WarrenMarch 15, 2021 at 21:437875 views77 comments
With many positions on modernity and the individual, can one say they are indifferent? Some philosophers say we are still living in modernity, for some we are in post-modernity, some say we were never modern.
Reply to Warren
I believe that we have experienced modernism and postmodernism, with its deconstruction of values. Perhaps we are in the post post modern. The whole experience of self and authenticity was perceived by the moderns, ripped apart by the postmodernists, and we may, now, have to put all the meanings together again. When you query whether we were ever modern, perhaps the problem was that it never became a homeland but just a resting place and, now, may be the chance to juxtapose all different fragments of the broken down philosophies. Of course, we may all do this differently and it may be the end of a cycle, with a lot of disintegration in the aftermath of the post modern, on the brink off the post apocalyptic era.
I think I am largely indifferent to this. Many categories are ineffable. I have no idea what modern is meant to mean. Is postmodernism simply hard modernism? Is sticking 'post' in front of something just a sign you have run out of ideas? Is modern the same thing as contemporary? Can a Buddhist monk in rural Thailand be modern; or do you have to be an ironic atheist working in IT in a big city? Is it situational, or is it a state of mind? Or is it simply a word; misused, abused, a usage in search of a meaning?
'Modern' period - commenced with publication of Newton's Principia 1687.
'Post-modern' period - commenced with publication of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity 1915.
Modernity is characterised by the idea of progress, trust in science, confidence in civilized values, the idea of destiny.
Post-modernity is characterised by nihilism, distrust of meta-narratives, cultural relativism, rejection of universal values, a plurality of competing cultural and social constructs.
It's the context that defines what we mean by modernity. And oh boy, do we use modern/modernity/post-modern etc. in a huge scope of totally different issues and viewpoints.
Uni-PerspectiveMarch 15, 2021 at 23:16#5107790 likes
I believe modernism and post-modernism always co-existed in an ongoing collective state of mind. One of the many natural balances of society. Just like in politics, one side's dialogue is louder than the other side and over time it will flip flop.
Modernity is characterised by the idea of progress, trust in science, confidence in civilized values, the idea of destiny.
I would also add skepticism about traditional culture and institutions. It's always seemed to me that modernity is a rejection of the past as much as it is confidence in the future.
'Modern' period - commenced with publication of Newton's Principia 1687.
'Post-modern' period - commenced with publication of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity 1915.
Modernity is characterised by the idea of progress, trust in science, confidence in civilized values, the idea of destiny.
Post-modernity is characterised by nihilism, distrust of meta-narratives, cultural relativism, rejection of universal values, a plurality of competing cultural and social constructs.
This is certainly a standard academic construct of the ideas. I wasn't sure the OP was wanting to explore this side of the street, although maybe. Modernism wasn't optimistic for long. It may have begun this way but after World War One it became drenched in pessimism and ideas of absurdity, regress and doom. And Duchump's Fountain (1917 urinal sculpture) kind of anticipated the postmodern project and Tracy Emin by some years. Incidentally when you read Don Quixote 1605, you find a book that is like a post-modern pastiche, dripping with irony and self-reflexivity. It could almost be John Barth (except readable). I'm not confident that categories like this really work.
It may have begun this way but after World War One it became drenched in pessimism and ideas of absurdity, regress and doom.
Hence my delimitation of 1915. I also think of Lewis Carroll as a portent of postmodernism. There are probably others. There are always overlaps and exceptions but think of it as an heuristic, that’s all.
I've always wanted to see Michael Freyn's play, Copenhagen. Apparently there's a very good BBC production of it, but I can't find it anywhere online. Reason being, I really mark the discovery of the uncertainty principle as an emblem of the post-modern period.
Reply to Warren I am modern, that is, committed to resisting the recurrences of pre-modern atavisms (periodically manifested in 'theo/auto/pluto-cratic anti-humanisms & populisms') while, in inclusive solidarity, improvising – theoretical, social-political, techological – 'alternatives' to the global neoliberal-corporatist status quo without succumbing to relativist / nihilist disillusionment (i.e. p0m0). Btw, this philosopher calls the shitshow status quo "compostmodernity".
If you are referred tho this quote as all of those who don’t want follow the masses in the modern era or post modern era, yes I guess there are a lot of people which can say they act indifferent towards modernity because they don’t like it all or they don’t want to.
Perhaps that’s they key of being indifferent.
With many positions on modernity and the individual, can one say they are indifferent? Some philosophers say we are still living in modernity, for some we are in post-modernity, some say we were never modern.
Dear God.
I have never 'got' this 'post-modern' concept.
Just another label to hang on a picture or something...if you turn it round do you go back to the future ?
*sighs*
Always makes me think of 'Thoroughly Modern Millie' the musical, 1967.
In 1922 New York City, flapper Millie Dillmount is determined to find work as a stenographer to a wealthy businessman and then marry him – a "thoroughly modern" goal.
So, modern values or goals way back then.
Hmmm, I was going to say have changed - but then again...
Some things never change. Or if they do, they return full circle...with knobs on.
It depends on perspective. Doesn't it always.
It's always seemed to me that modernity is a rejection of the past as much as it is confidence in the future.
It has struck me for several years now how many people in the West seem fixated on a mawkish form of nostalgia. There's a prevailing view that things were better in the past. A Golden Age.
This sentiment fills the speeches of public officials, the plots of movies and longform TV and the comments on social media. People keep presenting the view that we have lost something, that we need to regain it. The new mansions built in my city are nostalgia structures - pretend Victorian or grotesque 18th century pastiches called French Provincials. There's the now mainstream hipster-lite aesthetic, a fetishisation of early 20th century workwear and an ardour for old school crafts and multifaceted 'authenticity'.
Politically, aesthetically and emotionally, no one seems to much like the present time, no one seems to praise the modern and most folk seem afraid of the post-modern and the future. People seem to be going for pre-modernism.
Reply to Tom Storm
I think that you are right that people are going back to the idea of the premodern? I am inclined to think that postmodernism was extremely useful as a basis for exploring the whole way our thinking is constructed. However, perhaps it went too far and led to the whole collapse of meaning and the rise of 'post truth'. I think that we need more synthetic thinking which can establish important links between ideas, rather than just a return to the premodern. Here, I am suggesting that even though postmodernism comes with potential problems, in that it can give rise to a collapse of values, the insights of modernity and postmodernism are important for enabling critical analysis.
I am inclined to think that postmodernism was extremely useful as a basis for exploring the whole way our thinking is constructed.
I beg to differ, Jack. When was it ever not 'modern' to examine, critique & thereby develop how "our thinking is constructed". At best, p0m0 has always seemed to me nothing but a redundant, clown-show – a dada-like bit of rhetorical kitsch parodying a witches' brew of hellenic skepticism, apologetic fideism, berkleyan idealism, nietzschean perspectivism, russian nihilism, jamesian pluralism, etc – which, occasionally amusing in a tedious sorta way, is philosophically DOA. To be modern, it seems to me, is to always be engaged in a self-reflective subversive 'praxis' (i.e. "rebellion" "critique" "inquiry") that deconstructs the status quo by (re)constructing 'viable' alternatives, or exits (like e.g. hellenic cynics & epicureans; renaissance humanists; enlightenment deists & mechanists; russian anarchists & anglo-american fallibilists; post-war existentialists & absurdists; jazzists, surrealists & abstract expressionists; libertarian socialists & deep ecologists; etc).
