Over the course of both threads one of the main contentions was the idea of universal rights. In this case, feminism was used as an example of, partly inadvertently, providing a rationale for liberal interventions. The notion of universality, the concept of east/west, and frameworks such socialism, nationalism, and religion as driving forces of society were thus explored and questioned throughout the thread.
As a starter we could use TrueLeft's four points from one of his posts:
1) If there is a conflict where we must choose a side then go by absolute
morals. And I argue we must ALWAYS choose a side, at least implicitly.
2)
Absolute morals don't work, so we must go by relative morals. Namely by
cost/benefit analysis of any particular action, rather than a general category
of actions (for instance, it's uselss to speak of "intervention", we must
sepcify for any given intervention where, how, for whome, and under precisely
what circumstances so a general rule regarding "interventions" is
pointless).
3) So we now need to decide on who judges the costs and the
benefits. Ms. Almahadin correctly says that it can't be "us" alone, we need to
ask the people who are actually involved.
4) But the inherent problem is that
the people directly involved simply don't agree. If they did then there would be
no conflict and no need for intervention in the first place!
Comments welcome.
31 comments:
Actually, TrueLeft, could you publish your last post on the thread as a comment here, otherwise it looks slightly schizophrenic of me.
But anyway, my response to that still stands:
Isn't the problem precisely that a context-specific action is resistent to guidelines? If not, there's the danger of not being context-dependent (i.e. universal), or perhaps I misunderstand guidelines.
Olching-
Thanks. I have simply avoided reading any poster whose first post on this thread was off topic. So far as I am concerned the real debate is the one going on between the posters you mentioned and yourself, and some other worthies. The rest is just lines I need to skim over to get to the next relevant argument.
I hope I am not giving the wrong impression, as you ask me what the "absolute" morals are. First of all, that doesn't really matter to the point I am trying to make, I think. My argument is, I hope, relevant no matter what particular axiomatic moral system one starts with. We might have a society which feels eating tomatoes is evil and then debating whether to intervene to stop tomato slaughter in Europe, for example. The same question of absolutism/relativism would, I think, still arise.
Secondly, I think my four points above illustrate where I, at least, am at this point. I join you in rejecting the existence of absolute morals. But more than that: I argue that even those who claim their morals are absolute are usually not being entirely truthful.
I don't completely disregard the possibility that a few fanatics exist here and there in any culture who are willing to pay any price for a particular ideal. But if there is more than a single ethical axiom, ideal, to be maintained then there must always be some compromise between the axioms when they conflict with each other. And then again, even when there is just one single ideal, that still does not guarantee it will not conflict with itself!
For instance: say our ethics state that life must be protected at all costs. What happens when we face the classic question of the out-of-control train car, which can kill one person or five, depending on how we direct it down the tracks? At this point we either raise our hands saying we don't know, or we have to create a new axiom saying more life is better than less life, or some such thing. This new axiom in turn may conflict with the former, and even with it we still don't have the answer of what to do if the choice is between two equivalent lives. Do we choose randomly? Do we say that we simply don't choose and allow fate, or God, or chance to simply determine who will die? Or will we seek out other criteria: save children before adults, or adults before children, brown hair before black or brown eyes before green? More and more axioms which can each conflict with each other and still not give us a foolproof way of choosing an action.
So more or less from the outset we agree that no absolute system can solve the problem. What I have been trying is for a "meta-system", I guess. One that says: fine, we can't tell you what to choose in general so we have to break things down and deal with each context seperately. But in saying this we will have accomplished nothing if we don't follow up with a way of determining, once the context is fully apparent, what to do then. In effect, if we say the proper action is context-dependent, but then do not provide any guidelines of what to do once the context is given then this is just a cop-out. And at the moment I am stuck with the uncomfortable idea that what I have offered- a context-dependent morality- is precisely that- a cop-out. Because even having acknowledged that context must be taken into account, I do not yet know HOW to take it into account. As you say, and this is what I was getting at, we can spiral off forever deciding who decides who decides who decides...
The sad result is that I am left with WesttoEast's assessment: that a discussion of what is the "right" thing to do (not generally but even in a very particular situation!) is fruitless, and we can just sit back and let "history" take its course. But by so doing I still have to stress that we do not abdicate responsibility for what we do and, just as much, for what we don't do.
And I agree that doing nothing is a "solution" of sorts, as I wrote to Usini. But it is a solution to the question "what will we do?", and not to the question "what should we do?". Or, at least, we have not shown it to be an answer to this latter question. And the very possibility of showing that something "should" be done is predicated on accepting a minimal common morality. I suggested utiliartianism as such but no doubt others will not agree even with that, and I havn't got a good reason why this might be better than any other system- since the very evaluation of which system is better requires, in itself, a moral framework to work with in assigning value!
Regarding a blog for further discussion- I am in favour. I have no idea how to go about it, though.
Now Olching's previous comment makes more sense- it was a reply to my last post.
Now I will try and reply to his:
I said earlier- I am trying for something like a meta-guideline, I think.
An absolute moral imperative is something like an article of the ten commandments. Let's take "Do not steal" as an example. This kind of command is absolute, it is supposed to apply in all cases, under all conditions.
I think we both disagree with such an axiom. I, for one, can think of many cases where theft is not only acceptable to me, but even laudable. Say, Jean Valjean stealing bread to feed his sister's hungry children. Or Robin Hood might be justified for the more socialist among us (me, for instance).
So we both agree that moral evaluations must take context into account. We can't say all theft is bad because we think that theft by certain people, of certain amounts, with certain goals is a lesser evil or even a good thing.
