Morality and Philosphy

Mitch observes in a comment that his first responsibility was to his wife and children. Implicit in most of our assumptions is that rings begin with our nuclear family (if we don’t get that right, how can we be expected to get our larger responsibilities right). For those of us earthy types with whom this resonates, Rousseau’s theories don’t have a chance. We figure, well, hell, look what he did with his children – someone blessed with his extraordinary myopia/selfishness in such personal terms can not be taken seriously.

This is what we keep coming back to on this blog: as nature (or the barbarians) break in a series of defense walls, the last one is the first – the protection with which we surround our family.

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Alashiya and I were trading Emails, discussing the hurricane relief efforts, when she dropped a bombshell on me. “What are all of these other countries doing to help the US victims of a natural disaster?”

Huh! Good question. It could very well be that there’s some sort of relief effort being organized in another country, but I can’t seem to find any mention of it in the news.

I mean, the people of the United States have always been generous when innocent people from foreign countries need help. You can trace this back to the Berlin Airlift, the opening salvo of the Cold War, and we’ve been going strong ever since. So now that Americans are hurting, why doesn’t someone step up and make an offer of help?

It’s certainly become fashionable in recent years to claim that Americans aren’t doing their share when it comes to aid. I’m waiting for those same critics to rip the rest of the world a new one.

Paul Ricoeur died last week.

Not familiar with the name? He�s a French philosopher who immigrated to the United States after being subjected to criticism and abuse in his native country. He taught at the University of Chicago for more than 20 years, and it appears that the change of venue was a positive decision.

�But Paul Ric�ur did not only find in the United States a refuge to work in peace and enjoy the respect he deserved. His American semesters also proved fertile. In this philosophical new world where not only the interlocutors but also the style of thought itself were different, and where openness to discussion and the development of sound arguments were more important than the tone of oratory or ideological denunciation, Ric�ur discovered a climate that matched his own particular way of thinking.�

Did anyone ever get the chance to meet him?

My wife commented to me that one of the unfortunate things about philosophers is that they aren’t mathematicians. When philosophers discover a paradox, they write paper after paper after paper about the paradox, trying to resolve it. When mathematicians discover a paradox, they re-evaluate the model that caused it. Philosophers seem to have a lot of trouble actually evaluating underlying models, though. Instead, they assume some model is correct (in this case, their harm-based moral model) and they criticize the details of conclusions people draw from other models.

I don’t think it ever even occurs to them that their model of “harm” might not be the best one.

-Commenter LotharBot in a comment on my “Test of Moral Intuitions” post. (LotharBot’s subsequent comment is also well worth reading.)

UPDATE: Mrs. LotharBot elaborates in the comments.