. They are generally reflective of moderation, negociation and compromise. And this is inimical to an assessment predicated on the political philosophy of, for example, the philosopher-king.

Again, in my view, it is very different from a legislative agenda that revolves largely around God or the ideological rigidity of a Randian worldview. Our duty regarding the former is predicated on Devine Justice and Salvation, and the latter on a commitment to metaphysical Reason.


me [original post]:

....a man flew a plane into a building to protest the IRS today. This has generated much discussion about the role of government in our lives; and about the duty of citizens who find that role to be oppressive. How does "the concept of morality" fit into something like this?

you:

Well, that depends on what the concept of morality *is*. If it means "that which is unconditionally practically reasonable," then the issue would be one of whether (a) some goal, set by us independent on our reason in itself, has for one of the means to it conforming to the role the government gives us to play or (b) some goal that reason sets for us by itself involves such conformity. If (a) then to alleviate the rational pressure to do what the government says, all we have to do is give up on that goal; if (b) then it's reasonable to obey the government, no matter what our goals.

me:

It's not the "concept" of morality that interests me though. It is how theory and praxis co-exist down on the ground. As a nihilist, I am fascinated with human behavior in a world where it cannot be determined definitively whether a particular behavior is "unconditionally" reasonable. After all, when should we conform or not conform to government policy? When is it reasonable or not reasonable to obey the law?

Just as crucially, what is it about the individual lives we live that generate so many differing and conflicting reactions to this? How are the decisions we make today embedded in all of the experiences we had leading up to them? And how crucial is the existential gap here between that and our capacity as rational creatures to offer more rather than less reasonable legislation?



you:

Excusing an action is not the same as justifying it. And what makes moral risk *moral*?

me:


Yes, but if you are convinced that behaviors should flow from a committed sense of moral duty...or because not to act in a particular way is irrational...your reaction to those to behave otherwise will tend to be more prejudicial. If on the other hand you recognize that human behaviors [those behaviors evaluated and judged politically and ethically] reflect a deeply complex intertwining of many existential variables [constantly in flux and evolving] you are more likely to embrace moderation, negociation and compromise when the laws are being considered.


me [original post]:

But it's all just a matter of perspective, right? How would a "Kantian" react to this?

you:

I would start to react by asking him how he knew that capitalism was his duty.


me:


I would start by suggesting there is no way in which one CAN know that capitalism is an inherent aspect of one's moral duty. Let alone how. Capitalism is merely the historical manifestation of political economy at this point in time. A thousand years down the road and I suspect it will be understood in very different ways.


Re "general wrongdoing":


you:

I mean "general" as in general vs. particular. Another description of it might be in second-order vs. first-order terms: we can make a decision about how to make other decisions, and if when we make that second-order choice wrongly, it corrupts our first-order choices, too. Or Kant says that it's a matter of atemporal action vs. action in time; the most unrestricted-in-scope adoption of a maxim is transcendent, and if when forming the relevant maxim, we prioritize inclination over the pure will, this moral failure determines us to impurity for the rest of our lives unless (somehow) we reset our transcendent personality. <em>That</em> is radical evil.


me:

This is very abstract. Is it possible you can translate it by examining a particular decision you have made regarding a behavior that would be evaluated and judged by others in the context of moral imperatives, means and ends, right and wrong?

<strong>neither/nor wrote:</strong>
Sorry for the "you", "me" format. I can't figure out how to generate quote boxes at this venue.

Don't worry, I'm making use of the quote boxes but the "so-and-so wrote" parts of 'em aren't fully operational battle stations yet, either.

We may believe a law [a tax law for example] is unjust. We may believe a law sanctions behavior we think to be immoral. Our "duty" to obey it then is predicated largely on our understanding that not to will precipitate punishment. That is very different from embracing a duty to obey because we feel it reflects and facilitates a moral narrative.

Well, it looks to me that this would just be Kant's acting according to versus from duty distinction.

It's not the "concept" of morality that interests me though. It is how theory and praxis co-exist down on the ground. As a nihilist, I am fascinated with human behavior in a world where it cannot be determined definitively whether a particular behavior is "unconditionally" reasonable. After all, when should we conform or not conform to government policy? When is it reasonable or not reasonable to obey the law?

I guess I'd have to go into my ethical beliefs more broadly to argue these points.

