To say that something, a house say, is modest is to say that it does not deserve attention. What I think is true and what I think Christianity says is that this is what modesty essentially is in all its senses. The essence of modesty is that something does not or someone believes that she does not deserve attention. A person of modest means is a person whose living quarters, profession and lifestyle do not deserve attention. Similarly, a person who dresses modestly does not want or thinks that she deserves or at least acts as though (I don't think there can be false modesty with regard to dress) she does not deserve attention for her dress. A modest person then is one who believes that she does not deserve attention. Thus, it is very much the same as humility which on the Christian conception is to be disposed to put God's will above one's own thereby recognizing God's superiority and one's subjection to God. One who does this obviously does not think that their own self deserves much attention; God is what/who deserves the attention. As far as I can see, modesty and humility are, in all the important respects, the same.
On the Christian account both humility and modesty are subsumed into temperance which means that they are to be understood as traits of resistance i.e. resisting temptations to sin. To be humble/modest is to resist the temptation to be proud, to elevate one's own interests above those of God. This is of course something to be resisted because the proper place of humans is to be God's subject and thus to do his bidding. Thus, humility/modesty is the opposite of pride, one who is humble/modest obeys God's will.
It is important to note that one who is doing God's will and is only concerned with doing God's will (as only doing God's will because one thought that it would make him look good to others is really to just be acting on the basis of his own interests which are to look good) is not interested in attention. They see themselves as an instrument for God's will and as it would be foolish to think that it is the scalpel rather than the surgeon that deserves attention so too is it foolish to think that the person rather than God deserves attention. Thus, the humble/modest person will shun undue praise and attention because it is not he who is important or at all deserving.
I think that this is what modesty really is all about.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
An addendum
An example which will hopefully illuminate the point I am after. Suppose there is a club with a certain name, say the Charity club, and this club goes around doing good deeds for people. Then, after a time, membership in this club dies out and the club is disbanded. Some while later, a few people who remember it fondly reform the club however, instead of going about and doing good deeds, they just go out to dinner on Sunday's. Nevertheless when people here about the reformation of the club they are made happy as they remember the old Charity club for its good deeds and assume that this one is similar. If the name had not been reused people would have thought nothing of this club.
This is a silly example, no doubt, but I think it gets my point across. The idea is that the name of something carries with it a certain emotive content, but it only does so because of what it was the name of. It was the thing that was named that gives the name its emotive content. Despite the new club being totally different, people are still favorably disposed to it because of its name and what that name means to them. This is what I think is happening with modesty. Hopefully this is helpful in illuminating what I was trying to say in the previous post.
This is a silly example, no doubt, but I think it gets my point across. The idea is that the name of something carries with it a certain emotive content, but it only does so because of what it was the name of. It was the thing that was named that gives the name its emotive content. Despite the new club being totally different, people are still favorably disposed to it because of its name and what that name means to them. This is what I think is happening with modesty. Hopefully this is helpful in illuminating what I was trying to say in the previous post.
Christian Faith
I wanted to briefly write a bit about what the virtue of faith is supposed to be all about.
Essentially, to have faith is to totally accept the word of God, to have the disposition to see the world in light of this acceptance and to completely surrender oneself to God. So there is a cognitive aspect of faith which is to believe in the Christian doctrine as well as internalizing Christian values so that one sees actions and states of affairs in those terms. Moreover, there is a connative aspect of faith which is to want to be (literally) God's servant.
There can be no doubt that faith, so conceived, is no virtue if Christianity is false. Imagine, however, if one were to hang on to the idea that faith were a virtue without the Christian framework. What would that look like? The sort of thing I am imagining is someone claiming that faith is the disposition to believe those propositions that can not be proven yet without which one would fall into global external world skepticism. And this character trait is a virtue because skeptics, being unsure that other people exist, turn out to always be egoists and so having faith is required to get morality off the ground. (Or something like this, I am just thinking of a simple example. Maybe I am being foolish but I think that this is something that someone could say.) At any rate, something has gone wrong here. I would argue that the person making this claim has hijacked the term. Faith originally meant one thing and now it is being used to refer to something else. The problem here is that the original intuition or feeling that faith is a virtue was a result of its being so under the Christian description. Under the new anti-skeptic description it is something totally different yet it still maintains the emotive or intuitive appeal of the old one. (This is poorly worded, but I hope the idea has been conveyed. We can talk about this in our meeting.)
What has happened to faith in my silly example is what I think has happened to modesty in recent times with the modern characterizations. Many people, myself included, have the gut-feeling or intuition that modesty is a virtue and (I would guess) this is a result of Christian values which have been internalized in Western culture. We still to some degree, whether we believe the doctrine or not, are stuck with the Christian conceptual scheme. [I would need to argue for this point no doubt, though I feel that it is to some degree self-evident.] So we have this intuition (whose basis is in Christian thought) but we have dropped the Christian framework which means that we need a new characterization of modesty because we think the Christian one is false and so we make a new description of modesty. And yet we have gone awry because the intuition we are holding on to is a result of the framework we are rejecting. Modesty being a virtue is only plausible within that framework of Christianity but because we feel that modesty is a virtue and that Christianity is false we go on about modesty anyway.
My thought and point is that without Christianity modesty is not a virtue and that any attempt to make it so must fail as what is really occurring is the hijacking of the term and putting it under a new description. If Driver thinks that what she has described is a virtue that that is all well and good but she should not give it the name modesty because what she has described is not. The same, I would say, goes for your account which calls modesty the exact opposite of what the framework in which it gained the status of a virtue understood it to mean.
All this needs refinement and clarification but it is the basic thought that I have been having on this subject.
Essentially, to have faith is to totally accept the word of God, to have the disposition to see the world in light of this acceptance and to completely surrender oneself to God. So there is a cognitive aspect of faith which is to believe in the Christian doctrine as well as internalizing Christian values so that one sees actions and states of affairs in those terms. Moreover, there is a connative aspect of faith which is to want to be (literally) God's servant.
There can be no doubt that faith, so conceived, is no virtue if Christianity is false. Imagine, however, if one were to hang on to the idea that faith were a virtue without the Christian framework. What would that look like? The sort of thing I am imagining is someone claiming that faith is the disposition to believe those propositions that can not be proven yet without which one would fall into global external world skepticism. And this character trait is a virtue because skeptics, being unsure that other people exist, turn out to always be egoists and so having faith is required to get morality off the ground. (Or something like this, I am just thinking of a simple example. Maybe I am being foolish but I think that this is something that someone could say.) At any rate, something has gone wrong here. I would argue that the person making this claim has hijacked the term. Faith originally meant one thing and now it is being used to refer to something else. The problem here is that the original intuition or feeling that faith is a virtue was a result of its being so under the Christian description. Under the new anti-skeptic description it is something totally different yet it still maintains the emotive or intuitive appeal of the old one. (This is poorly worded, but I hope the idea has been conveyed. We can talk about this in our meeting.)
What has happened to faith in my silly example is what I think has happened to modesty in recent times with the modern characterizations. Many people, myself included, have the gut-feeling or intuition that modesty is a virtue and (I would guess) this is a result of Christian values which have been internalized in Western culture. We still to some degree, whether we believe the doctrine or not, are stuck with the Christian conceptual scheme. [I would need to argue for this point no doubt, though I feel that it is to some degree self-evident.] So we have this intuition (whose basis is in Christian thought) but we have dropped the Christian framework which means that we need a new characterization of modesty because we think the Christian one is false and so we make a new description of modesty. And yet we have gone awry because the intuition we are holding on to is a result of the framework we are rejecting. Modesty being a virtue is only plausible within that framework of Christianity but because we feel that modesty is a virtue and that Christianity is false we go on about modesty anyway.
