Laurentius

I was saying:
Yeah, this is what philosophy can turn out to be like: the “revelation-bearing word” of a charismatic, supra-gifted preacher, who gathers around his towering figure a sect-like “fan club”. Thus, I am disappointed to remark another resemblance between religion and philosophy.
And Malaclypse the Younger replied:
Well, it is entirely plausible, I think, to believe that the resemblance of the perceived deficiencies in religion to those in philosophy in general stem from a common human human source; philosophers in general are no more or less human than theologians.

AVE Malaclypse the Younger,
I suspect it is more than just and additional case of human weakness. IMO, the cult of either the philosopher or the prophet shows that it is natural that people should seek for an "enlightened/enlightening" leader that can embody their main principles of faith, value, and truth. On the other hand, philosophers temselves often find it flattering that their words should have such widespread impact and go on indulging their success, instead of being merely preoccupied with the discovery of truth and knowledge.
AVE

Laurentius

From Randal Bradley's book:
An atheism that rejects God and all mystical and supernatural explications of existence implies that there are no intrinsic values prescribed by God or inherent in the world just waiting to be discovered. This is the working premise of this book. Persons who adhere to softer forms of atheism or agnostism may disagree here. In particular, some atheists may not agree that there are no absolute or objective values in life.
The idea that there is no objective value in the absence of God is a recurrent one in the book:
Objective values refer to values that exist independently in the world and which are not merely created by people.
Such values are those of the culture one is given birth in. For each individual the system(s) of values where he/she lives is a GIVEN, not an option, a compelling reality as factual as the physical order of things.
People exist without any absolute or divine reason for their existence. They invent reasons for their existence but these are personal and arbitrary.
This is a fallacy, and to emphasize it I will use an example from linguistics, the same way Randal Bradley employs one when introducing the synchronic/diachronic dichotomy.
It has been noticed that language is a fluid reality, both shaping human behavior and being shaped by it. Although on a broad scale it does change throughout time and space, language is immutable from the perspective of each individual. Language is a collective human code, and no individual can make personal and arbitrary decisions on grammar, vocabulary, usage etc.
Values make up another code or system within which individuals are just born. For them such systems represent an immutable GIVEN; no such code can be changed or created without the cooperation of the whole community that makes use of it.
Humans do not spring in nature like flowers. They are not actually born in the real world, but in a specific human interpretation of it, in a symbolic universe consisting of a system of values or competing systems of values. Social beings as they are, humans will at least formally (if not internally) adopt the minimum of principles that will confirm their belonging to a human community or another.
These principles constitute an objective reality that impose on both each individual and the community as whole.
As a matter of fact, Randel Bradley is quite familiar with arguments in favor of social/cultural objectivism like mine; he even states something similar to it:
Societies are workable, not because they are founded on some divine or absolute morality, but because there is a general consensus on certain values. These translate into the laws and customs of a particular society. Not everyone will consent to live by these laws and as a result states use force to uphold their laws. Individuals can commit acts which harm society but the state can limit the freedom of people who exhibit unsociable or destructive behavior. Usually a workable equilibrium is reached. People find it in the best interest of whatever values they hold dear to cooperate with other people.
His error lies in the fact that he considers individuals as distinct entities from the society. In fact, the society indoctrinates people before they are able to sound and influencial decisions on their own. Sinchronically speaking, when an individual is born, the society is already in some kind of equilibrium based on a set of values that will represent the GIVEN through which he/she will enter the world as a human being.
AVE


[ March 02, 2002: Message edited by: Laurentius ]</p>

Malaclypse the Younger

These seem to be nothing more than ordinary human weaknesses.

Malaclypse the Younger

The objectivity of socially constructed phenomena such as language and social ethics is an interesting philosophical question.

Clearly, as you mention, such phenomena are not subjective, since one cannot succesfully arbitrarily and personally define one's own language or social ethics.

However, it is not clear that these phenomena are "objective" in the traditional sense of the word, since it is not meaningful to speak of a language without humans actually speaking/understanding it. It is not clear that language is "discovered" (in the global sense), although it is certainly discovered in the personal sense.

There are two ways of dealing with this issue. Either we have to make a separate category, such as intersubjectivity, or we can merely ascribe a certain level of "intelligence" or "consciousness" to social interaction and ascribe it a degree of its own subjectivity.

Francois Tremblay

Sounds like differing usage of "objective" to me. That language, for example, is not separate from humans doesn't mean that it can't be objective. We can form more useful and less useful concepts, and more useful and less useful languages. One may also designate our knowledge of what a particular language is as objective.

So there are two ways to see the question : the social entity as being true to reality, or our perception of it as being true to what it is (the two, of course, being rather far apart in most cases, I'm afraid...)

1sec

Commenting on:
Yes, this is it.
Religious messiahs rise over the mob in that they do devise beliefs and systems of beliefs that they manage to impose through the authority of the divine. (In many cases I've been wondering if they really believed they were "chosen", or they have rather chosen themselves).

