I cycled to campus for the second morning in a row (the third time ever). I estimate it takes about 30 minutes (give or take 5). I saves me a dollar on bus fare and whatever I'd pay to ride a stationary bike at a fitness center (although I'm sure it isn't constant activity the way aerobic exercise should be--it's actually an easy ride).
No rain today, so my tires are cleaner and my brakes are working better than yesterday. :)
I'm noticing that I'm out of practice with regular, spontaneous praise and thanksgiving. I don't spend enough time outside, being, wondering, enjoying--as Michael's been saying, properly playing. :) I think that means I need to spend serious time in the Psalter.
Note to self:
One of the more serious challenges for moral realism is moral epistemology. How can we know normative truths?
I suspect that moral knowing involves empirical investigation (a posteriori knowing) into what contributes to a certain notion of eudaimonia/well-being/happiness/a good life (or, on the flip side, what contributes to a certain notion harm). Thus far I think I'm in basic agreement with the Cornell realists--the reigning metaethical naturalists. But this empirical knowledge is not where our normative concepts of, e.g., well-being come from.
I suspect that our concepts of well-being properly originate partly in revelation (a posteriori, but not perhaps empirical knowing) and are partly innate (a priori knowing). I understand innate concepts as concepts that we form for the first time when we first use them to cognize something in our experience. So to say that we have innate concepts of well-being means that when we experience well-being (or a privation of well-being)--either for ourselves or in observation of others' lives--we recognize it as such. Such cognition is not necessarily infallible just because it involves native concepts.
I am open to both special revelation filling out and correcting our conceptions of well-being and privation of well-being, and to some form of internal spiritual regeneration (a la Plantinga's WCB model) doing the same.
(Comments welcome from all on the above!)
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"Make me a channel of Your Peace."
-St. Francis
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3 comments:
Is this more or less what you're saying?:
1) We recognize what is good for ourselves at a given moment innately.
2) What is best for all will be good for at least most in themselves at a given moment.
3) What is good for one at a given moment is not what is best in the long run.
4) Therefore, we have ethical rules to moderate behavior to lead to long-term goals (which, upon being reached, would be recognizable as good, and better than other goods).
5) Due to epistemic limitations, these ethical rules (both concerning what the good is and how to get there) may need to be mediated through revelation, and/or also through reason.
6) This ultimate well-being is not entirely discontinuous from the well-being of the current moment, and so we can study current well-being and so make advances.
So, we would have an ethic which is based upon future results which yet do not include anything beyond the experienced states of concrete beings, and which can see the need for revelation.
I don't want to take credit for what you just said, but I find it initially attractive (because your conclusion makes a nice place for revelation to fit in to the picture).
I don't think I said anything yesterday about how to divide the duties of nativism and revelation in providing us with our value-concepts. I certainly meant for those value-concepts to include those employed in recognizing our own good/harm, another's good/harm, social or institutional good/harm, etc. I didn't mean to suggest that we each have innate concepts of what is good-for-me/bad-for-me, and that our concepts of good/bad-for-other, good/bad-for-society, good/bad-for-humanity, or good/bad-for-ecology require revelatory input.
I think what I meant to suggest was that our innate value-concepts might be unclear and fallible and that revelation has a role to play in clarifying and correcting those concepts.
I didn't mean to put a sharp dichtomy the good-for-self, which we know innately, and the good-for-others, which we know only through revelation. Maybe a (6b) could note that the good-for-others is not entirely unlike the good-for-self, and so a greater understanding of the latter will entail a greater understanding of the former?
Another way to look at it would be like this: Ethics is a big round of the prisoner's dilemma. Reason alone can tell us this, and what the most immediate values for the dilemma are. What revelation tells us is that the dilemma only applies to local situations; the assumed compromise is really a complete win (the absolute maximum), with the other scenarios all being complete losses. So, we know the good-for-self, and can use this to make worthwhile guesses about the good-for-others, but we don't know either fully without revelation.
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