From: turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Transcendent values  (was: human rights...)
Date: 12 Sep 1992 13:46:08 -0500
Organization: U Texas Dept of Computer Sciences, Austin TX
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu
Summary: Again, I see nothing transcenent.

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In article <1992Sep12.063315.22069@panix.com> jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
> Contrary to your impression, parents who think about the matter rarely
> view themselves as basing the decisions they make on their children's
> behalf simply on whatever their own d., p. & i. happen to be.  A piece
> of evidence in this regard is that parents usually say they love their
> children, want what's best for them and are willing to make at least
> some sacrifices for them.

Your second sentence, far from countering my claim, directly
supports it.  Parents "love their children, so they want," i.e.
*desire*, their children to have fulfilling lives.  Parents have
their own *inclinations* of what constitutes a fulfilling life,
and so they raise their children with this *purpose* in mind.
Here, I see a lot of human desire, purpose, and inclination, and
nothing transcendent at all. 

> ... Claims that a moral principle or an argument should be 
> accepted by everyone regardless of subjective inclinations 
> may, of course, be nothing more than a mask for the will
> to power.  I see no reason to believe that all such claims 
> are of that nature, though. ...

What such claims mask is hard to say, and undoubtedly varies from
person to person.  But I assert that people "can give no sensible
explanation" of such claims from their many attempts to do so and
their universal failure.  May I suggest that, in this regard, a
single counter-example would work wonders.  You might begin by
explaining what it means to say that "a moral principle ...
*should* be accepted by everyone," in the absence of some
implicit understanding of what is the *purpose* of this "should". 

> Many such questions can be answered, although possibly not in a way the
> child can understand fully.  For example, you can tell a child that
> honesty is good because if he is honest then people will trust him,
> that lying to someone shows he doesn't really care about that person,
> that if people lie to each other they won't be able to cooperate and
> live happily together, and so on. ...

Here, we agree.  I see nothing to complain about your explanation
of why honesty is important (notice that it is in terms of
people's desires, purposes, and inclinations!), and if a child
cannot understand all this, I see nothing wrong in saying
something like "you may not understand all of this now, but you
will when you are older."

> Part of your point may be based on the observation that there is
> eventually an end to justification.  One can say to someone that lying
> is bad because it destroys the possibility of communion with others and
> communion with others is good because man is a social animal and
> realizes his nature through such communion, or that people who
> systematically cut themselves off from others tend as a matter of fact
> to be unhappy.  If he responds that he doesn't care about realizing his
> nature or about unhappiness, then there may not be much more to be
> said. ...

Exactly!  There is no going past people's desires, purposes,
inclinations, etc.  Values cannot transcend these.  In the case
of a child's "I don't care," the parent can respond "but *I*
care, and sometime down the road you will care also."  But
talking about some transcendent good is specious. 

> ... it is wrong to base decisions purely on your own interests
> (which I take to include desires, purposes and inclinations)
> or the interests of other parties rather than on the interests 
> of your son. ... But to make a decision in your son's interests, 
> you need a conception of those interests that goes beyond 
> your son's actual desires, purposes and inclinations, if only
> because those are too undeveloped and uninformed ...

An adult's "conception of [a child's] interests that goes beyond
[a child's] actual desires, purposes, and inclinations"
*inevitably* depends on the adult's desires, purposes, and
inclinations.  This should give every parent pause for thought.

> ... Thus, it is sometimes useful to view our actions as guided
> by principles that transcend actual d., p. & i ...

I am leary of the notion that it is useful to adopt views that 
are contrary to fact.

Russell