I suggest that on a case by case basis we judge any action we wish to evaluate morally through costs and benefits, in a utilitarian manner. If the net result of an action is expected to be more good than bad when summed across all relevant agents (for simplicity's sake let's call them people) then it is a "good" action. If the net sum is negative then it is an "evil" action.
So far so good, and I think we can agree on this principle with minor tweaking here and there. However, even if we don't adopt such a utilitarian system, any context-dependent system will have to find a mechanism of evaluating a potential action by its context.
A context specific system is resistant to GENERAL guidelines, like "do not steal". But once we have decided to use context-dependent guidelines we have to specify wht they are or we are not really saying anything.
More concretely: we have rejected a general ban on theft. We say that in some cases theft is a good thing. Fine. Unless we say how to decide in which cases theft is good and in which it isn't we haven't really said anything except that theft can be good and theft can be bad, with no way of telling which is which.
If we say the evaluation of an action is dependent on context we must say HOW it is dependent on context. When will it be deemed good and when will it be deemed bad? If we don't say this- THAT is what really carries a danger of not being context dependent at all. It is like saying two variables are corelated but not being able to say if they are positively or negatively corelated. In which case, it is just as likely that they aren't corelated at all- that is, that they are independent. And we would be back at square one saying that moral evaluations are independant of context.
So we need this meta-guideline. Not an absolute, general guidline, "do not steal", but a context specific one which matches to every context the proper evaluation. Something which permits us to say "do not steal- in such circumstance; but stealing is ok in such circumstances".
The utilitarianism suggested above would do that on a case by case basis. However, because utility is subjective we cannot find a guideline based purely on utility. We can use something like democracy, or a majority vote. But that is itself rife with problems, not least being the question of who gets to vote- shoudl western feminists vote on women's rights in Afghanistan? This is precisely where Al-Mahadin's argument kicks in and suggest that perhaps not.
TrueLeft, thanks for posting.
I've just spotted your recent post, and will amend what I was just going to post a little:
I'd like to pick you up on your third and fourth paragraph (of your first post), and thereby add another problem to the idea of guidelines (though you have explicated what you mean, this I think is still relevant). I believe liberals are convinced of the concept of universalism, at least some liberals. If you saw the vile vehemence with which Alec Macpherson appeared on Linda Grant's thread, it's not far off your description of 'fanatics'. A while ago I went on Harry's Place on a thread which was initially about the Irving/Griffin/Oxford controversy, but it descended into debating the same topics we are discussin (when to intervene, condemn etc...). I admit, I took a very relativist slant to provoke a little, but it was shocking to see the evangelism with which Macpherson, David T, and SOMuffin responded. But it was also insightful.
Now, I think the idea of fanatics is in fact partly informed by universalism. What I mean is 'the west' has created an absolute in which we can ostracise the 'fanatics' and preserve the 'moderates' (to which the liberals belong). But in fact the two (liberals and 'fanatics' that is) are not that different. They both believe in absolutes; one in universal human rights, the other in god or divine laws or something. Where they differ is perhaps in the means, but even there there are similarities.
Let me lean out of the window a little and attempt this (as a stream of consciousness): Liberal intervention needn't be that much different from 'terrorism'. What is different is the cultural convention. A suicide bomb is seen as abhorrent (and this is an example of a good culturally-dependent judgement methinks), whereas liberal intervention is seen as acceptable because of a publicly reasoned argument and justification. That justification is, however, based (in part at least) on an absolute (universal rights) that is in itself not different from other absolutes (god, religious thought etc...) in anything else but the content.
So, the reason why guidelines are difficult is because of the difference is content, which leads us back to context . If one doesn't understand the context, the content is brushed aside as 'wrong' or 'detrimental'.
Perhaps one last note: It think, as we've established, this does not mean that we cannot make value judgements on the content, but understanding how to arrive at those value judgements is where the problem lies (and I think you've been getting at this).
Finally an afterthought on utilitarianism: I'm not a great fan to be honest (I'm here to be corrected), simply because the idea of evil and good is so relative. I think it is often too simplistic. In any situation there is not 100% of evil and good that can be distributed, but evil and good varies. Even if there's a net gain, as you put it, who's to say that the intensity of evil for the minority doesn't outstrip the benefits. And similar to liberal interventionalism: Who has the right to decide a) what's good and bad and b) why that minority deserves to experience bad.
I hope that you don't mind me joining in.
My feelings are that you are discussing abstract ideas that impact on practical politics and are thus not value free in the sense that they become part of the whole argument about western dominance and assumed tutelage of a less advanced world, both morally and technoloigically. It seems to me that you are repeating the arguments for 19th Century imperialism, that we have to raise these lesser peoples to our levels and not to do so would be evading our responsibilities. What it came to in practice was using military technology to kill large numbers of relatively defenceless people and then using their labour and their land for the benefit of the occupying power. I can't really see modern agruments for intervention as different. Thus my instincts are against any intervention as I don't really think that the west has the kind of historical track record that I trust.
Olching-
I agree with everything you've written more or less.
Firstly, regarding fanaticism (by which I mean those who have absolutist morals and REALLY stick to them), I agree that the content of the morals is really beside the point. I am not going to tell someone what their worlview is, because there is no reason behind a worldview- it is simply axiomatic. And I think everyone has such axioms, which are all equally viable. I know, this may be seen as rather extreme relativism.
