Faith and reason are intrinsically non-violent ...

Originally posted by bbarr
Korsgaard came out to give a talk at my department a few weeks back, and we spoke at dinner about our respective conceptions of practical reason. I detected no disagreement about the use of this expression in our conversation, though we differ about what we take the norms of practical reason to be. I have Sources of Normativity right here in front of m ...[text shortened]... ow we disagree on the use of this term. If you could point me to the page, I'd appreciate it.

I was hoping you'd be interested in this issue. To be clear, I spoke way too quickly in my earlier post, mostly because I wasn't sure if you'd be interested in discussing the secondary literature. Since you are, I should make very clear that this is only a very slight difference. Maybe I'm making something out of nothing, but I think it's interesting. Here it is...

In the introduction, to Sources of Normativity Onora O'Niell says something that I've been puzzling over for a while and makes me think that Korsgaard's notion of Normativity might be a bit thicker than the one you described. O'Niell says this:


"The normative claims of morality have acquired an unsavoury reputation. Obligations are accused of being constraining and forbidding, even repellent and corrupting. This image of morality was perfected by Nietzsche and is kept in good working order by many critics of 'modern moral philosophy', most of whom prefer the more attractive aspects of the ethical life -- virtues and relationships, passions and affectations. But normativity, as Korsgaard presents it, is not confined to principles and obligations. It is pervasive. Goodness and virtue too imply norms, to which we may or may not live up." (Pg xii, my emphasis).


I don't know exactly what to make of this talk of "virtues," "relationships" etc. So I've been trying to read the book with this in mind (and also [i]Creating the Kindom of Ends[i]). Personally, I am more drawn to what O'Niell calls, following Hegel translators, "ethical life." But Kant's "Sitten" (morals) is notoriously distant from Hegel's Sittlichkeit" (ethical life). How could a Kantian ever draw in the "attractive aspects of ethical life"? Korsgaard obviously wants to, and I'm trying to trace how.

I have not sure of any place where she just comes out and defines, "normative." Please direct me to it if you know where it is. But in the first essay of Sources... (pg 1) and in the second essay Creating..(pg 47 *I think*) she ties normativity together with motivation in a way that I'm not sure is directly compatible with your definition of norm as "just a constraint."

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Did you browbeat him? That might explain his concession to your use of term.

People can define terms however they like, as long as they are clear about the definition. My point was simply that without clarification the term "norm" has some distinctly unKantian conotations.

Originally posted by bbarr
O.K., let's talk about your thesis that violence is inherent to reason. I am confused about both your use of term 'inherent' and your use of the term 'reason'. Presumably, if violence is indeed inherent to reason, then it must be the case that violence necessarily attends every instantiation of reason. It can't simply be the case, if violence is inherent to ...[text shortened]... nmediated epistemic contact with the world that you do not, in fact, possess.

The fact that violence attends each and every instance of reason does not mean that it shows itself in each case. I tried to make the case that the violence in reason is very hard to recognize on the very basic level. "The chair is on my right" does only the violence of isolating the chair from its surroundings and excluding in it, while placing it into the whole. Indeed this is violence barely worthy of the name.

The violence in reason is even latent in some instances. How could reason do violence to it's object when it has no object (as in abstract deductive reasoning)? P or ~P doesn't do violence, but violent structure still contained in it.

Dividing up the world into various nation-states doesn't look violent when the cartographer is making a map, but if you read discussions of illegal immigration in the debate forum, the violence inherent in the proposition (L or ~L) seems a good deal more obvious. The easy answer is that these people are sloppy reasoners, but they will be first to tell you that "Legal" is not equivalent to "~Legal." It is this clear cut reasoning (not sloppy in the least) that allows the violence to be concealed. This is a tendency of reasoning that we are always resisting, and that, to me, suggests that it is inherent.

If I take your arguments as inductive rather than deductive, would respond by saying that it makes perfect sense to me that the violence would be hardest to find in the commonplace examples you refer to, but we would need to carefully look at a wide variety of different types of samples if we're going to make an induction.

One might be tempted to suggest that I am contradicting myself if I do violence to reason and/or violence by making the proposition "reason is inherently violent." To be clear my reason is just as violent as the next guy's, and it does a great deal of violence to reason to understand it in terms of just one interpretation of its intrinsic parts. Paradoxically, the fact that my thesis is violent only furthers my point (sort of).

