In a sense, moral actions have no agents, and moral propositions have no authors (speakers, thinkers). Rather, the moral action is the action through which an agent first originates. A moral proposition is that through which a mind is created.
10 Comments
12/22/2013 10:57:57 pm
How can moral actions and propositions have no agents in any sense? I can see how you can say that taking moral action is a concomitant with agency (you can't have one without the other, or at least the potential of the other) but how can you say action precedes agency? Or that a moral proposition creates the mind? At best, it seems to me, you are offering us a poetic way of speaking which has some ability to feel inspirational but lacks explanatory potential. Did you, in fact, mean to suggest the above statements were explanatory in some sense? Or were they mainly meant to serve as a kind of metaphor evoking the feel of an insightful reversal of our usual way of thinking about this?
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reshef
12/23/2013 12:02:14 am
I do take what I say to be explanatory in some sense. Very much so. But I’m not sure this contradicts the other alternative you mention. And that’s because I’m not sure what insight you think may come from a reversal of our usual way of thinking about the relations between agent and action, or thinker and proposition. Do you really think any insight can come from this reversal? Do you think the second alternative you offer me is really viable?
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Stuart W. Mirsky
12/23/2013 01:00:38 am
It seems to me that we define actions, understand them, that is, in terms of agency. If that's so, and I don't see how it can be otherwise, then you have to have whatever it is that makes an agent in place to have an action.
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Stuart W. Mirsky
12/23/2013 01:04:22 am
Ah, geez, I forgot about the peculiarity of this site. It gives an error message and asks you to try again after you press the submit button. Since it does that each time, even after each re-submit, you can get the kind of multiple messages as above. Please forgive the triple play and feel free to eliminate two out of three. I think the last one I sent was the best version since I made a few changes it before trying to correct respond to the error message for the third time!
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reshef
12/23/2013 07:29:42 am
Thanks Stuart,
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12/23/2013 07:51:57 am
Interesting. But what would we call a moral truth on this view? Is it things like "thou shalt not kill" or bear false witness or covet thy neighbor's wife? Or is it something more basic than such precepts, from which they could be derived? Or is it more like just realizing something and knowing it when we do? I find your area of interest to be mine as well and I have been kicking around the same kind of issues though I am not always sure I've got enough of a handle on them. Your formulation looks interesting but I am not yet sure what to make of it. In fact I wouldn't know how to make anything of it unless it seemed to me to present what is, in your words, moral truth or, as I would tend to put it, morally good, or at least a means of discovering this for myself. Are you moving in this direction then?
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reshef
12/24/2013 08:25:36 pm
Stuart,
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12/24/2013 09:52:18 pm
"'Thou shall not kill’ may very well be a moral truth. Whether it is depends on what role it plays in one’s mental-spiritual life—i.e. on how one takes it in. If one already has the mind to think it, then for them it is not a moral truth."
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reshef
12/26/2013 03:24:43 am
Stuart,
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Stuart W. Mirsky
12/26/2013 12:59:03 pm
Reshef,
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Academia.edu page Previous Notes Excluded Middle Moral Clarification The Will in the Tractatus Morality and Creation Moral Skepticism Understanding language and understanding music - The unity of a sentence, and the unity of a salad In what way secondary and absolute uses are nonsense (2) Another way of using nonsense Ethics as an Aspect of Philosophy - In what sense is there an ethical point to the Tractatus Interpretation as finding a way to say what the writer does - the Tractatus for example In what way secondary and absolute uses are nonsense Art is a matter of use - two claims, and a thought about the relation to ethics Both Aspects at the Same Time - in connection with Wittgenstein's early views on ethics Thinking and Willing Subjects in the Tractatus Two notions of "Family Resemblance" and a relation to Aspect-Perception The experience of thinking The Figurative and the Literal: two kinds of picturing: making reality thinkable What’s the Point of Figurative Language? ‘Juliet is the sun’ again – What kind of metaphor is it? Secondary and Absolute Uses of Terms – the Problem of Irresoluteness Secondary and Absolute Uses of Terms – the Problem of Examples Wrestling with Nonsense—A Protest: Absolute Senses, Secondary Senses, Gulfs between People, Difficulties of Reality, and Philosophy. What’s so bad about pain? Between Romantics and Anatomy: Religion and Pornography in Hanoch Levin The transcendence of ethics – two views Pain as form of behavior and pain as private object Archives
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