Posts by Steve Parks
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I'm sorry Stephen, but you're wrong. We have the hard copies of the NZ Herald here. On the front page of the Herald, Wednesday, October 7, this is the standfirst beneath the main headline: "Police seek mystery woman as fears for Aisling intensify." This is a link to an online Herald story from last Wednesday without the standfirst but with the abduction angle. You'll note that it has the Asian woman in it:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10601788
That story with the heavier emphasis on the abduction angle (the first real emphasis on it, I think) seems to have gone up well after the Breakfast interview with Deb on the 7th, albeit the same day. Also, she flew in from Australia and, according to Henry, "caught a little bit of the news" about Aisling the day before their interview. A reaction based on that glimpse on the 6th is what she was referring to in the interview. So it still seems Stephen's right, it doesn't seem Deb had any reason to think anything was up other than a toddler had wondered away from home and was missing and being searched for.
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Having established with the opening scene [that] Nazis are subhumans and evil
Tarantino just can't win. In the in the review by Philip Matthews, he gets criticized for humanising Nazis. For example, Landa - the Nazi in the opening scene you mention - has "redeeming features" according to Philip (which, in the sense he meant it, I accept) . In support of this case on his blog, quotes are provided from critics claiming Tarantino's Nazis are sympathetic, persuasive and intelligent. Yet you criticize the portrayal of the Nazis as subhuman, a point you say is established in the opening scene.
Tarantino is right that rumour and myth reveal more than 'facts'; that is facts stripped of context ...
What Tarantino very dangerously implies (something he obviously can't say openly), is that we have more in common than we think we do.
If we look at acts (including acts of violence) stripped of context, then yes.
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"How do you call those Americans, enjoying a death of a foreigner so much?
... if the guy in the seat next to me would have found out that I am German? Would he stopped laughing and applauding? Or would he have seen me as a Nazi as well?"
Anke, I have some sympathy for your correspondent, given the situation she was in. But I will say that it was made pretty clear (notwithstanding some of the Basterds’ rhetoric) that the target of the Basterds’ ire was Nazis, not Germans. One of the plot points involved moving to the smaller cinema which resulted in an exclusively Nazi High Command audience. Also, one of the Basterds was a German.
I'm also well aware that World War II didn't end when Hitler and most of the Nazi hierarchy died in a fire in a Paris cinema.) And I personally found it a damn sight less offensive that a little film called U-571 (which was on television here recently, and received generally positive reviews from American critics) which had "based on a true story" all over it when it was nothing of the kind.
Quite. Some of the silliest complaints are about IG’s historical inaccuracies. (Even Rosenbaum seems bothered by that aspect.) It is obviously a fantasy; it would be like complaining that Man in the High Castle was bad history. A reasonably intelligent, averagely educated person, who happened not to know much about WW2 details, could quite possibly be mislead by U-571’s fabrication. Someone would have to be especially ignorant to take the history of Inglourious Basterds seriously.
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Rorty claimed not to be a relativist, but I agree it's hard to see how he wasn't, given some of what he said. I'm going to have to read more of his work though. (Fortunately, regardless of whether I agree fully with him, he had one the best prose styles of any philosopher - at least as good as Eco.)
the (not altogether unreasonable) problem raised that emotivism doesn't give any useful framework for discussion of morals.
That's pretty much where I stand. I do have a theory I'm developing that allows for a starting point for moral discussion that avoids the "Boo, Hurrah" or first principles problem. (I will not elaborate here, for fear of Russell locking down the thread to shut me up.) But even putting that aside, I see the issue as an open question problem, rather than necessarily an acceptance of non-cognativism. Had you not mentioned emotivism and instead just said you thought infinite regress was a problem for moral philosophy, I probably wouldn't have argued. But where would the fun have been in that?
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For what it's worth, I subscribe to the Jonathan Rosenbaum view of Inglourious Basterds.
I just had a look at your review, Philip.