As regards your final remark -- that my claim presupposes unmediated access to the world in itself. Only the empirically verifiable truth of my claim requires such access. If my claim were empirically testable in any sort of thorough sense, then yes such access would be necessary, but since, like the pope, I am making a rather speculative "proposition" about the nature of the understanding, I willfully admit that no such testing is possible. Also, while I admire your commitment to deduction, I'm afraid I can no more deduce the truth of my thesis than the Pope can deduce the truth of his.

Originally posted by bjohnson407
I was hoping you'd be interested in this issue. To be clear, I spoke way too quickly in my earlier post, mostly because I wasn't sure if you'd be interested in discussing the secondary literature. Since you are, I should make very clear that this is only a very [b]slight difference. Maybe I'm making something out of nothing, but I think it's interest ...[text shortened]... mpatible with your definition of norm as "just a constraint."[/b]

O.K., great, let's break down this O'Neill quote.

When O'Neill makes reference to the critics of "modern moral philosophy", she has three primarily in mind. These three are Elizabeth Anscombe, Bernard Williams and Michael Stocker. Anscombe wrote a seminal article called Modern Moral Philosophy where she claimed that the notion of moral obligation no longer makes sense. She claimed this notion was wedded to an outmoded world view according to which moral obligations had the force of necessity; the force of law (i.e., if you are obligated to P then you are morally required to P; failure to do so necessarily entails that you fail to act justifiably). But secular conceptions of ethics have jettisoned the notion of God from their theories, and with it the correlative notion of an ethical lawgiver. Williams, in his article Morality, the Peculiar institution claims that the very notion of a moral reason makes no sense, if moral reasons are taken to be those that by their nature ought to invariably outweigh or silence all competing reasons. He argues that broadly ethical reasons, which include what we would take to be prudential reasons, can outweigh moral reasons. Further, he claims that the notion of a moral obligation only makes sense if it is taken to refer to generally important domains of human concern. So, you are morally obligated not to kill innocents because it such activity is antithetical to important human concerns, and yet this moral obligation is does not have some magical normative force that necessarily outweighs all other competing reasons. Stocker, in his article The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theory argues that being motivated by duty, or by the recognition of an obligation, is antithetical to the sorts of motivation that we think are paradigmatic of friendship and love. He thinks that being motivated by moral reasons prevents us from manifesting the sort of direct concern for others that is constitutive of intimate relationships. In short, he argues that given our nature as being who care for others directly, if we were to structure our motivations in the ways modern moral theory suggests, we would court a schizophrenic split between our actual values and motivations and those foreign motivations recommended to us by these theories. Each of these philosophers have called for a return to virtue ethics, which promises to make theoretical room for the importance of care, compassion, generosity, and other character traits that we think people ought to have. So, O'Neill is here responding to a contemporary trend in theoretical ethics that rejects principle-based approaches to ethics like traditional Kantian deontology.

Does this make sense? I'll write more on this tomorrow.

Originally posted by bjohnson407
Your characterization of my view is basically correct, but I would avoid the language of phenomenal/neumenal, because Kant and I have very different ideas about the character and availability of "things in themselves." I am more concerned with the way things are made intelligible (and these are often sensible things in the phenomenal world). Also I would a very interesting and philosophically worthwhile task.

Also I wouldn't say that reason "invariably" does violence. I said early on that I don't think the violence of reason isn't all pervasive, but it is intrinsic to the structure of reason itself.

Then I guess I'm not getting it. If you say that violence is intrinsic to reason (which is something you have been claiming since page 2), that means basically it is part of the very nature of reason. It follows that violence is involved in every instance of reason (hence why I used 'invariably'😉. I'm confused as to why you think it is coherent for you to claim both that violence is intrinsic to reason and that it is not the case that instances of reason invariably involve violence.

but your objection seems to be that "violence" implies intention

I don't recall stating that it implies or entails intention, but I did say that the word typically evokes a sense of intention (deliberate action). I guess what I am trying to say is the following. I know that there is a lesser known definition attached to 'violence' that basically covers distortion/alteration. But why should we bend over backwards and jump through hoops making qualifications to accommodate the use of 'violence' when you often really just mean unintentional distortion (or some such -- perhaps we could find a better word still since you seem to have some issues with 'distortion'😉 through conceptualization and mental filtering? I found this comment of yours regarding bbarr's use of 'constitutive norm' rather ironic:

People can define terms however they like, as long as they are clear about the definition. My point was simply that without clarification the term "norm" has some distinctly unKantian conotations.