When was it ever not 'modern' to examine, critique & thereby develop how "our thinking is constructed". At best, p0m0 has always seemed to me nothing but a redundant, clown-show – a dada-like bit of rhetorical kitsch parodying a witches' brew of hellenic skepticism, apologetic fideism, berkleyan idealism, nietzschean perspectivism, russian nihilism, jamesian pluralism, etc – which, occasionally amusing in a tedious sorta way, is philosophically DOA.
:smile:
I do wish I had your way with words and a smidgeon of your knowledge of philosophical isms.
No question but generally old farts. I am hearing this from people too young to be able to look back - in their twenties.
Some of the old farts of today were the blowing-in-the-wind youth of yesteryear. The concerns pretty much the same as the young have today. A universal song for the human race to love and not hate.
Freedom. And so on...
What kind of things are people in their 20's saying about whose past; their own or their parents ?
There's a lot of envy out there...and anger about e.g. baby boomers and any other group of disparate people who lived in different parts of the world during whole chunks of years, decades.
Generalisations and divisions play into the feeling of being hard done by.
Politicians love this...and they are the ones who play a major role in what is available to any of us, regarding a better life. The constraints, the decisions to go to war, freedom of movement...
I am a modernist. Capitalism can still save itself; and continue to grow into the future. I just don't know if it will save itself; so it's difficult to orient oneself with regard to a belief in progress.
The potential is there: we have the knowledge, the technology, the industrial capacity, the skills, to plug into the planet for energy; use that energy to provide limitless clean electrical power, hydrogen fuel, capture and sequester carbon, desalinate and irrigate, recycle, and so on.
It is possible that the dream of modernity could be fulfilled; and the failure of modernity is too horrific to contemplate!
In face of the climate and ecological crisis, I say we go for it; meet the challenge head on and overcome it. The energy is there in the molten interior of the planet - more energy than we could ever put a dent in, no matter how lavishly it was spent to balance human welfare and environmental sustainability.
Bruno Latour posits that we have never been modern. Although there are hybrids of nature and culture –non-human and human, object and subject– and quasi-objects, modernity prefers to purify nature and society as distinct. Latour argues that there have always been hybridizations and quasi-objects in history.
Although Latour makes a case within the anthropological and ontological lens, a case can be made for being modern based on technological advancements and their effects on our epistemologies. One should look at the word modernity synchronically, not diachronically. With a shift in the late twentieth century, the computer has been steadily augmenting our brains. We are, to an extent, a cyborg with human and artificial intelligence intertwined in the form of mutualism. One can argue that we are in a post-modern era based on the digital age and its various disconnection to nature and society or altering society’s perception of reality. Jean Baudrillard introduces the concept of hyperreal postmodernism as a reflection of our time. He supports the idea of productive modernity as a successor of symbolic premodernity. I am not sure how that fits in with a Buddist in rural Thailand.
Bruno Latour posits that we have never been modern. Although there are hybrids of nature and culture –non-human and human, object and subject– and quasi-objects, modernity prefers to purify nature and society as distinct. Latour argues that there have always been hybridizations and quasi-objects in history.
That definitely sounds like Bruno Latour, the compostmodernist. :grin:
Here, I am suggesting that even though postmodernism comes with potential problems, in that it can give rise to a collapse of values, the insights of modernity and postmodernism are important for enabling critical analysis.
Out of interest, Jack - what do you think are a couple of useful insights post-modernism has given us?
Reply to 180 Proof
Probably the context in which I have followed through the ideas of postmodernism is within sociology and it is on this level that I think it is useful. I would not advocate postmodernism to be the point where self reflection is undervalued. I do believe that this aspect of modernism is so important and needs to triumph in spite of other aspects of philosophy we adopt.
Reply to Tom Storm
I am really interested in Lacan's work on psychoanalysis and his book, 'The Psychoses', although I have only read parts of it. I am also interested in Baudrillard's idea of simulacrum. However, I am in the position of having only read a little on these areas of thought and do wish to explore them in further depth.
Politically, aesthetically and emotionally, no one seems to much like the present time, no one seems to praise the modern and most folk seem afraid of the post-modern and the future. People seem to be going for pre-modernism.
I do like the present time. I'm as happy now as I've ever been. I do think we may be in a very dangerous period. It seems like all of science at once has advanced to the point where we can modify the very ground of our existence. It started with nuclear weapons, but now it includes genetics, computer science, biology, physics. There are those who speculate that the reason we've never run into any aliens is that when a civilization advances to where ours is, it kills itself off. I worry for my children.
When people go on about the good old days, I usually say "Yeah, back in the days when only white people could vote and we could beat up gay people." But... I also think stable families are important. Parents rather than the government should be the primary force in a child's life. There is value in having a mother and a father. Marriage and sexual responsibility are valuable. Subsidiarity works best - social and political issues should be dealt with at the most immediate (or local) level that is consistent with their resolution. We should know our history and value, be grateful to, those who came before us.
I usually say "Yeah, back in the good old days when black people couldn't vote and we could beat up gay people.
Yeah... I do pretty much the same.
What you say is wise and useful TC. I like the present time too, but I have met very few people in my extended circle who do. I'm particularly fascinated by young people who talk of the good old days they have not known - when products were better made, when music, art and writing was better, when the world was cleaner and free. They sound like baby boomers. But it's just possible I have made too much of this...
Reply to Tom Storm "General approaches" are ahistorical, or context-free, and not concrete enough, or insufficiently focused, to have much effect on exigent situations (like e.g. utopian programs, romantic ideals, "new age" nostrums & other decadent posturings).
I think the distinguishing mark of modern philosophy is the mathematical concept of reason. Descartes' mathematical method for solving any unknown, however powerful at its inception, has not been able to do what was hoped for. The alternative is not to abandon reason but to hold to a more modest view of reason and the limits of what it is capable of.
With many positions on modernity and the individual, can one say they are indifferent? Some philosophers say we are still living in modernity, for some we are in post-modernity, some say we were never modern.
“I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond! I’m new wave, but I’m old school and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot-wired, heat seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive and from time to time I’m radioactive."
Descartes did not limit his method to the objective domain as the term is now understood. It applies to the Meditations, questions of soul, God, and all the rest.
The alternative is not to abandon reason but to hold to a more modest view of reason and the limits of what it is capable of.
I think the pre-modern view acknowledged that reason has its limits but it points to a source that is higher than reason.
The modern conception of reason was somewhat promethean, that man could displace God as the source of meaning. From the review linked above:
...a new “religion of Humanity” appeared in the works of the positivist school led by Auguste Comte.... The positivists believed that Humanity had to be substituted definitively for God. Modern individuals who managed to subject nature to their needs now expected to achieve full autonomy, self-sufficiency, and self-determination. They felt entitled to give value to things, and decide what is good and evil without the aid of religion or tradition; this is what Nietzsche once called the “hyperbolic naiveté of man: positing himself as the meaning and measure of the value of things.”
The implications of this shift were far-reaching. “Two centuries after the project of a domination of nature...the project of a rivalry with God appeared.” From that moment on, it dominated the agenda of modernity. Modern individuals could no longer content themselves with dominating nature: they became God’s challengers, believing that there could only be one Sovereign on earth. The result was the appearance of an exclusive, atheistic humanism that went beyond rejecting God to actively seeking to replace him with the new godlike man. As the ultraconservative Joseph de Maistre once put it, “A boundless pride leads them continually to overthrow everything they have not themselves made, and to bring about new creations.” Nothing seemed impossible anymore to modern individuals, armed with the tools of new science, technology, and knowledge that made them capable of experimenting and controlling phenomena.
I think this also shows up in the 'creative destruction' of capitalism, the unquenchable thirst for the new, for novelty, for something never before seen, and that consumes and devours anything in its path to feed this insatiable hunger.