My thought and point is that without Christianity modesty is not a virtue and that any attempt to make it so must fail as what is really occurring is the hijacking of the term and putting it under a new description. If Driver thinks that what she has described is a virtue that that is all well and good but she should not give it the name modesty because what she has described is not. The same, I would say, goes for your account which calls modesty the exact opposite of what the framework in which it gained the status of a virtue understood it to mean.
All this needs refinement and clarification but it is the basic thought that I have been having on this subject.
Christianity's conception of pride
In Christianity pride is considered to be one of the greatest sins or vices. Aquinas says of pride that it is the disposition to prefer one's own will over that of one's superior and, of course, the ultimate superior of all people is God which means that the worst form of pride is when one favors his own goals, desires, will, etc. over those of God. (One thing that I think is important to note here [and it is in Aquinas and other Medieval Christian writers] is that what people want is very different from what God wants. Being good is all about taming one's own desires and acting in accordance with the will of God and against your own. God's will and man's are divergent and thus man's will must be subjugated. This is something that will come up later with regards to modesty/humility.)
Proud people love themselves greatly and as a result put themselves above their proper station. Aquinas says that pride is at the heart of all the sins as each of them are instances of a person indulging his own desires at the expense of God's which is at the very least implicitly accepting that one's own desire is higher than God's. In short, pride is the root of all other sins.
I think the Christian conception of pride lends support to my claim that your take on modesty sounded more like a take on pride. On your account the modest person is one who is motivated by goals derived totally from one's self, one who is not motivated by what one things will impress others. Essentially, a person who is modest does what he does because he thinks that it is worth doing, not because he thinks that others think that it is worth doing. Yet here we have a paradigm case of what Aquinas would call pride. For Christians a person ought do not want they themselves want but what God wants them to do. (This is what they think humility and modesty are all about as I will discuss later). To be motivated from within rather than from God is to be proud, not modest on the Christian conception. It would be the very opposite of modesty and humility.
Of course, this does not show that you are incorrect, because you were not writing from a Christian perspective, but at least to me it casts quite a bit of doubt on your conception. Especially when we consider that modesty and humility as virtues arose during the rise of Christianity it would seem very odd indeed if in truth their meaning had been quite the opposite of what early Christians had thought and in fact turned out to be the very things that Christians considered to be a vice. I think that if one is interested in the virtue you described, i.e. being motivated from within, it would be better categorized as pride.
Proud people love themselves greatly and as a result put themselves above their proper station. Aquinas says that pride is at the heart of all the sins as each of them are instances of a person indulging his own desires at the expense of God's which is at the very least implicitly accepting that one's own desire is higher than God's. In short, pride is the root of all other sins.
I think the Christian conception of pride lends support to my claim that your take on modesty sounded more like a take on pride. On your account the modest person is one who is motivated by goals derived totally from one's self, one who is not motivated by what one things will impress others. Essentially, a person who is modest does what he does because he thinks that it is worth doing, not because he thinks that others think that it is worth doing. Yet here we have a paradigm case of what Aquinas would call pride. For Christians a person ought do not want they themselves want but what God wants them to do. (This is what they think humility and modesty are all about as I will discuss later). To be motivated from within rather than from God is to be proud, not modest on the Christian conception. It would be the very opposite of modesty and humility.
Of course, this does not show that you are incorrect, because you were not writing from a Christian perspective, but at least to me it casts quite a bit of doubt on your conception. Especially when we consider that modesty and humility as virtues arose during the rise of Christianity it would seem very odd indeed if in truth their meaning had been quite the opposite of what early Christians had thought and in fact turned out to be the very things that Christians considered to be a vice. I think that if one is interested in the virtue you described, i.e. being motivated from within, it would be better categorized as pride.
Friday, October 17, 2008
A bit of Driver
I read Driver's response to your paper. I think that she has the right sort of critique of your positive account, but her own account still seems misguided.
Early on she gives a few examples of where ignorance is valued for some reason or another, but it would be a critical mistake to assume that a thing's being valued can lead to it in certain forms being a virtue. Youth, for example, is valued in our culture and so is wealth yet neither have any forms that turn out to be virtues. Youthfulness is no virtue and neither is the disposition to accumulate riches. But at any rate, her own examples do not even seem so good in this regard. She claims that ignorance of one's own beauty is said to enhance it, but this seems clearly false. One who does not continually point out her beauty is not thought to be more beautiful for not doing so but rather (maybe) more attractive as a person. This is of course the sense of attractive that does not mean only physically but considers all desirable traits. Furthermore, consider two people of equal beauty (twins say) one of whom know how beautiful she is while the other does not. Does Driver truly expect us to believe that the ignorant one is more beautiful than the other? What is valued is the lack of a "look at me attitude" which is consistent with knowing that one is quite beautiful. One might even think that being ignorant of one's beauty and for this reason not having the "look at me attitude" is nothing special at all. It is one who seems themselves in all their glory and truly see some things of great value who then refrains from the "look at me attitude" who is to be admired. (I would not call this person being modest either by the way, but rather displaying a sort of proper pride i.e. he does not shrink from deserved praise etc. but this is irrelevant here.) Another example she gives which I think is quite bad is that we value innocence in children. This is certainly true, but there is no way that innocence can be construed as a virtue because what it truly is is simple ignorance of the way the world actually is. One might say that innocence is the safety goggles we give children to protect them from certain facts about the world that would be too much for them to handle at their current state. Moreover, we do not value innocence in adults which really amounts to just being naive. (One might even say that this sort of ignorance is reprehensible in adults...) The point of what I have said is that, though on occasion we may value ignorance for some reason or another, it certainly does not follow that ignorance is ever a virtue.
Another point worth making is that her true/false modesty distinction is off the mark. She says that if you are talking to someone who is acting as though she is lesser than what she actually is and then you find out that she believes correctly that she is of such an such value then you will likely be offended. You would feel as though you have been patronized or condescended to. (I feel that Driver is wrapped up in her view that she can not see that this is not what condescending means...) She is just wrong about condescending. Consider these two stories: 1) After trying really hard to master some particular skill a player becomes frustrated. In order to raise the player's spirits his coach takes him aside and says that he should not feel bad as the coach himself had a lot of trouble with this skill when he was first learning it. Suppose that this boosts the players confidence and he goes on to succeed, but then later discovers that the coach never had any trouble learning that skill. Does the player now feel as though he has been condescended to? 2) Another player is learning a similar skill and having the same difficulties. His coach, noticing the problems, comments to the player that he should not feel bad about having difficulties as he is scrawny and weak and, well, no ever thought he could do it anyway. Does this player feel condescended to? Quite clearly, the first case is not an example of condescending behavior while the second case is. The point here is that false modesty has nothing to do with condescending behavior. In the first case the coach is an excellent candidate for false modesty on Driver's view, but is clearly not truly the case. He is not falsely modest despite the fact that he acted as though he believed something that he did not in fact believe but he did it for a noble purpose i.e. to help the struggling player. If Driver's account requires that this coach be falsely modest, then her account is wrong.
