Systematically inchoate questions
The following is a quote from Harry Frankfurt's Reasons of Love, pages 24-25.
The above is pertaining the question of 'How should we live?'... But, does this not apply to a wider range of ideas and questions in philosophy, which are systematically inchoate? I would like to ask, when does a question become, indeed, systematically inchoate, and how do we come about knowing this?
Furthermore, do you agree with this analysis, why or why not?
Thanks.
Harry Frankfurt:
Once we begin asking how people should live, we are bound to find ourselves helplessly in a spin. The trouble is not that the question is too difficult . Asking the question tends to be disorientating, rather, because it is inescapably self-referential and leads us to an endless circle. No attempt to deal with the problem of what we have good reason to care about-to deal with it systematically and from the ground up-can possibly succeed. Efforts to conduct a rational inquiry into the matter will inevitably be defeated and turned back upon themselves.
It is not hard to see why. In order to carry out a rational evaluation of some way of living, a person must first know what evaluative criteria to employ and how to employ them.
[...]
The trouble here is a rather obvious sort of circularity. In order for a person to be able even to conceive and to initiate and inquiry into how to live, he must already have settled upon the judgments at which the inquiry aims. Identifying the question of how one should live-that is, understanding just what question it is and just how to go about answering it-requires that one specify the criteria that are to be employed in evaluating various ways of living. Identifying the question is, indeed tantamount to specifying those criteria: what the question asks is, precisely, what way of living best satisfies them. But identifying the criteria to be employed in evaluating various ways of living is also tantamount to providing and answer to the question of how to live, for the answer to this question is simply that one should live in the way that best satisfies whatever criteria are to be employed for evaluating lives.
Clarifying what question the inquiry is to explore consists in identifying the criteria on the basis of which the exploration is to be pursued. But this comes to the same thing as affirming the judgments concerning what makes on life preferable to another, at which the inquiry aims. One might say, then, that the question is systematically inchoate. It is impossible to identify the question exactly, or to see how to go about inquiring into it, until the answer to the question is known.
The above is pertaining the question of 'How should we live?'... But, does this not apply to a wider range of ideas and questions in philosophy, which are systematically inchoate? I would like to ask, when does a question become, indeed, systematically inchoate, and how do we come about knowing this?
Furthermore, do you agree with this analysis, why or why not?
Thanks.
Comments (77)
I don't agree that the situation is so hopelessly circular. Instead - if you believe in the intelligibility of self-organised systems - the situation is the organic symmetry breaking one that I am always describing. You can escape spinning on a spot via the asymmetry of a dichotomy. You create intelligible structure by heading towards a self-consistent hierarchical organisation. A separation into the local and the global.
So take the question of how we ought to live. Of course this is actually about the most difficult of all as we are still inventing that answer as humans. We are changing our global story so fast - our general social, cultural, economic and ecological environment - that we can't expect to have settled down to some firm view on the fine detail of what that all means in terms of our schedule for the day.
Yet still, sociology tells us broadly that humans evolve a hierarchical organisation that gives direction to their particular actions. In every moment, there is some general sense of what you are all about as an expression of your system of civilised people. A functioning community.
Importantly, the general aspect of a system only constrains or shapes local actions. It doesn't prescribe in rule bound fashion.
As the actor, you in fact could do bloody anything at any time. You could have an epileptic fit and truly be in a spasm of trying to do everything at once, as randomly as possible. But if we are talking of ourselves as evolved social creatures with in fact fairly organised tendencies already, then we at least start on a balanced pro-social yet also self-interested footing. And then responding to the constraints of our social and ecological setting, we will creatively work out how best to express what we understand of the general goals of "a civilised person".
So the systems view already is based on constraints and freedoms. Co-operation and competition. Law and creativity/spontaneity. These are the complementary global and local bounds that together are meant to produce a story of generally functional behaviour. The social system exists because it is divided in a way that maintains a creative self-organising state of development and adaptation.
Of course, as a small cog in the machine, it often ain't easy to figure it out. As I say, we have created a world where the global constraints are changing at an accelerating pace.
But still, that doesn't mean we have to spin on the spot in circular self-referential fashion. In practice, we all try to form bubbles of social relations within which our actions can make sense. Whether that is as a gamer, a Samaritan, a parent, or whatever. We are seeking the rules of those small worlds - their general codes of behaviour, their general reasons for being - so as to play a creative part in maintaining those worlds as a self-organised thing.
So the same dynamic is always the case. It starts with a separation into the particular and the general. One is the creative freedom of some local act. The other is the constraint of the larger purpose or social form that it can serve.
When the two dovetail nicely, we feel our lives are in a state of flow. It all works harmoniously.
When our lives are not like that, then that is when we have to figure something out. Understanding that it is all about natural hierarchical organisation becomes a help at that stage.
