BHA:Tobin Epistemological relativism

[Mervyn Hartwig <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Tobin, Marko, Ruth and others,

I think we've got more agreement than we thought we had, particularly
now that Tobin has indicated that he basically accepts the Bhaskarian
account of human nature as relayed by Viren. As I recall, this thread
began, not with the issue of human rights as such, but with Marko
querying whether the Bhaskarian understanding of human nature is that it
is just a social construction. Everybody now seems to agree that that's
neither the Bhaskarian understanding nor their own.

1. Human nature. On the Bhaskarian account (as on the Rousseauian and
Marxian) socially constituted ('four-planar') human nature (including
all the different ethical frameworks Tobin highlights) - Marx's social
being - is dependent on a deeper core universal human nature which it,
on the one hand, functions to occlude (ideology), and, on the other,
presupposes and tacitly acknowledges - Marx's species being. (Bhaskar
invokes the Hegelian dialectics of co-presence or co-inclusion to assist
in understanding this.)

Core human nature includes a capacity or disposition for ethical
reasoning, but is not exhausted by that - as I think Marko has
emphasised all along, though the way he has put things has sometimes
been misleading (as in the case of all of us): he has also stressed
human *needs*, in particular the need for autonomy (non-alienation). His
central position has been that *emancipatory* politics depend on an
adequate understanding of our core nature. This is I think entirely in
keeping with the Bhaskarian conception, on which, as for Rousseau and
Marx, people need to be (are born, are essentially or by nature) free,
but everywhere are in chains. Indeed the drive to universal freedom (the
'pulse of freedom') set up by our essential nature *is* for Bhaskar
'moral alethia' or 'alethic moral truth'.

Nor is our core nature just 'biological'. First, because it includes our
psychological capacities, needs and interests, including the need for
autonomy ('subjective emergents' - Sean Creaven). Second because our
psycho-organic capacities and needs have been (and are being) formed in
the course of a long process of social evolution, and are necessarily
socially and culturally articulated. Certainly, Marko has spoken of our
core nature as 'biological', but if you examine the content of what he
ascribes to it, in particular his emphasis on the need for autonomy and
the role of social evolution in its formation, it seems to me that it is
*a similar conception to Bhaskar's*, which no-one would dream of
describing as 'simply human biology', let alone 'physicalist'.


2. So the key issue in this thread is not 'biology' as such but
reductionism vs emergence. Here Marko is at odds with CR (and Marxism)
in that he (mostly?) doesn't accept that the social is emergent. Note
however that his position *is* emergentist with respect to 'biology' or
our core nature - he doesn't continue the reduction all the way down to
ultimate particles as a physicalist would. If he wants to be consistent
it would seem that he must either continue the reduction in that way or
extend his emergentism to the social; the latter would seem the smaller
of the two steps, in particular because he accepts that humans, unlike
insects, have the capacity to 'transcend their genes'...


3. Emergence however implies the possibility of disemergence, including
of those aspects of our social being - master-slave-type relations and
ideology - that do not accord with our core nature, thereby bringing our
'essence' into line with our 'existence', alethic morality into line
with actually existing moralities. Perhaps Marko with his emphasis on
our core nature can see this more clearly than Tobin with his emphasis
on social construction. On the Bhaskarian account it is precisely the
thwarting of our core nature that gives rise to ideological illusion
(maya) - i.e. our core nature sets up 'axiological imperatives' to
fulfill our bodily needs and drives and relate in a non-alienated way
and as free beings; when these are frustrated this give rises to Tina
compromise formations or ideology - all the labrynthine structures of
the demi-real. These are irreal and false, i.e. illusory, though real in
causal efficacy. Perhaps Marko's keen appreciation of this is the basis
of his 'biological reductionism'. However, in rejecting social emergence
as such he seems to be implying that if our 'essence' and 'existence'
were in synch, not just maya, but the social as such would disappear
altogether, and that surely is not right. Our core nature will always
need to be socially mediated and fulfilled, i.e. can't exist separately
from such meditation.

Mervyn



Tobin Nellhaus <nellhaus@xxxxxxx> writes
>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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--
Mervyn Hartwig
Editor, Journal of Critical Realism (incorporating 'Alethia')
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