On Wed, 22 May 1996 ccw94@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> >Here is the core of our disagreement. Although poverty and environmental
> >degradation occur _due_to_ intentional acts, those acts did not have the
> >intention of causing them.
>
> But sometimes they do. Do you really believe that some forms of poverty,
> even in Britain today, are not the result of intentional acts, that those
> who formulated the policies were totally unaware of some of the potential
> outcomes of their actions? Since 1979 Britain has been run on a cost-benefit
> basis, as has arguably much of the developed world. Likewise environmental
> degradation. Do you really expect me to believe that these poor unfortunate
> souls, transnational corporations, for example, 'know not what they do', to
> quote Zizek?
I'm sure they do know what they do, and the TNCs are responsible for
them. My point is that this is not the same as the situation in which you
claim that Quetzil is responsible for clitoridectomy.
> They are (usually unwanted) side-effects. For
> >example, if I go and buy a house I do not do it with the intention of
> >driving up the price of property, but because I want to live somewhere.
> >All the same, my intentional action has that effect.
>
> This is beautiful, you have identified a structural constraint and
> unintended outcome of house-buying, yet feel free to absolve yourself of
> responsibility, presumably because you did not consciously make these
> structural conditions come about.
>
Well personally I don't feel free to absolve myself of causal responsibility.
> >Clitoridectomy, on the other hand, is a practice as opposed to an
> >unintended side-effect.
>
> Well it might be possible to argue that it is a side effect of a particular
> form of belief.
Thus locating the possibility that it does not fufil the
> function that it is believed it does. Hence making possible its critique.
> Hence destroying the other side of Hume's fork: that is facts can become
> values.
Do you mean that if people were told that clitoridectomy did not do what
they thought it did they might stop doing it? If so, that may be true but
I don't think a fact has become a value. Also, it isn't strictly an
unwanted side-effect of a belief but a way of acting on that belief.
Adult-child sex, anyway, is unlikely simply to be a practice relating to
a belief. In fact given the vastly different contexts
'adult'-'child' 'sex' might be carried out in, it would be hard to
describe it as one simple practice at all.
> > But don't claim that Quetzil is
causing a
practice > >about which he knows little and which he is not involved in.
>
> I didn't claim that he was 'causing' it, but that by his inaction was
> acting. Much the same that if i fail to stop my partner killing one of our,
> the only one actually, children, I have let it happen. Using a
> cultural/nationalist/statist card does not get anyone off the hook.
I think you need to articulate what you mean by off the hook, i.e. under
what conditions is someone morally responsible for something, that is has
an obligation to act with respect to it.
> >If you mean moral responsibility, then I'm not in a position to argue
> >because I cannot formulate a coherent notion of it. If
> >you mean causal responsibility, and treat humans (e.g. Quetzil) as free
> >(uncaused) agents, then I can see no other possibility than an individualistic
> >notion of responsibility.
>
> The notion of uncaused agents is certainly incoherent and rests on a false
> dichotomy between free-will and determinism. But free-will no more rests on
> the escape from cauality and/or natural necessity than I can be said to be
> free by walking off the top of a cliff, ignorant of the knowledge that
> gravity will contribute to the possibilty of my death.
I don't think the notion of uncaused agents is incoherent, although it
may be mistaken to believe that humans are such.
>
> Also, Dave can you explain your qoute about alfie to me?
It's from a magazine produced by homeless people in Cambridge. Some guy
wrote a short prose poem, and that was part of it. I have no idea who
Alfie is but I find it enchanting.
Dave Hugh-Jones So what's it all about Alfie? Have you ever seen the
dash2@xxxxxxxxx moon? It's a little whitish bluish thing that floats
about the sky. It's very very round and "they" say
that man invented the wheel.
Homeless person, 1995
>
> >Here is the core of our disagreement. Although poverty and environmental
> >degradation occur _due_to_ intentional acts, those acts did not have the
> >intention of causing them.
>
> But sometimes they do. Do you really believe that some forms of poverty,
> even in Britain today, are not the result of intentional acts, that those
> who formulated the policies were totally unaware of some of the potential
> outcomes of their actions? Since 1979 Britain has been run on a cost-benefit
> basis, as has arguably much of the developed world. Likewise environmental
> degradation. Do you really expect me to believe that these poor unfortunate
> souls, transnational corporations, for example, 'know not what they do', to
> quote Zizek?
I'm sure they do know what they do, and the TNCs are responsible for
them. My point is that this is not the same as the situation in which you
claim that Quetzil is responsible for clitoridectomy.
> They are (usually unwanted) side-effects. For
> >example, if I go and buy a house I do not do it with the intention of
> >driving up the price of property, but because I want to live somewhere.
> >All the same, my intentional action has that effect.
>
> This is beautiful, you have identified a structural constraint and
> unintended outcome of house-buying, yet feel free to absolve yourself of
> responsibility, presumably because you did not consciously make these
> structural conditions come about.
>
Well personally I don't feel free to absolve myself of causal responsibility.
> >Clitoridectomy, on the other hand, is a practice as opposed to an
> >unintended side-effect.
>
> Well it might be possible to argue that it is a side effect of a particular
> form of belief.
Thus locating the possibility that it does not fufil the
> function that it is believed it does. Hence making possible its critique.
> Hence destroying the other side of Hume's fork: that is facts can become
> values.
Do you mean that if people were told that clitoridectomy did not do what
they thought it did they might stop doing it? If so, that may be true but
I don't think a fact has become a value. Also, it isn't strictly an
unwanted side-effect of a belief but a way of acting on that belief.
Adult-child sex, anyway, is unlikely simply to be a practice relating to
a belief. In fact given the vastly different contexts
'adult'-'child' 'sex' might be carried out in, it would be hard to
describe it as one simple practice at all.
> > But don't claim that Quetzil is
causing a
practice > >about which he knows little and which he is not involved in.
>
> I didn't claim that he was 'causing' it, but that by his inaction was
> acting. Much the same that if i fail to stop my partner killing one of our,
> the only one actually, children, I have let it happen. Using a
> cultural/nationalist/statist card does not get anyone off the hook.
I think you need to articulate what you mean by off the hook, i.e. under
what conditions is someone morally responsible for something, that is has
an obligation to act with respect to it.
> >If you mean moral responsibility, then I'm not in a position to argue
> >because I cannot formulate a coherent notion of it. If
> >you mean causal responsibility, and treat humans (e.g. Quetzil) as free
> >(uncaused) agents, then I can see no other possibility than an individualistic
> >notion of responsibility.
>
> The notion of uncaused agents is certainly incoherent and rests on a false
> dichotomy between free-will and determinism. But free-will no more rests on
> the escape from cauality and/or natural necessity than I can be said to be
> free by walking off the top of a cliff, ignorant of the knowledge that
> gravity will contribute to the possibilty of my death.
I don't think the notion of uncaused agents is incoherent, although it
may be mistaken to believe that humans are such.
>
> Also, Dave can you explain your qoute about alfie to me?
It's from a magazine produced by homeless people in Cambridge. Some guy
wrote a short prose poem, and that was part of it. I have no idea who
Alfie is but I find it enchanting.
Dave Hugh-Jones So what's it all about Alfie? Have you ever seen the
dash2@xxxxxxxxx moon? It's a little whitish bluish thing that floats
about the sky. It's very very round and "they" say
that man invented the wheel.
Homeless person, 1995