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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (14687)	11/12/1998 7:04:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 67261

>If you ask the same person if it is nice and kind and good to give someone who is hungry food, they will look at you like your insulting them and say, yes. < The interesting part comes not from asking an unqualified question, but when you ask if act A is more nice or kind or meritorious than act B. If you ask "is giving food to the hungry more important than spending the money on crop research" (and we assume there is a pot of resources being contested) you won't get such a monolithic answer. I think the interesting discussion here lies at the place where there are differences, controversies which affect very real social policy. It is the way we order or prioritize the common sense rights and wrongs which mark a social policy. For that policy to succeed, it needs popular approval. Consensus. In this light - whether or not you really do know the purpose of life becomes unimportant. More to the point is the nature of the policies which are formed from the moral ideas which devolve from this knowledge of life's purpose. Do these policies find a mirror in enough voters to become nationally important? And what of those whose own wisdom about life, the Universe and everything lead them to an implacably opposed set of values? A morally neutral mechanism needs to exist to forge consensus and a sense of social identity from this living chaos. >I know the purpose of life.< The danger I see here is that this leads to a logically compelling moral framework - but one which does not have an evolutionary provision. (If you know the purpose of life - then all you know, learn, see... must be subordinated to that principle. It is all-consuming. To change the framework, even minutely, is to change the core principle.) I worry that this leads to rigidity - the kind we see in Saudi Arabia or North Korea. I would not voluntarily choose citizenship in either place - because I would not want to be placed at a clear disadvantage for dissenting from the state religion.

To: one_less who wrote (14687)	11/12/1998 9:14:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

Actually, Abdul Haq, you are a Kantian, a believer in the Categorical Imperative. :-) The Categorical Imperative has the general form: DO 'A' (i.e., it is UNCONDITIONED). There is only one imperative that commands us unconditionally and that is the Moral Law: "Act only on that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." This single Categorical Imperative, however, has several formulations. The first is: "Act as if the maxim of your action were to secure through your will a universal law of nature." The second is:"Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or that of another, always as an end and never as a means only." I do not agree with Lather (although you apparently do) that the statement "I know the purpose of life", in and by itself, indicates that you are necessarily rigid in your attitudes. It is one thing to say you "know" the ultimate purpose of life. It is quite another to say you "know" precisely how that purpose will be, or should be, realized. Its like the end and the means; we may both agree on the same end, but differ on the proper means to achieve it. There are people who feel they know the purpose of life. Then there are those who, as you say, don't even want to think about it. And then there are those who have a purpose IN life, but are not at all sure they know the purpose OF life. In other words, X leads his life AS IF there were some higher purpose, but he is by no means convinced that there is. There are quite a few people in this category. And you seem to contradict yourself a bit here, when you talk about an "anything goes, accommodate all attitude" which makes it "pointless to discuss problem solving". Elsewhere, you express the belief that there is a core moral sense that even the most reprobate criminals share (our Kantian Categorical Imperative). jbe