[MD] Reason, Tradition, Absolute Truth

[Michael Hamilton]

Matt,

I wasn't aware that "decision" carried all this philosophical baggage.
In any case, I wasn't using it in what you call a "philosophically
interesting" way. I didn't have in mind any distinction between
"choice" and "decision", as you seem to when you say "Those kinds of
choices don't look like decisions to me."

To me, "choice" and "decision" are just different words for what we
might call, in a Pirsigian sense, "evaluation". And the "something
different" about liberal social patterns of value is that they allow
for a sphere of evaluation by individuals, alongside (and growing
from) the customary sphere of evaluation by the society as a whole.
Does that make sense?

> Saying there's something different about
> liberalism "when compared with most social patterns" suggests to me that
> there's something different _in kind_ from other social patterns.  I think
> we should just stick to saying that, yes, they're different--of course
> they're different, how else would we differentiate them?

I don't think there's a difference in kind - they're all social
patterns. Taking into account what you say below, can we say something
like... liberalism has 'unique utilitarian consequences'... without
setting off any philosophical alarm bells?

> I think the way out of the liberal paradox is to just say that liberalism,
> like every other tradition, inculcates a set of core values, but liberal
> culture is the culture that applies Mill's utilitarian point about what
> people are premitted to do for happiness to what governments are permitted
> to do to instill values. Liberalism is a set of values, but it is the set of
> values that says that you can have your own conception of the good above and
> beyond the minimal one's set by liberalism. It says that you can believe
> non-believers are going to hell as long as you get along with them at work.
> Any conception of the good "above and beyond" liberalism that can make that
> concession is one that can fit in liberal society.

I didn't think it was necessary to get out of the liberal paradox.
'Indoctrinating people to think for themselves' seems like a perfectly
good description, paradoxical or not. However, I also agree with your
non-paradoxical way of putting it: "Liberalism is a set of values, but
it is the set of values that says that you can have your own
conception of the good above and
beyond the minimal one's set by liberalism." Is there really any
difference, though?

> If a conception of the good demands that you kill or otherwise make life
> horrible to a section of society, then it does not fit in liberal culture
> and must be eradicated.  That's how we can tell liberal culture is better.
> It's nicer (until provoked).
>
> So I would shy away from saying "people should be able to decide (some of)
> their values for themselves" because it sounds like a kind of decisionism,
> which is a brand of what Alasdair MacIntyre calls "emotivism"--the faulty,
> incoherent view of morality Enlightenment philosophy breeds.  Our "self" or
> ego is not an empty monad that points outward at beliefs and chooses among
> them.  The only way to make a choice is to have a background of beliefs in
> place.  And this is what Pirsig teaches us, too.  Our "self" is not an empty
> container that we fill up with values, our self is made up of these patterns
> of value.  We don't _have_ beliefs or values, we _are_ our beliefs or
> values.

Agreed. However, we can say that liberalism clears a space in which
individuals can evaluate for themselves, without implying that the
individual is "an empty monad that points outward at beliefs and
chooses among them". The point of all the Barfield stuff about the
"internalization" of consciousness, genius, inspiration and character
is that the "self" or "inner space" that arose after the seventeenth
century is not empty, but is "made up of these patterns of value".