A Bear - Poles Apart

March 5, 2017 / Congau

Higher Pleasure

Pleasure is a good, and maybe the only good, for it is what makes us happy and happiness is all we want.

But pleasure is not just pleasure. There are different kinds of pleasure. Many pleasures lead to pain, then, in total it is not pleasure anymore.

There are also different levels of pleasure. The lowest ones are those we have in common with the animals. Physical pleasure, although on occasions quite intense, can only reach a certain limit of satisfaction, but mental pleasures can attain a higher level and therefore be able to produce more actual satisfaction. It is possible to make the argument that a mild mental contentment may in fact be more pleasurable than the most intense physical enjoyment.

In that case the real quality of a pleasure can be assessed based on its intensity and duration and its level.

There is no way to calculate pleasure for it’s impossible to assign objective number values to make the comparison. But we still readily grade the quality all kinds of objects and products, from movies to hotel service, presumably based on the amount of satisfaction it has given us. We know the numbers are arbitrary, but we still do it.

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied,” says John Stuart Mill, but how can we compare them? Objectively and scientifically we cannot, but we are still quite sure that we prefer to be human beings.

Let’s therefore play with numbers and ask a miserable human being, on a scale from 1 to 10 about the quality of his life. He is very dissatisfied and gives a 1. Then we ask the satisfied pig and it cheerfully gives a 10. So far it looks like the pig has won by a wide margin. But the pig and the human being have graded two different objects, pig life and human life, and there has not yet been made a comparison between the two. We may want to give a paper clip a high quality score and a car a low score without in any way suggesting that the paper clip is worth more than the car. We surely value human life as such much higher than a pig life as such. Let’s say we would give human life the value of 100 points and pig life 1 point. Then the dissatisfied human being receives a total score of 100 x 1 = 100 while the pig gets 1 x 10 = 10. The human being has a higher amount of total pleasure.

If we let higher pleasures count for more, then it makes sense to say the more pleasure the better.

March 4, 2017 / Congau

Contradictory Liberalism

Liberalism is the ideology that holds that everybody must be allowed to have their own ideology as long as they allow everybody else to have theirs. In other words, liberalism allows everything as long as it is liberalism.

Complete liberalism is therefore logically impossible and what we see in the liberal democracies is a watered down version of it. Disagreement is certainly allowed, but it has to be within the safe frames of the system. As the liberal democracies matured in the twentieth century, they were able to shake off their illiberal adversaries. The extreme left and right slid into insignificance and the mainstream gravitated toward the middle. Thus Western society became more liberal, but inasmuch as real alternatives were excluded, it became less liberal.

The unhappy thing about the different political ideologies is that they view their ideal society as a totality that necessarily excludes everything that doesn’t fit inside. If the communist state were to be realized, capitalism could not be admitted in its midst and the government structures would be incompatible with the constitutions of Western democracies. Ideologies that require another structure have therefore become increasingly unrealistic and have been squeezed out. This has been an ongoing process that didn’t stop after the more extreme ideologies had become irrelevant; the new fringes continued to be shaved off. Liberalism, the ideology of free political competition, won by eliminating competition.

That is until the new populist movements emerged. They actually offer an alternative and thereby more competition, so we might think that they have enhanced liberalism. But of course they haven’t for they are driven by intolerance and their expressed wish is to shake up the establishment and the liberal protection structures.

The liberal establishment may deliberate on how to respond to that threat and the opposite alternatives are equally unpalatable: The populist movements could be banned, but that would mean an end to liberal democracy or they could be allowed to continue and crush liberal democracy. The only possibility is half-measures between restriction and tolerance, but that means allowing liberalism to be attacked from two different ends. But so what? Liberalism is contradictory anyway.

March 3, 2017 / Congau

Counting the Popular Will

The will of the people is sacred. At least it would have been, had it been known. People, as individuals or en masse, want what is best for themselves, and the state should be governed accordingly. Nothing could be more obvious. But what do they want? How do we know what they really want?

Modern democracy has invented a method of knowing, simple but effective; the popular vote. Leave or remain? Take it or Brex it? Yes or no? Ask that question on a particular day and encourage the people to answer. Everybody should answer; those who know what they want, those who think they know and those who were moved by the latest blow of the wind. Count the ballots, arrive at a number and that is the will of the people.

But the vote could have been held on a different day. A week before or after, a year sooner or later, the result might have been different. Why was the will of the people more important on that particular day? Of course it wasn’t, but that doesn’t matter for the real will can never be determined anyway. It is all more or less arbitrary. Then why engage in this game of hazard?

A referendum is never necessary, but normal elections serve a purpose. The leaders must somehow be chosen and a public poll is one way to do it. Hereditary succession is another and war is yet another, but the popular vote has often proved to be a smooth and painless method.

If only they can agree on the procedure and accept the outcome, it is not significant how it is done. One candidate receives three million more votes, but the other one is appointed president. That is not important, for the rules of the game are all that matter.