Nevertheless, there is no logical reason to define something as good or evil. Each of us simply feels a certain way about certain things and that's how we feel: we can't be convinced otherwise through reason because these feelings don't stem from reason. They may be innate, or we may have acquired them from our culture or even randomly decided that A is good and B is bad. But however we came by these sentiments, it was not through logic, and logic has nothing at all to do with them because logic works within a given framework of axioms: it cannot actually change the axioms themselves.
So content of moral axioms is beside the point.
I really think that we are all absolutists to some extent or other, in that I think we all have our own idisyncratic morality (probably influenced by nature, nurture and anything else you can think of) and that these moralities can be expressed in a system of axioms, with even more axioms to deal with places where the axioms conflict etc.
Where each of us differs on a more fundamental level than content, I think, is in how much our system of morality depends on axioms. In effect, how sensitive it is to context.
A person who adheres, for instance, to the ten commandments as they are- is very "axiomatic". There is next to no leeway for context. But if you split every commandment in two and say, for instance, "do not steal- if it is daytime, but you can steal if t is night"- there is more leeway for context (a silly one in this case, but this is just an example). You hive two times the actual number of axioms, but more freedom to maneuver.
My suggestion of utilitarianism basically has infinite axioms, or definitions. For every infinitesimal change in context, in the opinions of any person on any given subject, there can be a different outcome for the valuation of an outcome. Instead of one rule regardingtheft you have infinite rules, and each one would apply in a very specific context, for a very specific profile of preferences that each and every conscious creature in the universe can have (theoretically). So it's as context sensitive as I can imagine a moral system to be- infinitesimal changes in context can lead to very different evaluations of good and evil.
so we have a (not very well-defined, perhaps) scale of moral systems from the "absolutist" (which would mean "few" axioms) to the "relativist" (which has "many", or infinite axioms- more like defnitions in this case because the axiom just defines the utility function we use and the rest is defined to be "good" if positive and "bad" if negative).
Anyway, maybe this kind of terminology can allow us to discuss how absolutist a system is without reference to content which is, as you say, very culture dependent.
So to the extent that an individual insists upon a certain idea or rule without referrence to surrounding variables (context), that is absolutist. And it can be as true of "liberals" as of "conservatives", of whatever religion and ideology.
And I agree with what you frame as the problem, as well: in a relativist approach the CONTENT is merely the action and its context. We wouldn't comment on theft in general, we would comment on a particular case of theft.
The thing is, for any evaluation we need to agree to some basic system. I suggested a "content free" system like utilitarianism. Now, it isn't REALLY content free, as you noted. But relatively so.
The real problem begins with what happens after we have agreed. Because the issue I am trying to resolve is that even if we have a system we all agree upon, if it is at all dependent on what the individuals involved think, then we have a problem. You correctly say that in utilitarianism we need to have every person's utility. And we need to decide how to weigh conflicting desires of different individuals.
On a technical note- there are problems with minorities in a standard "sum of utilities" utilitarianism. But we can always use some kind of function of individual utilities which gives greater weight to those who have less, for instance. I am fond of the Nash function, which is a sum not of utilities but of their logarithms. That way an addition of utility to someone who has little is worth more than the addition of the same amount of utility to someone who has alot to begin with. And sum of a concave function of utilities should give the same result of "preference for equality".
But on the whole- the problems you raise regarding utilitarianism are precisely the problems I see as endemic to a relativist moral system. And that is precisely what troubles me because I tend to be very relativist, having rejected the idea of absolute morals as untenable quite some time ago... I fear I may be left with no morals whatsoever! :)
Welcome usini...I'll try to respond to your post and TrueLeft's post tonight. Currently engaged in family stuff.
Usini-
The problem is that if you don't intervene then sometimes you will be doing more harm than even with a poorly thought out intervention. Can we honestly look back on the Nazi genocides and say it was right to intervene so little? Or should Britian and France, perhaps, not even have bothered to declare war after Hitler invaded Poland?
I hate to break Godwin's law on this so I'll give some other examples to extenuate my crime:
Would it not have been right to intervene in any way in Rwanda? Surely some ways could have been worse than what happened, but others may well have been better. And not having lifted a finger when we could have makes "us" (generally speaking, of course) responsible for those who died whome we could have saved. A crime of omission.
How about South Africa? Was it wrong to impose consumer boycotts? In hindsight, from what I understand, the majority of South Africans do think well of those who boycotted the Apartheid regime. That isn't military intervention but it isn't necessarily much different. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died under the economic sanction regime after 1991, and that is without dropping a single bomb. I always say that economic warfare is just as much a form of war as planes and tanks and bombs.
Yet some economic warfare has turned out "good". And, indeed, some "real" war has also been deemed "good" by "history". I'll even go out on a limb and say that winners almost always count their wars as "good"!
So the problem remains: I don't think we can categorically say that no intervention is good (that's an absolutist axiom! :) ). We still have to find some measure by which we can check each proposed intervention and determine if we think it will be good or bad. Without the benfit of hindsight, if possible.
trueleft - the problem is (an once again I apologise for being a pragmatist) that interventions by individuals are not the same as interventions by states. A consumer boycott is a reaction by individuals. It is not the same as international sanctions. You quote the third reich. You know what happened to the consumer boycott of German goods in the US of course. It was called off because of threats against german Jews. Can you say that earlier actions against Germany would not have simply triggered off the holocaust earlier?
Anyway I think your historical paradigm is wrong. For many people outside Europe the real memory of Western intervention is Imperialism and the treatment of the local populations as less than human in their capacity to manage and understand their own affairs, as well as their ruthless exploitation for economic ends. The moderm doctrine looks little different and is implicitly racist and threatening. Sanctions involve a threat of further action if sanctions do not work. Have you noticed that while China is expanding aid to Africa, the US response has been to set up an "africa command" for its armed forces?
