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Ways that Kant kan...
Very nicely put Puti. I knew there was a reason I keep coming back to this board, and you constantly remind me of what it is.
I think the great tragedy is when we try to oversimply life and ask ourselves questions like, What is most important? Life is not a chain but a web, and every element is dependent on and depended on by every other. So when we ask for a ruling about reason over passion, we forget that there is a good reason why humans have both and not just one or the other.
I like diversity. I will keep my entire tool box containing reason and passion and compassion, and love, and all of the other wonderful things I am so fortunate to have!
Talk to you soon!
Mark Sacramento CA USA
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Mark S.
April 19, 2005
# Msgs: 8
Latest: April 19, 2005
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Re:Can't do Kant on passion
> The greatest good for the greatest
> number of people could be for the
> leader to choose a random member of
> the group, declare that person the
> murderer and execute him. An innocent
> person will die, but this will also
> restore security and order to the
> community. [...]
>
> Of course, in a free nation, this would
> be unacceptable. Our passion compels us
> to demand justice; it is the reason why
> the US judicial system is based on the
> principle that a hundred guilty men
> should go free before one innocent man
> is forced to pay the price for another's
> crime.
I think that there is more wisdom than
just a demand of justice hidden in such
a legislation. I cannot remember what
Kant says about the defendability of
utilitarianism, but it seems to me that
Reason does not necessarily make any
better supreme entity than Passion.
Isn't reasoning just a mental function
of the human brain when it tries to
observe some systematic order in the
surrounding world? Therefore the reason
is not necessarily stronger than the
reasoner, and could be surpassed by
something more useful.
Compassion, which you mentioned earlier,
is a good candidate for the job. Executing
an innocent scapegoat might seem temptingly
reasonable, but the price of the gained
safety will be in the long run too high,
even if the executioners try their best
to hide their reasoning from the public.
People who value honesty and love might
actually prefer to be scared by
uncertainty rather than be assured by
false but convenient safety, at least
afterwards if not at the moment.
Especially manipulating society from above
with utilitarian methods would lead into
a Pyrrhean victory.
I am afraid that we are not easily
able to find the greatest good for the
greatest number of people, or any other
number of people. When Reason is too
heavy a tool for us to wield gracefully,
we have to use whatever means we have
available and hope for each others'
forgiveness. Compassion is a good-looking
alternative, and so is a dutiful juridic
(and other) examination of "obvious" cases,
which actually is a type of sound humility.
Puti
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Juha-Petri T.
April 19, 2005
# Msgs: 8
Latest: April 19, 2005
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Re:Re:Can't do Kant on passion: Part 1 of 2
Hi Quentin,
I'm not familiar with das Gründgesetz, but it sounds like something they have included in the UN statement of Human Rights. I'm not sure I understand how das Gründgesetz works, but it sounds like we also have provisions in the U.S. Constitution that amount to the same thing. For example, the sixth Amendment to the constitution says that the government can never deprive a citizen of life, liberty or property without "due process of law." So before the government can ever take anything away from anyone for any reason there has to be a formal legal procedure, such as an indictment followed by a conviction at a trial by jury that justifies why that person should be expected to forfeit what rightfully belongs to them. So, in the Island scenario, you have to provide substantive legal proof that I'm the murderer before you can execute me, regardless of how much better off the community might be after my execution.
Of course, this all entirely begs the question of Kant's call for pure reason. It simply serves to prove that neither Germany, nor the U.S.A, nor the U.N. are nations who have agreed with Kant on this matter.
This is pretty much what I was getting at in my argument. We all demand justice in our hearts. This is not entirely logical. Logic dictates that, like many native American cultures, we leave our elderly behind to starve to death when their care becomes a burden on the community. Like the Japanese Kamakazee pilots during World War II, logic requires us to willingly surrender our lives to fight for our nation. But we are not driven by pure logic. Like Captain Kirk of Star Trek, we demand a solution to the Kobiyashi Maru, the no-win scenario. We fight, when to pull a solution from beyond the parameters of the problem that will create hope where none can live. We are creatures of passion. I don't see how we can get around it. And I don't know what I'd think of us if we ever changed it.
Thanks for the information. I'd love to hear more about das Gründgesetz. How exactly does this work? How does it get applied in the courts?
Tchü 'us!
Mark
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Mark S.