(What is a better account of false modesty? The only one that I think there is is the Christian one. This is that one behaves modestly at all times, saying that God deserves the credit and so on, but in his heart of hearts praises himself. Whereas the truly modest person will even to himself give all praise to God. The modest person acts and believes that he is not deserving and this sounds like Drivers' account but in fact it is crucially different as on the Christian view the modest person believes correctly that he is not deserving.)
In response to one of your challenges Driver tries to show that self-deception is not always bad and that sometimes it can be good. To do this she take the example of a mother who has deceived herself into having a slightly more elevated opinion of her children than the evidence warrants. She then asks us to suppose that this in fact has very good effects as children need praise in order to realize their potential and that parents who truly believe that their child deserves praise do a better job praising. I think that Thomas's work comes in handy here. He claims that a child who was valued by her parents only for her talents and abilities would live in a veritable hell. Would Driver's envisioned parent stop praising her children if she realized that they were not all she imagined them to be? What sort of parent is this? Thomas's point is that parents love their children totally and unconditionally simply because they are theirs. This and parent's constant reaffirmation to their child that they value her is what is important for the child's flourishing. She needs to know that she will be loved and valued even if she fails or is not so good at something. So it seems that what Driver is after (i.e. that children need to see that their parents value them) is something that can not come from self-deception nor does it have anything to do with the child's abilities or anything else that one could be decieved about. Moreover, she neglects the obvious fact that chilren who are praised for abilities they do not have may begin to believe that they do have them and this undoubtebly sets them up for future failure as well a bad case of the inflated ego.
In an attempt to refine her view, Driver discusses Roger the fake-Nobel Prize laureate. He is duped into believing that he has won the Nobel prize despite the fact that he is not done any work worthy of that prize. She then discusses how on one view he could be considered modest. It is just wrongheaded, I think, to even be using this example because Roger obviously has nothing to be modest about. He just has a load of false beliefs floating around, there is no actual achievement about which he can be modest or not. (Again, she just seems so wrapped up in her view...) Another instance of this is how she claims that your example of the person who believes that he is worth less than he is but acts as though he is worth more than he is is actually an example of a modest person though here modesty is not functioning as it should. This person may be many things but he is not modest. Modesty requires a certain sort of belief and a certain sort of behavior. When I concieve of the modest individual I see someone holding up his hands and shaking his head when he is praised. If this behavior is lacking in some way then he is not modest not matter what he actually believes.
At any rate, I think that Driver's view can safely be discounted.
Early on she gives a few examples of where ignorance is valued for some reason or another, but it would be a critical mistake to assume that a thing's being valued can lead to it in certain forms being a virtue. Youth, for example, is valued in our culture and so is wealth yet neither have any forms that turn out to be virtues. Youthfulness is no virtue and neither is the disposition to accumulate riches. But at any rate, her own examples do not even seem so good in this regard. She claims that ignorance of one's own beauty is said to enhance it, but this seems clearly false. One who does not continually point out her beauty is not thought to be more beautiful for not doing so but rather (maybe) more attractive as a person. This is of course the sense of attractive that does not mean only physically but considers all desirable traits. Furthermore, consider two people of equal beauty (twins say) one of whom know how beautiful she is while the other does not. Does Driver truly expect us to believe that the ignorant one is more beautiful than the other? What is valued is the lack of a "look at me attitude" which is consistent with knowing that one is quite beautiful. One might even think that being ignorant of one's beauty and for this reason not having the "look at me attitude" is nothing special at all. It is one who seems themselves in all their glory and truly see some things of great value who then refrains from the "look at me attitude" who is to be admired. (I would not call this person being modest either by the way, but rather displaying a sort of proper pride i.e. he does not shrink from deserved praise etc. but this is irrelevant here.) Another example she gives which I think is quite bad is that we value innocence in children. This is certainly true, but there is no way that innocence can be construed as a virtue because what it truly is is simple ignorance of the way the world actually is. One might say that innocence is the safety goggles we give children to protect them from certain facts about the world that would be too much for them to handle at their current state. Moreover, we do not value innocence in adults which really amounts to just being naive. (One might even say that this sort of ignorance is reprehensible in adults...) The point of what I have said is that, though on occasion we may value ignorance for some reason or another, it certainly does not follow that ignorance is ever a virtue.
Another point worth making is that her true/false modesty distinction is off the mark. She says that if you are talking to someone who is acting as though she is lesser than what she actually is and then you find out that she believes correctly that she is of such an such value then you will likely be offended. You would feel as though you have been patronized or condescended to. (I feel that Driver is wrapped up in her view that she can not see that this is not what condescending means...) She is just wrong about condescending. Consider these two stories: 1) After trying really hard to master some particular skill a player becomes frustrated. In order to raise the player's spirits his coach takes him aside and says that he should not feel bad as the coach himself had a lot of trouble with this skill when he was first learning it. Suppose that this boosts the players confidence and he goes on to succeed, but then later discovers that the coach never had any trouble learning that skill. Does the player now feel as though he has been condescended to? 2) Another player is learning a similar skill and having the same difficulties. His coach, noticing the problems, comments to the player that he should not feel bad about having difficulties as he is scrawny and weak and, well, no ever thought he could do it anyway. Does this player feel condescended to? Quite clearly, the first case is not an example of condescending behavior while the second case is. The point here is that false modesty has nothing to do with condescending behavior. In the first case the coach is an excellent candidate for false modesty on Driver's view, but is clearly not truly the case. He is not falsely modest despite the fact that he acted as though he believed something that he did not in fact believe but he did it for a noble purpose i.e. to help the struggling player. If Driver's account requires that this coach be falsely modest, then her account is wrong.
(What is a better account of false modesty? The only one that I think there is is the Christian one. This is that one behaves modestly at all times, saying that God deserves the credit and so on, but in his heart of hearts praises himself. Whereas the truly modest person will even to himself give all praise to God. The modest person acts and believes that he is not deserving and this sounds like Drivers' account but in fact it is crucially different as on the Christian view the modest person believes correctly that he is not deserving.)
In response to one of your challenges Driver tries to show that self-deception is not always bad and that sometimes it can be good. To do this she take the example of a mother who has deceived herself into having a slightly more elevated opinion of her children than the evidence warrants. She then asks us to suppose that this in fact has very good effects as children need praise in order to realize their potential and that parents who truly believe that their child deserves praise do a better job praising. I think that Thomas's work comes in handy here. He claims that a child who was valued by her parents only for her talents and abilities would live in a veritable hell. Would Driver's envisioned parent stop praising her children if she realized that they were not all she imagined them to be? What sort of parent is this? Thomas's point is that parents love their children totally and unconditionally simply because they are theirs. This and parent's constant reaffirmation to their child that they value her is what is important for the child's flourishing. She needs to know that she will be loved and valued even if she fails or is not so good at something. So it seems that what Driver is after (i.e. that children need to see that their parents value them) is something that can not come from self-deception nor does it have anything to do with the child's abilities or anything else that one could be decieved about. Moreover, she neglects the obvious fact that chilren who are praised for abilities they do not have may begin to believe that they do have them and this undoubtebly sets them up for future failure as well a bad case of the inflated ego.
