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Point to point, point observation
Jul. 30th, 2005 12:20 am
Role reversal:
High temp today in KW: 24. Dewpoint then: 15. High dewpoint: 15.
High temp today, here: 27. Dewpoint then: 14. High dewpoint: 17.
Once again, nothing interesting overheard on the Greyhound.
However, read Brian Rosebury, "Moral Responsibility and 'Moral Luck'" (Philosophical Review 104, 1995), on the Greyhound. (Brian Rosebury's teaching interests include the social and political thought of John Ruskin.)
As the scare quotes indicate, Rosebury is another, let's say, "eliminativist" about moral luck. Actually, I think he's the best eliminativist yet, maybe largely due to the fact that he's an eliminativist and also an anti-Kantian (can't buy the metaphysics of autonomous will, etc.). Also, of course, because his position seems closest to mine--naturally a bad outcome is going to produce a worse reaction, but that reaction isn't a moral reaction, properly speaking. And Rosebury thinks we'd admit it's not a moral reaction if we thought about it, i.e., we'd admit that the doer of the deed isn't more blameworthy because the consequences of the deed unluckily turned out badly.
But: why isn't it moral? What's the difference between being angry at someone for doing something and blaming them for doing it? Can you blame someone for doing something without holding them morally blameworthy? If you blame someone for something, is not the propositional content of your attitude (or whatever) that they shouldn't have done it? Doesn't this "solution" just depend on how you define "moral", among other terms in the neighbourhood?
Inter alia, Rosebury takes shots at the construction of moral thought experiments that assume perfect knowledge of outcomes. (E.g., if you don't kill ten innocent people, the terrorist will kill fifty innocent people.) His point is that, in actual situations of moral decision-making, you have to take into account what you don't know, and how you can either go about getting to know it or dealing with your lack of knowledge. One consequence: drivers who purely accidentally run over kids should be particularly upset about it, because they can't be sure they weren't negligent, even if they can't think of how they were.
It's a good point as far as it goes, but considering the case in which you do know strikes me as important if you're deciding whether, e.g., to implement a "shoot-to-kill" policy--although, bien sur, you do want to be mindful of the fact that, actually, you don't know how many innocent people you have to kill along the way to take out one terrorist.
Anyway, that stuff is mostly directed at Williams's "Gauguin" thought experiment, in which "Gauguin" (similarities to actual persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental) abandons his family to go off to the South Seas and become a great artist. The idea of the thought experiment is, "Gauguin" doesn't know if it's going to work out or not, and if it works out, he'll have been justified, but if it doesn't, he won't. So, Rosebury's response is, I guess, what "Gauguin" doesn't know isn't just a blank that he's entitled to forget about; he can be judged morally based on how he deals with what he doesn't know.
Of course, my take on "Gauguin" is, OF COURSE he's not morally justified! We All Know that Great Artists can be Great Jerks, and maybe some Great Artists need to be Great Jerks to be Great Artists, and maybe the world is better for their being Great Jerks--but that doesn't change the fact that they're great jerks. What it does do, for me, is show the limits of morality, properly speaking--the tension between the right and the good, etc.
... which, really, I think, shows why it's not just a matter of semantics.
High temp today in KW: 24. Dewpoint then: 15. High dewpoint: 15.
High temp today, here: 27. Dewpoint then: 14. High dewpoint: 17.
Once again, nothing interesting overheard on the Greyhound.
However, read Brian Rosebury, "Moral Responsibility and 'Moral Luck'" (Philosophical Review 104, 1995), on the Greyhound. (Brian Rosebury's teaching interests include the social and political thought of John Ruskin.)
As the scare quotes indicate, Rosebury is another, let's say, "eliminativist" about moral luck. Actually, I think he's the best eliminativist yet, maybe largely due to the fact that he's an eliminativist and also an anti-Kantian (can't buy the metaphysics of autonomous will, etc.). Also, of course, because his position seems closest to mine--naturally a bad outcome is going to produce a worse reaction, but that reaction isn't a moral reaction, properly speaking. And Rosebury thinks we'd admit it's not a moral reaction if we thought about it, i.e., we'd admit that the doer of the deed isn't more blameworthy because the consequences of the deed unluckily turned out badly.
But: why isn't it moral? What's the difference between being angry at someone for doing something and blaming them for doing it? Can you blame someone for doing something without holding them morally blameworthy? If you blame someone for something, is not the propositional content of your attitude (or whatever) that they shouldn't have done it? Doesn't this "solution" just depend on how you define "moral", among other terms in the neighbourhood?
Inter alia, Rosebury takes shots at the construction of moral thought experiments that assume perfect knowledge of outcomes. (E.g., if you don't kill ten innocent people, the terrorist will kill fifty innocent people.) His point is that, in actual situations of moral decision-making, you have to take into account what you don't know, and how you can either go about getting to know it or dealing with your lack of knowledge. One consequence: drivers who purely accidentally run over kids should be particularly upset about it, because they can't be sure they weren't negligent, even if they can't think of how they were.
It's a good point as far as it goes, but considering the case in which you do know strikes me as important if you're deciding whether, e.g., to implement a "shoot-to-kill" policy--although, bien sur, you do want to be mindful of the fact that, actually, you don't know how many innocent people you have to kill along the way to take out one terrorist.
Anyway, that stuff is mostly directed at Williams's "Gauguin" thought experiment, in which "Gauguin" (similarities to actual persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental) abandons his family to go off to the South Seas and become a great artist. The idea of the thought experiment is, "Gauguin" doesn't know if it's going to work out or not, and if it works out, he'll have been justified, but if it doesn't, he won't. So, Rosebury's response is, I guess, what "Gauguin" doesn't know isn't just a blank that he's entitled to forget about; he can be judged morally based on how he deals with what he doesn't know.
Of course, my take on "Gauguin" is, OF COURSE he's not morally justified! We All Know that Great Artists can be Great Jerks, and maybe some Great Artists need to be Great Jerks to be Great Artists, and maybe the world is better for their being Great Jerks--but that doesn't change the fact that they're great jerks. What it does do, for me, is show the limits of morality, properly speaking--the tension between the right and the good, etc.
... which, really, I think, shows why it's not just a matter of semantics.