'Modern' period - commenced with publication of Newton's Principia 1687.
'Post-modern' period - commenced with publication of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity 1915.
Modernity is characterised by the idea of progress, trust in science, confidence in civilized values, the idea of destiny.
Post-modernity is characterised by nihilism, distrust of meta-narratives, cultural relativism, rejection of universal values, a plurality of competing cultural and social constructs.
Short & sweet! Just what the doctor ordered (for me). :up: Thanks
So, the modern period describes the first step taken by humanity in the domain of science onwards to the point when postmodernism, characterized by nihilistic worldviews and so forth, enters the scene. I'm just curious but the terminology is a bit confusing - modernism and postmodernism give off the impression that the two are related in ways other than simple temporal succession, as if something happened that effected this transition from modern to postmodern. My question to you is, what brought about this shift in outlook, attitude?
Reply to TheMadFool World War 1 - the spectre of appalling savagery and loss of life in the heart of Europe; and the subsequent discovery of relativity and quantum physics, which undermined faith in the mechanistic model of the universe that had reigned after Newton.
The modern conception of reason was somewhat promethean, that man could displace God as the source of meaning.
More precisely: reasondispenses with God-of-the-gaps "explanations" and (over)interpretations of such non-explanations (i.e. "mysteries" "visions" "divinations" etc). It's the mathematization of Logos translating Mythos (i.e. asymptotically collapsing the woo-of-the-gaps paths of least mental effort vestiges of the pre-Bronze Age) which has inaugurated modern philosophy. "Meaning" denotes relevance derived from context; the only constant in our civilizational context is accelerando (towards extinction or apotheosis?) so that the future is "the source of meaning", not "the new" or "the latest", but the always not-yet or sublime, temporal singularity of unknown unknowns – unbounded immanence (Spinoza contra-ultra Descartes).
Prometheus' stolen gift to humankind: the fire in which we burn. What we can make of that, how making can remake us in this crucible-process, is the modern source of meaning. Barely four centuries underway out ten or so millennia of blinkered striving, not nearly long enough to adequately judge and condemn this era's significance in contrast to the demon-haunted candlelit darkness that came before; another several centuries more at least for a 1:10 comparison... What are you perennial (or p0m0) mysterians, mystifiers & mythagogues so afraid of, Wayfarer? :fire: :eyes:
You've got it all backwards. Man didn't challenge God. Man challenged a book about God, and a war mongering, corrupt institution built on that book, and got burnt at the stake for his troubles! Your post is gloating over the fact that religion has successfully undermined science - by putting Galileo on trial for heresy, and encouraging subjectivist philosophy, starting with Descartes, to the exclusion of the objective.
Maybe you think you are going to Heaven, and so it doesn't matter to you that depriving science of recognition as the means to establish valid knowledge of reality has allowed government and industry to abuse science, and apply technology badly, or worse, madly - until the human species is looking extinction in the face!
But for me, it matters that humankind is headed for extinction. My claim on immortality is not supernatural - but genetic, intellectual and economic. If I do not belong to a species with a future, everything is at best, mere masturbation!
Your refusal to take these accusations seriously shows your moral vacuity. If someone accused me of genocide, I'd take care not to appear to gloat over it!
"Meaning" denotes relevance derived from context; the only constant in our civilizational context is accelerando (towards extinction or apotheosis?)
That's the question. I don't know if literal extinction is a threat but there's a lot of conditions short of extinction that would still be horrendous. Sometimes when I'm pushing a trolley around our lushly-merchandised supermarkets, I imagine a voice saying 'sorry, your civilization has just been cancelled on account of debts owed to the future'. Resulting in collapse of the financial sector, as damn near happened on 18th September 2008.
I don't really believe it, but I do recognise it as a possibility. Much of the world's banking system is underwritten by growth curves, but when it becomes unmistakeably clear that economic growth can't go on because of resource shortages, then I really do think there could be civilizational collapse. There are any number of catastrophes that could trigger that.
Therefore, I would have thought that development of an economic and social philosophy NOT based on consumerism and acquisition might be of vital importance. What are people going to pursue, if not endless upward mobility? What form of culture could facilitate that? I think there have to be some deep philosophical changes for that to occur.
World War 1 - the spectre of appalling savagery and loss of life in the heart of Europe; and the subsequent discovery of relativity and quantum physics, which undermined faith in the mechanistic model of the universe that had reigned after Newton.
‘Things fall apart
The centre cannot hold’
~W B Yeats.
You know your history well! Kudos to you. As for me, my memory ain't what it used to be.
Just out of curiosoty, do you like the modernism-postmodernism transition that has taken place? Why?
. "Meaning" denotes relevance derived from context; the only constant in our civilizational context is accelerando (towards extinction or apotheosis?)
I should also add, the only forms of ‘apotheosis’ that Western liberal individualism can imagine are either the indefinite prolongation of existence through medical science, or through inter-stellar travel. I think the fantasy of interstellar travel is clearly the sublimated longing for Heaven. But I also don’t think it will ever be realised.
Just out of curiosoty, do you like the modernism-postmodernism transition that has taken place? Why?
It’s not a matter of liking or disliking - as everyone says nowadays, it is what it is. What I’ve always questioned, though, is the presumption of materialism, which is writ large in modern culture, generally. At the same time, I don’t belong to the hereditary faith that I was born into, hence the patchwork of ideas I advocate here, drawn in from various sources.
I would have thought that development of an economic and social philosophy NOT based on consumerism and acquisition might be of vital importance.
Then you'd be wrong again! Science can easily sustain capitalism - by harnessing limitless amounts of clean energy from magma. This isn't possible for unreformed ideologues; sovereign nation states jealous of their interests, who didn't reform because the Church made sure people believed that science isn't true, and doesn't describe reality. God does!
So ideologues continued, unreformed in relation to science as truth, but using science to achieve their primitive ends - until humankind stands on the brink of extinction. But because ideologues still do not value a scientific understanding of reality, even now, they cannot encompass the reality of limitless amounts of clean energy from magma - that could be used to produce endless electricity, hydrogen fuel, for desalination and irrigation, carbon capture and sequestration, recycling - providing for a prosperous and sustainable future.
There remains a chance - a slim chance, that we could recognise this error, and so create a justifying political rationale for the application of technology on the basis of scientific merit, and your proscription is some kind of communism. You make me sick.
I think the fantasy of interstellar travel is clearly the sublimated longing for Heaven.
This is probably, more or less, what one hominid grunt-gestured to the prettier one next to him while watching another group of hominids trek on out of Africa... Grouchy luddite, aren't you? :smirk:
("For fuck sake, they tamed fire and now eat cooked (burnt) instead of raw ... and there goes the bloody neighborhood!")
I feel that's what pulls at our heart strings and some begin to wish that things were different or others hope that things stay the same.
Perhaps, your attitude - unwillingness to pass judgment - is an indication of an understanding of the situation I'm, for better or worse, not privy to. Care to share?
materialism, which is writ large in modern culture,
That is a problem and, like it or not, Dostoevsky's warning - if God doesn't exist, everything is permitted - as a representative of the general sentiment of distrust and regret in re the materialistic turn culture has undergone, has become a prophecy that's on the verge of being fulfilled. I suppose it can't be helped - there's scant evidence for anything other than matter & energy (materialism); nevertheless, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
patchwork of ideas I advocate here, drawn in from various sources.
As far as ideas go, eclecistism is among the best! Having the best of both worlds or rather the best of all possible worlds is always going to pay handsomely if you know what I mean.
