On 10/7/15 8:38 AM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
In reply to Matt's comment :
"In Margolis's relativism, if your belief is supportable with
available evidence and fares better than available alternatives, then
you are right, if not you're wrong. The belief that witches caused the
plague was not supportable at that time, so in historicism-relativism
that belief is wrong. But remember, morals belong on a multi-valent
scale with degrees of rightness and wrongness. I'm not sure what other
classes of beliefs he puts on that scale. He did put some religious
beliefs on the multi-valent scale in his article Religion and Reason."
Hmm. I think that's a weak defense - to declare that a belief that is
supported by 'available evidence' is right and 'fares better'...The
belief that witches caused the plague could very well be supported _at
the time_. After all, one could readily come up with 'evidence' that
when she danced and sang (and no-one needed to see/hear her) then, the
plague broke out, and after murdering her, the plague stopped. The
FACT that correlation is not causation....well...
It's a second-best defense. Given that reality changes it becomes
necessary to put the word /evidence/ in scare quotes.
**** I don't understand the belief that 'Morals belong on a
multi-valent scale with degrees of rightness and wrongness". Is he
saying that IF one is starving, then it is OK to steal? And if one has
no such physical need, then, it is not OK to steal? I'm not sure what
a scale of morality includes.
Edwina
How exactly certain classes of judgments belong on multi-valent scale is
something I'm looking into. Just last week I received Susan Haaack's
book Deviant Logic, Fuzzy Logic in the mail. In the book she claims
"truth does not come in degrees" and that fuzzy logic isn't even logic.
In 2012 she gave a lecture in Bonn where she repeated that phrase, but
she later said (in a lecture available on YouTube) that on the airline
home she changed her mind: lies and mistakes come in degrees, so truth
must also. I haven't read from her book yet, although I took a cursory
look at what I can expect. I feel I'd need to understand her arguments
to best answer your question. But, I do have reasons for believing what
I already believe.
Hopefully these analogies will serve to explain. Saying that an act of
charity is morally good is like saying a Beethoven symphony is musically
good. I judge his third symphony as better than his eighth; and some
charitable acts are better than others. Jesus said, about the poor lady
who gave two small coins, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put
in more than all the others." Also, the legendary charitable act by
Fatima exemplifies 'very very good' on that scale, which is better than
'pretty good'. When a poor woman begged her for some clothing, Fatima
only had two dresses, an old worn one and her new wedding dress for her
upcoming wedding. Fatima gave the poor lady her wedding dress. It would
have been good to give her old dress but it was better to give her new
one. That represents something of how people thought in her culture, and
still think in ours.
Matt
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