What's an asymmetry of a dichotomy?
What's overly intellectualized here? It all seems plain and simple thinking to me.
Having two extremes of the one thing - scale - is to break a symmetry so as to create an asymmetry. A fundamental lop-sidedness.
It is the same when talking about constraints vs freedoms. They are both the same thing - causes. But having been divided into the global vs the local, they look completely different. They are the asymmetric opposite of each other. Or more carefully said, each other's reciprocal.
I don't quite see how this applies to the topic though. Care to elaborate?
I explained. Symmetry breaking breaks the symmetry of spinning on the spot to produce the local~global asymmetry of hierarchical organisation.
Instead of self-referential circularity, you have the mutual-referentiality of a hierarchically divided organisation. One scale represents the extreme long-term, the other the extreme short-term.
And so that maps to typical social structure. There is some general framework of expectations. There is some set of detailed actions that make sense within that context.
I don't see that I can make it any plainer.
And how does this apply to the topic for sake of redundancy? I must have read it a couple of times but am still struggling to conceptualize it into the grand scheme of things.
Quoting apokrisis
OK, I'm still lost.
Well how do you think social organisation develops? Give us your version.
It is plain and simple thinking. Thinking for the plain and the simple.
I'm not sure that's relevant? If it is how so?
So, it's overly intellectualized but too plain and simple. What are you trying to say here?
Oh for fuck's sakes. :yawn:
So, you've resorted to ad hom's and gross over-generalizations? Fine.
What? I asked how does symmetry breaking lead to the resolution of the issue, and no response on that.
What sort of issue is it?
Ethics aren't intellectual, then?
So, then what can anything of meaning be said about them if they can't be intellectualized?
Not what I said.
Are you trying to shut down this aspect of the discussion? How are you anticipating that I might respond?
So, no discussion?
Great.
Are you trying to shut down this aspect of the discussion? How are you anticipating that I might respond?
Here's what you said:
Quoting StreetlightX
Then is it or is it not an intellectual issue?
Sure it can be talked about, but not intellectualized? Where or how are you delineating between the two?
Anyone who doesn't care how i respond is a monster.
What's funny?
I'm doing as best I can. I just was wondering why you seem to be against discussing matters of what you call the only ethical question there is. If it can't be intellectualized, then what's left there to say about the issue, at least philosophically?
Apparently what's funny is that I'm challenging your attempt to shutdown discussion of whether or not viewing ethics as intellectual makes one a monster or not. So I'll keep the discussion going; what makes one a monster for thinking So? Elaborate. Discuss with me.
I'm not. The fact that I need to explain this - yeah, I'm done.
So, you haven't addressed the second part of that post, which I hoped you would. But, it's alright, I won't make the false assumption that your an authority on the matter if that's alright with you.
I'm fine with you being done.
I'll see if I can muster a reply you deserve. I think that ethics can be intellectualized due to the fact that we do it all the time. However, as per the OP and perhaps agreeing with StreetlightX, that such questions are indeed systematically incholate. Thus, ethics can be talked about but not in the normal philosophical manner as we think it could. Hope that made some sense.
Naah, it's fine. We can carry on just fine.
What angered me about @StreetlightX's response which I tried to express in parody, which obviously doesn't work for most people in general (sorry SLX), is that, for instance, SLX is a very intellectual person him/herself. And yet, when I simply bring up the issue, I'm told off that anyone who intellectualizes ethics is a monster. Clearly an emotional nerve has been struck. Laughing emoji indeed. Shut my inquiries down all day; I'll just inquire harder.
Of course there's an intellectual aspect to ethics; ethics is a fucking branch of philosophy. But if we emotionalize ethical problems, that's when we try to shut down attempts at inquiry with emotional shame tactics, as @StreetlightX did by labeling anyone a monster who tries to intellectualize ethics. Labeling you, Posty, SLX, and myself all as peripheral monsters at best, for people who post on philosophy forums about ethics.
So, how should one live?
You don't know me; I can't even try to tell you that I think about ethics all the time in daily life, and that I feel awkward all the time in normal interactions because I'm hypersensitive to how people treat one another, and that I shirk away from social interactions because I hate how much people fake ethical norms in order to get ahead for their own sakes, myself included at times. I can't even tell you that; and you wouldn't believe me because you don't know me. I wouldn't believe you if you told me that. But wait, isn't that part of the problem?
Emotional response aside, isn't there some abstract reflection to be done, once we make these intuitive, emotionally ethical responses? Once we reflect on how we feel, for instance, once I reflect on what I just said in the above paragraph, doesn't some intellectual strength bear us forward?
You don't give me much to reply towards.