I thought bbarr's use of 'constitutive norm' was fine; but your use of 'violence' I would say deserves such a criticism. I would say we could accommodate your use of 'violence' as long as it is clear that at bottom we are not using it within the usual connotations that pervade everyday society. And if we are going to use in that highly qualified way, then, again, I think this discussion has next to nothing to do with the opening post and the way 'violence' is employed there.

How would you go about proving that reason is intrinsically nonviolent?

Heck, I don't even know what that is supposed to mean on the face of it (although I think I have a good idea of what the Pope meant). I would clarify the discussion to the subject of practical reason and whether or not the deliverances of practical reason are oriented toward nonviolence. I would argue that they generally are, but I might drop the "intrinsically" bit. What if, for example, I am unwillingly thrust into an imminently violent situation -- maybe someone is coming at my family with the intent and potential means to harm. Are there good reasons for me, as the protector of my family, to meet violence with violence? Or does this even qualify as a case of "violence" on my part when I am justifiably in defense of things that I value?

Originally posted by bjohnson407

I don't know exactly what to make of this talk of "virtues," "relationships" etc. So I've been trying to read the book with this in mind (and also Creating the Kindom of Ends). Personally, I am more drawn to what O'Niell calls, following Hegel translators, "ethical life." But Kant's "Sitten" (morals) is notoriously distant from Hegel's Sittlichke s directly compatible with your definition of norm as "just a constraint."

This recent interest in virtue ethics has been driven primarily by discontent with features of its rival deontological and consequentialist views. Although one can find in the modern virtue ethics literature a litany of charges against its rivals, the following charges are endemic:

(1) Deontological and consequentialist moral theories are motivated, in part, by the misguided notion that proper moral deliberation consists primarily of the application of general rules to particular circumstances. They pay insufficient attention to the complexity of the actual scenarios we’re called upon to deliberate within and about, and the necessary role that moral judgment or discernment plays in allowing us navigate such complexity.

(2) Deontological and consequentialist moral theories have anemic conceptions of character and of the emotions, and fail to incorporate either appropriately into their accounts of moral psychology, or to address the roles they play in moral deliberation.

(3) Deontological and consequentialist moral theories fail to adequately address broadly ethical but non-moral questions (e.g., What sort of person ought one be? What sort of life ought one live?) that are of obvious importance.

Kant has been criticized on each of the above points, and modern neo-Kantians have often attempted to answer these objections by reference to the virtues (characterized as good traits of character). Kant has, after all, a "Doctrine of the Virtues", though he takes the virtues to ultimately by ancillary to duty and he takes the motivations that derive from the possession of traits like compassion and generosity to be insufficient to lend moral worth to actions done on their basis. Acting out of compassion, for Kant, lacks moral worth unless it is backed up by a further motivation of respect for the moral law. Virtue ethicists and others think this is crazy, since paradigmatic cases of acting out of friendship, love, care, etc. do not normally involve being motivated by anything like respect for the moral law (conceived of as a constraint on rational willing) and yet morally worthy nonetheless.

Korsgaard wants to allow for these forms of moral motivation to lend moral worth to the acts done on their basis, but wants also to retain the core Kantian idea that it is the reflective endorsement of a motivational state that makes it normative or reason-giving. This is clear from her comments on the reflective structure of consciousness in Sources of Normativity. She tries to bring in these forms of moral motivation through the idea that we all have practical identities (descriptions like 'father', 'son', 'lover', 'friend' under which we value ourselves and take our lives to be worth living) that provide us with our reasons to act. These practical identities are reason-giving only if they do not run contrary to a master practical identity of being a rational agent, or being the sort of entity that must act for reasons.

For Korsgaard our motivations do not provide us with reasons unless we endorse them as reason-giving, but we can be mistaken about this as when we act for considerations that run contrary to our practical identities as rational agents (i.e., when we act for considerations that are not universalizable).

Originally posted by bbarr
This recent interest in virtue ethics has been driven primarily by discontent with features of its rival deontological and consequentialist views. Although one can find in the modern virtue ethics literature a litany of charges against its rivals, the following charges are endemic:

(1) Deontological and consequentialist moral theories are motivated, in p s rational agents (i.e., when we act for considerations that are not universalizable).

Yes this is good. I appreciate you mentioning the Anscome, Williams and Stoker articles. I'll dig them up and have a look. I understand the critique of modern moral philosophy primarily through Hegel, and obviously the parameters have changed a bit since then. (I'm guessing your department specializes in analytic philosophy?)