Usini-
I appreciate the distinction between individuals and States. But we cannot really forget two things: a) States' actions are determined by individuals; and b) even a consumer boycott is more about sending a political message than actually hitting an economy. And it is this political message I am worried about.
In fact, in this sense I am even more cautious of "interventions" than you are yourself. I am saying that even just *speaking* critically, as an individual, is something which must be done only with some forethought as to the consequences.
Regarding the boycott of Nazi Germany- I wasn't thinking of that actually. More along the lines of why the Allies didn't bomb the death camps when they easily could have. And, as I said, the possibility that there would have been no war atll if Britain and France had not decided to "draw the line" at the occupation of Poland. By what you are saying they should have just said: "well, it's between the Germans and the Poles". Pretty much what they said about Sudetenland. On which point it might be interesting to hear Olching's thoughts, as he seems to have some expertise in central European history.
But regarding the boycott of Nazi Germany in the 1930s- you are right. I don't know if it was beneficial or not. And I am not saying that any "intervention" (in the broadest sense possible) is good. I am just saying that we can't categorically call any intervention bad. When you give examples of intervention gone awry it doesn't address my point- I am with you on that. But you need to say something about the examples I give of "successful" interventions(though success is, after all is said and done, subjective). Because these, too, seem to exist. Do you think the world would have been better off if France and Britain had not declared war after the annexation of Poland? Or if there had been no consumer boycott of SA? Maybe, and maybe not. It's really hard to judge. But I think the common POV is that these were "good" intervention.
Some more interventions which have been judged kindly by history (thus far) are the Marshall Plan, for instance. South Koreans by and large are very happy that the US defended them in 1953. Kuwait is very happy to have been liberated in 1991.
Of course, buy the same token, we may say that the USSR probably did not like the Marshall Plan very much. Nor did North Korea enjoy the US intervention in the Korean War (although they probably look kindly on the Chinese assistance they got). And many Iraqis even today, after everything, still see Kuwait is just a rebel province of Iraq. All of which just complicates matters further...
But what I am saying is not, by any means, that we must always intervene. What I am saying is that it is not, I think, right to say we must never intervene.
Specifically the point I made earlier on the CiF thread, was that non-intervention doesn't really exist at all. By doing nothing in Rwanda we gave de facto support for the genocide. By not intervening in Sabra and Shatila Sharon gave his tacit support for the massacres there. By not going to war over Czechoslovakia Britain and France were really permitting Hitler to occupy them unopposed. I don't know if there were better alternatives in any of these cases but I tend to think that there were. There is still some truth, in some cases, to the maxim that for evil to triumph all it takes is for good men (and women, of course) to do nothing.
Usini, I wasn't arguing for C19 imperaliasm. I agree with observation that then and now it was/is about raising 'lesser' people to 'western' levels. I think you posted a good comment on Linda Grant's thread as a follow-up to my comment on the east/west paradigm.
I think here we combine the abstract discussion of TrueLeft and myself with your point about western intervention. There is an historic record which is vital. On the one hand, as TrueLeft pointed out, we can look at past events and think to ourselves what might have been had we or had we not intervened (Godwin's law, Rwanda et al). I have a problem with that insofar it presupposes an 'objective' reading of history, which is in itself defined according to particular standards (I feel tempted to say empirical western standards). These examples are only used by liberals because they believe we are able to put ourselves back in that position and make a value judgement of how we may have acted. This doesn't work from an individual perspective too well, but not certainly not from a collective - pragmatic if you wish - perspective.
So then we have usini's take on history, and I have to say, I agree again. Particularly the second part of usini's second post is quite succinct. Now, opponents will say, perhaps with some justification, that in so doing we simply create a western bogey man and thereby detach ourselves from commenting in an amoral and relativist way. And this is where we can use the differentiation between individual action form national or international action. What do you think?
TrueLeft, I liked your spectrum from axiomatic to relativist. But I'll have to think about it. I wouldn't worry about being left with no morals; perhaps usini's differentiation between state and individual might help alieviate any fears...
I agree that any historic evaluation of "what might have been" is going to be judged by a subjective standard. But again we return to my fundamental problem: that this subjective standard is going to trip us up not only in any historical example but in also every current example. It is not only in history that we must look at all sides and how they might have felt about an intervention. That is true regarding our very current problems as well. And if we only intervene when all sides agree then, once again, we will never intervene: when they agree there is no conflict to intervene in and when there is a conflict we won't intervene.
Now Usini seems to be advocating precisely this and it isn't any worse than what I've been saying because I haven't been saying much at all except to urge supreme caution.
The problem with Usini's take is still that I don't see how neutrality is a feasible course to take. Except in very rare cases where all sides in a conflict are evenly matched- neutrality still seems to me to be explciit or implicit support for the powerful over the weak. And even when all sides are evenly matched I can't say categorically that non-intervention is always better, because maybe it would be preferable to help one side triumph rather than drag out a war which lasts for centuries. I just don't know.
Conversely, the problem with my take is what I've been struggling with all along: it just raises more questions than answers. It still requires us to somehow choose a side, if not in the "first order" problem then in the "second order", and if not then then the third etc..
So I see neutrality as impossible because you fall towards one side (the stronger one) immediately and my way as impossible because you fall to one side (the one you've deterministically chosen from the start) eventually...
