tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post7643595729193914816..comments2024-03-28T08:57:53.180+00:00Comments on Darwinian Conservatism by Larry Arnhart: The Rationalist Strikes Back: Thomas Nagel on David Brooks' Moral BiologyLarry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-43866575418646030792011-03-17T15:08:16.618+00:002011-03-17T15:08:16.618+00:00I agree with what you say, but add that Hume has a...I agree with what you say, but add that Hume has an especially tough time with rational psychopaths because they do follow their passions/desires, and Hume claims that desires can not be rationally criticized. Plus, he eschews all teleology so he can't criticize the psychopath for having abnormal desires; there are no such things for Hume.Empedocleshttp://apoxonbothyourhouses.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-59669155187278253162011-03-17T06:06:57.463+00:002011-03-17T06:06:57.463+00:00Reason comes after the fact. We have the emotional...Reason comes after the fact. We have the emotional/moral response to a situation. Then we rationalize it. Then we think and possible talk through the situation and use reason to help inform future behavior (under ideal conditions). Properly internalized, it then affects the next emotional response. Repeat.<br /><br />Some of us in the humanities are doing Darwinian work as well:<br /><br />http://evolutionandliterature.blogspot.comTroy Camplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16515578686042143845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-1288792674178318122011-03-15T15:23:47.472+00:002011-03-15T15:23:47.472+00:00In the striving for a good human life, reason and ...In the striving for a good human life, reason and desire are mutually dependent. Without reason, we could not intelligently manage our desires for their full satisfaction over a whole life. Without desire, our reason would lack any power to move us to think or act rationally. Even the most abstract activities of reason depend on desires such as curiosity or wonder to motivate and guide our thoughts. <br /><br />"Thought by itself moves nothing," Aristotle observed, because any human action that is deliberately chosen requires a union of reason and desire. A deliberate choice manifests either "desiring reason" or "reasoning desire."<br /><br />Sometimes desires are consciously apprehended, but not always. Like other animals, human beings often do not have full conscious awareness of the desires that move them. But to the extent to which they are conscious of their desires, human beings make prudent judgments about their conduct.<br /><br />This view of ethics as arising from reason and desire--ethics as rooted in natural human desires, as requiring habits of right desire, and as guided by prudential reasoning in judging the contingencies of action--was originally developed by Aristotle in his ethical, rhetorical, and biological writings. (Aristotle's RHETORIC is particularly important for understanding the psychology of the moral emotions.)<br /><br />Other philosophers in the tradition of ethical naturalism, such as Hume and Smith, have defended a similar understanding. Just as Aristotle declared that "thought by itself moves nothing," Hume declared that "reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will."<br /><br />Although Aristotle, Hume, and Darwin believed that most human beings were inclined by nature to develop a moral sense, they recognized that some human beings were morally depraved in that they found pleasure in brutal acts taht would not be naturally pleasurable to normal people. <br /><br />Aristotle thought that such depravity could arise from three possible causes--from injury, from habituation, or from innate temperament. A physical injury could cause mental disorder. Bad habituation, as in those abused from childhood, could cause morbid behavior. Or an inborn abnormality of temperament could cause brutal dispositions. Darwin suggested similar causes when he spoke of those who lacked the social emotions that support the moral sense. Such a person would be an "unnatural monster" and "essentially a bad man," for whom "the sole restraining motive left is the fear of punishment." Hume would identify such a person as a "clever knave."<br /><br />Today, we call people like this psychopaths. Those who are psychopathic have no moral sense. This is not caused by any lack of rationality, because psychopaths are often remarkably intelligent people. This is caused by a deficit in their moral emotions--probably tied to some abnormality in their brains--so that they cannot feel love, guilt, shame, or sympathy for others.<br /><br />Since psychopaths lack the moral emotions that make moral experience possible, it is impossible to persuade them that they are mistaken. Our only appeal with such people is force and fear. In the most extreme cases, we lock them up or execute them.