[MD] The MOQ and Death part 3

[Steven Peterson]

Hi DMB,


> dmb says:
>
> I disagree with the notion that pragmatist can use a theory "for whatever purposes we find it useful". I think you want to be careful how you say that so that it doesn't sound like we're allowed to measure the value of theory according to our own personal standards or personal goals. I mean, we don't want to make it sound like truth hinges on our whims, do we?

Steve:
I think you are right. How about this 2nd attempt at that paragraph...

Steve now says:
Like Becker himself, I see no way that we could every demonstrate the
truth of Becker's broad assertion beyond doubt. But as with our
consideration of materialism, we don't need to buy into it as the only
true description of human culture. Just because everything perhaps can
be given a material description, doesn't mean it should only ever be
given a material explanation or that material descriptions are
appropriate in all contexts. By the same token, just because material
explanations sometimes prove to be inadequate to our experience
doesn't mean that we should never use materialist explanations in the
contexts where they actually do perform well. To explain the parallel
with the Denial of Death, even if we believed that Becker's theory of
repression actually does adequately explain all of culture wouldn't
mean that it would be the only explanation that we should ever use.
And even if it turns out that Becker tried to fly too high and that
his theory only explains some of culture rather than all of it as he
hoped, as pragmatists we can still make use of Becker's theory to
whatever extent that it really does provide us with good explanations
without any expectation that there exists out there that one "True"
description that will make all other descriptions obsolete.


DMB:
 Isn't the question hinge on whether or not the theory explains things
well or not? What are the consequences in future experience going to
be if we ACT as if it were as true?

Steve:
agreed

DMB:
If all of human culture is built of unconsciously motivated
immortality projects and if these projects are the cause of misery and
evil, then acting as if the theory were true means that civilization
itself is evil and getting rid of evil means getting rid of human
culture. That would be a solution that's much worse than the problem.

Steve:
Agreed because I may not have explained the immortality project
phenomena well enough. Such projects are not necessarily bad. They are
necessarily doomed to fail because they can't really make us immortal,
but many of them are actually good in their effects.

DMB:
I can see how the theory might be applied to individuals in the
process of psychotherapy and it has a way of provoking some self
examination but as a theory of evil, it's way too reductionistic and
simplistic. As you said, I can't "take too seriously his claim for
fundamental universality" and it "can be applied to do what Socrates
told us to do: examine our lives".


Steve:
Okay, you're not sold. We disagree since I see some value in it as I
explained in a previous post whereas this one was more about
criticizing it, but we are allowed to find different tools useful.



> Steve said:
>
> ...Religious practices are no more a response to our fear of death than many of our other practices. While the "smug atheists" alluded to earlier may claim that the believer just can't face death, perhaps he hasn't really faced death either. Perhaps he just has some different ways of repressing knowledge of death which are not explicitly religious. The "smug atheist"  may have abandoned or never had an explicitly religious immortality project, but that does not mean that he has not been working on all sorts of other immortality projects to deny his own fear of death. Whether or not we view Becker's claim in the universality of repression of knowledge of death as "unscientific," the smug atheist who dismisses religion as a particularly cowardly response to human mortality is no more scientific about his assertion.
>
> dmb says:
> The reasoning here seems to be that everyone has a repressed fear of death that motivates various immortality projects, therefore all immortality project are the same. But if everyone has this unconscious motive, then it makes no sense to condemn for that. But surely we can say that some immortality projects are better than others.

Steve:
Right, and I should have been more clear on this point. Many religious
hero projects are especially dangerous.