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Jon Miller
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why are people mixing in science in an arguement about philosoply, ethics, morality, culture and th elike?
science is not like the others
Jon Miller
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Spiffor
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CPA - Evil Clone brigade
Nov 2001
time: 06:29
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The rethorics of this article is horrible. These are Fezzisms which look good :
1. Take some group you don't like, and give them a name you don't like ("cultural leftists"), so that the wrongs of this group ashames the whole Left...
2. Make bold and unbacked assertions about them (absolute cultural relativists who are however loathing the west, cultural warfare), and take these assertions for true during the rest of your essay. NEVER have a hint of doubt about the truth of your assertions. The fact that there is no example or statistic to back them should not worry you.
3. Describe irrelevant consequences, and use some rethorics and "common sense" (i.e preconceptions or misconceptions you assume most people have, and will use while reading the article) to bind them with the cultural left.
4. Make the same gross generalizations about the opponents of the cultural left. As before, don't back them. Hold them for truth, and don't doubt about them for one second.
Voilą ! Your article is ready ! You can now send it to some newspaper who'll be very glad to insult the Left with this empty hull. Even though it has no contents, the hull is quite well done, so that'll do the trick.
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Spiffor
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CPA - Evil Clone brigade
Nov 2001
time: 06:29
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About the real issue, i.e cultural relativism:
I think that cultures, ideologies etc should be judged through a clearly defined ethics, even though this ethics may be arbitrary (i.e imposed by the State, by the powerful Religion, by the junta of scientifics / philosophers in power, whatever).
As such, I have no problem with people or organizations having positive or negative judgments towards different cultures. Of course, I'd hope these same people could be able to criticize their own culture / religion without always laudating it.
Otherwise, we would have a crass ethnocentrism (i.e thinking that your group is the most important and the best, and judging only according your group's values and traditions), which is precisely the extreme opposite of cultural relativism. That's the ticket of the fundamentalists.
Some extent of cultural relativism is needed if we are to avoid repeating the mistakes of the colonizations, especially the African colonization.
1. We need people who are real cultural relativists as observers of cultures and religions, whether foreign or our own. Only a maximum cultural relativism can allow accurate observations.
2. We need people who have the authority to judge these cultures based on a precise ethics, whether they are priests, politicians, philosophers or scientists. These "high ranked moralists" must be aware that their judgment is not universal, and that it could be (will be) badly taken on the recieving end.
3. We need to see if there is an internal pressure for change within a given culture. If the pressure for change goes into the direction we feel being right, we should help it. However, we must keep in mind that we cannot force the change to a culture that refuses it.
As a conclusion, my opinion of a "reasonable cultural relativism", is that of a system which allows personal and organisational judgments. But it keeps in mind that these judgments are not universally shared, and the judged group needs to have its views respected.
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Jon Miller
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it is better, because it is not misusing a tool
religion is not being misused to answer questions of ethics
science is, when you try to use science to do ethics, you weaken science
when you try to use religion to answer quetions of ethics, nothing negative occurs
therefore religion is better than science to use to answer quetsions of ethics
as is philosophy (for those of you that find the prolbem of the existence of a deity to be insurmountable)
Jon Miller
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Jon Miller
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no
science is this way of understandign our world
it does a fairly good job (As can be seen by all the technology we have, that it ahs given to us)
it is built arround experiments and mathematics in such away that everyone can agree on
1 the mathematics
2 the experiments (there must be repeatability here)
when you try and claim that science is your basis of ethics you are weakening science because you are rating something that is not mathematical or experimental equally with what is
in a sense you are taking us back to the time when what the church said about the universe, and what galileo said where taken on equal footing
as such you are trying to reverse all that we have acheived since the dawn of the age of enlightenment
as a scientist, I have reason to be upset
Schmethics would be much superior than science to answering questions of ethics
Jon Miller
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Az
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MACEDONIA - It's the name of the sovereign country to the north of Greece
Apr 2000
time: 07:29
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quote:
Originally posted by Spiffor
About the real issue, i.e cultural relativism:
I think that cultures, ideologies etc should be judged through a clearly defined ethics, even though this ethics may be arbitrary (i.e imposed by the State, by the powerful Religion, by the junta of scientifics / philosophers in power, whatever).
As such, I have no problem with people or organizations having positive or negative judgments towards different cultures. Of course, I'd hope these same people could be able to criticize their own culture / religion without always laudating it.
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quote:
Otherwise, we would have a crass ethnocentrism (i.e thinking that your group is the most important and the best, and judging only according your group's values and traditions), which is precisely the extreme opposite of cultural relativism. That's the ticket of the fundamentalists.