Only don’t call it the will of the people. It is hidden anyway.

March 2, 2017 / Congau

Philosophers Running for Office

A philosopher running for office? He would hardly be a philosopher if he did. A philosopher is in search for the truth while a campaigning politician pursuing the truth would ruin his chances of election. People don’t want to hear the truth; already the ancient Socrates discovered that, and in these days that is more obvious than ever.

Yet, Plato, the faithful pupil of Socrates, wanted the philosophers to become kings, didn’t he? Yes, he did, but they would turn to politics very reluctantly, being forced against their will to abandon their quiet contemplative life. They would have no personal ambition and only their knowledge about the good and just society would oblige them to sacrifice themselves. That is hardly the attitude of a politician who is trying to get elected in our democracy where the lure of a high office is seen as the ultimate token of success.

The philosopher king could never be a ruler in a democracy and be dependent on popular acclaim. The truth cannot be attained by a vote. He would then have to rule against his own better judgment and implement a policy that would lead away from what he knew to be the ideal.

Such a business minded approach is acceptable for a man of the world who is satisfied with making the most of that imperfect matter he is given. But a philosopher is the constructor of harmonious theories that will fall apart the moment an inconsistency is introduced. He could be an absolute monarch, indeed, he would have to accept that job were it offered him, but in the world of democracy he would be an utter misfit. In fact, he would cease to be a philosopher the moment he stepped into it. A philosopher qua philosopher could not accept a compromise.

March 1, 2017 / Congau

The Danger of Cultural Relativism

“Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual’s beliefs and activities should be understood by others from the perspective of that individual’s own culture.” Wikipedia

That could be a good and admirable principle. The willingness to try to see things from another person’s perspective is essential for understanding our fellow human beings. But understanding does not mean accepting and the danger of cultural relativism is that the tolerance may be taken too far and slide into moral relativism.

All cultural practices should not be condoned just because they are means to cope with social circumstances. Ritual killings and human sacrifice are wrong regardless of their presumed function. Our universal moral sense tells us that hurting others and causing suffering should be avoided and we should not let that conviction be compromised by misguided tolerance.

It may be the case that many cultural practices of this world are just bad and maybe even our own culture contains disagreeable features; we should be allowed to condemn that.

True, in order to be justified in condemning something, it must first be understood and that is a healthy side of cultural relativism. If a sufficient cultural insight has been achieved and there is still a reason for moral condemnation, then one can be surer about this judgment. Also, some customs may look repulsive on the surface, but upon closer scrutiny it may turn out that they are actually quite moral as they protect people from unnecessary suffering.

However, being too ready to accept is dangerous. One would probably find that all cultural practices serve some sort of purpose and fit quite nicely into the social fabric. They all contribute to preserving society as it is, including its attractive features, but that can be no excuse for accepting customs that are immoral in themselves. A culture only has a limited intrinsic value. Even the preservation of a culture may not be worth the suffering of the people who have to live in it.

February 9, 2017 / Congau

The Right to Property

The universal right to property is a rather curious thing. The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness may be universal in the sense that it means the same for all human beings, but the right to property is dependent on what a person happens to own. If he owns nothing, there is no property right to be defended. If he owns a lot, he has in a way a lot more rights than his fellow citizens.

The guaranteed right to every single object a person possesses is also dependent on whether or not they were rightfully acquired in the first place. Presumably no one has the right to stolen goods. But even if an object is bought with the consent of the previous owner, it is necessary that that owner was really entitled to it. And even if he also had gotten it by honest means, it all depends on how the owner before him had acquired it, etc etc.

Of course there is no way to determine the chain of ownership all the way from the present and back to pre-historic time, so in a sense it is impossible to judge if the current owner really has the right to his property, at least if it is to be considered an absolute and inalienable right. The protection of property may be necessary in order to secure a functioning society, but that is a pragmatic arrangement and not a fundamental a priori right.

Moreover, even the states that are the most devoted to the concept of property rights do sometimes confiscate the property of their citizens, usually by imposing taxes, and that could not have been done if they considered the right to be absolute.

Whatever a person owns is in any case linked to a complexity of circumstances and only some of them can be referred back to the person himself. Justice and injustice, theft and honest work, it is all intermingled in the great social fabric and even if one particular owner is completely honest, his material conditions are integrated in social circumstances beyond his control. Chance and injustice are ingredients in anyone’s possessions. (For example, in the rich part of the world we owe some of our riches to exploitation of the poor part.) That doesn’t mean that anyone should be allowed to take away what we have at any time, but it also doesn’t make it a fundamental right.

February 8, 2017 / Congau

Morality vs Ethics

Is there a difference between morality and ethics? Some say there is and construct elaborate schemes to show the distinction. That may be linguistically interesting, but philosophically it is quite redundant.

Essentially the two words mean the same dealing with whatever is right human conduct. Ethics is from Greek “ethos” which means “custom” and is the oldest and original term as it was coined by the first Greek philosophers. “Morality” is the Latin counterpart and comes from “mos, moris” which also means “custom”. The Latin term is simply a translation of the Greek one just like many other words from the Greek philosophical vocabulary were translated when the Roman world adopted Greek science.

