Re: BHA: Re: Epistemological relativism

[Mervyn Hartwig <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Tobin, Marko

Just a few points, whereupon I'm off for a few days.

>As a logical point, this doesn't follow.  For one thing, gravity preceeded
>the very existence of human beings by billions of years.  Human rights,
>however, could only come into being at some point within human history.

Marko's point, as I understand it, is that just as gravity goes with
bodies, so human rights goes with (specifically) human bodies. Whether
they are recognised or not doesn't negate their reality. Seems logical
to me.

>Gravity acts upon us whether we
>have an idea of it or not; the same cannot be said about the idea of human
>rights.

One of Bhaskar's main points about 'the pulse of freedom' is that it is
in our (core universal human) nature to be free, whether we - and
particularly the oppressors - have any idea of it or not. That
(clearly!) doesn't mean that people don't have to struggle to have it
recognised.

>Then what do you make of the
>fact that Plato adamantly opposed democracy, and that his ideal Republic
>would have an extremely rigid and authoritarian power structure,
>institutional misogyny, censorship, etc?  If Plato led the charge against
>slavery in Athens, it's news to me.  He may have reasoned about ethics, but
>they *weren't* the ethics of human rights.

Doesn't seem factually correct. Cf Daly, *Deals and Ideals*, 22-3
(notes): Socrates first - 'healthy' - society is very much like Marx's
version of primitive communism (without Marx's claim as to its
historical empirical existence). This Socratic 'primitive communism' is
not often adverted to, and indeed the evaluation of it in The Republic
is ambivalent.... The second - 'feverish' - society  is not, as often
claimed, an 'ideal' one for Plato; on the contrary, it could already,
before The Laws, be said to recognise a 'fallen' state of man. Its form
of government, by religious-minded communist philosophers...

Daly's summary of the Platonic position, which admittedly suffered from
'the distortions of class': 'Socrates and his followers aspired to a
rational spiritual illumination through unifying dialectical philosophy,
the aim of which was to guide human beings to ther ideal communal
fulfilment, in the love (the only subject on which Socrates claimed
expertise) which unconditionally wills not a particular pleasure but the
universal good for every human being'.

>>                The
>> concept of the Universe itself is quite recent.
>> Is the Universe a social construction? If so how could something exist, a
>> human society, prior to the existience of the totality of all existience?
>
>I have no idea what you're on about.  No-one here has suggested anything
>remotely like this -- you're battling a straw man, and it looks silly.

As I see it, Marko's point is that social construction is being invoked
as in some sense ultimate, and that that notion reduces to absurdity.
Again, seems logical to me.

>If biology defines
>what human rights are,

That's not what Marko seems to me to be saying - biology doesn't
'define' anything -  rather that the fact that we are one species the
members of which are by and large all born into the world, no matter
when or where, with fundamentally similar (i.e. human!) needs and
capacities forms the indispensable basis for emancipatory politics. I
don't understand why the 'social constructionist' camp in this thread
can't meet Marko half way and concede that we are one species whose
species being, however differently manifested and mediated in different
societies, is only very slowly changing.

>A fixed concept
>of human nature necessarily limits the possibilities of what humans can do
>and the sorts of relationships they can have -- or can be allowed to have

Nobody is saying that human nature is fixed, let alone its concept. Even
if it were, your point wouldn't follow in an open, stratified world, any
more than the relatively enduring nature of causal mechanisms in general
limits possibility in such a world.