In an attempt to refine her view, Driver discusses Roger the fake-Nobel Prize laureate. He is duped into believing that he has won the Nobel prize despite the fact that he is not done any work worthy of that prize. She then discusses how on one view he could be considered modest. It is just wrongheaded, I think, to even be using this example because Roger obviously has nothing to be modest about. He just has a load of false beliefs floating around, there is no actual achievement about which he can be modest or not. (Again, she just seems so wrapped up in her view...) Another instance of this is how she claims that your example of the person who believes that he is worth less than he is but acts as though he is worth more than he is is actually an example of a modest person though here modesty is not functioning as it should. This person may be many things but he is not modest. Modesty requires a certain sort of belief and a certain sort of behavior. When I concieve of the modest individual I see someone holding up his hands and shaking his head when he is praised. If this behavior is lacking in some way then he is not modest not matter what he actually believes.
At any rate, I think that Driver's view can safely be discounted.
Friday, October 10, 2008
More Modesty
Smith says, "I conclude, then, that the modest person is one who applies a different—indeed, a higher—set of standards than others might apply to her case" and I am convinced that he is wrong. One ought to apply the correct set of standards, not ones that are higher than those that others may apply. Imagine a grade school child who, despite receiving and A on his short story, laments that fact that his stories pale in comparison to Kafka. This child is not being modest, he is being foolish.
He discusses the arrogance of philosophers in his section VIII. Why Modesty is a Virtue: Consequences but I do not think that this tells us anything about modesty. The mean between arrogance and excess humility was pride for Aristotle, not modesty and thus I think that Smith's point could be made just as well by recommending pride rather than modesty. Reading this paper and thinking about modesty in general has led me to the conclusion that modesty is no virtue after all. Unless I am mistaken it did not arise as a virtue until the Christian times and I believe that, as Flanagan's view accepts and as your view sort of accepts at the end (I think), modesty requires that one view his accomplishments against a backdrop that renders them or his role in them insignificant. There is something out there that if taken into consideration would force one to the conclusion that he is not so special after all. This, to me, clearly stems from Christianity and thus ought to be jettisoned along with the religion if we are not to take its theology seriously anymore. Aristotle did not worry about modesty and I do not think that modern virtue theorists should either.
Pride, I think, is the real virtue. (Smith's last section seems to be discussing the value of pride not modesty.) To be proud is to believe truly that one is of value. The proud person does not underestimate or overestimate his worth nor does he go around telling everyone about how great he is as such conduct belies a sort of underestimation in that he needs to approval of others in order to believe that he or his work is of value. There is no need to go into greater detail here, however, but what I think is important is that much of what has been said about what is good about modesty is really what is good about pride. In the end, it would seem that modesty requires those who are great to never truly accept it (they may accept that there work is great compared to others, that they can do extraordinary things, etc. but never that they are great) and this is a sad thing I think. To be such a special sort of person and yet to never accept it is a true shame as it deprives that person of self-knowledge. (There is much more to be said here.) Pride on the other hand requires that one have that self-knowledge and is thus superior as it gives one the correct view of things. Now of course this sort of view is in trouble if what you are saying about the value of the individual is true. So let's talk about this at our meeting.
He discusses the arrogance of philosophers in his section VIII. Why Modesty is a Virtue: Consequences but I do not think that this tells us anything about modesty. The mean between arrogance and excess humility was pride for Aristotle, not modesty and thus I think that Smith's point could be made just as well by recommending pride rather than modesty. Reading this paper and thinking about modesty in general has led me to the conclusion that modesty is no virtue after all. Unless I am mistaken it did not arise as a virtue until the Christian times and I believe that, as Flanagan's view accepts and as your view sort of accepts at the end (I think), modesty requires that one view his accomplishments against a backdrop that renders them or his role in them insignificant. There is something out there that if taken into consideration would force one to the conclusion that he is not so special after all. This, to me, clearly stems from Christianity and thus ought to be jettisoned along with the religion if we are not to take its theology seriously anymore. Aristotle did not worry about modesty and I do not think that modern virtue theorists should either.
Pride, I think, is the real virtue. (Smith's last section seems to be discussing the value of pride not modesty.) To be proud is to believe truly that one is of value. The proud person does not underestimate or overestimate his worth nor does he go around telling everyone about how great he is as such conduct belies a sort of underestimation in that he needs to approval of others in order to believe that he or his work is of value. There is no need to go into greater detail here, however, but what I think is important is that much of what has been said about what is good about modesty is really what is good about pride. In the end, it would seem that modesty requires those who are great to never truly accept it (they may accept that there work is great compared to others, that they can do extraordinary things, etc. but never that they are great) and this is a sad thing I think. To be such a special sort of person and yet to never accept it is a true shame as it deprives that person of self-knowledge. (There is much more to be said here.) Pride on the other hand requires that one have that self-knowledge and is thus superior as it gives one the correct view of things. Now of course this sort of view is in trouble if what you are saying about the value of the individual is true. So let's talk about this at our meeting.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Comments on Modesty
To begin with, I could not agree more that Driver's account is just plain wrong. No form of ignorance or self-deception can count as a virtue, regardless of the benefit it renders on society. As far as I can see, a virtue is a virtue insofar as it benefits the agent not the society (obviously justice is a problem for this sort of thinking, but this is beside the point [I think at least] for this purpose).
I also agree with your take on the accuracy account. One is not modest just because they correctly gauge their skill. (The global and focused modesty point is very good.)
"She could care about whether her writing really did constitute a genuine accomplishment, which is what the critics views call into question, while not worrying about what anyone thought of her for accomplishing it."I think that this is a very interesting distinction.
What I am curious about however, is this line, "And this will be, on this account, connected to the essence of modesty since someone who is trying to be modest, or to do what a modest person would do, is typically doing so in order to appear modest to someone (even if this is, in the limiting case, only herself). And in that case she does after all care what people think of her." I am not sure that this sounds right to me. How could a person not care what she thought of herself? Good self-esteem seems to be something that is very psychologically valuable and requires a positive self image. I really could not imagine someone who did not care about herself where this not caring is meant to be neutral rather than negative. To me, this sort of consideration brings into question the concept of "false modesty". I do not think that one is falsely modest who first wonders what the modest person would do and then acts accordingly for the same reason that I do not believe that the soldier who wonders what his hero would do and then acts accordingly is not acting courageously. False modesty, if it is anything, is to my mind simple insincerity i.e. when one compares his accomplishments to those of another by saying how much greater than his own those of the other are while saying this in a manner that makes it obvious that he does not think the other's accomplishments are very great. At any rate, I think there is something to talk about here.
Also, I would like to discuss your final paragraph where you say why you think modesty is a virtue. I would like to know more about the thoughts behind that paragraph. Is there a bit of determinism in there? Moreover, I have the intuition that some people are (at the very least) morally better than others and that they deserve praise for being so. It would seem wrong to praise only their acts but not the people. Take another example: the Olympics. Imagine that medals were not given to the athletes but rather to the performances. That would seem ridiculous. Another point, what about willpower? Do you want to say that those who persevere through all sorts of hardships to go on and accomplish something great are not to be praised? To me there seems to be more than just the accomplishment which is valuable but also the process that led to it. One last related point on this issue, imagine a struggling artist who, despite being good, has yet to be recognized. What I imagine this person to want is not just for his paintings to be viewed as good but for him to be viewed as being a good painter. What is important to him is that he has done well. Contrast his situation with one where a man has the ability to snap his fingers and 'poof' create masterpieces ex nihilo. In this case, we would rightly only value the painting not the man (at least for aesthetic reasons, we may value him for magical abilities but that is another story), yet this story seems entirely different than the one with the actual painter. At any rate I would really like to discuss this tomorrow as maybe, I am misconstruing your view and just need a clarification...