April 17, 2005
# Msgs: 8
Latest: April 19, 2005
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Can't do Kant on passion: Part 2 of 2
(Continued from "Can't do Kant on passion: Part 1 of 2")
Which isn't to say there aren't a lot of people who are devoted utilitarians. Our president Harry S. Truman used this argument to justify dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. He argued that this action would save American lives, and it did. Now Americans have to live with the shame of being the country that chose to sacrifice 100,000 Japanese civilians in order to save the lives of our own soldiers. My shame over this is a consequence of my passion. As things are in the world today, I think our country could do with more passion –that is, passion of a healthy sort—rather than less.
One other problem I have with the absolute reason theory of utopia: reason works great when you have all the facts. But we almost never do. We spend most of our lives shrugging our shoulders, taking wild guesses, and keeping our fingers crossed. Passion is no substitute for good information, but when we throw out passion in favor of logic, we tend to throw out things like intuition too. We throw out the wisdom of the mythic hero who knows how to follow the rules as well as when to break them, and who listens to his gut when he is forced to take a reasonable guess in the absence of satisfactory facts to inform his thinking. That is a tragic loss.
Karl Jung does great work in this area. He argues that much of our wisdom lies in the collective unconscious. Our life's work is exploring the unconscious and bringing that material into our consciousness, and learning to integrate it into our consciousness. We have knowledge in our guts, in our bones, and in our flesh, and often we can access this information only through our passions. This work is extra-rational. Not irrational, but simply outside the domain of logic.
There are many other theories that encourage us to integrate our passions and our intellect, to choose a balanced view of life that is reasoned and thoughtful and passionate as well. Plato used the parable of the charioteer to show that the rational mind stands at the reigns while the two horses of –well, I guess nowadays we'd think of them as Id and Superego. There's the self that wants what it wants and can't be bothered by other concerns, and the self that thinks first of The Good, seeking always to sublimate all other concerns. It is the rational mind that navigates between these extremes, ensuring that the self's needs are met while maintaining a healthy connection to the larger community and a sense of commitment to others.
Nice talk! Thanks again, Arnaud. I look forward to the next round
Take care!
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA USA
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Mark S.
April 16, 2005
# Msgs: 8
Latest: April 19, 2005
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Can't do Kant on passion: Part 1 of 2
Hi Arnaud!
Hi Quentin! I guess you'll be reading too. Welcome! I saw your message to me—I hope to reply to that shortly. I look forward to having you in our discussions. I'm sure you'll be a wonderful addition to conversation.
Thanks, Arnaud, for your response. Kant was a brilliant philosopher who laid the foundations for many of the values we take for granted today. I don't know about France, but here in the US, I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say, "What if everyone thought that way?" And most people who say this have never heard of Kant's "Categorical imperative," the source of the rule you refer to involving universal enforcement, which is the origin of this ethical test.
Regarding passion, however, I can't agree with Kant. While life might be simpler and easier, if, like Spock from original Star Trek, we could master our emotions and act only with logic, there are a number of problems with this. Dispassionate reason would take the power and beauty out of our art and of our lives. Our existence would be practical, but soulless. We would be a race of automatons.
Our passion balances our reason with compassion. Consider the problem of utilitarianism, which is a logic-oriented ethical system where each decision must be made based on the goal of bringing the greatest good to the greatest number. It's an excellent plan. But it fails in situations like this one: Imagine a group of people on a remote island where a murder has occurred. The greatest good for the greatest number of people could be for the leader to choose a random member of the group, declare that person the murderer and execute him. An innocent person will die, but this will also restore security and order to the community. This killer is discouraged from repeating his offence knowing that he'll be killed if he's caught. The community will be restored to a sense of security. And if the killer does act again, They'll have another chance to catch the real murderer. It is unfortunate that an innocent man may die (assuming they don't get lucky and choose the actual killer for the scapegoat), but all things considered, the greatest good is served. It's a sound response under utilitarianism if there's no better solution, if they're unable to accurately isolate the actual murderer.
Of course, in a free nation, this would be unacceptable. Our passion compels us to demand justice; it is the reason why the US judicial system is based on the principle that a hundred guilty men should go free before one innocent man is forced to pay the price for another's crime.
Continued: See Can't do Kant on passion: Part 2 of 2
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Mark S.
April 16, 2005
# Msgs: 8
Latest: April 19, 2005
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Re:Judge actions in context, not passions
> Well, have you ever heard of the theory
> of Kant?
> For him, passions are all obnoxious for
> two main reasons. First, they entails a
> deficiency of our conciousness [...]
>
> Then, passions are disastrous for moral.
> [...]
>
> They are said a desease of conciousness
> by Kant.
Are we then responsible of having
a disease? Or are we responsible of
making ourselves mentally vulnerable?
Are the former and the latter just
two sides of the same thing?
If we are responsible, are we able
to carry our responsibility and fix the
problem?
