http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressivism
I made my first contribution to a wikipedia article today, and was invited to join the philosophy / ethics taskforce(s). This is probably not the best use of my time, though. Motivation has been lacking the last couple of days in general.
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"He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)
http://gandalf83rss.blogspot.com/2007/10/common-word-between-islam-and.html
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"He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)
Ponderance of the day:
What is the relationship between metaethics and normative ethics? What are our purposes in metaethical inquiry? I suspect they are at bottom practical purposes, the same practical purposes at the root of our first-order ethical inquiry. If one of the primary functions of a metaethical theory is the *justification* (not merely the description) of first-order ethical judgments and their truth-aptness, this would seem to argue against certain expressivists' claim that metaethical discourse is morally detached, descriptive discourse by contrast with first-order moral discourse which is morally engaged, evaluative discourse. Further, if one of the purposes of metaethics is to aid in selection between competing normative ethical theories, it would be strange if our conclusions in metaethics had no consequences (even indirectly) on our normative ethical commitments.
These are articles I came across but have not really looked at much this afternoon:
Google Search: revisionist metaethics
JSTOR Links: Paul W. Taylor, The Normative Function of Metaethics, The Philosophical Review, 1958; Alan Gewirth, Metaethics and Moral Neutrality, Ethics, 1968. Reference from Taylor: Frederick A. Olafson, Meta-Ethics and the Moral Life, The Philosophical Review, 1956.
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"He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)
I sent my paper in on Monday after rewriting the ending a few times. However, I think it was not properly submitted, because I could not find the e-mail address (I was not at school where the flyer was). I sent the paper to the department e-mail address on the website of the hosting university, but this was not the correct address for paper submissions. Oh, well.
I am writing a paper this week (and probably next week too) on methodological considerations in metaethics. This will basically serve as an introductory chapter in which I set up to argue against metaethical theories that inadequately accomodate truth in moral discourse. I will argue that cognitivist expressivism is interesting because it agrees with me that a good theory will accomodate truth in moral discourse, and then proceed in the rest of the thesis to argue that cognitivist expressivism fails to make that acccomodation. If I have space and time enough, I will probably conclude the thesis by talking about a way or some ways to accomodate truth in moral discourse.
Here is a quote I found highly amusing in my reading today:
If meanings are given by objective truth conditions there is a question how we can know that the conditions are satisifed, for this would appear to require a confrontation between what we believe and reality; and the idea of such a confrontation is absurd (Davidson, "A Cohrence Theory of Truth and Knowledge").I rather thought that notion of confronting reality (or purporting to) was analytically contained in the concept of belief.
Since last Monday I have been focusing my energy on teaching and on writing a paper on expressivism and relativism that I want to submit to a graduate student conference (the deadline is Monday the 15th).
My argument in the paper is this:
V. Why Expressivism Must Either Relativize or Deny Moral Truth
1. A nonrelativistic account of the truth and falsity of moral judgments must admit nonrelativistic standards of value. **
2. Expressivism does not admit normative facts in any 'robust' objective sense.
3. Any metaethical view that admits nonrelativistic standards of value must admit normative facts in a sense rejected by expressivism. **
4. Hence, expressivism does not admit nonrelativistic standards of value.
5. Hence, expressivism is not a nonrelativistic account of the truth and falisty of moral judgments.
6. Hence, expressivism is either a relativistic account of the truth and falisty of moral judgments, or else it is not an account of the truth and falsity of moral judgments at all.
** points of contention (where I have my work cut out for me)
Conclusion: To the extent that the expressivists' reasons for rejecting ethical relativism and any metaethical account that does not account for the truth and falsity of moral judgments are accepted, expressivism itself ought to be rejected.)
This is an exercise for me in writing for a deadline, and trying to stay focused on a narrow argument. I need to stay out of tangential issues and additional arguments that I am also developing for my thesis.
I have been worrying a little bit today about all of this. About finishing this paper by Monday, about having enough for my thesis to be done "on time" (my new deadline being the end of this school year), about employment for next semester, about my academic career...
I'm hungry right now and I need a break.
I have also been tutoring at TMC. I've spent the last three weeks reading with a fourth-grader. That's rather fun. He's an easy kid to work with.
Love & Peace!