The quotes from Bellamy and Holland are pretty stupid I'll grant you – especially the last from Holland. The link I gave is a much better response to Rosenbaum’s challenge:
“I’m waiting for any of the enthusiasts for Inglourious Basterds to come up with some guidance about what grown-up things this movie has to say to us about World War 2 or the Holocaust — or maybe just what it has to say about other movies with the same subject matter. Or, if they think that what Tarantino is saying is adolescent but still deserving of our respect and attention, what that teenage intelligence consists of. Or implies. Or inspires. Or contributes to our culture.”
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By debates getting more hostile, I'm referring to any number of debates that have involved heated ethical disputes and ended in open warfare. Slavery in the US would be a good example.
Okay, good, the Pinker link I provided is pretty relevant to that.
But I'm undecided/skeptical on all these isms, I must say.
That's kinda what I was thinking of: I guess pragmatism seems like an anti-ism ism. I'm probably thinking more of the recent stuff exemplified by Rorty, what sometimes gets called "neopragmatism". They are against trying to find "the truth", for a start. Also, "[Putnam] is particularly struck by the suggestion that pragmatist epistemology, by emphasizing the communal character of inquiry and the need to take account of the experiences and contributions of other inquirers, provides a basis for a defence of democratic values. This may be related to Rorty's suggestion that pragmatists insist upon the priority of democracy over philosophy." Reminds me of some of your views.
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Plenty of Nazis with "redeeming features" in Valkyrie, Downfall, Inglourious Basterds and The Reader. Too many redeeming features in some cases ...
Which Nazis in Inglourious Basterds are you thinking of?
... I'd put money on it being no more complicated than "I've just seen Inglourious Basterds."
Heh, yeah well that was also mentioned in the early comments over at Reading the Maps, with suggestions of “too soon” and it’s wrong to stylise that kind of thing. Some critics have also been harsh on Basterds, eg Jonathan Rosenbaum.
Personally, I’d recommend the film, and agree largely with this defence.I’m all for ridiculing and satirizing the Nazis and their ideology, so I don’t agree with the Jewish Council when they say any parody of the Holocaust or Nazi party shows stupidity and poor taste. The Lincoln University students probably did in this case, though.
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I did say I’d try to resist responding at all, but, oh well. I will be (comparatively) brief.
If these are just "yuk" and "Hurrah" then ultimately there is no rational resolution to them, and no point discussing them any further.
Maybe, but that’s an “if”. At the very least, it would make sense to apply rationality unless we could know for sure there is only yuk and hurrah at the bottom, so to speak. You don’t need to resolve the “open question” issue in many actual debates.
I’m not sure which you mean is getting more hostile: purely philosophical debates about ethics, or the world in general due to a lack of resolution about ethics. If the former, I don’t see that’s the case, and anyway, hostile ethical debate is often over the stuff you said this isn’t about (supporting evidence, reasoning within a framework) not so much first principles. If the latter, you’d be wrong. (That speech isn’t primarily about rationality in ethics, but it touches on it, and it’s just interesting anyway. More rational and enlightened times roughly equals more peace.)
I'm inclined to think that reason should still be applied as much as possible
Yet, you also say it’s clear that reason “is not working, was never going to work, and is actually simply being used as a Yuk or Hurrah tool”.
OTOH, you really don't have much more basis for a position of "Ick, discrimination is wrong".
“Ick, discrimination is wrong” isn’t a position; the ‘ick’ adds nothing. You can think ‘ick’ over something, and not be against it. It’s not one ick vs the other. If someone thinks homosexuality is icky for some indefinable reason, that alone doesn’t justify discrimination, so I don’t even need to provide “more basis” for anything. If they think ick alone is justification, then as you suggest they’d be buying into that being turned on them. Most people who really wanted to discriminate would come up with some reason or another, and then we shoot that reason down.
Until then, it's still a possibility, and an excellent counter to nearly any normative moral theory. Just find the right ick, and they come crashing down.
Have you looked at Pragmatism at all? I haven’t read a lot (one book by Richard Rorty and a few articles) but it might just be your cup of tea.
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Thanks for your responses - this debate is interesting to me,
Yeah me too. I’ve had time for a good debate. But still, probably time to let this thread drop, so I’ll try to make this my last response...