At the same time, man is a cultural animal; he distinguishes himself from the other mammals in that he has sophisticated tools that insure him the superiority among which cultural heritage is the most powerful.

Cultural heritage is transmissible through emulation. Emulation needs either religious or secular messiahs. The cult of the phylosopher is thus unavoidable.
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Malaclypse the Younger

I disagree. Merely because a phenomenon appears to be common does not entail that it's unavoidable.

There doesn't seem to be any logical conflict between the formation and existence of an intersubjective culture and the avoidance of the "cult of the philosopher" phenomenon. Authority and dogma appear to be one way in which culture is formed, but the case has not been made for the necessity of authority and dogma.

John Page

Malaclypse:

I think there is a self-fulfilling definition of "philosopher" which could make 1sec's assertion true. For example, Jesus of Nazareth has been defined as a philosoper combining the traditions of Socratic thought with the theism of Akhenaten which in part begat Judaism.

Anyone:

On a different point, anybody here read Julian Jaynes' "Origin of Consciousness in the Bicameral Mind?" This book really changed the way I looked at things and, while I definitely disagree with some of the assertions/hypotheses made, the stuff about how society may have governed itself before written laws was fascinating. I would send the author some money but he's dead.

Cheers.

Laurentius

I've read most of this book, and here are some of my comments on the author's analysis of communism:

Communism could be a sound philosophy only for an atheist, because its ultimate purpose (at least theoretically) is to create a paradise-like place here on earth. No real Christian should pay so much attention on the earthly happiness promised by the heavenly society dreamed of by idealist marxists. Moreover, the bettering of Man, according to Marx, is fulfilled purely with material means - he says that once everyone is wealthy enough he/she will show a morally perfect conscience. I don't think this is something a Christian would agree with.

One of the idea in the Philosophical Wasteland I don't agree with is that values are absolutely subjective.

I'd say that Marx's analysis may be superficial, but not because he dared believe there are objective values. Such objective values exist, as part of the culture an individual is born in. His/her becoming a human being takes place by assimilating abstract concepts that are bearers of values that for everyone belonging to that culture represent objective values. As he/she grows up may or may not relativize them, but there'll always be a minimum set of "objecive ideas" that will make up his/her basic humanity, at least.

The good of society is the supreme value for Marx. It has been remarked that this sounds like a religious goal, a kind of secularization of the Paradise. Many ideologies put forth an ideal goal, which is unrealistic but is religiously desired by large masses of people.

We were previously in this thread that philosophers may act the same as messiahs do, and now we can see that even their work may make a secularized view that still preserves religious propensities. This may indicate that religion and philosophy, in their divergence, may ultimately address the same human need.
AVE

Malaclypse the Younger

Laurentius

Of course, christianity is not the only alternative to atheism. Creation of paradise on earth is fundamentally humanist, and there are religious as well as secular humanists. And certainly only a humanist could appreciate Marx.

But I do agree with your implicit statement of christian values and I see this as a damning indictment of those values. By rejecting paradise (on moral grounds), they are accepting suffering. And how does one reason from the proposition that suffering is preferable to fulfillment and then reject that one should thus cause suffering? This contradiction seems to pervade christian thought and ethics.

Again, you curiously invert the argument: Marx's narrow economic definition of material value is refuted even by the humanist. While our earthly needs are indeed material, they are not all economic. Marx sees economics as an end, not merely a means for the fulfillment of some material needs.

You are a theist; quelle suprise. Can you prove that values are not absolutely subjective?

[quote]I'd say that Marx's analysis may be superficial, but not because he dared believe there are objective values.

Marx's analysis is superficial not because he dared believe in objective values, but because he holds inconsistent premises.

I tend to disagree with the author's description of values as "irrational". Rather, I see them as factual. They simply are, and it is not irrational to accept facts.

We hit the intersubjective... an area of fuzziness between the objective and the subjective.

Certainly shared values are "objective" in the sense that they exist outside any one individual's mind. However, they are "subjective" in that they are properties of minds, not of objective reality.

In one sense a particular truth is "objective" because it is true regardless of what anyone believes; such a sense obviously excludes intersubjective values. Additionally, a sense of objectivity is that one cannot affect that truth by one's belief; intersubjectivity cannot be known except by knowing actual subjective belief; it is just the idea that our subjective beliefs are affected by what other subjectively believe. Nothing about subjectivity entails that subjective beliefs cannot be extrinsically affected.

But those beliefs are still subjective. There are no ideas/values that "objectively" determine humanity; rather, the values that determine (present) humanity are simply those that human beings actually subjectively hold. Humans hold a particular set of values; those values define humanity. But, if humans held exactly contrary values, those contrary values would define humanity. These values are not "discovered" (as we would expect if they were objective), but rather created.

Well, the "good of society" is not really a precise concept. Fundamentally, Marx makes a fallacy of reification here: "Society" is an abstract concept, it is not a concretely existing thing independent of the individuals who make up that society.

This is trivially obvious. The question is, what does this phenomenon mean?