Mervyn







Tobin Nellhaus <nellhaus@xxxxxxx> writes
>Marko--
>
>I offered you two different accounts of what social construction might mean;
>you seem unwilling to consider that possibility.  I think Marsh is right
>when he suggests that you see social construction as simply meaning
>fictitious.  Maybe you just have a biological allergy to the phrase.  Oh
>well...
>
>You wrote:
>
>>                     One may well argue that Gravity is a concept
>> that is historically quite recent, but this does not (or should not)
>obscure
>> the fact that Gravity did not come into being when some apple landed on
>> Newton's head. The same goes for human rights.
>
>As a logical point, this doesn't follow.  For one thing, gravity preceeded
>the very existence of human beings by billions of years.  Human rights,
>however, could only come into being at some point within human history.
>Further, while the concept of gravity is recent, awareness of the way
>objects are pulled or attracted to the earth is certainly not recent, for it
>forces itself upon us continually.  Human rights, however, have constantly
>to be struggled for -- they are not a reality that impress themselves upon
>us *whether we like it or not*, unless they have been put into practice in
>social institutions.  On the contrary, it is in some people's interest to
>deny their existence in both word and deed, and in many places human rights,
>as a practical reality, scarcely exist.  Gravity acts upon us whether we
>have an idea of it or not; the same cannot be said about the idea of human
>rights.
>
>>                The same goes for human rights. If one reads Plato or any
>> work of antiquity one can see quite clearly that people have reasoned
>> ethically throughout history.
>
>I have to admit, my jaw dropped when I read this.  Do you equate "reasoning
>ethically" with "believing in human rights"?  Then what do you make of the
>fact that Plato adamantly opposed democracy, and that his ideal Republic
>would have an extremely rigid and authoritarian power structure,
>institutional misogyny, censorship, etc?  If Plato led the charge against
>slavery in Athens, it's news to me.  He may have reasoned about ethics, but
>they *weren't* the ethics of human rights.  Your claim is deeply ahistorical
>and eternalizing, imputing (actually imposing) contemporary ideas upon other
>times.
>
>>            But what does not differ is the innate endowment of ethical
>> reasoning, which we all share, that we bring to bear on a given problem.
>
>The claim that we are all endowed with an ability to reason ethically is
>perhaps debatable -- after all, there are sociopaths and various other sorts
>(some might include very young children) whose ability to know right and
>wrong is (by most accounts) diminished or undeveloped.  But even if we all
>share this capacity, it does not logically follow that we all possess a
>notion of human rights.  For that matter, the existence of a capacity does
>not mean that is normally is -- or even should be -- exercised.  All people
>have the capacity to commit violence; most people commit very little, and I
>hope we agree that committing wanton acts of violence should not be a human
>right.
>
>>                The
>> concept of the Universe itself is quite recent.
>> Is the Universe a social construction? If so how could something exist, a
>> human society, prior to the existience of the totality of all existience?
>
>I have no idea what you're on about.  No-one here has suggested anything
>remotely like this -- you're battling a straw man, and it looks silly.
>
>>             So I take the opposite view, "grounding the idea of
>> discrimination on human nature is a risky strategy".
>
>Yes, this is correct.  But that's because virtually *any* argument that
>bases social practices and cultural developments on some putative "human
>nature" is risky.
>
>>                If human nature is a social
>> construction then it becomes easy to discriminate...Africans are inferior
>> because our culture is better than their's and culture makes the man.
>
>And in fact, people *do* discriminate with appalling ease.  By your
>argument, that pretty well demonstrates that human nature *is* a social
>construction.
>
>> The task of anyone interested in human emancipation, in my opinon, is to
>> demonstrate that emancipation is not logically precluded by our nature's.
>
>That's a first step; I hope the struggle for human emancipation doesn't stop
>there.
>
>> But I believe that the form human societies can take are constrained by
>our
>> biological nature, which means that society is not a social construction.
>If
>> society were a social construction then societies could differ arbitarily
>> and without limit.
>
>Again, your conclusions don't follow.  Is the form human societies can take
>constrained by our biological nature?  Yes, quite so.  All human societies
>must have a way to produce food.  No human society operates via telepathy.
>Etc.  But the fact that there are biological limits and conditions scarcely
>warrants your two conclusions, (1) that society is not a social
>construction, and (2) that social construction means societies can differ
>arbitarily and without limit.  Marx had it right: people make their own
>history, but not under conditions of their own choosing.  The idea that
>something is a social product does not entail the notion that it is created
>in unfettered freedom; the idea that there are limits and conditions does
>not entail that *everything* is limited, that there is no room for variance
>or innovation.
>
>And there *is* variance, both socially and biologically.  You have yet to
>present any definition of the biological basis of human rights, and to
>explain how that works.  In doing so, you need to account for human
>variation; whether (and to what degree?) you grant these rights to people
>who are mentally retarded, insane, deformed, criminal, toddlers, etc.; and
>on what logical basis biology makes such scope sensible.  If biology defines
>what human rights are, should people with different physiologies get the
>same rights?  Does biology equal destiny?  Further, one way to interpret the
>implications of biology is in "Darwinian" terms of "survival of the
>fittest."  From such a viewpoint, it's arguably self-destructive for our
>species to preserve the lives of the mentally impaired, the quadraplegic,
>the blind, the short, the ugly, the nice guys who finish last, and so forth.
>So what parts of biology count for defining human rights?
>
>If human society is not a social construction, but instead reduces to our
>biology, then we have few if any choices in the sort of society we have.  In
>fact the hope of emancipation through social struggle would be a false one:
>we cannot alter our biology -- oops, oh yeah, except through genetic
>modification, eugenics, sterilization, enforced "euthanasia," genocide....
>
>I assume that's not the direction you mean to go.  So perhaps I'm
>misinterpreting something, which is easy to do since so far you have only
>staked a claim, without an attempt to make a case.  You need to put forward
>an actual argument in favor of your position -- an argument involving
>evidence and reasoning -- and not simply declare your position dogmatically.
>
>With this, I want to address a point Viren makes:
>
>> Does this mean that concepts such as justice must change as well, from a
>> normative perspective.  If this is the case, should we agree that slavery
>> was ok in previous periods but not now?  Clearly at a descriptive level
>> this is true, but I would not want to concede this at a normative
>> level.  Hence with Marco and Dick, I would join in the struggle to create
>> and defend a universal ethical theory.
>
>As you say, what was considered justice at one point may be considered
>unjust later.  And that's a good thing, since it means we can learn things,
>see the error of our ways, and strive to do better (sometimes
>successfully!).  I don't disagree with the goal of universal human rights --
>far from it.  But I think they cannot find a viable basis in a predetermined
>"human nature," particularly if it's defined biologically.  A fixed concept
>of human nature necessarily limits the possibilities of what humans can do
>and the sorts of relationships they can have -- or can be allowed to have:
>some people say homosexuality is "against nature," after all.  In fact, they
>said that about flying.  WE DON'T KNOW what our limits really are, and we
>constantly push them back as we learn new things, allow our creative
>imaginations to take flight, and do things we didn't do before.  A mere
>century ago, not one country gave women the right to vote; now those that do
>are appalled by those that don't.  The notion of human rights expanded; I
>would like to see them continue to expand.  But that only happens when
>people struggle for them -- they are not handed to us by biology.
>
>Personally, I think our very ignorance of the limits of human possibility is
>one good reason for wanting to universalize human rights.  I suppose that's
>rather dialectical of me, in Bhaskar's sense: rather than ground our ethics
>in the positivity of a presumed knowledge of human nature, we should start
>with negativity, our ignorance.  If I don't really know what good you might
>be capable of, then I should not seek to limit your possibilities, and
>indeed I should to try to enhance or encourage them in order to help such
>good come to fruition.  And every bit of good, no matter how tiny, makes the
>world a better place.
>
>T.
>
>---
>Tobin Nellhaus
>nellhaus@xxxxxxxx
>"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce
>
>
>
>
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Mervyn Hartwig
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