I am afraid I don't see how the collective/individual view of action really solves the *theoretical* problem. After all, the debate started around what are the pros and cons of individuals, not States, voicing their opinions of minority rights in foreign regions.
Practically, the collective/individual divide is what I have myself proposed in some of today's issues. For instance, I opposed Union boycotts of Israel but support (and engage in) individual boycotts (of products from the OPT, for instance). And I feel that, practically, sanctions and embargoes do more harm than good in the Middle East (say in Gaza and Iran).
But this is very context dependent. I have heard from South Africans who say sanctions (individual and collective) against the Apartheid regime did help them. Which, of course, buys into their reading of history, and a pro-Apartheid individual (if such still exist) might see things very differently. Back to square one...
So practically in some contexts I have a good idea of what I think is a good course, but I can't generalize this in even the most context sensitive way. Including regarding the question of whether a division along collective/individual lines will solve the Gordian knot.
Basically, limiting ourselves to individual action can be seen as the kind of intervention which is simply very small and therefore has almost no effect, positive or negative, on either side anyway. But the moment it becomes a very influential movement (of so-called individuals) it will be as dangerous as any State initiative.
What do we say about individfual Americans going to fight in the Spanish Civil war? Or WWI? Or today's Mujahideen coming from far flung continents to Iraq and Afghanistan? If they are few then they are meaningless individual initiatives which change nothing. And if they are many then they are no more or less violent than any other application of military force.
If we only advocate small and ineffectual intervention it is once again a doctrine of neutrality which amounts to ignoring the plight of the weak. And if an "individual" movemet becomes a "mass" movement then how is it less prone to racism, ethnocentrism, or simple lack of comprehension of local intricacies?
Between Scylla and Charybdis. It's a lose-lose situation.
Perhaps it's better to distinguish between individual and collective rather than a specific political entity (e.g. state).
I think what usini is suggesting (correct me if I'm wrong), isn't neutrality or a kind of neutral non-intervention (and thereby siding with the stronger), but that the west hasn't got a leg to stand on form an historical perspective. I largely agree. Liberal interventions have been flawed, brutal, misguided, opportune, hypocritical. Sometimes all of these features at the same time. This is of course on governmental, political, economic, and/or military level. But what about other organisations?
What I'd be interested to know is what usini, TrueLeft or anyone else thinks of organisations such as Amnesty International. I think AI differ considerably from perhaps charitable organisations, because it isn't means driven (giving stuff to people), but content driven (these are the ways they should adopt). I know people who are involved in AI, and I'll be honest: I'm always torn between admiration and caution. The same goes for Peter Tatchell. On the one hand, I do admire him, on the other, I think he is far too simplistic and perhaps heavy-handed (the boycott of Zimbabwe is an example of this, but then it always depends on what is speaking on). Often this kind of approach operates on the premise that it's comparing like with like, when in fact it is not.
Anyway, over to you...
trueleft- My problem is always the management of information. When I am asked to support intervention in a situation, those advocating it or opposing it present the information selectively, because they are driven by a political agenda. This indeed is what a lot of the critics who questioned Linda Grant's credentials were trying to say before the were drowned out in cries of anti-semitism. Whether we like it or not most media are dominated by large capitalist western organisations. On Internet too westerners statistically have far more chance of presenting their weltanschaun. Thus it is this world view which becomes considered "normal" and right. Very often other viewpoints only appear later and when they do they are immediately attacked for being partial because they come, for example, from a palestinian or Iranian. A US commentator is no less partial, but he sees him or herself as somehow "objective". Thus as it takes a long time before more accurate and balanced information filters through, I always oppose precipitate action. Perhaps I am older and less trusting than you, but for generations who grew up on the Vietnam war distrust of government and the media is a norm. We were lied to so often and quite honestly I feel the situation is very similar today.
Olching - I appreciate your point about Amnesty. Of course nobody should be placed in prison for simply speaking. Did Amnesty support Irving? Have they added Britain to the list for the suspended sentence for that silly young woman at London airport? I honestly do not know. In Italy the case is very relevant because university professors were imprisoned for advocating violent actions which influenced others to make terrorist attacks while they sat comfortably in their universities. I have never really looked at AI's position on hate speech, but once again I think that we may find that they too adopt moral relativism.
Personally I pay for the schooling of a girl in Brazil. I also worked for VSO in Bangladesh for 2 years after university, partly because I was so sick of the left talking about the third world and not putting their bodies where their mouths were, so to speak. I think that the feminist position on the political is personal is not basically wrong, but is not enough on its own.
I, too, see problems with objectivity, and I think that is what it boils down to. The liberal, western values may sound nice in a vacuum, but it's implication behind it that I find most disconcerting: i.e. we are right, they are wrong. We are objective, they need to be taught.
I'm not sure about AI either (TrueLeft, any ideas?) when it comes to hate speech and so on. But the problem isn't AI per se. As I said, I admire them (and people like Tatchell, although I disagree with some of his stuff), but at the same time, I'm wondering if their pro-active stance is part of liberal interventionalism. I still haven't made my mind up. The intentions are obviously well meant, and they are very critical of western transgressions, but they are universalist.
Anyway, Happy New Year...!
Agree about objectivity. I don't think it exists- in much the same way as neutrality doesn't exist. Which is why I see no alternative to basing one's actions on subjective morality and information.
My tentative conclusion from all this seems to be that the only advice to give a policy maker is the following:
"Go by your own conscience. Your morals are no better or worse thn anyone else's, and you are no more or less objective than anyone else. But since all of us are equally ignorant, your way is as good as any".