At any rate, Kantian's employ various methods for overcoming the criticisms you point out. Korsgaard's is definitely one of the most impressive. She empoys this idea of people as sources of value beautifully in a 2004 lecture on Kant and animal ethics (link at bottom). And I worked with a profossor who was trying to tease out a Kantian "duty to care" from the imperfect duty of beneficence. And there are others who have been focusing their attention on Kant's rather obscure comments about "moral feeling," in hopes of generating a kinder-gentler-21rst-Century Kant.

But ultimately, I don't find these appropriations very convincing. If we have to modify Kant so much to make his work acceptible today, don't we do just as well to forge ahead with a new -- perhaps Kant inspired -- ethics? It seems to me that self-described 'Kantians' have lost touch with the historical Kant and now use his name as essentially shorthand for the best arguments we can make for an ethics that emphasizes duty. The name (brand) commands respect, and suggests a certain credibility. But a quick glance at the biography and his more salient comments about women and people of color makes it clear that the historical Kant is not someone we should want to immitate. We should be very cautious of the way his ethical system might be tied in with those more disturbing views. And we shouldn't be so committed to the name that we can't imagine a credible ethical system that isn't attached to a dead guy.

This is not a beef with you. Your outline of the debate is fair and accurate. But this is the side that I find myself coming down on these days. What is your view? Do you think that Korsgaard succedes in staying true to Kant while making his ethics acceptable for today? Do you understand why I think such a task is difficult, perhaps even impossible?



http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~korsgaar/CMK.FellowCreatures.pdf

Originally posted by LemonJello
[b]Also I wouldn't say that reason "invariably" does violence. I said early on that I don't think the violence of reason isn't all pervasive, but it is intrinsic to the structure of reason itself.

Then I guess I'm not getting it. If you say that violence is intrinsic to reason (which is something you have been claiming since page 2), that m rt when I am justifiably in defense of things that I value?[/b]

I'm confused as to why you think it is coherent for you to claim both that violence is intrinsic to reason and that it is not the case that instances of reason invariably involve violence?

You’re right. I need to clarify. Reason always has that violence in it which is intrinsic to it, but that doesn't mean that things aptly called nonviolent can't follow from it. For example, leaders could draft peace accords that could lead to long lasting peace, but the drawing of the border line is still violent. What I meant was that even though it's violent, reason doesn't purely harm everything it touches. You're right that if reason is intrinsically violent then it is violent in each and every case.

I should distinguish, perhaps, between Violence and Harm. If the doctor amputates someone's gang-green leg, that is a violent medical procedure, but it is not harmful – in fact, it's helpful. That's what I meant when I said that violence is not all pervasive. This distinction also allows me (I think) to say why reason is a violent act, even when it has no object (pure abstract deduction).


But why should we bend over backwards and jump through hoops making qualifications to accommodate the use of 'violence' when you often really just mean unintentional distortion (or some such -- perhaps we could find a better word still since you seem to have some issues with 'distortion'😉 through conceptualization and mental filtering?

I think "violence" captures what I'm after very well. One of reason's greatest qualities is the ability to precisely cut off sameness from difference (P v ~P). If you imagine Thinking as an Art and Reason as a Tool for that art. And if you recall what Michelangelo said about sculpting, (that he, "saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free" ) we can understand reason as the tool that carves the world into forms. But how could this carving be anything but violence? The fact that it often carves up thoughts, concepts and symbols rather than people doesn’t take away its violent character, nor does the fact that it is often virtuous and affects good outcomes.

There is a tendency among philosophers to think of reason like a mirror that reflects reality without altering it. But part of what I'm saying is that if you really want to know something, you've got to get in there with your hands and work with it. And in fact, I don't think that we have any choice but to do that. The idea that we could be purely passive observers of nature is a kind of illusion. Because to form rational and communicable thoughts we have to carve away at our concepts (and often the world) until we've precisely articulated them. This carving is violent even if it's not harmful to anyone or anything.


I would clarify the discussion to the subject of practical reason and whether or not the deliverances of practical reason are oriented toward nonviolence. I would argue that they generally are, but I might drop the "intrinsically" bit.

You're absolutely right that the Pope's comment is unsustainable with the "intrinsically" in there. Just look at some of the countless violent conflicts that moral actors saw as ethically justified. Even our best examples of moral reasoning have been taken up by people committing horrible acts of violence (I'd suggest Hannah Arendt's book Eichman in Jerusalem.).

If it is at all defensible, the Pope would have to back up and say one of two things: 1) Proper practical reasoning is intrinsically nonviolent. OR 2) Practical reasoning (qua reasoning) is purely mathematical and has no drive towards violence. Like a mirror or a soup strainer it is purely passive and therefore intrinsically void of violence.

