Relatively wrong

I was sparked by a discussion I’ve been having over at The Philosophers' Magazine website to explain why I don't accept moral relativism. I speak of “relativism” in the sense of the notion of morality being relative to each society or culture. I'm not addressing my criticisms here to the notion of morality being relative in other senses, such as between all individuals.

There is a lot of commentary on the subject, but here is a good book review from George Crowder that covers some of the issues.

In that review, Crowder mentions the ‘Liberal dilemma’. You can read about it in the article, but in a day-to-day sense it can be seen in a common liberal quandary: the average liberal deplores sexism (tsk tsk, men and their chauvinism), and they deplore being culturally judgmental (tsk tsk, the west and its cultural imperialism). So what do they say about the culture that’s sexist?

However, other positions also have their dilemmas. In the case of absolutism, it’s easiest explained with reference to Bible literalists. How do they know the Bible contains absolute moral truths? Because God says so, they will respond. Okay, but how do they know that’s what God says? Oh easy, they say: Because the Bible tells me so!

The thing is, there are at least two problems for the cultural relativists.

1) All culture’s values are equally valid; but what if one of the values of another culture is precisely the opposite of that notion? In other words, what if a society holds as a value that other society’s values are inferior? Does the relativist (intellectually, if not in practice) tell that culture that they are naughty for trying to impose their values on other societies? But if so, are they not doing exactly what moral relativists say we should not do: namely, judge another society by our standards?

Take the Taliban as an example. They hold morally absolutist views. They will impose their very strict, conservative moral views on anyone, including Muslims who hold different interpretations of the Koran. On the one hand, the relativist says the Taliban are right by their own standards, and there is no outside/objective position to judge them by otherwise. On the other hand, surely the very point of being a relativist is to say that moral absolutism is categorically wrong - and the Taliban are about as absolutist as a culture can be. How is it really possible to hold that there is nothing objectively wrong with the Taliban’s views, while being committed to a moral relativist position?

2) How does the relativist decide where the lines are between one society or culture, and another, without referring to non-societal based, objective norms? I knew an animal rights supporter who was against Spanish bullfighting. I was surprised to learn he was also against people criticizing Japanese whale hunting. Why? Because the Japanese are another culture, whereas (apparently) the Spanish are not.

The reasoning being that Spain was part of “western society”. It was valid to criticise their practices, because they could be seen within "our" moral worldview. Not so the Japanese, according to his assessment. So, was it up to this person (a New Zealander) to make the judgment that Spain was part of “our” culture? Or is it up to the Spanish to say whether they are the same culture, or a different one, for these purposes?

It’s impossible to make the judgment, or even say who should make the judgment, without referring to some non culture-based standard. Where is the line drawn; when does a person count as part of this or that culture or society; can there even be a line? If morality is reduced to a society’s view, you have to be able to judge what qualifies as a ‘society' without recourse to standards that are derived from your own society or culture. If you do use standards derived from your own society to define what counts as the other, you are effectively imposing your worldview, which is what you want to avoid. If you use standards or norms derived from a neutral standpoint you're not really a relativist.

This type of cultural relativism is nonsensical. However, that doesn’t mean I am a moral absolutist, in the sense that is usually implied by the term. As I said over on TPM, I actually fall somewhere between the moral relativist stance and the objectivists. Morality is objective in that moral truths can come from objective reality: our physical, biological, sociological and psychological interactions. It’s relative in that moral principles are contingent on changeable factors (including, but not limited to, social situations and cultural context). Morals are real, but not absolute; relative, but not arbitrary.

Happy birthday Photospace!

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Photospace gallery had its tenth anniversary celebration last Friday, with a non-themed group show. Also, a new venture began with the opening of Gilberd Marriott Gallery. Basically, James Gilberd and Mark Marriott are expanding the gallery to other art media, although photography will also be featured. The opening exhibition is series of paintings by Shane Hammond, Spirit of Now.

Highlights of the group exhibition for the anniversary included Siren Deluxe's latest work, which gave me a chuckle.

Question for John Campbell

I emailed Campbell Live a variation of the following:
...

The lead story in Campbell Live tonight was about the annoying, unpleasant, but essentially obvious and uninteresting fact that sometimes dodgy stuff gets in our food.

