BHA: Re: Tobin Epistemological relativism

["Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Marko, Viren, Dick, and Mervyn--

As Dick says, clarifying areas and reasons for disagreement is the best
result of this discussion.  It seems to me that one reason for the
difficulty in my discussion with Marko is in his comments below:

>            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).

Apparently there is slippage in the topic under discussion.  This thread
began with the issue of human rights, which Marko later merged with thought
about ethics, a shift I pointed out previously.  Now we have slid from
ethical thought to the faculty for ethical thinking.  To me these three are
quite distinct.  The ethical faculty is a capability which, as Marko says,
is innate.  Ethical thoughts are the actual products of that faculty, if and
when it is exercised.  Finally, human rights are a quite specific form of
ethical thought.

Now, at no point have I even *discussed* the ethical faculty, much less
denied its basis in human biology.  Clearly it has a biological basis, in
the same sense that language and the ability to carry a tune have biological
foundations.  But it is also clear, to me at least, that the extent to which
a capability is developed in any particular person varies, and varies over
time (a one-year old hasn't developed them very far, etc).  Some of the
variance is probably biological; for example, there may be a physiological
reason why some people are tone-deaf.  Most is not: a person may have a very
good voice, yet seldom sing, or never strive for operatic singing.
Likewise, we can assume that the vast majority of people have the ability to
make ethical judgments, without expecting them all to be moral philosophers.

Until now, however, I have strictly addressed the question of what we do
with our ethical capacity, that is, the *content* of ethics.  Here we get to
Marko's question about how it is that I oppose capitalism.  (To which my
answer is Yes.)  But the question that I think needs to be asked is how it
is that my efforts to think ethically led me toward marxism, whereas other
people engage in the same activity and conclude that capitalism is best, or
Catholicism, or whathaveyou.  Is there any reason for me to think that
someone who with different views is unethical, or lacks even the capacity to
think ethically?  I don't think so -- I definitely believe my views are
preferable because they have better support from both evidence and logic,
but I'm also quite certain that other people can genuinely strive to form
coherent ethics even though they come to conclusions I strongly disagree
with.  My point is, exercise of the ethical faculty can lead to very
different results.  The ethics that I developed personally differ from the
ones that Plato developed.  Societies also come up with differing ethical
frameworks, through the exercise of the *same* ethical faculty.  Thus
ethical systems (specific ideas, values and beliefs) are developed by
societies, in a historical process.  The fact that these systems have
differing sociohistorical provenance does *not* release us from the
responsibility of making judgments about them.  According to Plato's
society, slavery was quite okay; according to mine, is certainly isn't --
and I *will* argue that Plato's society was wrong.

>            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 you've followed me so far, then you'll see that the claim that
societies -- not biologies -- form ethical systems does *not* deny that
ethics is an innate faculty of mind.  All it says is that different
societies use the same ethical faculty to arrive at different ethical
systems.  Likewise, different societies use the same musical faculty to
arrive at different sorts of music (pentatonic, modal, 12-tone, symphonic,
rockabilly, etc).  Of course, the consequences of different ethics are
rather more severe than different musics, but the principle is identical.

> Constructivist ethics leads to moral relativism.

As I've indicated, this doesn't follow, IF "constructivist ethics" means
"understanding that ethics are developed by specific societies under
particular conditions, and consequently vary."  Of course if you see
"constructivist" as meaning something such as pure arbitrariness and
unlimited free play, then your statement is correct -- but you would no
longer be talking about anything that I have been saying.  Once again,
kindly don't impute to me ideas which I have already explicitly rejected.

Turning now to Viren--

>             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.

I wouldn't go that far.  There may well be such a link -- but a lot depends
on how one defines human nature.  And I think the onus is on those who argue
for this link to provide reasonable evidence and arguments for it,
particularly if "human nature" is simply human biology.

>         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.

I have no problem with this.  And I think your assessment of how Bhaskar
provides a sort of benchmark is apt.  Personally I feel he stresses autonomy
a little heavily, in the sense that "life is with people" and we are
strongly interdependent, but I don't think he's denying 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.

This seems like a pretty good way to put it, provided "human nature" is
understood in this non-reductive sense.  My critique has been against the
biological reductivism that Marco had presented.  As I've stated several
times, I do not deny that there are biologically-based capacities and
dispositions which contribute in one way or another to how and why we think
ethically.  I just think that ethics don't reduce to biology, and that
biologically-given capacities are capacities, not their results.

Finally, Mervyn:

>            But I also reject the sociological
> reductionism (Margaret Archer would call it sociological or social
> imperialism) you have sometimes seemed to espouse.

I hope that by now it's clear that I wasn't espousing sociological
reduction.  From my perspective (one of the things I'm interested in are the
cognitive implications of sensorimotor experience), the notion that I would
argue that way is a stretch.  Your misapprehension may have come from the
fact that Marko had put forth a biologically reductivist position, and I had
to emphasize that this fails to account for huge variations that can only be
understood sociohistorically.  To wit:

> >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?
>
> These examples tell against your own position surely. Both cannibalism
> and rape have been culturally condoned. If it isn't right, in some
> universal sense, to eat or rape your neighbour, it must be because they
> share a common human nature, which includes a capacity for altruism and
> ethical reasoning generally.

The fact that cannibalism and rape have been culturally condoned *supports*
my position, because it shows that universal values are scarce indeed, and
the extent of variation extremely broad.  So locating ethics directly in
human biology has a tough row to hoe.

T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus@xxxxxxxx
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce





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