Dostoevsky's warning - if God doesn't exist, everything is permitted
Wrong again!
Morality comes from human beings - from evolution within a tribal context. Moral behaviours were advantageous to the tribe, in competition with other tribes, and advantageous to the individual within the tribe.
Astonishing that neither Nietzsche nor Dostoevsky reasoned that man must have raised generation after generation of young; even if we forgive them not knowing that even chimpanzees have social hierarchy and moral order of sorts, this would seems fairly obvious - except to someone who truly believes that religion is the well spring of morality, and disproven by evolution - implies there's no morality.
Well, there is. Most fundamentally, it's an innate sensibility.
Morality comes from human beings - from evolution within a tribal context. Moral behaviours were advantageous to the tribe, in competition with other tribes, and advantageous to the individual within the tribe.
That's an explanation but I'm sure you wouldn't go so far as to say that's the explanation, no? Morality, if you haven't already noticed, is human-exclusive i.e. only humans seem to possess it in degrees that would qualify morality as a distinct entity. Put that in the context of consciousness, again something distinctly human but, more importantly, as of yet inexplicable by modern science. There's a clear link between the two - consciousness & morality - and that, to me, points to morality's origins beyond anything theories such as your sociological one posits.
Morality, if you haven't already noticed, is human-exclusive i.e. only humans seem to possess it in degrees that would qualify morality as a distinct entity.
No. It's not. As I already said, even chimpanzees have a moral order of sorts. What's most distinct about human morality is that it is intellectually articulated. Explicit, as opposed to embedded in the hierarchical structures of the tribe.
No. It's not. As I already said, even chimpanzees have a moral order of sorts. What's most distinct about human morality is that it is intellectually articulated. Explicit, as opposed to embedded in the hierarchical structures of the tribe.
...so the rest of your post is moot!
Are you saying a chimpanzee society is equivalent to human society in re morality? Let's set aside the fact that chimpanzees are our closest cousins which would, in a sense, imply that we should have some things in common for the moment. Is it true that chimpanzee societies are morally alike to human socieities? Before you answer that question, consider the differences in cognitive capacities between chimps and humans - do you really believe chimps analyze anything, let alone ethics, in the way and at the level humans do? The answer is obviously, "no". Doesn't that difference mean anything at all to chimp ethics and human ethics? The answer here too is evidently, "no". I rest my case!
That's an attitude I don't recommend - it would be like mistaking a stop in your journey with your destination.
I gave the matter some thought and a coupla points I want to discuss.
1. William Lane Craig, not someone a philosopher might want to cite, said in a debate that self-awareness, knowing that you exist, amplifies suffering (hyperalgesia, allodynia) and I recall mentioning it somewhere that that's the key to morality - our suffering magnified by our sense of self, we begin to, or more accurately we're forced to, think about right and wrong (morality). Animals, most of them, lack self-awareness and even among those we've determined are self-aware are only so in very rudimentary ways. Thus, morality can't be a matter of simple biology common to all animals - it needs a special, secret ingredient which is a level of consciousness that permits self-awareness to the degree found in humans or higher if such is possible. In short, morality may bud in animals, some of them, but it'll bloom only in the human mind or those blessed/cursed, I can never tell, with higher consciousness.
2. The usual way morality is explained by the theory of evolution is by demonstrating how, for example, altruism benefits the altruistic individual. I was quite happy with this answer until I realized that this basically means altruism = selfishness - that's like taking a white object and claiming that the whiteness is an illusion, that it's actually black. Granted that there's merit in such an approach for it brings to the fore paradoxes which to my reckoning lies at the heart of most/all issues that humans get involved in. For some reason I love paradoxes but that's a topic for another discussion. Anyway, did you notice what evolutionary biologists did there when they "explained" goodness (altruism) - it was achieved only by making the good (altruism) = bad (selfish). Yet, deep down, we can feel it in our hearts, we know something's off about it, our hearts (feelings) don't share our mind's (rationality) convictions that morality has now been explained by evolutinary theory. This uncertainty, this doubt, this discontenment, this tension between morality and the "explanation" for morality speaks volumes as far as I'm concerned. Something doesn't add up!
I gave the matter some thought and a coupla points I want to discuss.
I've been thinking about this for years, and I've done a fair bit of reading on it - and it makes no sense to me, or to the facts, to consider morality exclusively human, or even the consequence of conscious thought - not least because, if human beings were amoral brutes, as Nietzsche and Dostoevsky allude, we'd have wiped ourselves out.
William Lane Craig, not someone a philosopher might want to cite, said in a debate that self-awareness, knowing that you exist, amplifies suffering (hyperalgesia, allodynia) and I recall mentioning it somewhere that that's the key to morality - our suffering magnified by our sense of self, we begin to, or more accurately we're forced to, think about right and wrong (morality).
In chimpanzee society, they share food and groom each other. But they also remember who reciprocates, and withhold such favours from those who don't reciprocate, to encourage social cooperation. The same arguments play out in human civilisation with regard to taxation and welfare.
Animals, most of them, lack self-awareness and even among those we've determined are self-aware are only so in very rudimentary ways. Thus, morality can't be a matter of simple biology common to all animals -
Social animals tend to have moral behaviours, like meerkats for example. They live in big burrows, and some will stand guard while others forage, and issue warnings of the approach of predators.
2. The usual way morality is explained by the theory of evolution is by demonstrating how, for example, altruism benefits the altruistic individual.
Sharing food, standing guard - are examples of altruistic behaviour, and the benefit is in reciprocation. Reciprocation is what makes moral behaviour an evolutionary advantage in the struggle to survive and breed.
Yet, deep down, we can feel it in our hearts, we know something's off about it, our hearts (feelings) don't share our mind's (rationality) convictions that morality has now been explained by evolutionary theory.
I could not disagree more....at least, not without risk of being banned for the kind of language I'd need to use to adequately express how much I disagree! I don't know of anyone else saying morality is a sense - like humour or aesthetics. But it's in how we react: That's funny. You look great. That's wrong! We just know, instinctively.
Further, if you look to Piaget - and infant development in psychology, again, we get a lot of ingrained moral behaviours, like sharing between infants, when one is given less than the other. Are you suggesting that all infants, somehow reason this out?
No! Morality predates human intellect in evolution history, and predates moral education of the individual. Morality is an innate sense; drilled into us by evolution. I found something that might help:
Incidentally when you read Don Quixote 1605, you find a book that is like a post-modern pastiche, dripping with irony and self-reflexivity. It could almost be John Barth (except readable).
With many positions on modernity and the individual, can one say they are indifferent? Some philosophers say we are still living in modernity, for some we are in post-modernity, some say we were never modern.
I don't think it makes much sense to ask if we as individuals or on the whole are modern, postmodern or neither. They're more historical eras in which particular modes of thought disrupted or dominated.
With that in mind, I'd say, yes, Western societies are in a postmodern era: metanarratives are declining, ethics are becoming contextualised, absolute concepts of truth given increasingly over to putative ones (modelling) and embedded ones (facts).
There is obviously huge resistance to this, a reassertion of archaic concepts and values which act as both defenses and rallying points. But that resistance is itself a defining feature of the postmodern era: even if modernism won the war, it was still challenged.
There's also post-truth, the wayward child of modernism and postmodernism in which logical fallacy is foundational, fact and fiction are equal, and truth is what you assert it to be. There's also resistance to this, so maybe we're out of postmodernism now and in the post-truth era. I think an argument against this is that there is every reason to doubt that post-truthers believe what they say, rather they are opportunistic hypocrites who elevate anything that is useful to them and throw shade on anything that is not, e.g. the Republican party.