Yes, but if you are convinced that behaviors should flow from a committed sense of moral duty...or because not to act in a particular way is irrational...your reaction to those to behave otherwise will tend to be more prejudicial. If on the other hand you recognize that human behaviors [those behaviors evaluated and judged politically and ethically] reflect a deeply complex intertwining of many existential variables [constantly in flux and evolving] you are more likely to embrace moderation, negociation and compromise when the laws are being considered.

I'm not prejudicial in virtually any way, or if that doesn't sound plausible, prejudice can't be directly inferred from thinking about actions moralistically. And now it seems like you're vaguely hinting that "moderation, negotiation and compromise" involve a more thoughtful attitude towards human reality than does being moralistic. But *that* would sound like an ethical judgment in itself in the end, anyway.

I would start by suggesting there is no way in which one CAN know that capitalism is an inherent aspect of one's moral duty. Let alone how. Capitalism is merely the historical manifestation of political economy at this point in time. A thousand years down the road and I suspect it will be understood in very different ways.

I don't see how it would be very difficult to infer, "Capitalism isn't my duty," from, "Capitalism is merely the historical manifestation of political economy at this point in time" (with a few easy premises added to the mix). The qualifier <em>merely</em> seems (to me) loaded with critical connotations, as if what it describes is something that it would be unrealistic to regard as one's eternal obligation.

This is very abstract. Is it possible you can translate it by examining a particular decision you have made regarding a behavior that would be evaluated and judged by others in the context of moral imperatives, means and ends, right and wrong?

I'm not confident it could easily be judged by others minus their deep, constructive involvement in my life (i.e. friendship). But waiving that complication: suppose I do something like hurt someone because I had a sadistic desire to. Granting that I did something wrong, and did it for the sake of my sadism, then I gave priority to an empirical desire over the categorical imperative when generating the intention I acted on in this case. Kant's idea is that this perversion follows from an abstract failure to choose to always comply with the moral law. If I *had* chosen to do so, then inasmuch as desires aren't in a fight with my pure will but are defendants before it as before a judge, I would just choose not to satisfy my desires whenever this satisfaction would conflict with the moral law. But that means when I DO mess up, I have to have chosen otherwise than to always do the right thing. And inasmuch as that choice determines virtually every one of the rest in my life, in various circumstances it can determine me to transgression, which only therefore occurs as a result of how I corrupted my will in general.

For a more real life example: one of my closest friends often did things to push me and others away, drank a lot, endangered his life and future periodically, appeared to regard sex as a way to have power over girls, etc. His attitude troubled me a lot, so I spent a lot of time trying to understand it. Eventually I figured out (or believed that I'd done so) that his problem was that he thought his life could only have meaning if he were physically and socially stronger than others in comparison with the threat of his and their deaths. This error in his standards of evaluation distorted his actual evaluation of himself and others, damaging, warping his self-esteem, and perversely inspiring him to willfully (if not deliberately) break down his friendship with me as a way to hurt himself (by depriving himself of my help). Had he adopted a different evaluative standard, he wouldn't have failed at doing the right thing so easily and often as he did. So his incorrect judgment about the source of value in this world was the general wrongdoing, or radical evil, on his part that led to his particular trespasses against himself and others.

[quote]I'm not prejudicial in virtually any way, or if that doesn't sound plausible, prejudice can't be directly inferred from thinking about actions moralistically. And now it seems like you're vaguely hinting that "moderation, negotiation and compromise" involve a more thoughtful attitude towards human reality than does being moralistic. But *that* would sound like an ethical judgment in itself in the end, anyway.[quote]

I give up on the quote boxes...

Any suggestions...from anyone?

you:

"I'm not prejudicial in virtually any way, or if that doesn't sound plausible, prejudice can't be directly inferred from thinking about actions moralistically. And now it seems like you're vaguely hinting that "moderation, negotiation and compromise" involve a more thoughtful attitude towards human reality than does being moralistic. But *that* would sound like an ethical judgment in itself in the end, anyway."

me:

With respect to moral and political values, we are all prejudiced, of course. As dasein. We are "thrown" into a particular historical, culture and experiential smorgasbord at birth and then for many years are brainwashed as children to view the world around us as we are taught to. The conceit of the metaphysician [Rand, for one] is that we can then transcend this philosophically by considering only those ethical precepts that are [epistemologically, syllogistically] irrefutably rational. Human ethics is then assumed to be on par with, say, physics or mathematics.