Respectfully, Posty, I don't think it's a case of "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one ought to remain silent." I think we can speak about how ethics and the intellect interact; I think if we can't, then we can't talk about much. If ethics is purely unintellectual, then what is it? Emotional? Primal?
Btw, and more to your point here; so what that people don't intellectualize ethics on a day to day basis? What do people intellectualize on a normal day? Nothing. Red herring.
Same boat here, although due to differing reasons.
I agree that we intellectualize ethics every day. I mean how couldn't we? But, again as per the OP it's systematically incholate to do so in my opinion also.
So then what's left to say about these profound questions, since you edited your post now? Simply doing or action?
No idea Noble. But emotional or originating from a volition, passion, or desire or love sounds close.
:lol: [there's a joke there]
To systematize ethics is definitely problematic. Ethics is complex. No one can figure out ethics; it's a bitch. But the intellect still deals with ethics. Again, otherwise ethics is just a big emotional meltdown. The sort of thing I'm very familiar with. So it's odd to me that I have to be the one to emphasize that ethics is a rational, intellectual domain. The very notion that ethics and the intellect are separate creates the very meltdowns and pathologies in which an ethical (moral?) position becomes a fundamentalism, whether religious, political, atheistic, or whatever. Suddenly, any assault on the position is poison. The attack gets shut down at all costs.
Agreed.
I would say love, maybe. That's a loaded word, though. But of course ethics deals with love. We can look at it apophatically; @StreetlightX and I don't love each other. Should we? I think so. What would it take for love to sprout between us?
Well, ol Frankfurt in the book quoted in the OP makes the case that self love is the highest good from which virtuous behavior can originate. Do you think so?
I feel that that's the real issue. What does it mean to love oneself?
Elaborate! Discuss! Dream! Disagree! Join us, SLX!
So, according to Frankfurt, self love is disinterested care for oneself, if I recall correctly. Love generates it's own reasons according to Frankfurt. If your going to save someone in a lake and your wife or someone else is drowning, then love commands that you save the person you love from drowning. No questions asked.
Disinterested; yes. This is the nugget I could never pull out of the Gospels; Can I love myself on my own? Can I care for myself the way I care for someone else whom I love? No, not at all. How do I do that?
Can you put it in layman's terms?
I don't really have an answer to the how part. I'm still rereading the book referenced in the OP.
Isn't the "how" the crux of love, though?
What do you mean? The how in self love is just a matter of acceptance, I suppose. How much are you willing to look past your faults and accept yourself and not judge yourself. Easier said than done...
What's a rational evaluation, Harry?
adjective: inchoate
just begun and so not fully formed or developed; rudimentary.
"a still inchoate democracy"
synonyms: rudimentary, undeveloped, unformed, immature, incipient, embryonic; More
beginning, fledgling, developing
"their government should not interfere in the inchoate market forces"
That reflects my reaction to the quote in the OP. That some questions like “how shall we live” are too vague, too general. Not unimportant or unanswerable, just incomplete. Questions like that need further clarification, or need to be broken down into component parts. Like asking “where do we drive to?”
Where do you want to go? What do you want to see?
One thing Frankfurt is right about is that ethical 'answers' are co-eval with ethical 'questions': and they are coeval because all ethics are the result of encounters which define the very questions which constitute the field of ethics. Ethics is not some kind of thought-game, some intellectual past-time for the bored and lonely, requiring some inane deliniation of pre-set 'criteria'. But this is not a 'fault' of ethics, a 'systematic incoherency', this is its pure consistency, through and through, compromised by all idiotic attempts to treat it categorically.
That used to be the kind of question that religions and the religious aspects of philosophy - like virtue ethics, or stoicism - were thought to address. What is the good life? What aims to strive for? In any of the classical cultures, there was a body of literature about just these kinds of questions and their proposed solutions - in fact these were central to what culture is supposed to provide. Stoics, after all, were named after the porches from which they used to address their audiences, and these questions are just the kinds of questions that they would tackle. There were stories of heroes and epic dramas which re-told them. That was what 'culture' means. And if the question now seems 'inchoate' then perhaps that reflects a shortcoming of modern culture or the modern way of life. (Man walks past, looking at iPhone screen.....)
Actually an OP by David Brooks comes to mind, which was about a sociological survey of young adults attitudes to ethics. The main point was:
Which seems to speak of the same kind of problems that the passage quoted in the OP is aware of.
I think, basically, the problem is a kind of understated nihilism - not a sturm und drang kind of nihilism, but more like a shrug, a 'whatever' - which arises from the erosion of cultural ethics, the absence of meta-narratives and normative stories. We're all presumed to be responsible individuals, and yet the culture in which we live has abandoned or outgrown its orientating myths. 'Things fall apart'. In some ways, it is unavoidable, given the enormous rate of change of the world we're in. But I think it's correct to sense that it is in some sense an emergency.