In short, morality may bud in animals, some of them, but it'll bloom only in the human mind or those blessed/cursed, I can never tell, with higher consciousness.
This I brooded over deeply. Do you know what deep time or geological time is? I'm sure you do. A particular event needn't occur at human time scales. The Aravalli range in Northwest India were allegedly, at one time, higher than the himalayas, the current record holder for highest peaks, also found in India. The Aravallis experienced erosion over millions of years and their peaks were reduced to hills. The point to this being, we no doubt haven't "...wiped ourselves out" but are we...wiping ourselves...er...out? The difference between my point of view and yours is that between someone who leaves the theater in the middle of a movie and thinks the movie is over and someone who waits for the movie to end. Premature...er...ejaculation.!
I could not disagree more....at least, not without risk of being banned for the kind of language I'd need to use to adequately express how much I disagree!
Feel free to express yourself. Not for me though, you might learn something about yourself and that might be a good thing.
What you need to understand is that, looking at it in another way,
1. A theory that explains everything explains nothing. Your idea about tribal existence and others of that ilk all boil down to explaining both good and evil under one overarching theory which is just another way of saying, "my theory can explain everything." I'm sure you realized that the moment I showed you how atruism (good) is "explained" by the theory of evolution as ultimately serving a selfish (bad) purpose. Enough said!
2. An "explanation" such as above fails to do justice to an issue that's real as the letters on your screen, the issue of right and wrong. Morality is the one thing we care about deeply - ethics of this, ethics of that, so on - and yet there are no clear-cut guidelines on how to be a good person. I don't know how children in this day and age are faring but we were left to the mercy of our parents, friends, and the occasional teacher who cared.
Along comes science and its lackeys if I may refer to them like that and we're sent a notice that morality has been "explained" and how? By showing good is an illusion, it's actually bad e.g. altruism is "actually" selfish. I don't deny that such an explanation doesn't make sense, it does but, it fails to address what's the core issue - our minds are trying their best to conceive of a world in which altruism can't be somehow manipulated and made to fit into the box of selfishness. This, if nothing else, brings out the fundamental difference between mind and body - the former has more freedom than the latter and it shows in how we can conceive of, albeit only imperfectly, a world in which altruism isn't selfish all the while living in a world in which it is.
it makes no sense to me, or to the facts, to consider morality exclusively human, or even the consequence of conscious thought
The sense I make of it is the OT mythological sense. I read the story of the Fall as a psychological explanation - a fall out of the 'state of nature', where a lion or a monkey will be selfish or unselfish as its nature dictates, but always without consideration of what they ought to do or be. "They saw they were naked and were ashamed." - saw, that is, that they ought not be naked. The self awareness that leads to a moral choice is what we ancients take to be the difference between the human and animal. It is a psychological difference, that leaves the natural world innocent because ignorant. The possibility of virtue must arise at the same time as the possibility of vice as a dilemma, and because it is founded on a psychological awareness, also as a fall from innocence as the default. Hence it is is a tree of 'knowledge', the fruit of which leaves one expelled from the paradise of just being and doing into a mind-world of ought not and ought to do, and of moral judgement.
Comments (77)
I believe that we have experienced modernism and postmodernism, with its deconstruction of values. Perhaps we are in the post post modern. The whole experience of self and authenticity was perceived by the moderns, ripped apart by the postmodernists, and we may, now, have to put all the meanings together again. When you query whether we were ever modern, perhaps the problem was that it never became a homeland but just a resting place and, now, may be the chance to juxtapose all different fragments of the broken down philosophies. Of course, we may all do this differently and it may be the end of a cycle, with a lot of disintegration in the aftermath of the post modern, on the brink off the post apocalyptic era.
I think I am largely indifferent to this. Many categories are ineffable. I have no idea what modern is meant to mean. Is postmodernism simply hard modernism? Is sticking 'post' in front of something just a sign you have run out of ideas? Is modern the same thing as contemporary? Can a Buddhist monk in rural Thailand be modern; or do you have to be an ironic atheist working in IT in a big city? Is it situational, or is it a state of mind? Or is it simply a word; misused, abused, a usage in search of a meaning?
'Modern' period - commenced with publication of Newton's Principia 1687.
'Post-modern' period - commenced with publication of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity 1915.
Modernity is characterised by the idea of progress, trust in science, confidence in civilized values, the idea of destiny.
Post-modernity is characterised by nihilism, distrust of meta-narratives, cultural relativism, rejection of universal values, a plurality of competing cultural and social constructs.
A lot of good traditional stuff has been tossed out. We could use some of it back. Does that make me a reactionary?
Quoting Wayfarer
I would also add skepticism about traditional culture and institutions. It's always seemed to me that modernity is a rejection of the past as much as it is confidence in the future.
This is certainly a standard academic construct of the ideas. I wasn't sure the OP was wanting to explore this side of the street, although maybe. Modernism wasn't optimistic for long. It may have begun this way but after World War One it became drenched in pessimism and ideas of absurdity, regress and doom. And Duchump's Fountain (1917 urinal sculpture) kind of anticipated the postmodern project and Tracy Emin by some years. Incidentally when you read Don Quixote 1605, you find a book that is like a post-modern pastiche, dripping with irony and self-reflexivity. It could almost be John Barth (except readable). I'm not confident that categories like this really work.
Hence my delimitation of 1915. I also think of Lewis Carroll as a portent of postmodernism. There are probably others. There are always overlaps and exceptions but think of it as an heuristic, that’s all.
I've always wanted to see Michael Freyn's play, Copenhagen. Apparently there's a very good BBC production of it, but I can't find it anywhere online. Reason being, I really mark the discovery of the uncertainty principle as an emblem of the post-modern period.
Quoting T Clark
Agree. Also the determination to break free of ecclesiastical domination, especially after the Wars of Religion.
If you are referred tho this quote as all of those who don’t want follow the masses in the modern era or post modern era, yes I guess there are a lot of people which can say they act indifferent towards modernity because they don’t like it all or they don’t want to.
Perhaps that’s they key of being indifferent.
[citation needed]
Dear God.
I have never 'got' this 'post-modern' concept.
Just another label to hang on a picture or something...if you turn it round do you go back to the future ?
*sighs*
Always makes me think of 'Thoroughly Modern Millie' the musical, 1967.
So, modern values or goals way back then.
Hmmm, I was going to say have changed - but then again...
Some things never change. Or if they do, they return full circle...with knobs on.
It depends on perspective. Doesn't it always.
Quoting T Clark
It has struck me for several years now how many people in the West seem fixated on a mawkish form of nostalgia. There's a prevailing view that things were better in the past. A Golden Age.
This sentiment fills the speeches of public officials, the plots of movies and longform TV and the comments on social media. People keep presenting the view that we have lost something, that we need to regain it. The new mansions built in my city are nostalgia structures - pretend Victorian or grotesque 18th century pastiches called French Provincials. There's the now mainstream hipster-lite aesthetic, a fetishisation of early 20th century workwear and an ardour for old school crafts and multifaceted 'authenticity'.
Politically, aesthetically and emotionally, no one seems to much like the present time, no one seems to praise the modern and most folk seem afraid of the post-modern and the future. People seem to be going for pre-modernism.
Isn't that true of any generation ?
You call that music ? You call that dancing ?
In my day...
Quoting Tom Storm
You what ? What people, where...?
I'm just describing what I see. If you don't see it, great. What do you see?
Quoting Amity
No question but generally old farts. I am hearing this from people too young to be able to look back - in their twenties.