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"He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)
Jerry Fodor has argued that we never really learn new class-concepts; we only learn new vocabulary for class-concepts we already have. For example, if you show me ten things and identify some as "flarn" and the others as "non-flarn", I might learn that the class-concept "flarn" applies to everything that is a flat, green, rectangular or triangular shape. I already had the concept of FLAT+GREEN+(RECTANGULAR OR TRIANGULAR) in my inventory of concepts; I just learned your word for this concept. Fodor argues that all lexical concepts--all concepts that are normally denoted by a single word in English--are innate. On this view, even the concept CARBURETOR is an innate concept. (He further supports this view with arguments designed to show that giving definitions of such concepts--in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions--is not possible using other, simpler concepts.) Let's call this view "extreme nativism".
OK - That was background. Here's my thought (had while walking back from teaching Logic this morning):
The essential claim of extreme nativism is that our class-concepts (at least, the lexical ones) are not learned in a classical empiricist sense--that is, we don't acquire these concepts via experience. They have always been a part of our mental inventory. (Note: Nativists don't deny that experience plays a role in our 'learning' concepts--we may have a concept innately, but we don't 'learn' it, in a sense, until we meet something in our expereince to which we apply it).
Perhaps this claim could be modified or restated to make it seem more plausible. The categories into which we sort the objects of our experience are a subjective contribution that our minds make to our experience, not a contribution that the objective, given reality makes to our experience. (William James says something like this--we classify and categorize things according to 'essences' depending on how it suits our practical purposes at the time). So, categorization is native to our minds, not a part of the world. Perhaps we don't create the class-concepts until we need them; it is not like there is a fixed set of concepts (including CARBURETOR) that is a part of our natural endowment that come out to play when we first meet something the concept applies to. Rather, we have an innate capacity to creatively make up class concepts in accordance with our practical purposes.
In some ways the great mystery (to scientists & philosophers of science) is, where do our concepts come from? And also, where do our hypotheses come from? The scientific method explains how we test our hypotheses, but it does not explain how we come up with them. My suggestion is that the creation of explanatory hypotheses and the conception of class-concepts are essentially and non-reductively products of our innate mental structures and capacities. No input from the external world determines our concepts and hypotheses for us; it is a part of our internal processing mechanism.
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"He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)
I caught a kind of second wind after posting yesterday evening. Writing and/or saying what I'm thinking can really be helpful when I feel upset or out of control, or like giving up.
I submitted two papers from the end of the Fall 2006 semester--one each to the two conferences whose deadlines were yesterday. So I feel like I didn't give up after all.
The James paper is behind me however the grade turns out. That's one more obstacle toward my graduation out of the way (at least, once I get a grade back!). I can now turn to other things.
There's one more fall grad conference (at Western Michigan) with a deadline in two weeks (the 15th). Maybe I can submit a thesis-related paper to that one. My thesis is my primary goal now. (Other than keeping up with Logic, and the rest of my life). I will need to focus my energies on a particular task, though--one chapter, one criticism, etc. It will come together. I will do this. I will finish.
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"He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)
This evening I handed in a paper that has been due since December 2005. I feel discontent. Perhaps this is a typical symptom of Type-A personalities who write philosophy papers, or who regard themselves professional students. In some ways I feel like my writing improved over the course of the last six or seven weeks. But I had much higher ambitions for this paper. It just would take too much work--too much time and energy that I do not have right now--to take it to level I imagined.
I am missing two conference deadlines as we speak. One is for grad students only--I'm not sure if I'm eligible for it anyway since I'm not enrolled in any credit hours this semester. The other is not for grad students only--which probably means that I would have even less chance of getting a paper accepted there. But the reason I am missing the deadlines is because I don't have anything ready. I had dreams of submitting the aforementioned paper I turned in this evening, but I think it is all I can bring myself to do to give it to the professor and ask for a grade. (I am so scared I will get a B or worse for the course!) There is at least one other paper I would like to submit, which I was encouraged by a professor to submit for publication about a year ago. It is not really ready for submission, though--one of the sources needs updating (I did not have access to the second edition of a book I was using), and I need to write some more (a transitional passage added here or there would be good). After turning in the other paper this evening I just didn't feel like I had the energy or drive to do any real work on this paper.
Ah, maybe I'll e-mail it in anyway in the next hour. I'll let you know.
Those of you that know me probably will not be suprised that this is the content of my thoughts...as I said, type-A personality. I can find so many ways to self-criticize right now...laziness, self-absorption...
I just want to go home and rest--to have no worries or responsibilities. I spend too much of my time longing for that state of being! I don't really want a life with no responsibility. I want to mean something to people.
I wish I could just teach for the rest of my life, without any other performance pressures. I am fairly consistently confident about my teaching abilities. At least I get to tutor tomorrow.
As I get ready to publish this post, I notice my automatic signature. Peace. That sounds nice.
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"He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)
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