File spoon-archives/habermas.archive/habermas_2001/habermas.0110, message 6


Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2001 12:24:42 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
From: Stephen Chilton <schilton-AT-d.umn.edu>
Subject: Re: HAB: Re: SPC's concerns about agreement and motivation


This is a belated response (but not yet a reply) to John Wright's
comments on the abstract I sent around earlier claiming that lack
of agreement on norms caused certain problems for moral theories.
I've copied his comments at the end of this.

His comments helped me clarify my concerns, and also made me
recognize that I have to look more specifically at how moral
disagreement is in fact handled in various moral theories.  I
believe that the problems I'm thinking of are still there, but
obviously something more than the dowsing rod of my intuition is
required.  I'll pursue my research off-list and in the library
until I have something worth saying.

I attended some panels a few months ago where several scholars
presented their ideas about aspects of a certain form of just
society.  (I'm being deliberately vague here.)  During one
discussion period I asked them what they thought should be done
if, despite all their logic and good arguments, some people
remained unpersuaded of their theory.  They looked at each other
in a baffled sort of way, and finally one of them said, "We'd have
to use force.  After all, we've given them every opportunity to
see our logic."  (I don't have the words exactly right, mostly
because I was so astonished at the comment that I immediately had
the reaction, "He *couldn't* have said that, could he?"  But that
was the meaning and justification.  It reminds me of the old,
short joke, "'Shut up,' he explained.")  I looked at this group of
good-looking, well-dressed, educated, successful, articulate (and
benevolent) panelists, who had just finished detailing a proposal
that would work extremely well for good-looking, well-dressed,
educated, successful, articulate people.  I looked around at the
audience to see if any of the good-looking, well-dressed,
educated, successful, articulate members of the audience shared my
astonishment at this disrespect for others, but no -- both they
and the panelists were, if anything, nodding in agreement, and the
discussion passed on to other issues.  Surely I can't be the only
person in the world who sees that as an extremely lousy
justification?  This experience gave some support to my sense that
a lot of theories take a similar position, however disguised, and
so I remain concerned and will remain ... on the case!

Thanks for the comment, John, and also for the useful reference to
Nagel's work.

Best,

Steve


>       I'd just point out about your abstract that I, as a
> moral theorist, would want you to make a clear distinction
> between practical problems and solutions and theoretical
> problems and solutions -- these strike me as run together in
> your abstract.  For example, about the 'agreement problem' --
> it's not the case that we lack a moral theory for cases in
> which which there is a failure to achieve consensus. Rather,
> there is a theoretical question about status of that
> disagreement -- of course, you're presupposing the truth of
> constructivism, so that the status would probably be
> indicative of some kind of irrationality (cultural,
> institutional, etc). But I don't think any moral theorist
> would say that a more correct or complete moral theory is
> going to get us out of that bind, it just decides the kind of
> the bind we're in (or whether we're in one).  You seem to want
> to know the right way out of it, which is a practical problem,
> to be resolved among participants in moral discourse (again,
> presupposing constructivism).  That may happen with recourse
> to political or cultural experts, possibly even philosophers,
> not in order to offer a moral theory, only to identify our
> impasses (Thomas Nagel's "Conflicts of Value" in Mortal
> Thoughts is quite good on this).
>
> Best
>
> John
>
>
> John R. Wright, Ph. D.
> Department of Philosophy
> State University of New York at Stony Brook
> Stony Brook, NY 11794-3750



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