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"Ethno" has nothing to do with it.
quote:
Some extent of cultural relativism is needed if we are to avoid repeating the mistakes of the colonizations, especially the African colonization.
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"Let the darkies kill each other, they think it's ok"?
quote:
1. We need people who are real cultural relativists as observers of cultures and religions, whether foreign or our own. Only a maximum cultural relativism can allow accurate observations.
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don't mind that.
quote:
2. We need people who have the authority to judge these cultures based on a precise ethics, whether they are priests, politicians, philosophers or scientists. These "high ranked moralists" must be aware that their judgment is not universal, and that it could be (will be) badly taken on the recieving end.
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I don't quite understand what you mean. Are you continuing to insist there is no right or wrong?
quote:
3. We need to see if there is an internal pressure for change within a given culture. If the pressure for change goes into the direction we feel being right, we should help it. However, we must keep in mind that we cannot force the change to a culture that refuses it.
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Why not? It could be the ethical thing to do.
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As a conclusion, my opinion of a "reasonable cultural relativism", is that of a system which allows personal and organisational judgments. But it keeps in mind that these judgments are not universally shared, and the judged group needs to have its views respected. |
"We, the people of Babyeatlandia, thank you for respecting our customs and traditions." 
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Spiffor
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CPA - Evil Clone brigade
Nov 2001
time: 06:29
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quote:
Originally posted by Azazel
"Let the darkies kill each other, they think it's ok"? |
No. The failure of colonializations, especially African colonization, was to assume that the encountered people were savages. In America and Australia, these people were simply slaughtered. In Africa, things were a bit more subtle, as these people have witnessed the utter disappearance of all their cultural bearings (notably, African tribes didn't get their identity out of the territory they occupied, but out of their assumed ethnicity). The cultural void that is Africa right now partly explains why there are so many bloodbaths and so little willingness to solve problems together there. All of this because we were convinced our culture was inherently superior and that imposing it could only benefit the Africans. The disappearance of their obviously inferior culture was not a problem, it was a blessing.
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I don't quite understand what you mean. Are you continuing to insist there is no right or wrong? |
There is no absolute right or absolute wrong. Morals is dictated by influential human beings, and as such, no morals will be universal as long as humanity doesn't share a one and only culture.
"Good" definitions of right or wrong should hail from a precise ethics code, defined by the influential members of the culture (make it plural if several cultures feel they have the same values). I would actually have no problem with written ethics code which are as complex as laws (besides, laws often reflect the culture's morality). However, the people who judge cultures thanks to this ethics code should be aware that the ethics code in the targeted culture is different.
As such, the "judges" should be aware that their definition of right or wrong is a human, flawed and not-universal definition. As such, they shouldn't assume the target culture will agree with their judgments. Morals is generally to be used at an internal level.
quote:
quote:
3. We need to see if there is an internal pressure for change within a given culture. If the pressure for change goes into the direction we feel being right, we should help it. However, we must keep in mind that we cannot force the change to a culture that refuses it.
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Why not? It could be the ethical thing to do. |
For you, but not for them. If you intend to do the right thing for a population, make sure that the population wants it, or somehow desires it.
Let's take the example of the Muslim veil (I purposefully don't take the most horrible things backwards Arabs still do to women). For many of us westerners, it is a scandalous mark of womens' inferiority in the Arab society. For many women who wear it, it is a cloth they'd feel naked / slutty without. Would it be ethical to force Arab women to take out the veil ?
Let's now use an imaginary example. Finland has become the hyperpower of the world, and believes it comes from its compulsory nakedness. All Finn scholars and priests agree : nakedness is really a liberation for the human being, and is the milestone that made the Finn society that harmonious and great. It is obvious the clothed populations must be freed of this oppression, and Finland will now use much of its huge power to promote compulsory nakedness worldwide.
Would you like the Finns to put up a significant pressure over Israel to have you naked ? After all, for them, it is the ethical thing to do.
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"We, the people of Babyeatlandia, thank you for respecting our customs and traditions." |
More seriously, as long as there is not a wind of change in the society, that means the people there are happy with eating babies. Attacking (or putting whatever pressure you want) Babeeatlandia would be counterproductive as they'd continue their tradition anyways, and will resent the attacker.
It doesn't mean their traditions should be tolerated as soon as they put a foot on your territory.