It is what I have suspected for quite some time: complete moral relativism is the only thing approaching a consistent morality.
All that remains is for each of us to adopt a (completely arbitrary) moral system and then try to act according to it. So if Hitler believes it is good to kill all Jews- fine. And if a Jew disagrees- it is just as fine for her to fight against it, by whatever means she wishes. If Israel wants to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians- fine. And if Palestinians want to resist that- just as fine.
This isn't quite as depressing as it seems, perhaps, in that this is no worse than what has actually existed since... forever. What is depressing about it is that after all our efforts we haven't come up with anything better than what existed before.
Complete moral relativism is "might makes right". And I guess that's the way it's always been. Sad we haven't been able to do any better than that, however.
I see your criticism and understand it. But I don't think it is total relativism. What I think we have done is to query the established meta-narrative. And that is truly essential.
I said before that I have difficulties with historical examples (i.e. as situational examples of what might have been done/not done). I don't think it's necessarily an ad hoc decision each time. We are all ideolgues to some extent, but perhaps we can use your spectrum (from axiomatic to relativist) as an explanation for the differences between 'ideologies'. Perhaps I'll post that suggestion at Harry's Place and wait for the barage of hate to be thrown at me :0)
Perhaps one last comment on the 'your morals are as good as any' bit. I think I touched on it on the CiF thread, but some values are simply very very culturally embedded and evidently work well. They can also be widespread. So I think there is room for differentiating between values. I'm not sure I'm offering anything concrete, just an observation.
Have a Good New Year!
I think that you are too pessimistic. One thing that almost all societies have always accepted is the greater rights to life of children. Comments such as "We should kill Indian children because nits make lice" by Phil Sheridan or "As to the Jewish women and children, I did not believe I had a right to let these children grow up to become avengers who would kill our fathers" by Himmler still have the capacity to shock.
My own personal coming of age was the boat people in Vietnam. Whatever motives one may say one has there can never be an excuse for pushing families out into the South China Sea in leaky boats. If your arguments need to reinforced through the barrel of a gun then either they are not good enough or you have not talked enough. Probably I come across as rather extreme but I always remember the contempt in the voice of a missionary in Bangladesh when he described how during the war of 1971 pakistani soldiers shot three wounded men taken out of his hospital "to impress us".
Olching-
The criticism is aimed at myself more than anyone. I hope that was clear!
We have questioned the meta-narrative, as you say. I think we will all be able to calmly say to anyone now: "your way is no better than their way". What is less satisfactory is that we will also have to add: "but it is no worse".
It's true, then, that we will be able to urge greater caution before taking any action. But we cannot yet say HOW to take caution, what argument pro and con might be made to any action, and whose opinions to value more and whose to value less. So to the extent that we can undermine certainties in our own superiority- yes, we can all agree on that. But if all we can do with this is simply cultivate indecision then it is not an improvement over the world of moral certainties and absolutes.
On a somewhat different but related note: you spoke earlier of the East/West paradigm. From what I know of Eastern philosophy, much is made of accepting one's place. Justice is less about one side being right and the other wrong than it is about promoting harmonious relations- which usually means appeasing the powerful at the expense of the weak.
This is a more practical morality, in that sense, than a Western (maybe Abrahamic?) insistence on objective good and evil, and rewards for the good and punishments for the evil. What do you think, of it, however, as a moral system in itself? That is, does it square with your own idea of morality?
I ask because the next step from moral relativism is acceptance of individual interest as a legitimate criterion of morality. That is, if everyone is free to choose what morality they wish then it seems likely that most will choose a morality which places their on self-interest above everything else. That is what I might call a completely "pragmatic" morality. And this seems more in line with Eastern modes of thought than Western, at least as I understand them.
Regarding AI- I share you admiration for them, as well as your caution. I would like to point out that in my experience the fact that they do "preach" an absolute morality has made them objects of much derision in some places- like Israel, for instance. Indeed, very few things are as likely to provoke a sniff of scorn from an Israeli as to say "AI says...". So in some ways I suspect that not only are they ignored, but they may actually provoke some enmity to both them and, by association, to the "universal" morals they espouse.
This reminds me of Ben Gurion's famous statement regarding the UN: "Um shmum" (which translates freely as "UN is BS"). The scorn for international organisations, both diplomatic and human rights based (UN and AI respectively), is a rejection of universalism, to some extent. As can be seen from the contex-dependent arguments usually brought to back up such scorn: "they don't know what it's like here", or "yes, but in THIS CASE its different because...".
Usini-
Perhaps I am pessimistic but at the moment I think you are overly optimistic.
There are some values shared in almost all cultures. Evolutionists have argued that this is evidence of some morals being inherited, and I think there is some evidence that this is the case.
Unfortunately, these "natural" morals are neither completely universal nor are they completely in line with my ideas of morality or, I suspect, yours.
For instance, though you say children's lives are typically valued higher than other lives, this is very far from universal. Infanticide has been common in many, many cultures. Both regarding ones enemies and even regarding one's own children.
One of the major revolutions of Judaism in its early times was the prohibition of child-sacrifice. It is shocking, but in the ancient Near East it was customary in almost all cultures to sacrifice one's first-born son. When Judaism rejected human sacrifice in general- the biggest cultural opposition to overcome was the sacrifice of one's own child! It was so difficult that it is expressly forbidden at least three times in the Bible, that I remember at the moment. That just goes to show how pervasive a problem it was.
