On Fri, 27 Oct 1995, Michael McMaster wrote:
> Replying to LO3422 --
[ snip, downto... ]
> My major issue with the idea that "we need to make moral judgement
> and/or keep the moral judgement words" is that it trivialises what
> constitutes a dialogue of moral issues. To my way of thinking, the
> importance of the moral is the dialogue, the inquity, the continual
> exploration of the implications of a subject. The "final" assessment
> is not the point. I do have opinions and assessments about
> good/evil but I don't consider these major constituents of morality.
My proposition is simply that moral dialog is impossible without moral
concepts. This issue is prior even to the questions about whether moral
judgements are subjective, since we can't even discuss _those_ if we
haven't got a language to do it in.
> For my thinking, these assessments are not the stuff of powerful
> dialogue, communication and relationship. When I use them, I'm
> usually intending to end a dialogue.
I respect a statement such as this one for its "confessional" mode. I
have sometimes done that too. It does happen, however, that from time to
time someone uses assessments to begin, not end, a dialog.
Moral language is needed even to ask questions and conduct dialog.
Socratic dialog, schematically, takes place between two people striving
towards a truth that both acknowledge is _objective_ and not currently
known to either of them. Isn't that exactly what this discussion is? We
are not merely comparing adolescent notes about lifestyle around a
campfire -- we are all of us working, daily, to do better and to
understand more. And I don't see how our ways of _measuring_ that
"better" and "more" can themselves be disconnected from the world we live
in (i.e. purely "subjective"). If I try to improve how I conduct a
meeting or manage a group, it's the visible course of the world that tells
me whether I'm on the right track or not.
> The only access to dialogue in
> these areas is when I can talk about them at a level below my
> assessment and my attachment to my assessment. I have not seen the
> value of making such declarations yet. I have seen the cost of these
> declarations. (For instance, union members shooting at managers.)
Once again, why would we associate the bare _existence_ of language of
right and wrong, good and evil, exclusively with _assertions_ rather than
also with _questions_?
Why is this list so exciting to all of us? One reason, I believe, is
that, like the book by Senge that inspired it, it addresses what are
fundamentally moral issues: "What ought I to do?" It does this (or
rather, 'we do this') in our mutual questioning, discovery, and learning.
Abjuring moral language would not, I think, prevent union members from
shooting at managers, would it? I should think that, if anything, it
would release even worse behavior by both parties. People have certainly
said stupid things with words like "good" and "evil", and covered
atrocities in ringing declarations of moral virtue. But we do not free
ourselves from error by striking from our vocabulary all the words that
appear in our erroneous statements.
> The expression, particularly when generalised rather than
> personalised, has occurred not as "morality" but as righteousness to
> me. Depersonalised, you are speaking for God or the king or some
> other authority. Personalised, you are expressing yourself and then
> we are dealing with our ability to generate something after such
> speaking.
One more comment and I'll let go. To me, the foundations of moral
discourse do _not_ lie in third-party judgements of the behavior of
others. Much of our public discourse, in recent decades, has been
vitiated by attending only to such judgements. The foundations lie in my
-- and our -- efforts to find, for ourselves and our institutions, what is
good and worth doing; _that_ is where the roots lie. And that is one, at
least, of the goals of this group, is it not?
--
Regards
Jim Michmerhuizen jamzen@world.std.com
web residence at http://world.std.com/~jamzen/
...........................................................................
. . . . There are far *fewer* things in heaven and earth, Horatio, . . . .
. . . . . than are dreamt of in your philosophy... . . | _ .