Someone found some pre-maggot stage fly eggs in their Tegal chicken. The expert the show spoke to all but acknowledged it was virtually impossible to stop the occasional fly egg from getting where it shouldn't, and in this case the eggs were harmless even had they not been detected. There was no suggestion of a systemic problem.

The next person found a blow fly on his Pizza Hut hot and spicy. Again, it was acknowledged that this would have been difficult to prevent, and it wasn't the fault of Pizza Hut that the fly got in to the oven just at the moment it must have. It was a poor job it wasn't picked up, but Pizza Hut apologised and attempted to make amends.

Both situations would have been very unpleasant for me too, and I don't blame the people concerned for being put off those foods for a while at least. But you'd be kidding yourself if you think that this doesn't happen occasionally, including with other brands.

This is my question to John Campbell: Why was this lead story material? This shouldn't have been a lead story on Fair Go, a show which specialises in this kind of thing. There's nothing about these particular instances that warranted that treatment on a supposedly leading, prime time current affairs show. Is this even 'current affairs' at all? Is the so called 'silly season' coming early? Or has Campbell Live always been this inane, and I just haven't noticed?
...

To date, I have not received a reply. Quelle surprise.

The Venus you

Say it’s the same taste taking down the same kiss
Say it’s the same you
Say it’s the same you and it’s always been like this
Say it’s the same you
-- The Cure Labyrinth (from "The Cure" 2004)

It is often perceived that philosophy provides no answers, only more questions. One reason for this perception is covered by Nicholas Fearn in his excellent book Philosophy: The Latest Answers to the Oldest Questions.

Bertrand Russell once compared the branches of human knowledge to a filing cabinet, in which the material discussed by philosophers was found in the department marked 'Don't Know'. [...] Sir Isaac Newton wrote the Principia and Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations as philosophers, but they are now remembered respectively as a physicist and an economist. The contemporary thinker Noam Chomsky is described as a philosopher as well as the founder of linguistics, but the former half of his title will one day be dropped from encyclopedias.

In other words, once an area under philosophical discussion becomes sufficiently resolved or systematised, it gets categorised as another discipline.

Another reason is that, due to philosophy’s concern with the why and how questions, it’s almost always possible for someone to add a further “but why” or “but how” to an issue under discussion. This can go too far. A friend once observed (in regard to some art students' approach to art theory) that this one-upsmanship is reminiscent of the perpetually unsatisfied child questioning all the received wisdom of their parents: “But why, mummy?” … “But why?”

Fearn’s take on this is once again worth quoting. Writing on the problem of free will, Fearn covers the compatibilist response to the problem many see posed by determinism. Determinists believe that human activity and the human mind is subject to the same physical laws as the rest of the universe - subject to cause and effect - and therefore any sense of free will is an illusion. Compatibilists say that free will is campatible with a "cause and effect" universe run according to scientific laws. In his conclusion to this topic, Fearn writes:

...most philosophers who work on the question of free will are incompatibilists, while most of those who do not are compatibilists. The former camp often ridicules the latter for their unfamiliarity with the latest arguments and texts on the subject. But perhaps compatibilist philosophers have better things to do than reoccupy secured ground. [...] We might also ask how non-theologians can regard the matter of Mary's virginity as settled, or how people who are not UFO fanatics can consider the alien abduction question settled. The answer, of course, is very easily. The last twenty years of free-will debate have produced a strong line of anti-compatibilist thinking. This, however, is what one would expect in a field that has been vacated by philosophy's regular armies and left to partisans who refuse to accept defeat.

I would say the free will problem is one area in which philosophy has delivered what counts, as near as matters, to a resolution. I may discuss this more in another post, but basically the time has come to wrap the debate: either accept compatibilism as the solution to the problem of free will; or admit you think free will is an illusion; or admit you hold to some tenuous mystical explanation that satisfies you but is hard to place within a rational framework. (I’m basically in the first camp.)

