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Are Enlightenment Ideals Unequivocal Goods?
Empirical knowledge is knowledge based on what we observe through our senses or tools that extend our senses. Empirical knowledge, in its purity, is only knowledge which we have ourselves observed. Reason is the ability to change our thinking when provided new information by use of logic.
Both of these are hailed as the hallmark of the Enlightenment and are used to discredit Tradition and Faith.
They limit truth to only what is newly or recently observed via new technologies.
Religion, especially Christianity, is full of empirical truth, as experiential – but it is gleaned over thousands of years of many (or One’s) experiences – far longer than any one person can live or observe. Tradition also follows this long term experience by relying on the wisdom of ancestors to guide our path today (G.K. Chesterton would agree).
Hyper-individualism (another byproduct of the enlightenment) also prefers what is best or favored by one individual and rejects all impact on society as a whole. It is true that one individual will not cause long-term, societal repercussions, but many embracing the same pattern of behavior result in long-term consequences at a societal level that can affect generations as demonstrated by history. This may add weight to the idea of an individual’s Christian faith needing a community. These are effects that we, ourselves, cannot observe and are not based in reason’s new information. Here, reason and empiricism fail us.
It has long been my belief that the Bible, as a blueprint for living well, is a cosmic pattern for long term survival of the human race and civilization where honoring your father and mother (so you might live long upon the earth) is the micro version. Parents know better the long-term consequences of a child’s choices than the child does – as does the ultimate parent, our Eternal Father in Heaven, know better the trajectory of humankind.
For the inheritors of the enlightenment, history begins with Locke.
Published in General
Well, I probably didn’t express myself as well as I could have. It was Valentine’s Day and my wife wanted me to spend time with her.
Human nature is likely a cause of people doing good things and bad things. It’s likely a cause of our competitive nature and our cooperative nature.
I think the human’s ability to reason and reflect on past experience, including the experiences of past generations and civilizations, has persuaded human beings to expand the circle of empathy.
Maybe we started out only caring about ourselves and our family members. But later we decided that in order to prosper, we had to care about the tribe. Later we decided that rather than get mired in endless wars with the rival tribe, we’d reach a truce with the other tribe and there would be intermarriage with the other tribe. Then nations and races.
Along the way there were tribal wars, religious wars, wars of nation against nation and racial oppression. But as Larry mentioned, enlightened self-interest along with some aspect of human nature, empathy towards other people similar to us, motivated us to universalize our concern.
Ok. My wife is calling me into the kitchen.
I agree in part. Sometimes it’s good to suffer in the short term for long term gain.
For example, a high school student would rather hang out with his friends instead of study for his chemistry exam. But he suffers through the studying for his chemistry exam in order to enjoy more well-being and happiness in the long term.
The reason why taking cocaine for a “high” is a bad idea is because the enjoyment is artificial and not sustainable. A tolerance for the cocaine is built up and later the user requires more and more cocaine for a smaller and smaller “high.” All the while this is happening, the user is damaging his body.
Taking the long view is something that human beings have an imperfect record of doing. The alcohol makes us feel good without having to accomplish anything. It’s easier to drink a beer than it is to put a fresh coat of paint on ones house.
But overall, a society where people are enjoying lots of happiness (not just in the short term either, but long term) and minimal suffering is “better” than a society where people are suffering a lot and enjoying very little happiness.
What if someone only cares about his own happiness and gets a thrill out of making others suffer? I don’t think I can persuade this kind of person. I can only hope that people like him are a small enough minority among the population to where they won’t overwhelm the rest of us.
A smart person who uses his smarts for what I consider to be sinister motives, like a Bernie Madoff or even an Adolph Hitler, can do real damage.
To be blunt size, usually height, and muscle mass are cues for physical attraction in females because those traits are the ones that passed on. To make it even more simple evolution is a winnowing, for the most part, in the gene pool. Human history and our current physiology speak to the polygynous—where there would be intrasexual competition for mates so height and muscle mass would be important factors—types winning in the beginning of the species, and hence their past traits impacts us today.
Psychopathic traits, like narcissism and false charm, can be seen initially as attractive, “he’s confident and commanding”, and depending on the other traits of the psychopath, being tall and strong, would make the male seem like a winner for genetic cues to the female. As I mentioned before psychopathy has gradations. There probably is a sweet spot but the point remains that it works, which speaks to the genetic lineage of females and their choices also.
It would depend upon how psycopathic they were though. If they were Uber-psychopathic they may be too duplicitous that they give themselves away and are killed for being a threat. Probably more likely that those who hit that sweet spot are most likely to have more sexual liaisons but other human traits and inventions get in that way, like inventing birth control technology, of it having an absolute effect. Remember that while a psycopath might be able to get some female mates it would take extraordinary ability to successfully procreate with all females and other males may guard their own mates.
Sometimes there is no happy ending.
The genetics of the bad-boy are unimportant to the woman. Psychologically she’s looking at someone who can protect her for the rest of her days. Children come a distant second to self-survival. Or at least that’s how I explain the attraction. There are a lot of wiry little guys with pony tails and hob-nail belts and Doc Martins (do I date myself?) with broad smiles and big talk who dance like bongo drummers and who get cute girls — short, but cute.