1 is wrong because practical reasoning is an active discipline where many ethicists disagree about what is ethically right or wrong, most of whom allow for violence in some form or another. If the Pope held view 1, he would be replacing practical reasoning with passive obedience to an arbitrary principal of nonviolence. And (2) is in conflict with my position that takes reason (pure, practical or otherwise) to be violent. If he held view (2), then my discussion here has not been irrelevant.

Originally posted by bjohnson407
Yes this is good. I appreciate you mentioning the Anscome, Williams and Stoker articles. I'll dig them up and have a look. I understand the critique of modern moral philosophy primarily through Hegel, and obviously the parameters have changed a bit since then. (I'm guessing your department specializes in analytic philosophy?)

At any rate, Kantian's e ...[text shortened]... ible?



http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~korsgaar/CMK.FellowCreatures.pdf

Unfortunately, my department exclusively specializes in analytic philosophy. What meager knowledge I have of the continental tradition comes from my own haphazard studies of Nietzsche, Foucault, Habermas, Levinas and Rorty.

When Korsgaard was here in Seattle in April, she gave a talk about the final or teleological goods of animals and humans. It was interesting, and of a piece with the essay you provide below. I find it fascinating that the leading contemporary neo-Kantian must take a page from Aristotle in order to countenance direct obligations to animals. But I also an deeply unsure that we must, in fact, endorse our animal nature. In Sources the argument is that we have to endorse our rational nature in order to stop a threatened regress that arises from the reflective structure of our consciousness and the fact that as agents we can only act for reasons. But, as far as I can tell, there is no similar argument to hand for our animal nature.

I think that Korsgaard, O'Neill, Nagel, Baron and others are trying to forge ahead in just the manner you describe. Nancy Sherman, in particular, has tried to achieve a sort of Aristotelian/Kantian synthesis. These various philosophers characterize themselves as neo-Kantians because they attempt to retain the basic Kantian picture. They attempt to ground ethics in practical reason through a priori considerations of the nature of the will. Part of the motivation for this is the aim of making morality a necessary affair, not subject to the contingencies of socialization and moral education that Aristotle and the other ancients tend to emphasize.

When I was an arrogant young man, I took myself to be a Humean because I didn't want anybody telling me what I should value. When I got older, I was a neo-Kantian because I found out that practical reason involves more than merely instrumental, means-ends reasoning. Now that I am older still, I am a virtue ethicist because I am committed to finding a place in normative ethical theory for character traits, emotional responses, and direct concern for others. My current work centers around virtue and moral psychology, and I am now writing on the way character traits give us our reasons and structure our deliberations, and on how we need to jettison foundationalist conceptions of justification from ethics in favor of reflective equilibrium constrained by human nature. So, I do understand why you find the Kantian picture unappealing.

Originally posted by bbarr
Unfortunately, my department exclusively specializes in analytic philosophy. What meager knowledge I have of the continental tradition comes from my own haphazard studies of Nietzsche, Foucault, Habermas, Levinas and Rorty.

When Korsgaard was here in Seattle in April, she gave a talk about the final or teleological goods of animals and humans. It ...[text shortened]... onstrained by human nature. So, I do understand why you find the Kantian picture unappealing.

I've always been more into the history of philosophy and continental philosophy. Consequently, I am interested in Kant more as a historical moment than as a resource for today's ethics.

As for Korsgaard, she does come off sounding rather Aristotelian. But I think her main point is a good one. I don't think Kant would have gone along with it, but she's right to say that many of our values are grounded in our animal nature. "Don't break my knee-caps" wouldnt make much if we were somehow disembodied (non-animal). I would agree that a rational agent must value animals and endorse his/her "animal nature," but I don't know how to make the duties stick if animals can't have duties to us in return.

If I were to try and expand Kant's ethics to include animals, I would focus on the place in the Metaphysics of Morals where he talks about duties to ourselves. If you stretch the duty of self cultivation as far as it will go, you can certainly warrant a boycot on factory farming and other forms of animal abuse. I know she wants to go further than that, but I just don't think Kant will give her the resources she needs. Hence, interest in Aristotle.

Your work sounds like a step in the right direction. I know some continental philosophers who would challeng the invocation of "human nature." I guess that's probably not a problem in your language community. But if you're interested in engaging with continental philosophy and you haven't looked at it already, I bet you'd enjoy "the Chomsky Foucault Debate." The complete debate was published in a small volume along with some essays that the two published after the fact.