Moderation, negotiation and compromise are more thoughtful only in the pragmatic sense that it is more thoughtful to embrace them if we acknowledge that, philosophically, we can only ascribe particular human behaviors to particular existential vantage points. And not instead to some essential or universial script[ure].


you:

I don't see how it would be very difficult to infer, "Capitalism isn't my duty," from, "Capitalism is merely the historical manifestation of political economy at this point in time" (with a few easy premises added to the mix). The qualifier <em>merely</em> seems (to me) loaded with critical connotations, as if what it describes is something that it would be unrealistic to regard as one's eternal obligation.

me:

If you had been born and raised in an aboriginal, indigenous village somewhere in South America, Africa, or Austrailia [or, for that matter, on an Amish farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania] it would never even occur to you to consider the relationship between capitalism and "my moral duty". Or, if you had been born and raised in a family, community, state etc. that viewed capitalism as the embodiment of all that is evil in the world, your moral duty would revolve instead around tearing it down.

My point then is this: Philosophers are not able to extricate themselves [epistemologically] from these historical and cultural interplays of ever shifting and evolving existential variables in order to determine what the optimal relationship between capitalism and one's moral duty MUST be; in order to, in turn, be at one with moral and political renditions of Justice---either ecclesiastic or secular.

It's always just a matter of opinion.


you:

I'm not confident it could easily be judged by others minus their deep, constructive involvement in my life (i.e. friendship). But waiving that complication....


me:

However confident you might be, it is the rock of gabraltar compared to my own lack thereof. I may well be the most broken, fragmented man out there.

And out in the world of actual, existential human interaction it is not really possible at all to wave this complication. It is always there embedded in the many differing and conflicting ways in which we view human behavior as right and wrong, good and evil.

With respect to the relationship between human behavior and "duty", Immanuel Kant is, in my view, no less entangled than Ayn Rand in the quagmire that is our nihilistic etiology. If, with respect to human value judgments, we are not born of God or of metaphysical Reason, what then is there to determine or differentiate right and wrong behavior?

In reality? Politcal and economic power, by and large.


you:

suppose I do something like hurt someone because I had a sadistic desire to. Granting that I did something wrong, and did it for the sake of my sadism, then I gave priority to an empirical desire over the categorical imperative when generating the intention I acted on in this case.

me:

Again, saddism is an emotional and psychological state we all have the potential to employ. What then is the exact relationship between intense human emotional reactions and the capacity of "higher brain functions" to tame them? We don't know. CAN we know? And "intention" is no less deeply embedded in the labyrinth that is the enormously circuitous and heterogenous existential trajectory of our LIVED lives from the cradle to the grave.


you:

Eventually I figured out (or believed that I'd done so) that [my friend's] problem was that he thought his life could only have meaning if he were physically and socially stronger than others in comparison with the threat of his and their deaths.

me:

Yes, see how enormously abstruse, bewildering and obscure the human psyche can be? And to the extent we think we have "figured out" what all these crypic realtionships mean, it is only the extent [in my view] to which others think they have figured out our own.

For philosophy to impose a language on all this is nothing short of illusory. The phbilosophers, the sociolologists, the psychologists, the anthropologists, the politicians etc. sit down with the folks from the "hard sciences" and, what, "capture" the human condition? Capture it such that we can reasonally deduce a a code of conduct in line with categorical imperatives necessary to impose a "duty" on citizens? I don't think so. In reality, reading the morning newspaper shows we have not even come close!!

you:

So his incorrect judgment about the source of value in this world was the general wrongdoing, or radical evil, on his part that led to his particular trespasses against himself and others.


me:

Again, imagine that not only you but many other people who know your friend set out to compose a "snapshot" of his behavior. Imagine, in turn, that "professionals", "experts"---psychologists, sociologists, anthropolitists etc---examined his life. Folks with vast and varied moral and political agendas. Now imagine all of you sitting down somewhere and discussing his behaviors. How many widely varying "snapshots" would we have? And even if they could all be reconciled somehow, how would you all go about reconiciling his behaviors as you interpreted them, and behaviors you feel should reflect the optimal behavior of someone embracing a moral and political narrative in line with actions that could be construed as reflecting one's "moral duty" vis a vis everyone else?