[MD] Reason, Tradition, Absolute Truth

[David M]

MOQers

We all have to make choices, yet every situation and
set of options is unique to some extent. So making choices
is about trying  to value possibilities that are new and hard
to weigh up. This is why life is interesting and we await
dynamic inspiration  and get anxious and uncertain.
We live in a cosmos that has some order but is
largely disorder -read the daily cosmos news if in
doubt on this one, duck here comes another supernova.

DM
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Hamilton" <thethemichael at gmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 1:45 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Reason, Tradition, Absolute Truth


> 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".
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