I'm not sure that the motivation behind the more famous proponents of emotivism can be so easily seen as attempting to ridicule moral statements
I wouldn’t say ridicule. I did say 'devalue' at one point, but even that was followed by “in the sense that they say morals are just expressions of an unarguable sensation”, which still seems about right, other than perhaps to modifying to “expression of a taste preference based on an unarguable sensation or sentiment”. Like ‘olives taste yuk’, or ‘red is my favourite colour’ they cannot be true or false, or even more flawed or less flawed. From that Wikipedia article we have Ayers saying: ‘Thus if I say to someone, "You acted wrongly in stealing that money," I am not stating anything more than if I had simply said, "You stole that money." In adding that this action is wrong I am not making any further statement about it.’
I think this not the case, and it is not a useful way of looking at moral discourse.It may well be that they simply want to establish where fact ends and opinion begins.
I’d see that as more a problem of first principle or maybe ‘open question’ problem. But that applies to virtually all (if not all) forms of discourse, and I don’t see that the emotivist angle adds much illumination to the issue of where facts end and opinion begins. I think, Occam’s razor in mind, that Brandt’s approach is the better: treat any given moral statement prima facie as a proposition. If in any given case it can be unpacked and shown as nothing more than an expression of “yuk” or “Harrah” then so be it. But unless that process has been done, calling moral positions non-cognitive is not helpful.
Brandt simply asserts that reasoning is not involved in tastes of the tongue, with the aim for showing that morals are not arbitrary like tastes. I gave counterexamples.
Yes, but your counter examples weren’t about applying reasoning to the taste per se. There’s a subtle but important difference here between using a reasoned argument to directly change a position, and there being reasons behind a change of position. You may have good reason to reduce the sugar in your diet, but that reason is not itself the cause of your change in taste over sugar in your coffee. Similarly, I decided to try to inure myself to olives, based on reasons that could be put like this: often olives were snacks at some of the functions I would attend, and they were often in food others prepared so it would be good to get used to them and expand my tastes, plus they are good for my health. This could be seen as the ‘argument’ to try olives, but did not itself cause my taste to change. That process is perhaps rightly called non-cognitive, in that what caused the actual change in taste was the non-rational process of inuring myself to the (initially) unpleasant flavour of olives. That process is distinct from the reasons for putting myself through the process.
Compare this to a change like the hypothetical person in posts above regarding race (let’s call her Ann). She can explain the reason for her change in view. She could explain the reason and describe the evidence to another person, who could potentially reconsider their own view on the matter based purely on that argument. Ann sees her previous position on race as unfounded, and indeed the reason for her change of view goes hand-in-hand with her perception of the old view as flawed. So we have a reasoned case for the change itself, explainable to others, and a change based on coming to understand that a previous position was incorrect in some way.Now compare to a debate over the best electoral system for New Zealand. I have changed my position on this matter (from STV supporter to MMP). These sorts of discussions take place in a cognitive way: we debate based on reasons and argument over the evidence. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say my previous position was completely unfounded, I have certainly come to see my old view as having inadequacies in some ways, and my new position in favour of MMP is not an arbitrary change of electoral taste. I could explain the reason for my change in position, and those reasons go hand in hand with seeing my old view as in some way mistaken. Ann’s change in position over race seems very much like this, and not at all like my change in taste for olives. To call Ann’s change of position on race an example of something ‘non-rational’ and akin to a change in taste seems to me to be a peculiar stance to take.
That is just one particular parse that highlights the arbitrariness - "I don't like X" is a proposition (it could be false - I could be lying), but it's not one anyone else can really dispute, if it does indeed merely report a feeling or sensation, or instinct, or upbringing.
If it is just “I don’t like X”, as in “ X " causes me to feel icky in some way, but I have nothing else to say”, then that’s a taste preference and nothing more. “Two men kissing makes me feel ick” is a taste preference, but it is not in itself a moral position. I know people who don’t like seeing two men in a passionate embrace, but have liberal moral views on homosexuality. They don’t think homosexuals should be discriminated against in any way, but their preference is still not to view men kissing. The “Yuk, there’s two guys kissing!” reaction is something many males seem to have at some point. (It is not so often accompanied by the same reaction to two women kissing.) But in and of itself this is not a moral position. If someone were to base their moral view on homosexuality on their personal “ick” reaction and nothing more, and say for example that homosexual actions should be outlawed, the onus is on them to explain why their personal taste should be applied as some moral disapprobation. If they cannot, but stubbornly maintain “ick = it’s wrong”, then true, you can’t argue with that position any further. But they’re just being irrational – it would be like arguing with a flat earther.