One thing I forgot to mention is the Rawlsian Veil of Ignorance idea.
When developing ideas about right and wrong, imagine a society in which you don’t know your place. You don’t know if you are going to be a slave or a master. You don’t know if you are going to be extremely poor or extremely wealthy.
What moral framework would you apply to this society? Would you allow slavery or prohibit it? Would you require socialism or free enterprise? Would you prefer universal suffrage and a representative democracy or a dictatorship? Would there be trials by jury?
Now, one objection could be: Why should I play this game? Why shouldn’t I construct moral rules based on my current personal biases without worrying about how it might impact me if I were in a different situation (if I were of a different race, gender, economic class)?
That’s another set of unanswerable questions, in my view. I suspect that anyone who asks such questions really doesn’t want to develop a “good” set of moral rules and simply wants the “rules” rigged for his benefit.
Short term considerations, by definition, tend to be what people look for but going back to physiology human females are rather well suited to rearing of offspring solo and anthropological research tends to show that women were gatherers, who could meet their own caloric needs, and even today we see single mothers. So women do not by necessity require big and tall to live their days out or raise offspring.
It is, however, a boon. And boons matter in competition, whether intra-species or inter-species. So in this world of competition those women with the genes that sought out a long-term mate would have greater chances than those that did not and so had more descendants. Obviously it wasn’t a great enough boon to take over the gene pool entirely. But overall I don’t think protection is the entire picture, it is probably a plurality of the calculation though.
Psychopaths do have certain behavior that can create a facade of behaviors that are evolutionarily good and do not relate to protection directly. The narcissism, manipulation, and arrogance of a psychopath can make them appear confident and dominant. Those are both widely known female attraction cues because those types of males were more likely to engage females and mate with them, which would mean more offspring and success—and possibly ability to acquire materials for offspring or mate.
The problem for Rawls is that his Veil of Ignorance idea does not lead to the outcome he prefers. Even he acknowledged that. If you actually give people a choice between being placed randomly into a socialist, equalitarian, growthless society (as Rawls favored), and a capitalist society with equality of opportunity and an emphasis on economic growth, most people prefer the capitalist society. Which is why no one ever got shot trying to go east over the Berlin Wall.
Bernie Sanders (and John Rawls) might want to think that if this question was posed to people, people would prefer the elimination of corporations, the profit motive and for all health care providers to be government employees. Maybe the only reason why people don’t vote this way is because people take a peek behind the veil?
Well, no.
It’s because the average Joe understands human nature (both the good aspects and bad aspects) more accurately than the Bernie bros.
In a debate featuring Philosophy professor Shelly Kagan and Christian William Lane Craig, Kagan mentions the Rawlsian veil of ignorance. But Kagan also adds the caveat that people would make this decision while being “perfectly rational.” So, there’s a double utopian quality to this hypothetical. We must first strive hard to be impartial and we must second strive hard to be rational.
Don’t get me wrong. I like the Rawlsian veil of ignorance. It’s just a tough hypothetical situation to play along with.
The Veil of Ignorance was Rawls’ effort to marshal peoples’ self-interest in support of his preferred socialist society. And it fails. It fails abysmally. In real life, people performing this thought experiment do not choose socialism. Rawls and Kagan can then say that those people are not being “rational.” But they are.
I don’t know what you mean by “human nature,” or how you can separate “human nature” from the reasoning process of the human mind, but however you choose to characterize the decision-making process, people will choose to live in the United States, rather than the Soviet Union, Cuba, or Venezuela. Almost invariably. Rawls and his ilk may like to think that only they are being “rational” because they choose socialism; but their so-called rationality consists of being an ideologue who ignores evidence and history. The average Joe does know better, and doesn’t find it tough to play along with this hypothetical. Not tough at all.
I agree. People have reflected on the performance of societies that “chose” to redistribute income and wealth “according to his need” and saw that this performance was awful.
That’s a good point. I have been implicitly using “human nature” and the human’s ability to reason as separate aspects of the human personality. If I try to make sense of this separation, I would say that my feeling hungry after not having eaten in 16 hours is part of my “basic human nature.” (I’ve added the word “basic” in there on purpose.)
My ability to read scientific data and weigh the pros and cons of intermittent fasting is part of my reasoning ability. I can decide to invest less time in reading the scientific literature regarding various diets and/or fasting. but I can not decide to not get hungry after not eating for almost a full day.
I would argue that what I am describing as “basic human nature” does not equip us to be moral. Wolves get hungry. Yet they can not be moral or immoral. We are only capable of being moral or immoral because we have a reasoning ability.
I agree that Rawls (and perhaps Kagan, I don’t know Kagan’s politics) has assumed that socialism is the optimal economic system despite massive evidence to the contrary.
As for the average Joe finding it hard to play along with the hypothetical, I think it is very difficult. One can try to be objective, but even as we try to set aside our biases, we still have them. Still, the classic Leftish critique of the working class average Joe in Kansas is the “What’s the Matter With Kansas” critique, that people aren’t biased enough in favor of their selfish economic interests and too biased in favor of their social-religious interests. It’s also wrong.