Steve said: Playing the causation game doesn't depend on any particular metaphysics. But once you start looking for explanations in terms of causes, the serpent of causation is found to run over everything.
Matt: That's a good way of putting it. One of the most powerful, succinct statements of this view--that once you start "playing the causation game" the viewpoint of morality based on free will seems to disappear before your very eyes--is Thomas Nagel's "Moral Luck." Nagel ultimately believes morality does need a notion of free will, but he nevertheless acknowledges how paradoxical the Kantian framework is (which he considers necessary to morality). The idea is that free will is flexed when you have _control_, and Nagel's point is that when you look too close, you don't have control over much. Ron: Epictetus contributes much to this discussion. I think ethical development is the assertion of control in our lives. When we assert control we assert ourselves as reasoning human beings, when we look close we must take care that we must concern ourselves with that which can control, that ethical acts emerge from making such distinctions. as Stanford enclopedia of philosophy cites: "The linchpin of Epictetus' entire philosophy is his account of what it is to be a human being; that is, to be a rational mortal creature. “Rational” as a descriptive term means that human beings have the capacity to “use impressions” in a reflective manner. Animals, like humans, use their impressions of the world in that their behavior is guided by what they perceive their circumstances to be. But human beings also examine the content of their impressions to determine whether they are true or false; we have the faculty of “assent” (1.6.12-22). Assent is regulated by our awareness of logical consistency or contradiction between the proposition under consideration and beliefs that one already holds: when we are not aware of any consideration, we assent readily, but when we perceive a conflict we are strongly constrained to reject one or the other of the conflicting views (2.26.3). Thus Medea kills her children because she believes it is to her advantage to do so; if someone were to show her clearly that she is deceived in this belief, she would not do it (1.28.8). Our hatred of being deceived, our inability to accept as true what we clearly see to be false, is for Epictetus the most basic fact about human beings and the most promising (1.28.1-5)." ..... Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html