People who disagree with evolution are doing so in spite of objective evidence.
In spite of what you call evidence. I say your view of “objective evidence” is just an assertion. I wish you would stop trying to impose your opinions of “truth values” on me.
Okay, I’m being facetious. But it seems to me these discourses might go all the way down on anything. An awful lot of people really do think you and I are wrong about the evidence. That is, they honestly believe the evidence of reality supports their “intelligent design” position better than evolution. Yet others will say your view of ‘reality’ and ‘science’ is the problem. How do you judge that view against yours, when “any dispute about values can only be resolved by judging that one value system is superior to another, and this judgment itself presupposes a value system”. Moral discourse can quickly slip into metaphysics. You can’t reason with someone committed to non-reason. I’d see that as more a case for choosing your battles, than for emotivism, as such.
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But I'm not so sure that sensation is totally divorced from reason
Neither am I, but either way that doesn’t help the emotivist case. It might help some other case for subjectivism in morality, but not theirs. My point was they are trying to say that moral statements are like taste preferences in that they are not arguable. There is therefore nothing to be gained in expanding “taste” to be something we can argue over evidence about. Emotivists say reason and evidence play no part in taste preferences per se; moral statements are like taste statements; therefore, moral statements are also not amenable to reason and evidence. You don’t help their case by saying maybe we can apply those to taste. You then say that maybe you have undermined “Any reasoning about the world” - which would be all of it, I would have thought. Maybe so, and maybe not. But either way, that would amount to a different case for seeing morality as purely subjective. Emotivists weren’t trying to undermine reason, and I’m not trying to refute any possible case for subjectivism you care to put up.
I think I have addressed this. I said that you have failed to show that when you change your morals that there is a "truth" in the matter, that you were clearly right or wrong either before or after. You've merely asserted that you moved from wrong to right,
You’ve missed the point. The challenge to emotivists is to explain why, as Brant pointed out, moral statements do not appear to act like taste statements. I know you don’t agree, for example, with the hypothetical woman’s own view that her previous position on race was actually “wrong”, but the point is why does she treat this “taste” in that way? To recap Brant’s case on how moral statements clearly act differently to taste statements:
1] People can change their position on a moral issue due to reasoning from another person, and/or evidence presented. This is not true of taste statements.
2] When people do change their moral position, they see their previous position as having been mistaken. Not just different, but actually unfounded. This never applies to any taste statement.You’re response to [1] is to say maybe reason does apply to the sort of thing emotivists meant by ‘taste’ after all. As I said above, this fails to support, and in fact undermines, their case. For [2] you suggest that we really want to loudly claim distaste for certain things, so...? Not all moral changes are as significant as going from racist to not, and that doesn’t really explain the way we consistently view prior positions as unfounded. The simplest explanation is to conclude moral discourse is not like stating pure taste preferences, and that moral statements should prima facie be considered propositions.
Are we back to scientific reasoning now? I thought you'd given up on saying moral theorizing was like that.
I was consistent in saying that moral reasoning seems to have some things in common with statements we make regarding empirical matters, if that’s what you mean. In fact, I specifically stated that point in my last post, so I’m not sure why you’re confused.
One of my biggest motivations for leaning towards it is actually "self distrust". I'm well aware that people can argue themselves into believing any position. That's a dangerous thing, if you think that because you've used reason, that you're therefore right,
That can be dangerous, but it isn’t “reason” that’s the problem. There’s a difference between being rational and rationalizing. You’re using reason here – how else do you think you’ve been trying to explain your position and counter mine? You haven’t been using mental projection or yogic flying, I’m pretty sure. Not valuing reason is more of a problem. Like I asked you before, how else would we begin to discuss morality?