Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!yale!husc6!uwvax!rutgers!caip!think!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!cca!mirror!.misc!inmet!janw From: janw@inmet.UUCP Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc Subject: Re: A Modest Proposal Message-ID: <117400125@inmet> Date: Tue, 7-Oct-86 14:14:00 EDT Article-I.D.: inmet.117400125 Posted: Tue Oct 7 14:14:00 1986 Date-Received: Thu, 16-Oct-86 06:48:51 EDT References: <575@gargoyle.UUCP> Lines: 92 Nf-ID: #R:gargoyle.UUCP:-57500:inmet:117400125:000:4612 Nf-From: inmet.UUCP!janw Oct 7 14:14:00 1986 [carnes@gargoyle.UUCP ] [/* ---- "Re: A Modest Proposal" ---- */] >>P.S. BTW, Richard, another question you never answered (you've >>developed preterition into a fine art) ... >This is rather silly. Given the ten minutes or so per week I have >available to spend on the netnews, I have to be highly selective in >my responses. We're not conducting formal debates here. Quite correct. And let me congratulate you on what you manage to do in 10 minutes. Given the need for selectivity, criteria of selection are the problem. It has been my impression (perhaps subjective), and that of some of your other opponents, that you often pass by in dignified silence what the other side considers its main point and the strongest argument, and fasten on some parenthetical remark instead ( as now); and that you don't even answer direct questions. This is the meaning of my parenthetical remark on preterition. It in no way obliges you to change your debating style - which has its virtues - or to defend it - but is merely an observation, and of no great importance. >What is the point, really, of writing long net-articles to correct >someone's errors and confusions, except perhaps to gratify one's ego >or to amuse oneself on a rainy day? There are some: clarifying your own ideas; testing them against objections; same with another's ideas; spreading some truth you consider important; engaging in a social experiment... some oth- ers, too... But surely an old distinguished netter like you must have some good reasons. >>... do *you* draw the >>line anywhere, and if so, where? In other words, in your moral >>philosophy, are *some* rights or principles inviolable, whatever the >>cost? To use Dostoyevsky's example, would you sanction torturing a >>child to establish an earthly paradise? >After you, Alphonse. Let's see your answers to these questions, >together with your reasons for your answers. The latter will >distinguish you from the dogmatists. O.K., answer last question first, as Marx used to say (Groucho, not Karl). Utilitarianism does not pass its own test. Case by case optimiza- tion is not optimal - for at least two reasons: the overhead is too high, and human weakness distorts judgement, exposing one to the temptations of the moment - cumulative temptations of many moments. This leads to what I call the Principle Principle - or the Rule Rule - which is that one needs inflexible rules. In legal sphere, this justifies written law - and as laws are changeable too, constitutions. (The first great achievement of the Roman plebs was not making any law - but forcing the patricians to write down theirs.) The same applies to rules of debate, to rules of experiment etc. - sticking to the rule may be sub- optimal in particular cases, but ad hoc decisions are worse in the long run. The same applies to moral shalt's and shalt-not's. Followed in- flexibly, and reinforced by habit, they become the moral skeleton of a person. Principles *can* be modified - as the Constitution can be changed - but only gradually, on the basis of the sum total of experi- ence, and not ad hoc. When faced with a particular situation, one doesn't argue with one's principle, but obeys. In some ex- traordinary case, one *may* lose more by it than all one gains by ever adhering to the principle. When one accepts the principle, one accepts that chance: fiat justitia, ruat caelum. Returning to Dostoyevsky's problem - he explored it extensively in his books. He ran thought experiments which showed - rather prophetically - that people who forego all moral restrictions where heaven on earth is at stake, tend to create hell on earth instead. That it has to be so, can be inferred - not infallibly - from general philosophical and psychological considerations. That it *does* work that way, is an empirical fact. In the ab- sence of rigid principles, people are too gullible (Milgram's ex- periment comes to mind), and too corruptible - morally and intel- lectually - by power, fear, vanity, and immediate self-interest. In an absolutely ruling *group* both factors are combined to make its absolute corruption, and general disaster, a certainty. The world is safer in the hands of people who neither *will* nor *can* sacrifice everything for its sake. Justifying a *particular* set of rules as against another is a different problem; if you accept the general principle (or metaprinciple), we can move on to it. I hope my answer to my own question is clear enough. Jan Wasilewsky