The Philosophers' Cocoon 01/30/2015 Vicious philosophical reasoning? _Kevin Timpe's_ (http://people.nnu.edu/ktimpe/) post entitled, "_Moral Outrage_ (http://philosophycommons.typepad.com/disability_and_disadvanta/2015/01/moral-outrage.html) ", over at his and Thomas Nadelhoffer's new blog, _Discrimination and Disadvantage_ (http://philosophycommons.typepad.com/disability_and_disadvanta/) , as well as _this moving New York Times Magazine _ (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/magazine/unspeakable-conversations.html) article by disability-rights advocate Harriet McBryde Johnson recounting her experiences meeting and debating Peter Singer, have both gotten me thinking about a more general issue that has bothered me for some time: namely, whether some philosophical questions, ideas, and arguments are simply wrong (and even vicious) to investigate. On philosophy blogs, one often hears the refrain that we philosophers are/should be in the business of questioning everything--that nothing should be off-limits. As a staunch believer in free expression and academic freedom, I'm willing to accept that we should be permitted to engage in philosophical and scientific inquiry that others find hurtful, offensive, and morally outrageous. My question, though, is not about social policy, but about personal morality: that is, about what we should be willing to do ourselves, what kind of people we should be, and how these questions relate to philosophical inquiry (again, are there some questions we just shouldn't ask? Are there some arguments we just shouldn't make?). Before I give the example that first gave rise to these questions in me, I'd like to begin by deferring to Timpe and Johnson. Timpe writes: What I found pretty quickly, however, upon digging into the disability literature is that I become outraged by some of the views I encounter. These views aren't just (in my view) wrong, but (again, in my view) morally offensive. To hear individuals claim, for instance, that my son has no moral standing at all (despite never having met him); to ask, apparently in all honest, if the severely disabled have a right not to be eaten; to discover sterilization of some individuals with disabilities is not only legal but compulsory in some states--these, and other views, provoke a very strong visceral reaction. Similarly, Johnson writes in detail of how harrowing her experiences meeting Singer have been. She writes: It is a chilly Monday in late March, just less than a year ago. I am at Princeton University. My host is Prof. Peter Singer, often called -- and not just by his book publicist -- the most influential philosopher of our time. He is the man who wants me dead. No, that's not at all fair. He wants to legalize the killing of certain babies who might come to be like me if allowed to live... In the lecture hall that afternoon, Singer lays it all out. The ''illogic'' of allowing abortion but not infanticide, of allowing withdrawal of life support but not active killing. Applying the basic assumptions of preference utilitarianism, he spins out his bone-chilling argument for letting parents kill disabled babies and replace them with nondisabled babies who have a greater chance at happiness... He responds to each point with clear and lucid counterarguments. He proceeds with the assumption that I am one of the people who might rightly have been killed at birth. He sticks to his guns, conceding just enough to show himself open-minded and flexible. We go back and forth for 10 long minutes. Even as I am horrified by what he says, and by the fact that I have been sucked into a civil discussion of whether I ought to exist, I can't help being dazzled by his verbal facility. He is so respectful, so free of condescension, so focused on the argument, that by the time the show is over, I'm not exactly angry with him. Yes, I am shaking, furious, enraged -- but it's for the big room, 200 of my fellow Charlestonians who have listened with polite interest, when in decency they should have run him out of town on a rail. Although I cannot (and will not) speak for them, Timpe and Johnson arguably imply that it is wrong and indeed vicious to entertain certain questions, ideas, and arguments, and indeed, that the very conception of philosophy that has led its practitioners to entertain those questions, ideas, and arguments--a conception of philosophy that coldly prioritizes Truth above all else, above flesh and blood human beings in particular--is in some sense morally rotten on precisely these grounds: the assumption that Truth is more important that human beings. This is something that has long worried me, and which in my case emerged in a different area: the theological Problem of Evil. In his well-known work, "Why God Allows Evil", Richard Swinburne admits up front: It is inevitable that any attempt by myself or anyone else to construct a theodicy will sound callous, indeed totally insensitive to human suffering...I can only ask the reader to believe that I am not totally insensitive to human suffering, and that I do mind about the agony of poisoning, child abuse, bereavement, solitary imprisonment, and marital infidelity as much as anyone else. However, whenever I read something like this--when I read Swinburne's own answer to the Problem of Evil or hear some other philosopher of religion suggest that the problem has been solved, etc.