A book called the Authenticity Hoax taps into this idea too. Andrew Potter.
That was a joke - about people turning the clock back to before the modernist project, hence pre-modern.
I think that you are right that people are going back to the idea of the premodern? I am inclined to think that postmodernism was extremely useful as a basis for exploring the whole way our thinking is constructed. However, perhaps it went too far and led to the whole collapse of meaning and the rise of 'post truth'. I think that we need more synthetic thinking which can establish important links between ideas, rather than just a return to the premodern. Here, I am suggesting that even though postmodernism comes with potential problems, in that it can give rise to a collapse of values, the insights of modernity and postmodernism are important for enabling critical analysis.
I beg to differ, Jack. When was it ever not 'modern' to examine, critique & thereby develop how "our thinking is constructed". At best, p0m0 has always seemed to me nothing but a redundant, clown-show – a dada-like bit of rhetorical kitsch parodying a witches' brew of hellenic skepticism, apologetic fideism, berkleyan idealism, nietzschean perspectivism, russian nihilism, jamesian pluralism, etc – which, occasionally amusing in a tedious sorta way, is philosophically DOA. To be modern, it seems to me, is to always be engaged in a self-reflective subversive 'praxis' (i.e. "rebellion" "critique" "inquiry") that deconstructs the status quo by (re)constructing 'viable' alternatives, or exits (like e.g. hellenic cynics & epicureans; renaissance humanists; enlightenment deists & mechanists; russian anarchists & anglo-american fallibilists; post-war existentialists & absurdists; jazzists, surrealists & abstract expressionists; libertarian socialists & deep ecologists; etc).
Quoting 180 Proof
:smile:
I do wish I had your way with words and a smidgeon of your knowledge of philosophical isms.
Hilarious. Have to use that term when referring to the present day ludicrous compostmodernism.
Some of the old farts of today were the blowing-in-the-wind youth of yesteryear. The concerns pretty much the same as the young have today. A universal song for the human race to love and not hate.
Freedom. And so on...
What kind of things are people in their 20's saying about whose past; their own or their parents ?
There's a lot of envy out there...and anger about e.g. baby boomers and any other group of disparate people who lived in different parts of the world during whole chunks of years, decades.
Generalisations and divisions play into the feeling of being hard done by.
Politicians love this...and they are the ones who play a major role in what is available to any of us, regarding a better life. The constraints, the decisions to go to war, freedom of movement...
The potential is there: we have the knowledge, the technology, the industrial capacity, the skills, to plug into the planet for energy; use that energy to provide limitless clean electrical power, hydrogen fuel, capture and sequester carbon, desalinate and irrigate, recycle, and so on.
It is possible that the dream of modernity could be fulfilled; and the failure of modernity is too horrific to contemplate!
In face of the climate and ecological crisis, I say we go for it; meet the challenge head on and overcome it. The energy is there in the molten interior of the planet - more energy than we could ever put a dent in, no matter how lavishly it was spent to balance human welfare and environmental sustainability.
Although Latour makes a case within the anthropological and ontological lens, a case can be made for being modern based on technological advancements and their effects on our epistemologies. One should look at the word modernity synchronically, not diachronically. With a shift in the late twentieth century, the computer has been steadily augmenting our brains. We are, to an extent, a cyborg with human and artificial intelligence intertwined in the form of mutualism. One can argue that we are in a post-modern era based on the digital age and its various disconnection to nature and society or altering society’s perception of reality. Jean Baudrillard introduces the concept of hyperreal postmodernism as a reflection of our time. He supports the idea of productive modernity as a successor of symbolic premodernity. I am not sure how that fits in with a Buddist in rural Thailand.
Tips for resisting the recurrences of pre-modern atavisms.
That definitely sounds like Bruno Latour, the compostmodernist. :grin:
Out of interest, Jack - what do you think are a couple of useful insights post-modernism has given us?
Probably the context in which I have followed through the ideas of postmodernism is within sociology and it is on this level that I think it is useful. I would not advocate postmodernism to be the point where self reflection is undervalued. I do believe that this aspect of modernism is so important and needs to triumph in spite of other aspects of philosophy we adopt.
I am really interested in Lacan's work on psychoanalysis and his book, 'The Psychoses', although I have only read parts of it. I am also interested in Baudrillard's idea of simulacrum. However, I am in the position of having only read a little on these areas of thought and do wish to explore them in further depth.
I do like the present time. I'm as happy now as I've ever been. I do think we may be in a very dangerous period. It seems like all of science at once has advanced to the point where we can modify the very ground of our existence. It started with nuclear weapons, but now it includes genetics, computer science, biology, physics. There are those who speculate that the reason we've never run into any aliens is that when a civilization advances to where ours is, it kills itself off. I worry for my children.
When people go on about the good old days, I usually say "Yeah, back in the days when only white people could vote and we could beat up gay people." But... I also think stable families are important. Parents rather than the government should be the primary force in a child's life. There is value in having a mother and a father. Marriage and sexual responsibility are valuable. Subsidiarity works best - social and political issues should be dealt with at the most immediate (or local) level that is consistent with their resolution. We should know our history and value, be grateful to, those who came before us.
Yeah... I do pretty much the same.
What you say is wise and useful TC. I like the present time too, but I have met very few people in my extended circle who do. I'm particularly fascinated by young people who talk of the good old days they have not known - when products were better made, when music, art and writing was better, when the world was cleaner and free. They sound like baby boomers. But it's just possible I have made too much of this...
If you don't mind - how old are you? I'm 69. I won't be offended if you don't want to say.
From "post-political" to "post-truth" – what we [s]owe[/s] the likes of Foucault, Thatcher-Reagan & MAGA: compostmodern follies redux ...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/15/michel-foucault-self-individual-politics
Modernity DOA? :mask:
I'm a neo-enlightenment philosopher!
“I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond! I’m new wave, but I’m old school and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot-wired, heat seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive and from time to time I’m radioactive."
:cool:
Adam and Eve's fall or as in "I've fallen and can't get up"? (The latter might be an US cultural reference.)
...applied to the objective domain and only interpretable in those terms.
Descartes did not limit his method to the objective domain as the term is now understood. It applies to the Meditations, questions of soul, God, and all the rest.
Quoting Fooloso4
I think the pre-modern view acknowledged that reason has its limits but it points to a source that is higher than reason.
The modern conception of reason was somewhat promethean, that man could displace God as the source of meaning. From the review linked above:
I think this also shows up in the 'creative destruction' of capitalism, the unquenchable thirst for the new, for novelty, for something never before seen, and that consumes and devours anything in its path to feed this insatiable hunger.
Short & sweet! Just what the doctor ordered (for me). :up: Thanks
So, the modern period describes the first step taken by humanity in the domain of science onwards to the point when postmodernism, characterized by nihilistic worldviews and so forth, enters the scene. I'm just curious but the terminology is a bit confusing - modernism and postmodernism give off the impression that the two are related in ways other than simple temporal succession, as if something happened that effected this transition from modern to postmodern. My question to you is, what brought about this shift in outlook, attitude?
‘Things fall apart
The centre cannot hold’
~W B Yeats.
~Also Sprach Zarathustra
Quoting Wayfarer
More precisely: reason dispenses with God-of-the-gaps "explanations" and (over)interpretations of such non-explanations (i.e. "mysteries" "visions" "divinations" etc). It's the mathematization of Logos translating Mythos (i.e. asymptotically collapsing the woo-of-the-gaps paths of least mental effort vestiges of the pre-Bronze Age) which has inaugurated modern philosophy. "Meaning" denotes relevance derived from context; the only constant in our civilizational context is accelerando (towards extinction or apotheosis?) so that the future is "the source of meaning", not "the new" or "the latest", but the always not-yet or sublime, temporal singularity of unknown unknowns – unbounded immanence (Spinoza contra-ultra Descartes).