I also agree with your take on the accuracy account. One is not modest just because they correctly gauge their skill. (The global and focused modesty point is very good.)
"She could care about whether her writing really did constitute a genuine accomplishment, which is what the critics views call into question, while not worrying about what anyone thought of her for accomplishing it."I think that this is a very interesting distinction.
What I am curious about however, is this line, "And this will be, on this account, connected to the essence of modesty since someone who is trying to be modest, or to do what a modest person would do, is typically doing so in order to appear modest to someone (even if this is, in the limiting case, only herself). And in that case she does after all care what people think of her." I am not sure that this sounds right to me. How could a person not care what she thought of herself? Good self-esteem seems to be something that is very psychologically valuable and requires a positive self image. I really could not imagine someone who did not care about herself where this not caring is meant to be neutral rather than negative. To me, this sort of consideration brings into question the concept of "false modesty". I do not think that one is falsely modest who first wonders what the modest person would do and then acts accordingly for the same reason that I do not believe that the soldier who wonders what his hero would do and then acts accordingly is not acting courageously. False modesty, if it is anything, is to my mind simple insincerity i.e. when one compares his accomplishments to those of another by saying how much greater than his own those of the other are while saying this in a manner that makes it obvious that he does not think the other's accomplishments are very great. At any rate, I think there is something to talk about here.
Also, I would like to discuss your final paragraph where you say why you think modesty is a virtue. I would like to know more about the thoughts behind that paragraph. Is there a bit of determinism in there? Moreover, I have the intuition that some people are (at the very least) morally better than others and that they deserve praise for being so. It would seem wrong to praise only their acts but not the people. Take another example: the Olympics. Imagine that medals were not given to the athletes but rather to the performances. That would seem ridiculous. Another point, what about willpower? Do you want to say that those who persevere through all sorts of hardships to go on and accomplish something great are not to be praised? To me there seems to be more than just the accomplishment which is valuable but also the process that led to it. One last related point on this issue, imagine a struggling artist who, despite being good, has yet to be recognized. What I imagine this person to want is not just for his paintings to be viewed as good but for him to be viewed as being a good painter. What is important to him is that he has done well. Contrast his situation with one where a man has the ability to snap his fingers and 'poof' create masterpieces ex nihilo. In this case, we would rightly only value the painting not the man (at least for aesthetic reasons, we may value him for magical abilities but that is another story), yet this story seems entirely different than the one with the actual painter. At any rate I would really like to discuss this tomorrow as maybe, I am misconstruing your view and just need a clarification...
Morals By Agreement: Part I
To begin, Gautier outlines what he plans to show in his work.
According to Gautier, rationality is all about seeking the maximization of benefits for oneself. To be rational is to determine your greatest interest and then to pursue it. Despite the fact that this view would seem to imply that people who act on moral grounds are irrational, Gautier says that this is not so. On his view, acting in accordance with the constraints of morality is rational because when one does so along with his community he will maximize his benefits more than if he along with everyone else failed to act morally. The idea is that completely free agents acting so as to maximize their own benefits will not fare as well as slightly constrained agents acting so as to maximize their own benefits. Morality is to be understood as the constraints.
I want to draw attention to two things Gautier says. "The contractarian need not claim that actual persons take no interest in their fellows: indeed, we suppose that some degree of sociability is characteristic of human beings. But the contractarian sees sociability as enriching human life; for him, it becomes a source of exploitation if it induces persons to acquiesce in institutions and practices that but for their fellow-feelings would be costly to them." I think that the final statement is false. There are certain things that we do for our friends and loved ones that we do not do for just anyone else (raising children, helping elderly parents, doing selfless favors for friends) which would seem to be very costly to us were it not for our "fellow-feelings". Does this in anyway show that these practices are forms of exploitation? Surely this can not be true as it is the "fellow-feeling" that makes us want to do these things. The benefit to us is the well-being of the other person. Another thought that if Gautier takes the sort of approach that he does here with other people's interests, how can he not take the same approach when it comes to a person's own interest? Why not say 'in cases where it would appear costly to partake in a particular practice were it not for his self love, then a person is irrational if he engages in that practice? (Epicetus once wrote (for another purpose) to the effect that it is only because of the fact that we love our bodies so much that we do the things we do as when we imagine having to do these things for others they seem repulsive i.e. washing oneself. The point that you can not separate our affections for something from it when trying to determine whether or not acting in a particular way with regard to it is rational.)
The other statement that I find myself disagreeing with is when he says "Those who claim to establish the rationality of such compliance (with moral principles) appeal to a strong and controversial conception of reason that seems to incorporate prior moral suppositions." The thought that I have here is that it would seem as though those leave out these moral considerations in their conception of reason have the supposition that moral principles are not a part of reason. He says that those who take morality to be a part of reason have just assumed it to be there, but my point is that he has just assumed it not to be there; no argument has been given as to why it is not a part of reason or why it can not be. Maybe an argument will come for this later on, but at this point there is none.
According to Gautier, rationality is all about seeking the maximization of benefits for oneself. To be rational is to determine your greatest interest and then to pursue it. Despite the fact that this view would seem to imply that people who act on moral grounds are irrational, Gautier says that this is not so. On his view, acting in accordance with the constraints of morality is rational because when one does so along with his community he will maximize his benefits more than if he along with everyone else failed to act morally. The idea is that completely free agents acting so as to maximize their own benefits will not fare as well as slightly constrained agents acting so as to maximize their own benefits. Morality is to be understood as the constraints.
I want to draw attention to two things Gautier says. "The contractarian need not claim that actual persons take no interest in their fellows: indeed, we suppose that some degree of sociability is characteristic of human beings. But the contractarian sees sociability as enriching human life; for him, it becomes a source of exploitation if it induces persons to acquiesce in institutions and practices that but for their fellow-feelings would be costly to them." I think that the final statement is false. There are certain things that we do for our friends and loved ones that we do not do for just anyone else (raising children, helping elderly parents, doing selfless favors for friends) which would seem to be very costly to us were it not for our "fellow-feelings". Does this in anyway show that these practices are forms of exploitation? Surely this can not be true as it is the "fellow-feeling" that makes us want to do these things. The benefit to us is the well-being of the other person. Another thought that if Gautier takes the sort of approach that he does here with other people's interests, how can he not take the same approach when it comes to a person's own interest? Why not say 'in cases where it would appear costly to partake in a particular practice were it not for his self love, then a person is irrational if he engages in that practice? (Epicetus once wrote (for another purpose) to the effect that it is only because of the fact that we love our bodies so much that we do the things we do as when we imagine having to do these things for others they seem repulsive i.e. washing oneself. The point that you can not separate our affections for something from it when trying to determine whether or not acting in a particular way with regard to it is rational.)