In fact, in terms of evolutionary arguments, it is common among many animals to prefer the death of an offspring than of the parent. Especially among animals whose offspring require their parents to survive- and none are more dependent on theri parents than human, for a very long time. So it seems that if evolution is to be our guide then prefering the death of a child to the death of oneself should be common- as, indeed, it has been throughout most of history in many cultures!
So I am not sure that protecting children is really as universal as you mightthink from looking at modern Western culture. And furthermore, I am not certain that I would be happy with a "universal" morality based on evolutionary imperatives.
@trueleft This is an example of what I consider the generally ahistorical approach on CIF and particularly on the I/P threads. "In the ancient Near East it was customary in almost all cultures to sacrifice one's first-born son." Let me explain. The literate area was very small and we have so few extant documents that one cannot make a claim of that type. If you say this is not true, moving closer to our period and into historic time, do you know that there is little evidence that Nero was so bad? All our evidence is based on two books Seutonius and Tacitus, written much later and both with an axe to grind. There is also the question of how much this "sacrifice of the first born" was a piece of black propaganda propegated by the Romans in their war against the Phoenicians. You are on very dodgy ground historically.
What makes us different from the animals is that we have the concept of past and future. This extends further than our own lifetimes and thus our awareness of the sgnificance of our offspring is different from that of animals. I am not saying that children were not slaughtered, but emphasising how this crime resonates and is seen as somehow morally different. If it were not so why are examples so often cited as being especially barbaric? and this is not just by modern writers but by contemporary ones also. Clearly it went beyond the normal moral boundaries. Other examples are attacks on the land itself. Sowing the site of Carthage woth salt or Kit Carson's destruction of the Navaho peach orchards has always seemed especially barbaric, because it is declaring war on the planet itself. Just my thoughts.
Usini-
I am afraid there is quite a bit of historical evidence that children were sacrificed. And it isn't a Roman axe to grind- aside from actual archeaological evidence (altars etc.) the source I cited was written a few hundred years before ever a Roman set foot in the East. It's from the so-called "Old Testament", and from especially ancient texts of it (deemed so by modern scholarship).
Moreover, even if we don't accept this example there are plenty of others. Human sacrifice no doubt existed in many cultures, for instance, even until rather recently in some places, and this despite our natural and evolutionarily adaptive reticence from human suffering. Our natural inclination is usually to help people who are suffering, or at least not to witness their suffering (it distresses most people to see others in pain). Yet causing pain and death has managed to exist side by side with this "natural" distaste for pain in cultures too numerous to mention.
The truth is, really shaky ground is claiming that even biology confers a universal morality. For example: almost no cultures exist where siblings are allowed to have sexual intercourse with each other. But in ancient Egypt the sons and daughters of kings were not only permitted to wed and make offspring but were forced to. Furthermore, for my own part, I can say that my own intuitive morality has nothing in it against incest (if it is mutually accepted by all parties).
So I don't think a "universal" morality can be inferred from biology and the examples I have given thus far are just the tip of the iceberg of cultural variations even on supposedly biologically based ethics.
Oh, and I forgot: happy New Year to you all!
Happy New Year to all. I'll try and comment on your posts soon, but today has been a bit of a write off thanks to an absence of any kind of absolute morality last night...
I am not denying that sacrifice of children took place. My argument was about the fact that we cannot know how widespread it was simply from lack of historical evidence. The problem with quoting the bible is that everyone decides which bits they say are historically true and which bits are not. Thus did Sarah really concieve at 99? "No" you say, "don't be silly, that is just the hyperbole of the time." and then you quote other bits as verbatim. Its a bit like the Iliad or Odyssey.
I have my doubts about the whole Baal thing in the bible. If one imagines a simple pastoral people encountering the Tyrian civilisation their interpretation may have been completely wrong. Think of the Dorian Greeks puzzling over the Minoan civilisation and Knossos and coming up with the Minotaur myth.
I live in an island that was settled by the Carthaginians and we have Necropoli here. Most archeologists (an untrustworthy breed in my experience) attribute the large number of childrens' bones found in them to the incredibly high rate of infant mortality.
I have to admit that I haven't read the "Selfish Gene" and other books of that type, but I find the simple biological interpretation a little wanting as it reduces human thought to an irrelevance. We not just "are" but concieve of ourselves as "being". What a poem called "me and the animals" (by Gunn I think) referred to as animals capacity to "be that's all", which we do not share.
The argument over biology is surely just another way of discussing the nurture versus nature debate. Personally, I am slightly skeptical towards naturalist explanations (I haven't read The Selfish Gene either), as I tend toward historical, cultural, and social explanations.
However, bizarrely, it seems to me that children argument usini puts forward seems to back it up to some extent (every culture protects children...as do non-human animals). Regardless of how widespread child sacrifice was, the act of child sacrifice would seem to suggest a ritual in opposition to perhaps the natural urge to protect (one's) children.
Still, I tend to agree that the biological argument is unsatisfying. Similarly, when neuro-science seeks to explain wartime atrocities, it often feels that it doesn't do the situation justice.
As far as the bible or other ancient texts are concerned (or indeed many other texts), I have view them as commentaries on the cultures that produced or distributed them.
What do you feel about my other universal of not damaging the land itself? Isn't the horror of Hiroshima partly that the land itself was poisoned by radiation. "Poisoning the wells" is an image that still resonates in urban civilisations whose members have never seen a well. It seems to me that both destroying the children and the land carry elements of irredeemable self-mutilation which are taboos or at least beyond the pale of normal human action and universally create revulsion.