Prometheus' stolen gift to humankind: the fire in which we burn. What we can make of that, how making can remake us in this crucible-process, is the modern source of meaning. Barely four centuries underway out ten or so millennia of blinkered striving, not nearly long enough to adequately judge and condemn this era's significance in contrast to the demon-haunted candlelit darkness that came before; another several centuries more at least for a 1:10 comparison... What are you perennial (or p0m0) mysterians, mystifiers & mythagogues so afraid of, Wayfarer? :fire: :eyes:
You've got it all backwards. Man didn't challenge God. Man challenged a book about God, and a war mongering, corrupt institution built on that book, and got burnt at the stake for his troubles! Your post is gloating over the fact that religion has successfully undermined science - by putting Galileo on trial for heresy, and encouraging subjectivist philosophy, starting with Descartes, to the exclusion of the objective.
Maybe you think you are going to Heaven, and so it doesn't matter to you that depriving science of recognition as the means to establish valid knowledge of reality has allowed government and industry to abuse science, and apply technology badly, or worse, madly - until the human species is looking extinction in the face!
But for me, it matters that humankind is headed for extinction. My claim on immortality is not supernatural - but genetic, intellectual and economic. If I do not belong to a species with a future, everything is at best, mere masturbation!
Your refusal to take these accusations seriously shows your moral vacuity. If someone accused me of genocide, I'd take care not to appear to gloat over it!
That's the question. I don't know if literal extinction is a threat but there's a lot of conditions short of extinction that would still be horrendous. Sometimes when I'm pushing a trolley around our lushly-merchandised supermarkets, I imagine a voice saying 'sorry, your civilization has just been cancelled on account of debts owed to the future'. Resulting in collapse of the financial sector, as damn near happened on 18th September 2008.
I don't really believe it, but I do recognise it as a possibility. Much of the world's banking system is underwritten by growth curves, but when it becomes unmistakeably clear that economic growth can't go on because of resource shortages, then I really do think there could be civilizational collapse. There are any number of catastrophes that could trigger that.
Therefore, I would have thought that development of an economic and social philosophy NOT based on consumerism and acquisition might be of vital importance. What are people going to pursue, if not endless upward mobility? What form of culture could facilitate that? I think there have to be some deep philosophical changes for that to occur.
//oh, and the Ubermensch ain't it.//
You know your history well! Kudos to you. As for me, my memory ain't what it used to be.
Just out of curiosoty, do you like the modernism-postmodernism transition that has taken place? Why?
I should also add, the only forms of ‘apotheosis’ that Western liberal individualism can imagine are either the indefinite prolongation of existence through medical science, or through inter-stellar travel. I think the fantasy of interstellar travel is clearly the sublimated longing for Heaven. But I also don’t think it will ever be realised.
Quoting TheMadFool
It’s not a matter of liking or disliking - as everyone says nowadays, it is what it is. What I’ve always questioned, though, is the presumption of materialism, which is writ large in modern culture, generally. At the same time, I don’t belong to the hereditary faith that I was born into, hence the patchwork of ideas I advocate here, drawn in from various sources.
"...towards extinction or apotheosis?" samsara or nirvana? Yes both.
Then you'd be wrong again! Science can easily sustain capitalism - by harnessing limitless amounts of clean energy from magma. This isn't possible for unreformed ideologues; sovereign nation states jealous of their interests, who didn't reform because the Church made sure people believed that science isn't true, and doesn't describe reality. God does!
So ideologues continued, unreformed in relation to science as truth, but using science to achieve their primitive ends - until humankind stands on the brink of extinction. But because ideologues still do not value a scientific understanding of reality, even now, they cannot encompass the reality of limitless amounts of clean energy from magma - that could be used to produce endless electricity, hydrogen fuel, for desalination and irrigation, carbon capture and sequestration, recycling - providing for a prosperous and sustainable future.
There remains a chance - a slim chance, that we could recognise this error, and so create a justifying political rationale for the application of technology on the basis of scientific merit, and your proscription is some kind of communism. You make me sick.
This is probably, more or less, what one hominid grunt-gestured to the prettier one next to him while watching another group of hominids trek on out of Africa... Grouchy luddite, aren't you? :smirk:
("For fuck sake, they tamed fire and now eat cooked (burnt) instead of raw ... and there goes the bloody neighborhood!")
Well said! Nevertheless, there are people, like me for example, who can't help but judge matters based on our own weltanschaunngs.
Quoting Wayfarer
I feel that's what pulls at our heart strings and some begin to wish that things were different or others hope that things stay the same.
Perhaps, your attitude - unwillingness to pass judgment - is an indication of an understanding of the situation I'm, for better or worse, not privy to. Care to share?
Quoting Wayfarer
That is a problem and, like it or not, Dostoevsky's warning - if God doesn't exist, everything is permitted - as a representative of the general sentiment of distrust and regret in re the materialistic turn culture has undergone, has become a prophecy that's on the verge of being fulfilled. I suppose it can't be helped - there's scant evidence for anything other than matter & energy (materialism); nevertheless, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Quoting Wayfarer
As far as ideas go, eclecistism is among the best! Having the best of both worlds or rather the best of all possible worlds is always going to pay handsomely if you know what I mean.
Wrong again!
Morality comes from human beings - from evolution within a tribal context. Moral behaviours were advantageous to the tribe, in competition with other tribes, and advantageous to the individual within the tribe.
Astonishing that neither Nietzsche nor Dostoevsky reasoned that man must have raised generation after generation of young; even if we forgive them not knowing that even chimpanzees have social hierarchy and moral order of sorts, this would seems fairly obvious - except to someone who truly believes that religion is the well spring of morality, and disproven by evolution - implies there's no morality.
Well, there is. Most fundamentally, it's an innate sensibility.
You would know, right?
Quoting counterpunch
That's an explanation but I'm sure you wouldn't go so far as to say that's the explanation, no? Morality, if you haven't already noticed, is human-exclusive i.e. only humans seem to possess it in degrees that would qualify morality as a distinct entity. Put that in the context of consciousness, again something distinctly human but, more importantly, as of yet inexplicable by modern science. There's a clear link between the two - consciousness & morality - and that, to me, points to morality's origins beyond anything theories such as your sociological one posits.
Yes. I would.
Quoting TheMadFool
Yes. I would.
Quoting TheMadFool
No. It's not. As I already said, even chimpanzees have a moral order of sorts. What's most distinct about human morality is that it is intellectually articulated. Explicit, as opposed to embedded in the hierarchical structures of the tribe.
...so the rest of your post is moot!
Hate to break it to you but no, you wouldn't! Sorry!
Quoting counterpunch
Are you saying a chimpanzee society is equivalent to human society in re morality? Let's set aside the fact that chimpanzees are our closest cousins which would, in a sense, imply that we should have some things in common for the moment. Is it true that chimpanzee societies are morally alike to human socieities? Before you answer that question, consider the differences in cognitive capacities between chimps and humans - do you really believe chimps analyze anything, let alone ethics, in the way and at the level humans do? The answer is obviously, "no". Doesn't that difference mean anything at all to chimp ethics and human ethics? The answer here too is evidently, "no". I rest my case!
That's fine: after all - wadda you know?
By your own admission - fuck all!
Quoting TheMadFool
Yes, we can agree on something at least!
