Behind the times
Jul. 21st, 2005 01:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cincinnatus_c
So, today I got around to looking up Partisan Review in the library catalogue, which is something I've been meaning to do since I've been hanging out in the periodicals section the last six weeks. I don't think I've ever actually seen anything particularly interesting in Partisan Review, but it seems like the kind of thing that might have something interesting. (Rorty, somewhere, says that when he was a young lefty, getting something published in Partisan Review was "the end of desire".)
The catalogue record indicated that the library had holdings up to 2003--and after that, it said in brackets, "(ceased)".
"(Ceased)?"
As it turns out, one of its two founding editors, who had become editor-in-chief, died, and rather than continuing, they packed it in.
Why was I not informed?
Of course, if I'd been reading www.aldaily.com, or www.politicaltheory.info back then, I'd've been all over it, like I was all over The Public Interest folding this year. But I'm pretty much done with aldaily's snarkiness, and politicaltheory is a bit too much noise-to-signal, so ... who knows what I'll miss next.
Editor's note at the bottom of the Table of Contents of the final issue of Partisan Review: "In the Winter 2003 issue, Millicent Bell's poem 'Eliane' was mistakenly cut off. It will be reprinted in its entirety in our Summer 2003 issue. We apologize for the error."
Partisan Review's final word: "contrary". Fittingly enough, I guess. (You know, not quite "dissent", just ... "contrary".)
High temp today, here: 29. Dewpoint then: 16. High dewpoint: 18.
High temp today in TO: 30. Dewpoint then: 16. High dewpoint: 18.
I forgot to report yesterday that in an idiot-on-the-street segment on Global the other night, they were talking to idiots on the street about the humidity, asking them what they think a humidex advisory means or something, and one of the idiots on the street said it meant the air was very moist ... or maybe very dry, she wasn't sure.
Speaking of pop-up thunderstorms, tonight Michael Kuss--who seems to be the most knowledgeable weatherperson on network television I've seen--said there might be pop-up thunderstorms overnight along a cold front. I guess "pop-up thunderstorm" has just lost all meaning; any thunderstorm is now a pop-up thunderstorm. Anyway, he did also say that the remains of Emily could take a northward turn through central Mexico and dump a lot of rain in California. So maybe the Atlantic-Pacific crossover tropical cyclone really is possible.
In a way, all you need to know about Andrew Latus, "Moral and Epistemic Luck" (Journal of Philosophical Research 25, 2000), is contained in this footnote: "Of course, this argument [i.e., the basic argument of the paper] only succeeds so long as morality involves the evaluation of people [as opposed to actions, or intentions, or whathaveyou]. My argument can be evaded if this condition is given up, but to do so is to endorse a highly impoverished version of morality." Well: it may be highly impoverished, but it's the Kantian version of morality. So, this is another paper that misses the basically Kantian point.
The argument of the paper is this: if you say there's no such thing as resultant moral luck (i.e., blameworthiness is unrelated to the results of your intentional actions), you still have a problem with circumstantial and constitutive moral luck--circumstantial moral luck being kind of luck that, e.g., either puts you in Germany in 1933 or doesn't; constitutive moral luck being the kind of luck that either gives you a nice and conscientious character or doesn't. Since your intentions result from your circumstances and the constitution of your character, both of which are subject to luck, your intentions are therefore subject to luck.
But again: if you think that your intentions result from things beyond your control--i.e., they're not formed autonomously--then the whole Kantian basis of the problem is cut out. Intentions are supposed to be the locus of moral praiseworthiness or blameworthiness just because they, and nothing else, are autonomous.
This, of course, does not mean that you can't pass judgments on people. But these judgments are not moral judgments, in the sense that Kantianism has given to moral in the modern world.
And I think there's a chicken-and-egg kind of thing in that last bit, which is why I don't think I'm too hung up on Kant. Latus is one of those who frames the problem in terms of an intuition--blameworthiness can't depend on luck--rather than the more specific Kantian principle--blameworthiness depends solely on intentions. (Domsky casts the problem as a conflict between two intuitions, which are essentially just: blameworthiness can't depend on luck; blameworthiness does depend on luck.) But I don't think people actually have the broad intuition. They might be inclined to agree with it if you asked them, but I think if pressed, what they actually agree with is the Kantian principle.
And what it comes down to, I think, is this: they'll agree that, while you're not more morally blameworthy if you happen to kill someone driving drunk than you would have been if you made it home safely, that doesn't change the fact that they're going to be upset that somebody was killed by drunk driving, and since you're the cause of their being upset, they're going to be upset with you--and why not?
So, that's probably all for the moral luck detour, for now ... maybe. Back to the Meno project today, and after a slow few hours when I wasn't sure whether I could really get up for it again, I made another new discovery, found another new way of looking at the structure of the text--this dialogue is just so amazingly rich. Today's discovery, new hypothesis, anyway: Meno actually gives Socrates a formally good definition of virtue--one which follows the form of Socrates's definition of shape, rather than his explanation of colour--namely, virtue is desiring "the honourable" and being able to get it. The first thing Socrates does to that is change the word translated as "honourable"--kalos--to the more generic word translated as "good"--agatha. Agatha, in Greek, like the English "good", can mean material goods as well as moral ones, and Socrates runs with the material aspect of it, until he forces Meno to admit that desiring goods and being able to obtain them is only virtuous if you do it justly--but justice is a virtue, so now you're defining the whole in terms of one of its parts. (And then Meno calls Socrates a torpedo fish.)