I am not taking what the Bible says without a grain of salt. In fact, my comment on the Bible was of a sort of "second guessing" nature: if the Bible sees fit to forbid the sacrifice onf a first born son so many times, in such different contexts then I assume it was a common practice. Usually we don't legislate against something which isn't done, let alone legislating against it four or five separate times.
The Bible even devotes a few whole chapters (which is ALOT in biblical terms) to a story which has as one fo its main morals that God does not want the sacrifice of children. I am referring to the story of Abraham and Isaac.
In any case, I agree that we tend to abhor the deatsh of children. And of other humans in general, as I said. But nevertheless we fimnd no shortage of cultures where killing other people, and even children, was accepted in spite of our natural (human) revulsion from it. So in these cultures such killing was not "evil", and we canot argue that there is a universal condemnation of child killing when there have been at least some cultures in which infanticide was acceptable.
The same can be said for destruction of land. While it is true that we naturally abhor such acts, as makes some evolutionary sense (killing can be adaptive, destruction of life sustaining resources themselves less so), some cultures practiced it- with your example of the Romans beinga case in point. According to Caesar himself, I believe, his legions did the same thing in Gaul as was done in Carthage, for example. So if in Rome this type of behaviour was not considered "evil" then we cannot say it is a universal evil. At best we can say humans tend to dissaprove of such things, but there can certainly be humans who did not- and even some who acted upon their sentiments and were even hailed as heroes by their contemporaries and/or descendents.
If Hitler had won the war do you think Western ethics would be as critical of genocide as they are now? Genocide has been a fairly common occurence in history, after all.
BTW, I haven't read The Selfish Gene either. How did it become a bestseller???
Regarding nature-nurture, this always seemed to me a very artificial dichotomy. It's like some holdover from nineteenth Century Vitalism. As I see it there is no essential difference between what happens "inside" and what happens "outside". the same thinsg apply in our skins as outside them. The same chemsitry and phsyics work inside a cell as outside its membrane. There is nothing essential to any object, so far as I can tell. There is ONLY environment, only context.
trueleft - I think you are referring to that amazing quote in Tacitus from a gallic chieftain: "they make a desert and they call it peace". I believe, but am not sure that he was protesting the destruction of traditional Gallic culture rather than physical destruction of the land. I don't think the romans had the technology or numbers. Carthage was a particular case because it was a city state. In fact between the second and third Punic wars the Romans encouraged the local tribes to attack the relatively small area of cultivation around Carthage to effectively starve Carthage to death.
Genocide is a tricky word. I think culturecide has been relatively common throughout history but even in the case of homo sapiens agains neanderthal man there is enough genetic evidence to suggest that a fair number were not killed and eaten but enslaved. Examples like the Shoah or Tasmania are thankfully few and far between. Genghis Khan for example did carry out genocide on certain tribes, but as a rational act of frightfulness to cow others into surrender, not on ideological grounds. It seems more a human characteristic to dominate and integrate. Survival does seem Darwinian!
usini, regarding the destruction of the land itself, it is true that this represents a significant act in itself. It represents attacking the very body of a group of people (from a small settlement to a nation or a country). This image became particularly powerful during romanticism in C18 and C19, and was then accentuated by fascist movements in Europe in C20. That is why the act of physically destroying a piece of land is viewed as a form of rape. This taboo is still as strong nowadays, but it has also shifted, if I may tentatively suggest, and is now also found in environmentalist thought. This is in itself borne out of the romantic period and eco-thought of C19&20 (Lawrence etc...).
TrueLeft, I am no theologian, but yes your reasoning seems sound to me (5 chapters = important moral axiom).
I take your point to some extent about nurture-nature being an artificial dichotomy, and yet scholarship would suggest that there are stark differences between hard science and humanities/social science. Whilst one approach clearly presents ahistorical templates, the other seeks to explain 'external' factors. So perhaps the difference is in the question: 'How?' and 'Why?' (granted, this
is simplistic).
Re Dawkins, I've heard from friends who are by no means Dawkins fans (on the contrary) that the Selfish Gene is an excellent read. Regardless of his ideas and the content, he does write well and persuasively, I think.
Is genocide or culturecide really that unique? It's a genuine question. The earliest ideological genocides are documented in the bible (no matter of their authenticity), so the idea isn't that new. And indeed there are historical examples that at the very least are uncertain as to whether it was or wasn't (attempted) genocide/culturecide. Even something like the Albigensian Crusade throws open a whole host of questions (means, ends etc...).
I hope you forgive me for coming here now. At this moment I am drunk, as is my usual habit even in the week.
I remember Linda Grant writing well of 'True Left'.
Perhaps Olching knows who I am, and I don't want to be anonymous any more. I want to stand up for what I believe , why I think this way, and why I think others should as well.
I never write anything about Isreal and Palestine. The simple reason is I don't care because I don't understand it. Most people inb 'the West' don't either
I could try to study it for a 1000 years and be no better off.
Tomorrow I'm going to put on the blog my analysis of Cohen. I have already done so with regards Hitchens.
Olching. I'm in krakow. You are in Poland too. Let's meet. Why not. I'm infinitely more interesting than a name in some banal keyboard excercice, I exist, and I am not a monster.
Hi Karl,
Good to hear from you. I've stumbled across your new blog.
Cohen makes me feel nauseated. Not sure you've been following his latest article where he breaks the most basic rule of constructing an argument, namely by making up evidence (he describes a clip contrary to what happens in the clip and uses a fake German word to underpin his point).
Sadly, I don't live in Poland. I used to...in Krakow to be precise, and a glorious time it was. I'm in Britain, but if I'm around I'll let you know.
Hope the hangover's not too bad.
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