Quote from: Nichole on March 14, 2008, 04:29:16 PM
Can a philosophy of morality be anything other than a poorly defined construct that we place over actions and thoughts?
(BTW, please don't mistakenly think this is a solid belief I hold. Just a curiosity right now. A Socratic dialogue, if you will.)
Oooh. Cool. I like those.
First point - yeah, morality is absolutely a construct built up from a core value. In my case, the core value is self-determination, as I would argue that most of the Western world's is. But if you go from a different core value though, for example 'survival', if we were defining a morality for non sentient animals, say, most of what is good under the first philosophy is completely wrong. Morality is a social construct, like everything else. We might have an inherent sense of compassion or an instinct towards community or whatever, but the act of saying - this is the most important thing ... that's creation.
As to the whole cause and effect chain. My first argument is that 'the buck stops here'. Yes, perhaps my reaction is informed by previous events and reactions, but I have the choice, just like everybody behind, and for that matter, ahead of me along the chain, to act against instinct, or anger, or fear, or whatever informs my initial response.
Examing the consequences isn't so difficult either as long as you are willing to work your way back from obvious outcomes rather than to try and project things forward.
Take a consequence of "I just got stolen from", for example. Asking why, you might answer - because the guy was hungry, because he can't find honest work, because he resents me, because. If you keep asking why far back enough, you'll most likely find that you had a hand, somehow, in your own situation. Taking the "can't find honest work" scenario back, it might be because the assailant lacks an education. So why, because he grew up in a country (South Africa, in the example) where there were huge inequalities in the educational opportunities that one group had over another. Now, if I look at my own situation, I grew up in relative privilage, and though I was too young to have had a hand in Apartheid, I benefited from it. And even though the situation has changed politically, in many ways the inequalities remain, and are worse, and resentments don't just disappear.
Similarly you can, step by step, trace environmental impacts, or social decay, or whatever else back to yourself in some way.
The other day, on the bus home from work, this guy starts ranting about how he's a true Brit because he was born here, even though he's black, and that it's all these immigrants from Poland and Aussie and South Africa (*blush*) that are the interlopers. Another guy in the back of the bus, made the mistake of breathing, I suppse, and the first guy starts going off at him. Meanwhile the second guy is protesting that he's a born Londoner, and the first is going on about how there is no such thing, and that white people are just settlers from mainland Europe anyway. Luckily the incident didn't escelate, but I can imagine that the first guy was upset by some other incident and projecting it forward. The second guy, caught in a scary situation, most likely projected THAT incident forward in turn in some sort of resentment, etc. etc. and somewhere along the line it no longer matters where the circle of racism and resentment started or began, only that somebody try to break the chain by recognising it and defusing his or her own ignorant or fearful reaction.
Now granted, I do tend to rationalise things to death, and I think you could easily boil this down to a simple question like "Am I acting out of understanding here, or am I acting out of ignorance?" (Because really, to me those are the base states that inform all others. If you can honestly look at your action and say the first rather than the second, you should be doing okay most of the time.
So anyway, that's my take on it. Incomplete and incoherent, but it's been a long week and you are not catching me at my best. I'll revise once I've had some sleep!
