Dave, Dan,
I just have a few little replies of clarity, with no real substantive
issues to take up.
Dave said:
But since you mentioned it, I'd guess that a psychopath would do
quite well with Kant's ethics because they rely so heavily on rational
calculations.
Matt:
I'm not sure what you're thinking of, but it sounds like you meant
utilitarian. Kant's ethics is built for the democratic polis, partly
because it requires nothing except the recognition that other human
beings have a basic dignity. He built it to make ethical behavior for
everyone, no matter their abilities or talents (how smart or stupid,
etc.), which is unlike, say, Aristotle, whose ethics was built for an
aristocratic ethos: ethical behavior was only for the great who
could manage it.
Matt said:
The problem with judging moral behavior, put this way, is clear:
what's the difference between a lifelong liar who behaves the exact
same way from birth to death as the honest saint? Nothing, judged
by outward behavior. This, however, is a _theoretical_ problem. On
the practical side, one might very well say that most liars slip up.
Steve said:
Your [Matt's] thought experiment concerning a habitual liar who fakes
moral behavior in every instance throughout his entire life is along
the lines I was thinking.
DMB said:
That thought experiment strikes me as quite unrealistic. I mean, an
actual habitual liar who tries to fake morality for a lifetime would be
a very sick person.
Matt:
Right, it was unrealistic. Most thought experiments are, but they can
be useful to help focus our intuitions about how things should be (by
making us focus on the relevant features of the artificial environment
that is the thought experiment). Being unrealistic is what I meant by
"theoretical" as opposed to "practical," and then in my further
elaboration saying "probability being a different matter" in the idea of
a hypocritical atheist theologian.
It's certainly fair to not find much use for thought experiments in
one's own practical work as a philosopher. They do seem
suspiciously remote from real life. But I still find them to have a use,
just so long as one understands the scope of their relevance.
Matt said:
What Steve has not said more about are those further non-Kantian
answers I mentioned in relation to Dave, about how one precisely
moves from praise/blame to "thinking that is itself not consciously
motivated by potential praise or blame." That is Dave's definition of
moral behavior again.
DMB said:
My definition of moral behavior? I didn't intend to do anything that
ambitious. I was only making an obvious point about determinism.
Matt:
Sure, I didn't think you were laying out an entire moral philosophy.
However, I was trying to treat what you were saying seriously, and
as philosophical claims. One method to do so is to transpose the
assumptions that must (or seem to) be in play for
statements/claims to make sense. That's why I highlighted by
quoting particular passages from the piece of writing that was in
front of me and articulated what I took it to mean in the face of a
different context. I don't think there's anything weird or pernicious
about such a procedure. It's what we do all the time for Pirsig on
topics that Pirsig didn't say anything explicitly about, but we
understand there to be a distinctively Pirsigian stance towards
anyways. I thought what you said made a very clear, consistent
sense, and one that I don't think I violated in transposing for my
purposes (for example, from your statement "It's not because THEY
think it's morally wrong, but because they know that other people
think it's wrong" to the idea that "moral behavior must consist in
avoiding wrong-doing because _you_ want to avoid wrong-doing" to
eventually the one you brought out, "thinking that is itself not
consciously motivated by potential praise or blame"). Perhaps
saying it was your "definition" is a bit much, but I was just trying to
make explicit what seemed to be working implicitly.
DMB said:
The psychopathic Brujo? No way. I mean, psychopathology is a
serious mental illness that precludes morality whereas the culture
bearers are extraordinarily moral.
Matt:
I don't see why "no way." I thought it was Pirsig's point that we need
a new, finer-grained understanding of insanity to understand how the
extra-ordinary appears by the very fact of its extraness to be outside
of reality, which for most is simply "the ordinary."
I wasn't intending to get into the nitty-gritty of an ethico-psychological
discussion, about which I do not have any expertise. I was simply
taking Carl's definition of the psychopath for granted ("A psychopath
experiences a break with reality") and transposing Pirsig's
understanding of insanity onto it, and discussing it in terms of the
conversation about praise/blame, intention, and moral responsibility
I had generated from the remarks you and Steve exchanged. I
wasn't inquiring into whether Carl's definition was right, nor
intending to suggest different medical treatment for them. But
according to a distinction between a "psychopath" and a "sociopath"
that Carl supplied, the first was operating in a different reality and
the second was operating in _our normal_ ethical reality, just with
no care for doing what that normal ethical reality calls for. The
tricky part in dealing with psychopaths, on this understanding, is the
tricky part in dealing with brujos or any potential Dynamic advance:
they could be Dynamic Quality or they could be degeneracy. It's
hard to tell in the present, as opposed to in the future looking back
at the past. As you say, "even though they both break the rules, it's
a whole different deal." It's just that knowing which deal it is can
be difficult, and Pirsig seems to say that there are no assured
methods for telling which kind of deal it is. Maybe you disagree
with that, but I can't help but think that doing so would violate some
of the advances Pirsig did intend to make in the philosophy of
insanity.
Dan said:
Yes, gotta agree with Dave. The terms Carl and Matt used are
incorrect. A psychopath isn't suffering from delusions. I believe Carl
is thinking of a psychotic. A big difference between the two is that a
psychotic person can be treated with drugs while there is no way to
make a psychopath care about others.
Matt:
I'm not sure why technical correctness here matters for the
philosophical points being made. However, what Carl--with the
DSM-IV in front of him--did mean by "psychopath" was "psychotic"
(as one can see by comparing what Carl said about psychopaths and
what the DSM-IV says at the beginning of its chapter on
"Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders" (p. 297)), and that
differentiated from the sociopath or "person with an antisocial
personality disorder." And what's interesting is that, indeed, the two
are in vastly different sections of the manual. But I'm not sure why
we should get caught up too much on technicalities, especially if they
don't seem to matter to the larger point (which, Dan, it appears you
did agree to: your distinction between psychotic/psychopath perfectly
coincides with Carl's psychopath/sociopath).
Dan said:
And... Monk isn't a sociopath. The character suffers from an
obsessive-compulsive disorder but it is clear that he cares deeply
about others. One of the most charming things about him is how he
cannot give up on the love he feels for his dead wife. That's not faked
or superficial.
Matt:
I think you're missing some of the sinister undertones of Mr. Monk.
(Though, first of all, I didn't say he was a sociopath, I said he was
similar to the new Sherlock, who is cast as a sociopath: I think my
implicit distinction was between being, ahem, "socially retarded" and
"mean-spirited.") He is OCD, but his caring for others is articulated
through a vast gulf between himself and others. There's actually a
lot of meat to his character that would pay a close analysis, and while
his love of his wife is part of it, what is carefully contained by the
orchestrators of the show (writers, directors, etc.) into moments of
comedy are not only his occasionally overbearing snobbishness (which
as a vice directed toward others, speaks against his caring), but his
occasional lack of empathy: he just does not understand, occasionally,
the emotions of others. This comes out most of all in those
disconcerting moments between himself and Sharonna/Natalie, when
his assistant has to grit through his lack of care about their feelings.
The show always (and nearly always successfully) converts those
moments into comedy, but that doesn't eliminate the character of the
behavior. It just excuses it for our viewing benefit.
I would venture to say that Monk's motivation comes less from a
sense of caring for others and more out of a sense of honor. You
break the law, you go to jail. It doesn't matter who you are or why
you did it. And differentiating the two as motivations gives an
interesting perspective on the different character of actions,
depending on what your motivation is (just as we were already
discussing that being motivated by punishment/reward casts a
non-moral glow on one's actions).
Matt
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