<br /><br />Brooks takes up the research on psychopathy in one passage of his book. I have a chapter on psychopathy in DARWINIAN NATURAL RIGHT.Larry Arnharthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-91755262291882792292011-03-15T14:21:49.222+00:002011-03-15T14:21:49.222+00:00So how do you reconcile Hume's view that reaso...So how do you reconcile Hume's view that reason is and ought to be slave to the passions, and that passions are not subject to rational criticism, with his view of human sympathy? How can he rationally say that we ought to have a passion for the feelings of other humans? How could he rationally criticize someone who just happens to lack that sympathy?Empedocleshttp://apoxonbothyourhouses.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-33638020402218734232011-03-15T12:09:56.814+00:002011-03-15T12:09:56.814+00:00In DARWINIAN NATURAL RIGHT, I argue that Hume'...In DARWINIAN NATURAL RIGHT, I argue that Hume's idea of the moral sense as rooted in natural human desires belongs to the tradition of ethical naturalism begun by Aristotle. Hume appeals to moral sentiments that manifest a universal human nature, and therefore he is not a subjectivist or nihilist.<br /><br />I have elaborated these points in many of my posts on this blog.Larry Arnharthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-70137117055714546792011-03-15T05:04:19.262+00:002011-03-15T05:04:19.262+00:00With all due sympathy for your critical remarks on...With all due sympathy for your critical remarks on Nagel, I'm a bit troubled by your easy assimilation of Plato and Kant and Aristotle to Hume. I've not read Brooks' book, but the articles and interviews I've read have led me to some worries that it is too Humean. To my mind, there is a very important difference between Aristotle and Hume, one that you have sometimes overlooked. The difference is in their answer to the question of what <i>makes</i> something good. Hume thinks that what makes something good is, in the last analysis, just that we desire it. We don't and can't desire things for reasons, unless of course the reason is supplied by some further end that we just desire for no reason at all. Hume's ethics is thus thoroughly subjectivist.<br /><br />Aristotle rejects this view, as you must realize. For Aristotle, what makes something good is that it constitutes or is appropriately related to the integral exercise of our essential capacities as rational animals. The complete and harmonious exercise of these capacities is our natural end. Though anything we desire for its own sake ordinarily bears <i>some</i> sort of relation to these ends, our desires can be warped or distorted by natural deficiencies or by poor habituation, and in any event the desire that we have for these ends is not what makes them good. The best that Hume can do is to say that some desires are unusual or impossible to realize coherently; it is just not open to him, given his analysis of desire and practical reason, to talk about a desire being intrinsically mistaken (i.e., mistaken just by virtue of what it is for, not by virtue of how it relates to our other desires). <br /><br />This difference has pretty serious implications. For one thing, Humean subjectivism is, in effect, nihilism for people who are happy to be unreflective and pretty conventional. But it is no less nihilistic than Nietzsche. I would have expected you, as someone who has written eloquently about the threat of nihilism, to appreciate the difference between a view like Aristotle's that sees the good as a matter of actualizing our essential capacities as rational animals, and a view like Hume's which tells us that the objects of our desires have no value beyond what our desires give them. If there is no standard for our desires, then why should it really matter what we desire? <br /><br />My worry about Brooks is that he leans too far in this Humean direction. That is, no doubt, part of Nagel's worry, too. But Nagel, you're right, is too Kantian. Kantians, of course, can end up sounding a whole lot like Aristotelians once they're willing to translate their talk about personhood and rational agency into talk about our nature as rational animals (see Korsgaard's more recent work, in which she defends an explicitly teleological account of the human good drawing on Plato and Aristotle and still thinks that she's being faithful to Kant; or consider Rawls' recourse to the importance for rational agents of 'expressing their rational nature' through respect for other rational agents). They often won't make that translation, of course, and insist that facts and 'values' are utterly distinct. That mistake, however, is motivated in part by a desire to avoid the problems with views like Hume's, which leave us unable to evaluate our desires except relative to other desires. To that extent, the Kantian critique is right on.<br /><br />Aristotle offers us a tremendous resource in part because his view allows us to reject the false dichotomy between Humean subjectivism and Kantian apriorism. I'm disappointed that you seem to want to keep that dichotomy alive.<br /><br />For a very nice account of the differences between Aristotle, Hume, and Kant, see Fred Miller's "Aristotelian Autonomy."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com