The wind returneth again
Aug. 11th, 2005 01:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cincinnatus_c
Project Meno seems to have drawn to a close. I'll read the thing over tomorrow, maybe even send it away Friday. And now: full-time moral luck! Well, maybe not. Probably should try to polish up and send off some other things. You know, like, in my Area of Specialization. Whatever the hell exactly that is.
High temp today, here: 29. Dewpoint then: 20. High dewpoint: 21.
High temp today in TO: 32. Dewpoint then: 19. High dewpoint: 21.
Getting noticeably darker around 8 p.m. I don't mind the fall--not yesterday I learned to know the love of pale November days--but the ending summer always kills me. Ah, the inevitability, the inexorable decline, can only end one way--it hit the moon.
It snowed in Australia today. No new tropical storms on the horizon (but Irene is projected to come onshore around the Carolinas as a hurricane sometime next week). Two-week outlook has temperatures seasonal or below. The pattern seems to be breaking down, but we've heard that one before.
Today, read Paul Russell, "Smith on Moral Sentiment and Moral Luck" ( History of Philosophy Quarterly 16, 1999), Norvin Richards, "Luck and Desert" (Mind 95, 1986), Jonathan E. Adler, "Luckless Desert is Different Desert" (Mind 96, 1987), and C.C.W. Taylor's "Critical Notice" on Nussbaum's book (Mind 96, 1987).
I'd been looking forward to reading the piece about Smith, since I thought it might have something to say about what the "moral sentiment" of blame actually is, as opposed to other "sentiments" in the neighbourhood. Doesn't actually say anything about that, and is actually quite boring--the first moral luck piece I've found boring, oddly enough (or not, given that it's the first one that's pretty straight scholarly exegesis and criticism). The main point seems to be that Smith thinks blame should attach to intentions, but doesn't have Kant's metaphysical baggage about free will. Trouble is, unless you posit a free will, I'm not sure how you justify thinking blame should attach to intentions.
Damned if I can remember what Richards was on about, largely because the end of his piece--and much of Adler's response--is taken up with basically irrelevant stuff about whether blame and approbation should be retrospective or prospective. Richards, apparently, is a utilitarian, and so thinks it needs to be prospective, i.e., aimed at preventing further harm in the future. Richards is worried that maybe that's not really blame, or something.
But that, one way or another, doesn't seem to affect the main line of argument, which has now come back to me--it's probably the first go at the "epistemic" line of attack: unlucky bad outcomes don't make you more deserving of blame, but they do enable us to know that you're deserving of blame, and so they entitle us to blame you. Richards is one of those who thinks that blame needs to attach to character, so it's all about our being able to tell if you're a bad person or not. Along the meandering way, Richards proposes that your character is going to manifest itself in your actions no matter what situation your put into, so that Nagel's woulda-been-a-Nazi-if-he'd-been-in-Germany will reveal himself to be just as bad a person as he would have if he'd actually been in Germany. Adler, along the meandering way (I was mildly taken aback that either of these two pieces got into Mind in their published state--and this is one of the felicitous side-effects of this moral luck project, seeing what goes on in the various journals), calls this "preposterous", question-beggingly because we would of course blame the actual-Nazi more than the woulda-been-a-Nazi, but goes on to gesture in a vaguely interesting way at some sort of social-psychological research suggesting that the kind of person you are generally makes very little difference to how you behave under a given set of circumstances. (I guess, really, the point would be: there just isn't that much difference between most people, which I'll certainly buy.)
Taylor's review of Nussbaum continues the trend of Nussbaum reviews: the reviewer gushes, because Nussbaum is, after all, very impressive, but one gets the impression that the reviewer does not actually like the book, and when it comes down to details (this one, mostly concerning Aristotle), has mostly negative things to say about it. This one ventured the furthest in its not actually liking the book; Taylor admits that the book was failing to hold his interest by the end. The other Taylor's review says that he doesn't get something, but maybe because he hasn't read the book carefully enough; this Taylor says that Nussbaum spends a lot of words setting things up and summarizing and so forth, which has been exactly my problem with Nussbaum on the couple of occasions I've tried to read The Therapy of Desire--she reads as if she's got serious dissertationitis: this is the sentence that tells you how I'm going to introduce the paragraph that tells you how I'm going to introduce the introduction to the first part of the book....