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Giant_Squid
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Fun Guy from Yuggoth
Jan 1970
time: 00:29
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Azazel:
quote:
But why? you're just judging him according to your postulates, who told you that your ethics are correct and his are wrong? you're an evil and close-minded person. |
You're assuming that just because something is subjective it doesn't exist. Metaphor: in the "real" relativism, Einstein's theory of relativity, he proves conclusively that speed, as classically conceived of, does not exist and is a subjective perception. Everyone agrees with Einstein on this. However, if you were to go 90 down the freeway and tell the policeman it's all right because speed is a subjective concept, I highly doubt you'd get out of a ticket. (note that this is a metaphor, and I'm not saying in the least that the situations are exactly alike)
My morality is entirely subjective. I like it because it's elegant, it's well-thought-out, it contains no contradictions, it accords with the natural and inbuilt views I have on the subject, and it presents a clear goal and leads towards it. I believe the deontological position contains several logical errors, which I hope to point out on that thread. If I turn out to be right and can prove it, then people can still hold it if they really want, but holding it will be inconsistent with logic, which is something most people wish to be consistent with, as well as inconsistent with some of the most deeply rooted human beliefs on morality.
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You see? Now I know that there are almost no cultures that are so velhemently anti-utilitarian, but, many of them are anti-utilitarian. Why is it wrong to oppose, fight and resist them? Why is it wrong to decry them as things that should pass from this world? |
I believe that the whole argument about not wanting to force stuff on cultures against their will is based on the desire not to want the people in these cultures to be unhappy (which I would sure be if someone else forced their culture on me). That being said, it's entirely utilitarian to not do so, unless the people in this culture hate the culture and want to change, in which case it's hardly forcing, is it?
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I agree with that. I am a Utilitarian, it is my postulate, to us GS's phrase, however I am not objective, therefore I cannot say that it is better, merely that I believe it is. |
I'm not sure if that's such a "merely". Take the postulates of geometry. Considered in isolation, any set of postulates are equally good. We have the standard Euclidean postulates, which work great. We have the Riemannian ones, which work well too. Or we can make up totally random and absurd postulates like that every straight line intersects itself exactly seven and a half times. Since these are postulates, none of them can be necessarily better than the others, but if we start working with that last one, we'll run into major contradictions, and we usually use an unspoken rule that logical contradictions are bad. If we use Riemannian, we get a consistent system, BUT we kind of already knew what we were aiming for (at least if we were aiming for something that described the world well enough to build a pyramid or something) and this isn't it. Even though a system may work right, if it tells us that we can never make a decent pair of parallel lines then it's never going to be helpful in engineering. So we keep the Euclidean postulates, which as postulates aren't any superior to the others, because we happen to like where they lead.
With morality, I already know what I want, in an entirely irrational sense - I want the world to be a better place in which to live. I could just as well want the world to be a worse place to live or a place with more things colored purple, but I don't hold those desires and see no reason to find logical systems that work on those principles.
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Dr Strangelove
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Which cultural lefties eschew rendering judgements? AFAIK most of them are somewhat opinionated and rather judgemental.
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Boris Godunov
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Portland, OR
Aug 2001
time: 00:29
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quote:
Originally posted by Lung
1.) extreme relativism, |
Neither I nor anyone of my leftist friends that I know is a moral relativist. Imran, a conservative, is, however. Go figure.
quote:
2.) hostility to traditional Western culture, and, |
Blanket generalization. What is the definition of Western "culture?" I, for one, love the cultural institutions of the West above all others. There's a difference between wanting to change what are anachronistic and bigoted societal values and despising a culture.
I hate, say, Aztec culture, though, because it was murderous.
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3.) the view that academia, scholarship, education, science, culture and the arts are nothing but weapons for use in political and ideological warfare. |
Again, who says? I revere all of the things above for what they are, not how I can use them. It's also contradictory to no. 2. How could leftists be using culture and the arts as a weapon for their beliefs, if their beliefs involve hating that culture?
Generalized horsehockey.
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Lung
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of my princess Anastasia!
Mar 1999
time: 15:29
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It looks like Lung has created a monster!  
I can't say i agree with it entirely, just that it highlighted the folly of taking moral relativism to the extreme. Sure, he tends to rant, but "the cultural left", as he puts it, certainly seems to be losing ground to the rise in religious fervour (to varying degrees in Islam and christianity).
As much as i think most lefties are hypocritical elitists, if they balance out the loonies on the right, then they're doing something worthwhile. However, poor me in the middle (like the silent majority) just wants to live in peace, while extremists everywhere keep trying to impede me 
My grandmother was right - people just shouldn't stick their noses into other people's business. She never mentioned governments, churches, business, etcetera particularly, but i think it applies to the lot of them.
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