The other statement that I find myself disagreeing with is when he says "Those who claim to establish the rationality of such compliance (with moral principles) appeal to a strong and controversial conception of reason that seems to incorporate prior moral suppositions." The thought that I have here is that it would seem as though those leave out these moral considerations in their conception of reason have the supposition that moral principles are not a part of reason. He says that those who take morality to be a part of reason have just assumed it to be there, but my point is that he has just assumed it not to be there; no argument has been given as to why it is not a part of reason or why it can not be. Maybe an argument will come for this later on, but at this point there is none.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Thomas: Chapter 7 and 8
In these chapters Thomas's goal is to argue that those who have a morally good character are more likely to live well (i.e. living a good life, reaching contentment, flourish, be happy). He does not want to say, like Plato, that every person with a morally good character is happier in virtue of having a morally good character than a person who is without it.
For Thomas, flourishing requires (among other things) a proper regard for oneself which is to be concerned with oneself and one's interactions with others, friends and loved one's in particular. Proper regard for oneself amounts to self-love which is the belief that one ought to be treated morally and the desire to flourish (there is nothing necessarily egoistic about this as one can still at times prefer the interests of others over his own). In terms of one's friends and loved ones, it is clear that a person could not be happy without these social relationships and that one can not truly be said to be a friend of another if he does not (or is not willing to) contribute substantially to the well-being and interests of the other person. Moreover, with regard to strangers and people who one does not know well, he should realize that if he desires to be treated morally (and that moral treatment is required for flourishing in that one who is unjustly hindered at all times could never flourish) then other people will desire the same and have the same right to be so treated as he has.
Thomas also makes the claim that psychic harmony is very important to one's well being and that the person with a morally good character is more likely to achieve psychic harmony. Psychic harmony is to be understood as our knowledge of our reasons for acting. As it is the case the person of moral character will not have to feign his true feelings, the reasons that he gives for doing things are the reasons that he actually has. The same is not so for the immoral person. He must give very different reasons for acting than the one's he actually has for otherwise he would be suspected and hindered by other people. (Roughly, the idea is that it is extremely psychologically taxing to keep all your lies straight and so on.) Moreover, Thomas wants to say that the immoral person is essentially insincere. A promise from him does not mean the same thing as it does from a moral person and even to those who he truly loves and cares about his word can never be as solid as the truly honest man. The immoral person in virtue of being immoral lives a life of insincerity and, what is more, it may well turn out that after a time he himself has trouble distinguishing between sincere and insincere feelings, motives, etc. It is in this sense that Thomas means that he is lacking in self-knowledge (i.e. knowledge of his motivations) whereas the moral person is not lacking this knowledge. [argument for this p. 216-232] Furthermore, [p.229-230 "John and Peter"] even when the immoral person is dealing with those whom he loves and cares about his reasons for acting in the way he does toward them could be, as a result of his typical immoral way of dealing with and reasoning about his interactions with people, not out of actual care for them but out of his self-interested desire to maintain them as friends. And this it would seem would be quite distressing to the genuinely immoral person because he truly does care about his people and wants that to be his reason for acting as he does. This sort of thing can not happen to the moral person as he is not a master of insincerity and thus is not as readily able to act in this way. [I did not give this argument much credit the first time I looked at it, but at a second glance I like it a lot more.]
For Thomas, flourishing requires (among other things) a proper regard for oneself which is to be concerned with oneself and one's interactions with others, friends and loved one's in particular. Proper regard for oneself amounts to self-love which is the belief that one ought to be treated morally and the desire to flourish (there is nothing necessarily egoistic about this as one can still at times prefer the interests of others over his own). In terms of one's friends and loved ones, it is clear that a person could not be happy without these social relationships and that one can not truly be said to be a friend of another if he does not (or is not willing to) contribute substantially to the well-being and interests of the other person. Moreover, with regard to strangers and people who one does not know well, he should realize that if he desires to be treated morally (and that moral treatment is required for flourishing in that one who is unjustly hindered at all times could never flourish) then other people will desire the same and have the same right to be so treated as he has.
Thomas also makes the claim that psychic harmony is very important to one's well being and that the person with a morally good character is more likely to achieve psychic harmony. Psychic harmony is to be understood as our knowledge of our reasons for acting. As it is the case the person of moral character will not have to feign his true feelings, the reasons that he gives for doing things are the reasons that he actually has. The same is not so for the immoral person. He must give very different reasons for acting than the one's he actually has for otherwise he would be suspected and hindered by other people. (Roughly, the idea is that it is extremely psychologically taxing to keep all your lies straight and so on.) Moreover, Thomas wants to say that the immoral person is essentially insincere. A promise from him does not mean the same thing as it does from a moral person and even to those who he truly loves and cares about his word can never be as solid as the truly honest man. The immoral person in virtue of being immoral lives a life of insincerity and, what is more, it may well turn out that after a time he himself has trouble distinguishing between sincere and insincere feelings, motives, etc. It is in this sense that Thomas means that he is lacking in self-knowledge (i.e. knowledge of his motivations) whereas the moral person is not lacking this knowledge. [argument for this p. 216-232] Furthermore, [p.229-230 "John and Peter"] even when the immoral person is dealing with those whom he loves and cares about his reasons for acting in the way he does toward them could be, as a result of his typical immoral way of dealing with and reasoning about his interactions with people, not out of actual care for them but out of his self-interested desire to maintain them as friends. And this it would seem would be quite distressing to the genuinely immoral person because he truly does care about his people and wants that to be his reason for acting as he does. This sort of thing can not happen to the moral person as he is not a master of insincerity and thus is not as readily able to act in this way. [I did not give this argument much credit the first time I looked at it, but at a second glance I like it a lot more.]
Friday, October 3, 2008
Thomas: Chapter 6
This chapter deals with how morality/altruism between strangers works and though it does not give much in the way of argument as to why it does and should work, I think that Thomas has some very interesting insights throughout.
To begin, Thomas starts out with the uncontroversial claim that a person who is treated well by another person will tend to like that person more. In other words those who are consistently nice to us gain our affections. (This is the same reasoning that was behind why children love their parents.) This is important because not only does it make us favorably disposed toward those people who are nice to us it also gives us certain counterfactual beliefs about these people. For example, if Smith always helps me out whenever I am indeed then I will likely form the belief that if I end up being in need Smith will help me out. The idea here is quite simple and it is that as I become more favorably disposed to those who are kind to me I will also become more likely to do kind things for them, which will in turn increase their feelings towards me and so on.
What is more is that we all (at least in most societies, though not all) have a basic level of trust for one another. Even though we tend not to think about it, no one runs around believing that the strangers he passes on the street desire to kill him. If we thought for a moment that people desired to kill us or do us harm it would be psychologically impossible for us to live decent lives. We would always be terrified that someone would try to do us in. This is still the case even if we imagine that murders were always caught by the authorities and harshly punished. It is the thought that people desire to harm us and would if they could only get away with it that would make this state of affairs psychologically unbearable. The sort of life that we lead depends in large part on our tendency to at least on a very basic level trust one another. A further example. It is quite common for one person to ask a complete stranger what time it is or when the next bus will arrive. Yet when we ask such things there is not even the slightest suspicion that the person might lie to us (at least in ordinary circumstances). Even if it turns out that the wrong information was given our tendency is to think that the person was ignorant of the facts or just foolish and not that he was being malicious. Again this displays that basic level of trust that we have for one another and also the fact that in general people do not desire to harm one another (so long as their interests are not at state, then we have a different story).