Anyway, this Taylor continues another trend in Nussbaum reviews, which is that they say nothing on the subject of moral luck, which is slightly ominous ... but at least I have other reasons to want to read this book. It's, like, all over my Areas of Specialization and Competence.
koff
High temp today, here: 29. Dewpoint then: 20. High dewpoint: 21.
High temp today in TO: 32. Dewpoint then: 19. High dewpoint: 21.
Getting noticeably darker around 8 p.m. I don't mind the fall--not yesterday I learned to know the love of pale November days--but the ending summer always kills me. Ah, the inevitability, the inexorable decline, can only end one way--it hit the moon.
It snowed in Australia today. No new tropical storms on the horizon (but Irene is projected to come onshore around the Carolinas as a hurricane sometime next week). Two-week outlook has temperatures seasonal or below. The pattern seems to be breaking down, but we've heard that one before.
Today, read Paul Russell, "Smith on Moral Sentiment and Moral Luck" ( History of Philosophy Quarterly 16, 1999), Norvin Richards, "Luck and Desert" (Mind 95, 1986), Jonathan E. Adler, "Luckless Desert is Different Desert" (Mind 96, 1987), and C.C.W. Taylor's "Critical Notice" on Nussbaum's book (Mind 96, 1987).
I'd been looking forward to reading the piece about Smith, since I thought it might have something to say about what the "moral sentiment" of blame actually is, as opposed to other "sentiments" in the neighbourhood. Doesn't actually say anything about that, and is actually quite boring--the first moral luck piece I've found boring, oddly enough (or not, given that it's the first one that's pretty straight scholarly exegesis and criticism). The main point seems to be that Smith thinks blame should attach to intentions, but doesn't have Kant's metaphysical baggage about free will. Trouble is, unless you posit a free will, I'm not sure how you justify thinking blame should attach to intentions.
Damned if I can remember what Richards was on about, largely because the end of his piece--and much of Adler's response--is taken up with basically irrelevant stuff about whether blame and approbation should be retrospective or prospective. Richards, apparently, is a utilitarian, and so thinks it needs to be prospective, i.e., aimed at preventing further harm in the future. Richards is worried that maybe that's not really blame, or something.
But that, one way or another, doesn't seem to affect the main line of argument, which has now come back to me--it's probably the first go at the "epistemic" line of attack: unlucky bad outcomes don't make you more deserving of blame, but they do enable us to know that you're deserving of blame, and so they entitle us to blame you. Richards is one of those who thinks that blame needs to attach to character, so it's all about our being able to tell if you're a bad person or not. Along the meandering way, Richards proposes that your character is going to manifest itself in your actions no matter what situation your put into, so that Nagel's woulda-been-a-Nazi-if-he'd-been-in-Germany will reveal himself to be just as bad a person as he would have if he'd actually been in Germany. Adler, along the meandering way (I was mildly taken aback that either of these two pieces got into Mind in their published state--and this is one of the felicitous side-effects of this moral luck project, seeing what goes on in the various journals), calls this "preposterous", question-beggingly because we would of course blame the actual-Nazi more than the woulda-been-a-Nazi, but goes on to gesture in a vaguely interesting way at some sort of social-psychological research suggesting that the kind of person you are generally makes very little difference to how you behave under a given set of circumstances. (I guess, really, the point would be: there just isn't that much difference between most people, which I'll certainly buy.)
Taylor's review of Nussbaum continues the trend of Nussbaum reviews: the reviewer gushes, because Nussbaum is, after all, very impressive, but one gets the impression that the reviewer does not actually like the book, and when it comes down to details (this one, mostly concerning Aristotle), has mostly negative things to say about it. This one ventured the furthest in its not actually liking the book; Taylor admits that the book was failing to hold his interest by the end. The other Taylor's review says that he doesn't get something, but maybe because he hasn't read the book carefully enough; this Taylor says that Nussbaum spends a lot of words setting things up and summarizing and so forth, which has been exactly my problem with Nussbaum on the couple of occasions I've tried to read The Therapy of Desire--she reads as if she's got serious dissertationitis: this is the sentence that tells you how I'm going to introduce the paragraph that tells you how I'm going to introduce the introduction to the first part of the book....
Anyway, this Taylor continues another trend in Nussbaum reviews, which is that they say nothing on the subject of moral luck, which is slightly ominous ... but at least I have other reasons to want to read this book. It's, like, all over my Areas of Specialization and Competence.
koff