Now--on the hypothesis that Meno's original definition really is a good one--I have to figure out why Socrates does this.
The catalogue record indicated that the library had holdings up to 2003--and after that, it said in brackets, "(ceased)".
"(Ceased)?"
As it turns out, one of its two founding editors, who had become editor-in-chief, died, and rather than continuing, they packed it in.
Why was I not informed?
Of course, if I'd been reading www.aldaily.com, or www.politicaltheory.info back then, I'd've been all over it, like I was all over The Public Interest folding this year. But I'm pretty much done with aldaily's snarkiness, and politicaltheory is a bit too much noise-to-signal, so ... who knows what I'll miss next.
Editor's note at the bottom of the Table of Contents of the final issue of Partisan Review: "In the Winter 2003 issue, Millicent Bell's poem 'Eliane' was mistakenly cut off. It will be reprinted in its entirety in our Summer 2003 issue. We apologize for the error."
Partisan Review's final word: "contrary". Fittingly enough, I guess. (You know, not quite "dissent", just ... "contrary".)
High temp today, here: 29. Dewpoint then: 16. High dewpoint: 18.
High temp today in TO: 30. Dewpoint then: 16. High dewpoint: 18.
I forgot to report yesterday that in an idiot-on-the-street segment on Global the other night, they were talking to idiots on the street about the humidity, asking them what they think a humidex advisory means or something, and one of the idiots on the street said it meant the air was very moist ... or maybe very dry, she wasn't sure.
Speaking of pop-up thunderstorms, tonight Michael Kuss--who seems to be the most knowledgeable weatherperson on network television I've seen--said there might be pop-up thunderstorms overnight along a cold front. I guess "pop-up thunderstorm" has just lost all meaning; any thunderstorm is now a pop-up thunderstorm. Anyway, he did also say that the remains of Emily could take a northward turn through central Mexico and dump a lot of rain in California. So maybe the Atlantic-Pacific crossover tropical cyclone really is possible.
In a way, all you need to know about Andrew Latus, "Moral and Epistemic Luck" (Journal of Philosophical Research 25, 2000), is contained in this footnote: "Of course, this argument [i.e., the basic argument of the paper] only succeeds so long as morality involves the evaluation of people [as opposed to actions, or intentions, or whathaveyou]. My argument can be evaded if this condition is given up, but to do so is to endorse a highly impoverished version of morality." Well: it may be highly impoverished, but it's the Kantian version of morality. So, this is another paper that misses the basically Kantian point.
The argument of the paper is this: if you say there's no such thing as resultant moral luck (i.e., blameworthiness is unrelated to the results of your intentional actions), you still have a problem with circumstantial and constitutive moral luck--circumstantial moral luck being kind of luck that, e.g., either puts you in Germany in 1933 or doesn't; constitutive moral luck being the kind of luck that either gives you a nice and conscientious character or doesn't. Since your intentions result from your circumstances and the constitution of your character, both of which are subject to luck, your intentions are therefore subject to luck.
But again: if you think that your intentions result from things beyond your control--i.e., they're not formed autonomously--then the whole Kantian basis of the problem is cut out. Intentions are supposed to be the locus of moral praiseworthiness or blameworthiness just because they, and nothing else, are autonomous.
This, of course, does not mean that you can't pass judgments on people. But these judgments are not moral judgments, in the sense that Kantianism has given to moral in the modern world.
And I think there's a chicken-and-egg kind of thing in that last bit, which is why I don't think I'm too hung up on Kant. Latus is one of those who frames the problem in terms of an intuition--blameworthiness can't depend on luck--rather than the more specific Kantian principle--blameworthiness depends solely on intentions. (Domsky casts the problem as a conflict between two intuitions, which are essentially just: blameworthiness can't depend on luck; blameworthiness does depend on luck.) But I don't think people actually have the broad intuition. They might be inclined to agree with it if you asked them, but I think if pressed, what they actually agree with is the Kantian principle.
And what it comes down to, I think, is this: they'll agree that, while you're not more morally blameworthy if you happen to kill someone driving drunk than you would have been if you made it home safely, that doesn't change the fact that they're going to be upset that somebody was killed by drunk driving, and since you're the cause of their being upset, they're going to be upset with you--and why not?
So, that's probably all for the moral luck detour, for now ... maybe. Back to the Meno project today, and after a slow few hours when I wasn't sure whether I could really get up for it again, I made another new discovery, found another new way of looking at the structure of the text--this dialogue is just so amazingly rich. Today's discovery, new hypothesis, anyway: Meno actually gives Socrates a formally good definition of virtue--one which follows the form of Socrates's definition of shape, rather than his explanation of colour--namely, virtue is desiring "the honourable" and being able to get it. The first thing Socrates does to that is change the word translated as "honourable"--kalos--to the more generic word translated as "good"--agatha. Agatha, in Greek, like the English "good", can mean material goods as well as moral ones, and Socrates runs with the material aspect of it, until he forces Meno to admit that desiring goods and being able to obtain them is only virtuous if you do it justly--but justice is a virtue, so now you're defining the whole in terms of one of its parts. (And then Meno calls Socrates a torpedo fish.)
Now--on the hypothesis that Meno's original definition really is a good one--I have to figure out why Socrates does this.
