Re: BHA: Re: Tobin Epistemological relativism

[viren viven murthy <vvmurthy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Marco and Tobin:

I am definitely with Mervyn in thinking that many of the issues in your
debate could be solved by finding a half-way point.  Both of you are
concerned with human relativism and seem to be interested in constructing
a universal ethics geared to human emancipation.  However Marco, you seem
to assume that ethics is reducible to biological view of human nature,
while Tobin, you seem to deny any link between a core human nature and
ethical principles.

To me it seems that any coherent ethical theory must begin with some basic
assumptions about the human condition.  However, these assumptions are not
equivalent to ethics.  Perhaps, the capacity for ethical reasoning is
innate in all human beings, but this capacity is not the same as any
particular ethics, such as an ethics that criticizes capitalist
exploitation.  We assume this capacity as a starting point for discussions
about ethics.

To some extent, as Marxists, we would have to agree that, even if the
capacity for ethical reasoning is not a social construction, particular
ethical views, such as Plato's or Spinoza's are.  But, I think that one of
Marco's points is that we cannot stop here.  We need to have some type of
benchmark in order to distinguish and evaluate different social
constructions.  In this moment, certain capacities associated with the
human condition will again play a role.  Reducing human rights or ethics
to struggle risks degenerating into a might makes right type of ethical
world view.  Clearly, we need to struggle to realize human rights and
ensure that agencies fulfill human obligations, but a movement can fail
but still be ethically correct.

I think that Bhaskar addresses these types of issues in Chapter 3.10 of
DPF, when he discusses the concept of dialectical universalizability.  He
begins with a concept of human nature as autonomous and expressing the
dialectic of desire (absenting constraints).  Based on his definition of
human nature he writes that "one will be free just to the extent that one
possesses the power knowledge and disposition to act in one's real
interests. . ."  I think that at this point Bhaskar invokes a universal
definition of freedom that, we can say is socially constructed, but
universally valid.  In this sense it is similar to certain scientific
description (both being of course, fallible).  Like gravity, Bhaskar would
claim that this definition can be used to understand cultures that did not
possess this concept.

Like many Marxists, Bhaskar goes on to describe how capitalist society
prevents the realization of autonomy (our essential human nature).  "Thus
nothing which was reified, i.e like labour-power treated as a commodity,
could be said to be truly autonomous.  Self-determination is normally a
necessary condition for self-realization, and if one's self includes one's
potentialities, then one can reasonably be said to be alienated from
them.  And only a self which, in solidarity, has emancipated itself can be
said to have become self-determining, i.e. autonomous."(281-2)

I think this passage supports the basic thrust of Marco's argument, but we
must emphasize, that in Bhaskar's view, human nature is not merely
biological.  He does not derive ethics from biological traits, but he does
derive ethics from human nature, which includes capacities and
dispositions associated with biology.

Viren

On Thu, 21 Mar 2002, Marko Beljac wrote:

>
>
>
> The fact that we have many fundamentally similar needs is not very helpful,
> unless one is willing to maintain that a need or a desire automatically
> confers a right.  We all have a need to eat, but does that need confer a
> right to eat your neighbor?  Does a person's need for sex confer a right to
> commit rape?  The moment one says, "Well, okay, there are some limits and
> needs don't confer unlimited rights," one is on strictly social grounds.
> Nature doesn't give a damn what you eat so long as it provides nourishment
> that suits your physiology and doesn't poison you in the process; sperm can
> be ejaculated and meet an egg whether the sex is consensual or not.  People,
> however, care a lot.
>
> I would like to make a few comments here. I take it that we are all concerned with emancipatory politics. Tobin here is making an argument for the social construction of ethics.  I however would argue the opposite. The ethical faculty is as much an innate faculty of homo sapiens as the language faculty (although I should be careful because even this faculty is supposedly a social construction). Ethics, it seems to me quite clearly, is an adaptation for an intelligent organism such as ourselves. Tobin claims that people care a lot. This of course is true, but the question is why do they care a lot. By holding a social constructivist approach toward ethics one is denying that ethics is an innate faculty of mind. If Tobin, like Bhaskar, is opposed to Capitalism and he lives in a Capitalist society and given that ethics is a social construction how is that Tobin opposes Capitalism? Does he oppose Capitalism merely because, for whatever reason, he has found himself living within a sub culture or that he has read some books but not others? Or is that his use of his innate ethical faculty, which he shares with us all, is telling him that there is something fundamentally wrong with Capitalism, enabling him to persuade others outside of the sub culture that his views are necessarily correct?
>
> Constructivist ethics leads to moral relativism. Moral relativism of course precludes universal emancipation. We are in the happy circumstance of knowing that science tells us that the ethical faculty is an innate feature of homo sapiens and that thereby science does not logically preclude universal human emancipation. For all those concerned with a "realist philosophy of science" this is something to celebrate, in my opinion.
>
> Marko.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>



     --- from list bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---