--I can't help but shake my head in dismay. I experience Swinburne's words as a performative contradiction. When he writes, "I do mind about the agony of poisoning, [etc.], as much as anyone else", I think to myself: you just showed me that you don't! The agony of poisoning, child abuse, genocide, etc., are not things that one should "mind as much as the next person" (which sounds entirely cold to me); they are things that should inspire horror in you and lead you to think: I can't possibly answer the Problem of Evil; no one can. I experience it, in other words, as callous (to those who suffer) to even attempt the answer the problem. I imagine looking the eyes of someone who has suffered their whole lives with little or no recompense--a person for whom this world has been an abject nightmare--and I cannot imagine bringing myself to give that person the "solution" the problem of good evil in good conscience. And, I think to myself, if I couldn't say it to them--if they would think me a monster for trying to philosophically rationalize a world that they experience as a cruel joke--then I probably shouldn't say it, or think it, at all. I should instead--if I am to do justice to them, flesh and blood human beings--not even attempt to answer the question. Just like Peter Singer should not attempt to argue that persons with disabilities shouldn't be born. Or so I am inclined to think. Am I wrong? =================================== Selected Comments Maybe the real problem, then, is that academic philosophy is _not_ oriented toward Truth. Instead, it's oriented to cleverness and originality and other things that can't be proper intellectual ideals. And part of the falsity or inauthenticity of academic philosophy is that it rejects (unphilosophically, without any good argument) a wide range of truths or seeming truths that are known through emotion or morality. ------------ Thanks for your comment. I'm inclined to agree with most of it--but I would offer a somewhat different final diagnosis: namely, that it's not (merely) academic philosophy's focus on cleverness that gives rise to the problem (though I do think that is a problem), but rather the (apparently very common) assumption that philosophical/ethical truth is found through *ignoring* emotions and giving arguments based on principle alone. Psychopaths are brilliant at "making principled arguments" without emotion, and yet that's precisely what makes them monsters! We should not emulate them, but instead recognize that moral argument requires a whole lot more than abstract arguments: namely, emotional maturity and sensitivity. ------------------------------ To start saying that an argument can't be heard because someone is suffering comes with potential serious risks. I suppose if you are arguing that God is causing your suffering, too bad for God; God should not be allowed to advocate for Himself. But anything short of that risks silencing arguments simply because the right person seems to be suffering right now. ---------------- I'm inclined to say that while Johnson was well within her rights to be offended and horrified, that doesn't mean Singer shouldn't be exploring his philosophical arguments because they provoke such a reaction. After all, think back to different periods of time. A noble in Ancien Regime France might have been deeply offended, and said you were denying his humanity, by advocating for democracy. A Christian in the middle ages might have argued that an atheist arguing against the existence of god is talking about something unspeakably horrifying that it could traumatizing given the world view of millions at the time, if exposed to it. He could then use similar reasoning as you have to say that the atheist shouldn't even explore such a question because of that. And so on. Emotions are important and shouldn't be ignored, *but* we cannot close off the possibility that even strong ones might be wrong, even if it is a small possibility. One of the things I love about philosophy is that very little is off-limits, that I can ask the questions that might make the people I grew up around uncomfortable or even offended. We shouldn't close off whole areas of inquiry on emotions *alone*. ------------------------------------------ Notice how the framing of the question changes its implications dramatically: (a) Is it wrong to investigate certain possible positions? This leaves the question of the position's truth or justification open. But here's another way of putting it: (b) Can our moral revulsion towards certain positions count as strong evidence that they cannot be justified, and are thus not worth pursuing? This allows our pre-theoretical instincts some evidentiary weight, as any sane moral epistemology must. It is a better way of rendering the question, since it reminds us that those who cheerfully ignore their own moral instincts aren't being "more rational". They are being *less* rational. At the end of the day, we may decide to permit the investigation of certain positions. But this ought to be in virtue of other moral commitments that we have (to open inquiry, free speech, etc.). It should not be because some quasi-Platonic picture of the philosopher as Pure Reasoner has won the day. Put another way: those who advocate for that picture are no less beholden to 'gut' moral instinct than anyone else. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. 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[RC] Philosophy and the problem of evil
BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community Sat, 31 Jan 2015 12:28:36 -0800