Now Thomas points out that this level of trust need not exist, as it likely does not in some countries that have experienced extreme hardships (i.e. famine, disease, civil war, etc.). Moreover, just as kind actions from another tend to improve our opinion of them, mean acts from another tend to diminish our opinion of them. Thus, the circumstances play a very important role whether these morality-friendly conditions exist. (This idea reminds me of Aristotle's points about certain conditions need to be met in a persons environment before it is even possible for that person to attempt to achieve eudaimonia.)
Despite the fact that it need not be the case that we live is a society where these conditions are met, it seems to be the case that (at least most of the time) these conditions are met in our society. Thus, if we get a good start in life and are shown kindness by those around us it becomes more and more likely that we will acquire beliefs about the people around us that they will try to help us if we are in need. This then, coupled with the fact that people in general to not desire to harm other people, can form the basis for our basic level of trust of those around us who we may not know well as well as strangers. Again, this is not meant to give us any answer to Gyges type problems but is rather meant to be seen as an explanation of why things are the way they are morally speaking. Thomas wants to say why people have moral sentiments and desires not why they should.
To begin, Thomas starts out with the uncontroversial claim that a person who is treated well by another person will tend to like that person more. In other words those who are consistently nice to us gain our affections. (This is the same reasoning that was behind why children love their parents.) This is important because not only does it make us favorably disposed toward those people who are nice to us it also gives us certain counterfactual beliefs about these people. For example, if Smith always helps me out whenever I am indeed then I will likely form the belief that if I end up being in need Smith will help me out. The idea here is quite simple and it is that as I become more favorably disposed to those who are kind to me I will also become more likely to do kind things for them, which will in turn increase their feelings towards me and so on.
What is more is that we all (at least in most societies, though not all) have a basic level of trust for one another. Even though we tend not to think about it, no one runs around believing that the strangers he passes on the street desire to kill him. If we thought for a moment that people desired to kill us or do us harm it would be psychologically impossible for us to live decent lives. We would always be terrified that someone would try to do us in. This is still the case even if we imagine that murders were always caught by the authorities and harshly punished. It is the thought that people desire to harm us and would if they could only get away with it that would make this state of affairs psychologically unbearable. The sort of life that we lead depends in large part on our tendency to at least on a very basic level trust one another. A further example. It is quite common for one person to ask a complete stranger what time it is or when the next bus will arrive. Yet when we ask such things there is not even the slightest suspicion that the person might lie to us (at least in ordinary circumstances). Even if it turns out that the wrong information was given our tendency is to think that the person was ignorant of the facts or just foolish and not that he was being malicious. Again this displays that basic level of trust that we have for one another and also the fact that in general people do not desire to harm one another (so long as their interests are not at state, then we have a different story).
Now Thomas points out that this level of trust need not exist, as it likely does not in some countries that have experienced extreme hardships (i.e. famine, disease, civil war, etc.). Moreover, just as kind actions from another tend to improve our opinion of them, mean acts from another tend to diminish our opinion of them. Thus, the circumstances play a very important role whether these morality-friendly conditions exist. (This idea reminds me of Aristotle's points about certain conditions need to be met in a persons environment before it is even possible for that person to attempt to achieve eudaimonia.)
Despite the fact that it need not be the case that we live is a society where these conditions are met, it seems to be the case that (at least most of the time) these conditions are met in our society. Thus, if we get a good start in life and are shown kindness by those around us it becomes more and more likely that we will acquire beliefs about the people around us that they will try to help us if we are in need. This then, coupled with the fact that people in general to not desire to harm other people, can form the basis for our basic level of trust of those around us who we may not know well as well as strangers. Again, this is not meant to give us any answer to Gyges type problems but is rather meant to be seen as an explanation of why things are the way they are morally speaking. Thomas wants to say why people have moral sentiments and desires not why they should.
Thomas: Chapter 4 and 5
Chapters 4 and 5 deal with friendship and its importance for morality. Thomas echoes Aristotle's sentiments in saying that a person's life would not be worth living, even if he had every other good in the world, were he to be without friendship. Friendship is an extremely important of a person's life and contributes substantially to that person's flourishing. Thomas discusses in depth his conception of friendship but that is not directly relevant to our purposes so I will leave it out. The important point from these chapters is that friendship requires altruism which is to say that it requires friends to act in such ways so as to respect, advance and protect one another's well being. A true friend is happy to see his friend succeed or flourish and is sad to seem him fail. The flourishing of one requires the flourishing of the other. Given the good that friendship is for people and the importance we attach to it there can be no doubt that we develop the ability to perceive the interests of our friends as well as the motivation to help them. Thomas says that these are essentially moral sensibilities as we learn how to determine and care about advancing the interests of others.
This is important to morality as a whole because our friends are not a separate species from other people and thus the moral sensibilities we develop in dealing with friends can also be applied to other people. For example, we can clearly see how an action may help or hinder the interests of another person even if we are not friends with that person. In other words friendship gives us the tools for social interaction at large.
However, I have to add some commentary here. Everything that Thomas said here is compatible with the gangster egoist we have imagined before. One can truly see and care about the well-being of some people without caring at all for the well-being of others though he may know full well what it would be to hurt or help it. What Thomas is trying to do is lay the foundation for moral sentiments/feelings. He wants to show that people are not inherently only self-interested and he wants to show where altruistic feelings come from. In this regard I think he has done quite well, but what none of this does is show that these feelings are applied to complete strangers or anybody out of one's circle. Certainly these feelings can be applied to others but showing that they arise in certain contexts does not show in anyway that they are spread over all contexts. Thomas needs something more in order to get around the problem of the the gangster who does everything he can for the well-being of his family and friends but sees everyone else as expendable when it comes to accomplishing his goals.
This is important to morality as a whole because our friends are not a separate species from other people and thus the moral sensibilities we develop in dealing with friends can also be applied to other people. For example, we can clearly see how an action may help or hinder the interests of another person even if we are not friends with that person. In other words friendship gives us the tools for social interaction at large.
However, I have to add some commentary here. Everything that Thomas said here is compatible with the gangster egoist we have imagined before. One can truly see and care about the well-being of some people without caring at all for the well-being of others though he may know full well what it would be to hurt or help it. What Thomas is trying to do is lay the foundation for moral sentiments/feelings. He wants to show that people are not inherently only self-interested and he wants to show where altruistic feelings come from. In this regard I think he has done quite well, but what none of this does is show that these feelings are applied to complete strangers or anybody out of one's circle. Certainly these feelings can be applied to others but showing that they arise in certain contexts does not show in anyway that they are spread over all contexts. Thomas needs something more in order to get around the problem of the the gangster who does everything he can for the well-being of his family and friends but sees everyone else as expendable when it comes to accomplishing his goals.
Thomas: Chapter 3
In this next chapter Thomas builds off what he established in the previous one. Though it has been argued that biology provides us with the capacity for morality/altruism it does not guarantee it. Like other abilities it needs to be developed from a young age in order to produce a person with a good moral character. Thomas believes that in order to account for this fact one must again look at parental love and see how it can affect the child.
The essence of his argument is that parental love is a clear instance of altruism. Parents sacrifice many opportunities for personal benefit in favor of benefiting their children. This is especially important for a child as it is, in its early stages, completely vulnerable and unable to take care of itself. Moreover, realizing these facts causes the child to reciprocate the love of its parents. It is from this that from an early age children learn what it is to act altruistically towards another person which in turn helps to develop their altruistic capacity. (Of course, not all parents treat their children well and thus this explanation leaves out those children whose parents were not so good. However, Thomas's point requires only that this sort of parental love and reciprocation does happen some times.)