Another issue I think has been resolved is one that is often put as a thought experiment. It is the future, and practical matter teleportation has been invented. We have the technology to ‘beam’ you from Earth to a newly terraformed Venus. The transporter chamber on Earth will scan your body and deconstruct it totally, atom by atom, leaving you completely disintegrated but perfectly recorded in terms of everything that went into your form. It then transmits this information to a counterpart on Venus. This chamber reconstructs the exact form of you that was just disintegrated, down to every last detail at an atomic level. You reappear, functional and feeling yourself. You are now on Venus. Or are you?

The Venus you has been perfectly recreated, to the point of having the same personality, same memories, and same body. ‘You’ sure feel like you, and you remember stepping into the Earth transport chamber. You are confident you are the same person, and with a continued psychological identity and completely identical physical form, it may be hard to see why not. But consider: if you were zapped by a ‘disintegration ray’ (a form of weapon not uncommon in science fiction stories) you would be dead. Not temporarily dead, or ‘pending’ dead, but dead as in dead. In the case of the matter transporter, are you not still killed? Is the new Venus version of you not exactly that: a new version of you, but not the same you?

My answer to this thought experiment is another thought experiment: say the matter transporter on Earth could scan you without needing to deconstruct you. Now say it malfunctioned and transmitted the scanned snapshot of you to Venus without disintegrating you at all. The Venus chamber doesn’t know any better, it just recreates the structure it was sent. And hey presto… You Live!
But, umm… You also live. The real you, back on Earth.
The new you is a real being, no doubt; a real self-aware person that honestly believes it is you, and really does have all your memories. But it isn’t the ‘you’ that is standing back on earth. The Venus version of you is more akin to a clone - it's no more “actually” you than a clone is, anyway. The person that walks into the transmitter on Earth is not the same person (the same continuous identity) as the Venus-you that gets created in the receiving transport chamber, as evidenced by the fact that you are still standing on Earth wondering why the heck the transporter didn’t work.

I’ve not heard a convincing argument - indeed, any argument at all - why this would not be true even if the transporter successfully disintegrated you on Earth before transmitting the replication signal. The Venus you doesn’t become you in terms of continued identity any more so just because the real you is killed by disintegration. The two phenomena are independent, as my version of the thought experiment shows.

Of course, we’re a long way off having an actual matter transporter anything like that portrayed in Star Trek. But the thought experiment and its resolution raises questions around what constitutes our identity, in the most intrinsic sense, and the matter of our sense of identity remains a puzzle for philosophy and science. (Maybe more on this another in another post.)

Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan is infamous for killing the fan-beloved character of Mr Spock in a sacrificial act at the end. But truth be told, all the Star Trek characters were effectively killed the first time, and each time, they were beamed anywhere. New versions of them were created; versions that had all the same abilities, strengths and weaknesses, and the same memories, as the originals. Versions that honestly thought they were the same person. But they were copies. By the time of Khan’s wrath, Spock was already dead.

As far as we can ascertain, getting into a matter transport device (at least one that functions in the way they are generally portrayed as functioning) would be nothing short of suicide, however painless.


The taste is dry - the kiss is thirst
And it’s not the same you
It’s not the same you

Laziness without Fear

Well, I haven't posted for some time. I was distracted by a move from one Wellington suburb to another, and those moves sure take a lot out of me. I'm pretty much allergic to moving. Then there was a small matter of becoming employed full-time again. I love not working (in a regular job, that is), but eventually my savings would have run out, so I took the opportunity that came up, and now at least my ongoing income is one thing I don't have to worry about.

But I really, really liked not working. My new favourite book is Hello Laziness by Corinne Maier. You can't go wrong with a book that has chapter titles like: "The idiot on your left", and "Laziness without fear". Yes! Them's some inspiring words.

Anyway, I should be posting a bit more regularly now.

In the meantime, I'm trying one of those polls that Blogger offers [poll now closed]. I always thought it was generally better to have hypertext links open in a new window, so you can keep reading and just refer to the new article as suits. But some argue for links navigating to the new page, seeming to believe that having your links open a new window is, well, a bit rude. I find that notion baffling. (Anyone feel disrespected when they clicked on that link?)

Blogger's default is not to open a new window, so I have to add a bit of code every time I want to make the hyperlinks act how I prefer. It's annoying, and virtually all websites I frequent go with the 'new window' option. Is blogger just behind the times in this regard?