From: mfy@sli.COM (Mike Yoder)
Subject: Re: Basic Courtesy
Organization: The Internet
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 06:15:46 GMT


I wish all here good health, long life, and a joyful day.

The most learned Hossein Ali Qomi has, to my stark amazement, moved this
discussion towards a domain where I can, in my judgment, make a clarifying
contribution.  I will let him decide whether this response constitutes
"brickbats."  (Are those a common form of wildlife where you live, good sir?)

">" marks Hossein's words, ">>" marks Leonard Erickson's, who was originally
addressing Angharad.  Marry, methinks we need a listmistress.

>>Therefore it behooves us to *not* assume that our "principles" justify 
>>saying *anything* hurtful. It's one thing to state facts, it's quite another 
>>to state opinions.
>
>Three questions:
>	1.  Are opinions _really_ not truth-functional?

Some are, some aren't.  An opinion about a fact of the form "it is raining" is
arguably truth-functional if one disregards fuzziness about how many drops are
needed to constitute a rainfall.  An opinion about an evaluation, however, does
not have a truth value until a specific evaluator is explicitly or implicitly
supplied.

The difference is like that between propositions and propositional forms: "if p
then q" has no truth value.  It acquires one, as it were, when particular
statements are substituted for p and q.  Similarly, "X is better than Y" has in
English the form of a binary relation, but it is really a ternary relation in
which the third item in the relation (expressible as "in the opinion of Z") is
elided and (usually) implied by context.  It has no truth value alone, any more
than the sentence fragment "has warts" has a truth value.  "Franz has warts"
and "Hossein has warts" both have truth values, assuming well-definedness of
wartdom (and of Franz and Hossein), but the fragment doesn't.

To put it another way: if I say "strawberries are tastier than blueberries" and
you say "blueberries are tastier than strawberries," there is no logical
contradiction, though the grammatical forms suggest one.  Thus opinions as to
the relative gustatory values of fruits have no truth values.  More generally,
subjective judgments have no truth value before a subject is chosen.

>How is any knowledge whatsoever possible if that is so?

This question requires, I presume, no further elaboration of the point.

>After all the expression of belief X is nothing more than my assertion of the
>truth of X.

Provided that X has the semantic content, and not just the grammatical form, of
a proposition.  If X is a subjective belief, there *is* something more: the
implicit use of you as the subject.

>No knowledge whatsoever is possible if my belief is not as capable of being
>true or false as any other referential statement is.

No; if a specific belief is subjective, it does not follow that all other
beliefs are too.  (I assume that you have not equivocated here between the two
meanings of "my belief" as a specific belief vs. that as an imaginary
collective entity comprising all your beliefs.)

>	2.  If you _really_ think that no opinion can be true, then why are
>you wasting our time with your opinion?

The answer to this should also be clear by now, so I will not elaborate.

>	3.  If we can't "assume that our 'principles' justify saying
>*anything* hurtful," then what would you say to Hitler or Stalin? Have a
>nice day?  That's a reductio ad absurdum, but like any sound reductio ad
>absurdum it reveals the flaw in the underlying reasoning.  If nothing's
>worth hurting someone over, then _nothing_ is the principle you're left
>with.

I agree with the reasoning here, except that the conclusion is too strong.  It
is logically possible, but silly, to have principles that require saying "have
a nice day" even to Hitlers and Stalins, but which allow (say) dropping H-bombs
on them.  I am inclined, though, to forgive the implicit assumption of
non-silliness here.  (Grand of me, isn't it?)

>>To summarize, you may speak of principles and the like all that you wish, 
>>but the end does not justify the means. 
>
>Like hell it doesn't.  Every means is justified by the end -- even the
>Kantian categorical imperative: the end in that case is "not using people
>as means."  Simple-minded cant like "the end does not justify the means"
>is a screen for failure to analyze the ethical content of a decision.

"The end does not justify the means" is not simple-minded cant unless you try
to use it as a statement with a truth value, which is misapplying it.  It is
more in the nature of a proverb or (if you will) slogan, and is a useful
reminder that the means chosen have a disturbing tendency to become a permanent
part of the end actually achieved.  Interpreted as a caution that the means
used must be considered in the value balancing in their own right, it is almost
tautological: I daresay you would not consider it justifiable, let alone a good
idea, to use a nuclear weapon to eradicate the rats in your basement.

The problem this "cant" addresses is that it is easy to make wrong judgments
about the efficacy and the side effects of certain means, even to the point of
choosing counterproductive methods.  The Jesuits learned the hard way in the
Phillippines that preaching against sexual activity by the young can lead to
increases, not decreases, in its prevalence.  I suspect those Jesuits would be
smiling knowingly now if they were following this debate.

  Franz Joder von Joderhuebel (Michael F. Yoder) [mfy%sli@uunet.uu.net]
  A good master is not something you find behind your stove.
    -- Paracelsus