tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post6960907356172065098..comments2023-04-02T09:49:12.204-04:00Comments on Problems of Life: Waxing and Waning (Gaita)Matthew Pianaltohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-80215890777416656962014-03-14T13:00:13.564-04:002014-03-14T13:00:13.564-04:00Skipping the question about Blackburn (sorry), to ...Skipping the question about Blackburn (sorry), to the last paragraph above: I don't think I'd say I want to isolate ethics from psychology, but I'm wary (as came up before) of interpretations of "ought implies can" that leave too little room for positing and striving toward ethical ideals (even if only a saint, if anyone, reaches them). On the mood stuff: I mainly mean that there's a difference between looking at the vastness of space and thinking that everything is meaningless because I've been bickering with my wife (and so am in a bad mood) and being struck by that thought because of what the sky presents to me (under one of the aspects from which I can view it). Since in the latter case I'm not necessarily in any particular mood, I'm left unsure what the "right" response to such revelations would be. Hence, some of the puzzlement in my post.Matthew Pianaltohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-48925104274667320752014-03-13T09:40:35.291-04:002014-03-13T09:40:35.291-04:00Sure, the connection between the sense of groundle...Sure, the connection between the sense of groundlessness and the "aspect of meaninglessness" is contentious. But who cares? It is DEEP. The connection between unreality and unimportance, and reality and importance, is an important one to explore. I take it that this is the connection between metaphysics and morals. Murdoch again. <br /><br />I should mention in this context a connection that I think I can see to your previous post. God too has this double aspect—of existence and non-existence. I put my two cents here: http://reshefagamsegal.weebly.com/1/post/2014/02/the-grammar-of-religious-belief.html. Perhaps there is even some sense in which to make a connection between the groundlessness of values and the aspect of absolute significance. <br /><br />About Blackburn’s diagnosis: I’m not sure how useful it is. On the one hand, it seems useful in calling attention to the connection between reality and importance. But then instead of examining what ‘real’ may come to in different cases, it seems to keep working with a very rough and unexamined distinction between the real and the unreal. Anyway, what you do seems to me to bypass Blackburn’s concern in the sense that it examines (rather than assumes) what sense or senses reality and unreality has in connection with moral values. – Is this a fair characterization?<br /><br />You distinguish between what is revelatory and what is just a projection of moods. It sounds to me as if you are concerned with keeping ethics apart from psychology (as Frege was concerned with keeping logic apart from psychology). Is this right? If so, is there a special difficulty in this case? Or is the distinction between the psychological and what is not psychological take a different shape in the moral case?Reshefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01350527262158734622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-46284346723052846392014-03-13T09:05:01.803-04:002014-03-13T09:05:01.803-04:00Thanks, Reshef. I think I did mean to connect the ...Thanks, Reshef. I think I did mean to connect the sense of groundlessness to the "aspect of meaninglessness" but that is, of course, contentious at best (and sloppy thinking at worst). It's the sense that our categories and concerns are at once both deeply unreal and unimportant. Of course, some anti-realists (like Blackburn) would say that I'm just screwed up by a presumption that values are only important if they are "real," and I really need to get that looked at.<br /><br />Perhaps a "full understanding" would be working out what is (and isn't) to be made of the two aspects, what under each aspect is revelatory and what is just a projection of my own (good or bad) moods. But there is perhaps always something yet to be worked out.<br /><br />A similar notion on which I've been meditating is Iris Murdoch's contention that the good man sees "the pointlessness of virtue."Matthew Pianaltohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16380038537888895216noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20662860.post-67088966809019481142014-03-13T08:32:04.060-04:002014-03-13T08:32:04.060-04:00First, thanks. This is a wonderful post.
You say:...First, thanks. This is a wonderful post.<br /><br />You say: “it seems surprising that a person who had the kind of moral seriousness as [Gaita’s] father […] would have a sense of the reality of good and evil that waxes and wanes.”<br /><br />There are here, I think, two separate contrasts—one that Gaita is making (I haven’t yet read the book, so I’m going only by the quotation you supplied), and another that you are making. Gaita’s contrast, I think, is between full and partial understanding or appreciation of a moral insight. Your contrast—much more interesting—is between two aspects in which things, looked at in a certain way, can appear: the aspect of absolute significance and the aspect of complete meaninglessness. – I’m not sure I understand how these two contrasts connect for you, if they do. That is, I’m not sure how Gaita’s concern is a doorway to yours.<br /><br />One way of reading the quotation from what Gaita is as talking of the fact that even though we may come to appreciate—or be struck—by the truth of Socrates claim about suffering and doing evil, the practical consequences of that may not by that appreciation become clear to us, or they may only become partly clear, or gradually clear. That would lead to one way of making Gaita’s contrast. But your question is very different—and it pertains to your contrast. You talk of something like fully appreciating the fact that things (e.g. what is revealed by the night sky) may have two very different aspects. – Can you say what you mean here by “full understanding”? What is the opposite of “full” here? Is it “partial”? And what is less than full understanding?<br /><br />Also, are you connecting what you call “the groundlessness of our values” to seeing things under the aspect of meaninglessness?Reshefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01350527262158734622noreply@blogger.com