Quoting counterpunch
That's an attitude I don't recommend - it would be like mistaking a stop in your journey with your destination.
I gave the matter some thought and a coupla points I want to discuss.
1. William Lane Craig, not someone a philosopher might want to cite, said in a debate that self-awareness, knowing that you exist, amplifies suffering (hyperalgesia, allodynia) and I recall mentioning it somewhere that that's the key to morality - our suffering magnified by our sense of self, we begin to, or more accurately we're forced to, think about right and wrong (morality). Animals, most of them, lack self-awareness and even among those we've determined are self-aware are only so in very rudimentary ways. Thus, morality can't be a matter of simple biology common to all animals - it needs a special, secret ingredient which is a level of consciousness that permits self-awareness to the degree found in humans or higher if such is possible. In short, morality may bud in animals, some of them, but it'll bloom only in the human mind or those blessed/cursed, I can never tell, with higher consciousness.
2. The usual way morality is explained by the theory of evolution is by demonstrating how, for example, altruism benefits the altruistic individual. I was quite happy with this answer until I realized that this basically means altruism = selfishness - that's like taking a white object and claiming that the whiteness is an illusion, that it's actually black. Granted that there's merit in such an approach for it brings to the fore paradoxes which to my reckoning lies at the heart of most/all issues that humans get involved in. For some reason I love paradoxes but that's a topic for another discussion. Anyway, did you notice what evolutionary biologists did there when they "explained" goodness (altruism) - it was achieved only by making the good (altruism) = bad (selfish). Yet, deep down, we can feel it in our hearts, we know something's off about it, our hearts (feelings) don't share our mind's (rationality) convictions that morality has now been explained by evolutinary theory. This uncertainty, this doubt, this discontenment, this tension between morality and the "explanation" for morality speaks volumes as far as I'm concerned. Something doesn't add up!
Quoting TheMadFool
I've been thinking about this for years, and I've done a fair bit of reading on it - and it makes no sense to me, or to the facts, to consider morality exclusively human, or even the consequence of conscious thought - not least because, if human beings were amoral brutes, as Nietzsche and Dostoevsky allude, we'd have wiped ourselves out.
Quoting TheMadFool
In chimpanzee society, they share food and groom each other. But they also remember who reciprocates, and withhold such favours from those who don't reciprocate, to encourage social cooperation. The same arguments play out in human civilisation with regard to taxation and welfare.
Quoting TheMadFool
Social animals tend to have moral behaviours, like meerkats for example. They live in big burrows, and some will stand guard while others forage, and issue warnings of the approach of predators.
Quoting TheMadFool
Sharing food, standing guard - are examples of altruistic behaviour, and the benefit is in reciprocation. Reciprocation is what makes moral behaviour an evolutionary advantage in the struggle to survive and breed.
Quoting TheMadFool
I could not disagree more....at least, not without risk of being banned for the kind of language I'd need to use to adequately express how much I disagree! I don't know of anyone else saying morality is a sense - like humour or aesthetics. But it's in how we react: That's funny. You look great. That's wrong! We just know, instinctively.
Further, if you look to Piaget - and infant development in psychology, again, we get a lot of ingrained moral behaviours, like sharing between infants, when one is given less than the other. Are you suggesting that all infants, somehow reason this out?
No! Morality predates human intellect in evolution history, and predates moral education of the individual. Morality is an innate sense; drilled into us by evolution. I found something that might help:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-learn/201809/infants-instincts-help-share-and-comfort
:up:
Quoting Warren
I don't think it makes much sense to ask if we as individuals or on the whole are modern, postmodern or neither. They're more historical eras in which particular modes of thought disrupted or dominated.
With that in mind, I'd say, yes, Western societies are in a postmodern era: metanarratives are declining, ethics are becoming contextualised, absolute concepts of truth given increasingly over to putative ones (modelling) and embedded ones (facts).
There is obviously huge resistance to this, a reassertion of archaic concepts and values which act as both defenses and rallying points. But that resistance is itself a defining feature of the postmodern era: even if modernism won the war, it was still challenged.
There's also post-truth, the wayward child of modernism and postmodernism in which logical fallacy is foundational, fact and fiction are equal, and truth is what you assert it to be. There's also resistance to this, so maybe we're out of postmodernism now and in the post-truth era. I think an argument against this is that there is every reason to doubt that post-truthers believe what they say, rather they are opportunistic hypocrites who elevate anything that is useful to them and throw shade on anything that is not, e.g. the Republican party.
Sorry to hear that! I'm sure the pay-offs will make up for the time [s]lost[/s] consumed.
Quoting counterpunch
I didn't imply that though it looks like I said it. Sorry for the confusion - I'm not a 100%. You know the feeling, right? See vide infra:
Quoting TheMadFool
Quoting counterpunch
This I brooded over deeply. Do you know what deep time or geological time is? I'm sure you do. A particular event needn't occur at human time scales. The Aravalli range in Northwest India were allegedly, at one time, higher than the himalayas, the current record holder for highest peaks, also found in India. The Aravallis experienced erosion over millions of years and their peaks were reduced to hills. The point to this being, we no doubt haven't "...wiped ourselves out" but are we...wiping ourselves...er...out? The difference between my point of view and yours is that between someone who leaves the theater in the middle of a movie and thinks the movie is over and someone who waits for the movie to end. Premature...er...ejaculation.!
Quoting counterpunch
Feel free to express yourself. Not for me though, you might learn something about yourself and that might be a good thing.
What you need to understand is that, looking at it in another way,
1. A theory that explains everything explains nothing. Your idea about tribal existence and others of that ilk all boil down to explaining both good and evil under one overarching theory which is just another way of saying, "my theory can explain everything." I'm sure you realized that the moment I showed you how atruism (good) is "explained" by the theory of evolution as ultimately serving a selfish (bad) purpose. Enough said!
2. An "explanation" such as above fails to do justice to an issue that's real as the letters on your screen, the issue of right and wrong. Morality is the one thing we care about deeply - ethics of this, ethics of that, so on - and yet there are no clear-cut guidelines on how to be a good person. I don't know how children in this day and age are faring but we were left to the mercy of our parents, friends, and the occasional teacher who cared.
Along comes science and its lackeys if I may refer to them like that and we're sent a notice that morality has been "explained" and how? By showing good is an illusion, it's actually bad e.g. altruism is "actually" selfish. I don't deny that such an explanation doesn't make sense, it does but, it fails to address what's the core issue - our minds are trying their best to conceive of a world in which altruism can't be somehow manipulated and made to fit into the box of selfishness. This, if nothing else, brings out the fundamental difference between mind and body - the former has more freedom than the latter and it shows in how we can conceive of, albeit only imperfectly, a world in which altruism isn't selfish all the while living in a world in which it is.
Perhaps. Pre-enlightenment, anyway.
Quoting counterpunch
The sense I make of it is the OT mythological sense. I read the story of the Fall as a psychological explanation - a fall out of the 'state of nature', where a lion or a monkey will be selfish or unselfish as its nature dictates, but always without consideration of what they ought to do or be. "They saw they were naked and were ashamed." - saw, that is, that they ought not be naked. The self awareness that leads to a moral choice is what we ancients take to be the difference between the human and animal. It is a psychological difference, that leaves the natural world innocent because ignorant. The possibility of virtue must arise at the same time as the possibility of vice as a dilemma, and because it is founded on a psychological awareness, also as a fall from innocence as the default. Hence it is is a tree of 'knowledge', the fruit of which leaves one expelled from the paradise of just being and doing into a mind-world of ought not and ought to do, and of moral judgement.