Moreover, children have a great tendency to emulate their parents. This is important because upon realizing the connection between their parents's love for them and their altruistic acts the child tends to act in kind. And this is true as, even though children can obviously not match their parents in terms of benefiting each other, children often do (or try to do at least) nice things for their parents. The point here is that at an early age children (can) learn what it is like to be loved and have other people act altruistically towards them. Furthermore, this serves as the basis of the child's reciprocation and thus their motivation to act for the well-being of another.
Another important point about parental love that Thomas mentions is its importance in a child's development of moral autonomy self-esteem. Parents, through their unconditional love, show their children that they are valued not for anything they do but just for who they are. A parent may approve or disapprove of a child's aciton and thereby teach the child what is appropriate and what is not, but despite this does not accompany disapproval with rejection. The child is always accepted and loved. This is very important for the psychological security of the child as it knows that whatever it does it will still be valued and cared for. Also, this helps the child build up a conception of its self worth and is thus less affected by attacks on that worth by others. Through their love and support, Thomas argues that parents bolster their children's self-esteem/sense of self worth against failures and the criticisms of others. Moral autonomy is also in part developed here as the child is not required to adhere unquestioningly to some authority in order to gain acceptance.
The essence of his argument is that parental love is a clear instance of altruism. Parents sacrifice many opportunities for personal benefit in favor of benefiting their children. This is especially important for a child as it is, in its early stages, completely vulnerable and unable to take care of itself. Moreover, realizing these facts causes the child to reciprocate the love of its parents. It is from this that from an early age children learn what it is to act altruistically towards another person which in turn helps to develop their altruistic capacity. (Of course, not all parents treat their children well and thus this explanation leaves out those children whose parents were not so good. However, Thomas's point requires only that this sort of parental love and reciprocation does happen some times.)
Moreover, children have a great tendency to emulate their parents. This is important because upon realizing the connection between their parents's love for them and their altruistic acts the child tends to act in kind. And this is true as, even though children can obviously not match their parents in terms of benefiting each other, children often do (or try to do at least) nice things for their parents. The point here is that at an early age children (can) learn what it is like to be loved and have other people act altruistically towards them. Furthermore, this serves as the basis of the child's reciprocation and thus their motivation to act for the well-being of another.
Another important point about parental love that Thomas mentions is its importance in a child's development of moral autonomy self-esteem. Parents, through their unconditional love, show their children that they are valued not for anything they do but just for who they are. A parent may approve or disapprove of a child's aciton and thereby teach the child what is appropriate and what is not, but despite this does not accompany disapproval with rejection. The child is always accepted and loved. This is very important for the psychological security of the child as it knows that whatever it does it will still be valued and cared for. Also, this helps the child build up a conception of its self worth and is thus less affected by attacks on that worth by others. Through their love and support, Thomas argues that parents bolster their children's self-esteem/sense of self worth against failures and the criticisms of others. Moral autonomy is also in part developed here as the child is not required to adhere unquestioningly to some authority in order to gain acceptance.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Thomas: Chapter 2
In this chapter, Thomas attempts to build the foundations of altruism in biology. The essence of his argument is that love is a form of altruism and that given the sort of species that we are love is essential to our survival. An infant would never grow to maturity were it not for parental love. He quickly dispatches the thought that any altruism based in biology is really masked self-interest by saying 1) that a person acting altruistically toward his child does not first think "does this act help preserve/strengthen the future of my genetic material" but rather only thinks "does this act help my child" and 2) it makes no sense to say that altruistic acts towards non-family members are in any way meant to or in anyway do ensure the future of ones genes. Furthermore, he claims that there is a clear difference between what we desire to do and what biology disposes us to do (I found this to be very interesting). Biology may dispose us to have altruistic feelings towards an infant that is crying but that does not say what we desire to do. We may desire to act on those feelings or not to. Moreover, supposing that we do desire to help the child we may be glad that we have the disposition to feel as we do towards it. (Another example, a smoker may desire to quit and as a result lament urges to smoke whereas a sky diver may desire to jump out of planes with a parachute and as a result be glad that he has the urge to thrill seek.) The point is that it is our desires that matter when it comes to moral motivation and that our biological constitution does not determine our desires as they can be in line with it or against it. Thomas also makes the point that there is a difference between doing something that benefits you and doing something that benefits you because it benefits you. This means that altruistic acts may benefit the actor in some way or another but this does not mean the acts were not altruistic. Thus claiming that there is a biological basis of altruism is not a self-defeating claim.
Thomas then goes on to talk about the importance of parental love in morality. This is a case where people (parents) make enormous sacrifices for the well-being of other people (their children). What is especially important here is that parents love their children with no strings attached so to speak. They care only for the well-being of the child and this is not tied to any particular trait the child has. It is this unconditional love, Thomas argues, that provides a child with psychological security; it knows that it will always be accepted and loved by those on whom it depends entirely. This accounts for the child's reciprocation of that love. What is also important here is that this love and concern for another's well being can not be explained away as self-interested from a biological point of view because it also exists between parents who have adopted and their adopted child. The point that Thomas is trying to make is that our biology has endowed us with altruistic sentiments/feelings (i.e. parental love) and that, as these sentiments are essentially moral sentiments, biology can clearly be seen to be a part of the basis of morality and not just the basis for our self-interestedness (i.e. survival instinct).
Thomas goes on to say that once these moral sentiments are established, we can at least see that people are not inherently only self-interested beings. Given this, we can see the beginnings of how altruistic sentiments can spread to include other people as well. What is important to note here, however, is that thus far Thomas has not claimed to find the basis of morality or ground it in any substantial way. All he has tried to show at this point is that moral/altruistic sentiments are not contrary to our biological make up or intrinsic nature; biology does not show that we are just self-interested. It is this fact that Thomas takes to be part of the basis for morality as it shows that human beings have the capacity for moral/altruisitc sentiments and therefore motivations.
Thomas then goes on to talk about the importance of parental love in morality. This is a case where people (parents) make enormous sacrifices for the well-being of other people (their children). What is especially important here is that parents love their children with no strings attached so to speak. They care only for the well-being of the child and this is not tied to any particular trait the child has. It is this unconditional love, Thomas argues, that provides a child with psychological security; it knows that it will always be accepted and loved by those on whom it depends entirely. This accounts for the child's reciprocation of that love. What is also important here is that this love and concern for another's well being can not be explained away as self-interested from a biological point of view because it also exists between parents who have adopted and their adopted child. The point that Thomas is trying to make is that our biology has endowed us with altruistic sentiments/feelings (i.e. parental love) and that, as these sentiments are essentially moral sentiments, biology can clearly be seen to be a part of the basis of morality and not just the basis for our self-interestedness (i.e. survival instinct).
Thomas goes on to say that once these moral sentiments are established, we can at least see that people are not inherently only self-interested beings. Given this, we can see the beginnings of how altruistic sentiments can spread to include other people as well. What is important to note here, however, is that thus far Thomas has not claimed to find the basis of morality or ground it in any substantial way. All he has tried to show at this point is that moral/altruistic sentiments are not contrary to our biological make up or intrinsic nature; biology does not show that we are just self-interested. It is this fact that Thomas takes to be part of the basis for morality as it shows that human beings have the capacity for moral/altruisitc sentiments and therefore motivations.
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