Later when the Latin language and its derivatives spread throughout western Europe, the Latin terms would probably be more readily available for daily use while Greek would be marginalized (or forgotten until the Renaissance) for more technical use. That can explain why “morality” (and “moral”, “moralize” etc.) has a more personal ring, being closer to home so to speak, referring to or condemning individual conduct, while “ethics”, the more foreign term, sounds more formal and systematic.

But this distinction is mainly stylistic. One word or the other may be preferable in a text just like the choice between any two almost identical synonyms still matter. However, in a strictly logical language such embellishing varieties are unnecessary and confusing. Ideally philosophy (and science) should have only one word for each basic concept. A lot of unsubstantial disagreement could then have been avoided.

A language that only has one word for “morality” and “ethics” and there are probably many such languages in the world, loses nothing in precision, quite the contrary.

February 7, 2017 / Congau

Madness

Madness is an incorrect perception of reality. But who is to say what is correct, one might object. Maybe the madman is right and the rest of us are wrong? Well, that could be, of course, and just like you cannot prove that you are not dreaming right now, there is no proof that you are sane. However, we do have a certain common perception of reality and in general we have to accept that in order to live our daily life relatively comfortably. There has to be a certain order and predictability for us to do anything.

The madman also lives in this order, more or less, but in certain instances he slides out of it, and that’s what makes him mad. It’s exactly because he also has a reference to our common reality that we can rightfully call him mad. He drops out of this reality only partially and because he retains a certain connection to it, it is possible to make a comparison and identify his madness. If it were possible to be a hundred percent mad, that might not have been madness at all, but it’s the simultaneous discrepancy between one reality and a twisted reality that makes a person mad.

To a certain degree we are all mad inasmuch as we cannot keep a consistent and complete order in the way we perceive reality. If the inherent contradiction is too great, we suffer and become mentally ill; that is madness proper and the bad side of it.

But there is also something that may be called a good madness and that is the conscious willingness to step out of the rigid order and imagine alternative realities. That is actually a necessary condition for any creativity and in that sense an artist needs to be mad. In fact any human being should be a little mad in order to be human, that is to stay sane.

February 6, 2017 / Congau

If Everybody Did That

“What would happen if everybody did that?” We often hear this moral reproach. Your action is supposedly bad because if everybody did the same, the world would be a terrible place. Don’t board the bus without a ticket, because if everybody did, the bus company would go bankrupt and we would all lose. If everybody did…

But is that really a valid reason? How can my action in one sweep be extended to everyone else? There is no reason to think that my behavior would be imitated by any other person, let alone by the whole world. If my action is bad, it must be because it actually leads to something bad or because there is a significant risk that it will have bad consequences. There is no logical connection between what I do and what everybody else might do.

Some things may be good for one person even if it would be disastrous if many other people did it. If you and a few others like to go fishing in the local pond, it is fine, but if the whole world did, the pond would soon be empty. Yet, you don’t say that you shouldn’t fish because if everybody else did…

A few people, among them you, could very well evade paying the fare on the bus without dire consequences; actually without any consequences at all. In fact, if you are very poor, I hope you do try to be a free rider, for then you deserve it. If you are not, you should spend those few coins on a ticket. Making an effort to avoid paying what you can afford is an act of greed and for personal moral health reasons that should not be done. It is not because your action in any way extends to everyone else, but, on the contrary, because it stays with you.

February 5, 2017 / Congau

Helping the World

Whatever you give to the world, you give of yourself. A true gift is a sacrifice.

The rich and well fed man who transfers a fraction of his abundance to charity scarcely gives anything. The world does not need our surplus and our leftovers; it needs us.

Suppose you, wealthy as you are, donate a thousand dollars, ten thousand, a million, to a charity organization. Well, surely they need the money more than you do, so you cannot really go wrong, but your act of generosity disappears into anonymity and may not reach a real individual.

The problem is not that it is wasted. Let’s suppose every cent is well spent on effective projects. Schools and hospitals are built; new irrigation systems and production facilities are constructed. It is all well and good, but there is no human connection between giver and receiver, and it is not even clear who they are. Any donator is only one out of many and the beneficiaries are a faceless mass. Even quite a large sum of money may not be essential for a project and no individual is a necessary receiver. Someone, anyone or no one cares and the person cared for is not a person. That is not the real meaning of charity and it is certainly not love.

Love is sacrifice from a person to a person.

To help the world is to be a real human being who gives a part of himself to other real human beings. It is not an abstraction, it is work.

It is hard work and most of us fall short. Giving money away is better than doing nothing, but we cannot buy a clear conscience.

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	Quý on Fate
	Congau on Conscience
	Migelli Bin Origen on Conscience
	Congau on The Danger of Philosophy
	Author_Joanne_Reed on The Danger of Philosophy

A Bear – Poles Apart