Puti
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Language pair: French; English
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Juha-Petri T.
April 15, 2005
# Msgs: 8
Latest: April 19, 2005
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Judge actions in context, not passions
We are not responsible for our passions any more than we are responsible for our nervous system. We feel passion because we have belly-buttons. It's a package deal.
What we are responsible for is how we choose to respond to our passions. I may feel a rage because some self-absorbed individual cut me off on the freeway, but that doesn't mean that nobody can blame me if I decide to run him off of the road, risking his life, my life, and the lives of others.
I may be overwhelmed with emotions when a see a lovely young woman walking down the street, but our civilization has long grown past the days when I can be expected to drag her by the hair into a cave.
This does not mean, however, that certain passionate reactions don't require a certain understanding, that our passions cannot serve at times as mitigating factors in judging our actions. So a violent crime I commit against someone I am trying to rob, for example, should not carry the same judgments as a violent crime I may commit against someone trying to rob me. I would expect in such a situation as the latter, to receive some kind of understanding that I was acting under surprise, shock, confusion, fear, anger, and that I did not have the opportunity to prepare myself rationally for the encounter that my assailant, with some foreknowledge of the possibility of our encounter, may have had.
Essentially, passions are natural biochemical reactions to life's experiences. They can be mild or overwhelming. I think judgments on peoples' behaviors in response to passions need to be made based on the circumstances of each individual incident. It is not possible to say that all passionate acts are okay or that all passionate acts are wrong. As my friend Puti so wisely points out, circumstances are often very important in deciding how we should respond to social problems.
Thanks Arnaud!
Mark,
Sacramento, CA USA
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Language pair: French; English
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Mark S.
April 11, 2005
# Msgs: 8
Latest: April 19, 2005
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Re:A debate about passions.
> Are we responsible for our passions?
>
I think we are responsible of what we choose to do with our passions.
However, if somebody gives in to his passion of hunger and steals bread, the responsibility of his nearest people should be examined before his own.
Puti
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Language pair: French; English
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Juha-Petri T.
April 10, 2005
# Msgs: 8
Latest: April 19, 2005
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Puzzling puzzles
¡Cielos!
That sounds terribly unrewarding, and very poorly planned on my part.
I went ahead and fixed that. It's really terrible to make you go so far and receive nothing for your efforts.
Please accept my sincerest apologies.
Talk to you soon,
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA USA
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Mark S.
April 10, 2005
# Msgs: 5
Latest: April 10, 2005
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Re:Re:Arnaud: Re feelings about the site, membership, the rules
Konnichiwa Mark,
Welcome to MLE. I look forward to getting to know you.
It's very funny, I saw your introduction and it caught my eye for a number of reasons. First, of course, was the very sensible first name you were wise enough to receive, I assume, from your parents. Next was your last name, which is the same as a respected colleague of mine, Caroline Pickrel (though I'm sure she spells it with only one l. You don't have a sister-in-law attending university at Sac state here in California, do you? One' who hasn't learned how to spell her husband's name right yet maybe?
Were that not enough to attract my notice, it so happens that I lived in Montana for two and a half years some time back, I guess from 1986 - 1989. Not in Helena, unfortunately, but I did have the inexpressible pleasure of visiting the city. I will never forget the breathtaking beauty of coming into town on the highway from Great Falls to see this Edenic oasis of the plains you call home. You're a lucky guy Mark. I hope you'll e-mail me some pictures some time.
So by this time, I'm really leaning toward dropping you a reply, if for no other reason than just to say "hi" and "welcome."
And then the very next message above that is also from you, and it is addressed to me.
At this point, I'm beginning to wonder if this is a mere coincidence, or one of those synchronous things. We're even about the same age. What's up with that? Not that it matters; I figure it'll be a pleasant ride in any case.
That said, I'm delighted you enjoyed my post. You'll find I'm quite the big mouth around here. I have a lot to say, and I'm not so good at making it concise. I figure if I spray enough buckshot ideas across the board, one or two eventually have hit a target for somebody.
I'm jealous of your decision to study Japanese. I came within a hairsbreadth of studying it myself once, but at the last minute opted instead for Mandarin Chinese, which I expected would be more useful to me here in California. I've never regretted the decision, but I do find Japanese a lovely language, and all the more enticing now that I read and write Chinese and have a leg up on written Japanese for that. When I invent my "time enough to do everything I ever wanted" machine, Japanese will be high up on the list of things I'll finally get to.
Well, welcome again, and thanks for the note. Think of me next time you get out tubing :-)
Shalom,
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA
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Mark S.
April 8, 2005
# Msgs: 5
Latest: April 10, 2005
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