G E Morton wrote
Er, how do you draw that conclusion?
One has to consider what K had to say. He was complaining about Hegel who wanted to rationalize, literally, our existence, roughly put. The complaint is that when historical movements absorb the individual into "grander" themes, then the actualities that we truly encounter are forgotten, when in fact, those personal episodes are the very foundation for what call real. This applies to any attempt to divest subjectivity of its meaning and gravitas.
A useful language is not idiosyncratic, but it is subjective. It could not serve as a communication tool were it idiosyncratic, but the enormous variety of human languages --- not to mention the individualized connotations people attach to many words --- is conclusive evidence that it is subjective. But there must be consensus on the common denotative meanings of most words within a given speech community. The "connection" of a language to the world is a matter of convention within a speech community; an utterance is meaningful within that community if it adheres to those conventions (by "meaningful" I mean that it succeeds in conveying some information or eliciting some desired action).
Then fine. No issues with this.
The denotative meanings of "good" and "evil," however (and of many other terms expressing judgments or personal reactions to various things and events) are idiosyncratic as well as subjective. A diner in a restaurant may declare, "This is good soup." At another table, a diner opines, "This soup is terrible." "Good" (or goodness") and "evil" are not things-in-the-world, nor properties of things-in-the-world. They only express someone's judgment of something, i.e., whether it is something to be sought or praised, or something to be avoided and condemned. Some things are, to be sure, widely regarded as "good" or evil," because people are similar in many ways, and many things that benefit or injure one, and are thus deemed "good," or "evil," will also benefit or injure others.
But this is not where the ethical realist claim lies, in the opinion, the mood, the attitude. Here is what you wrote:
There is no "value." There are only values, which are subjective and idiosyncratic. Those are real enough --- to the extent Alfie pursues X, invests time, money, effort to secure it --- X has value to him. Propositions asserting values are cognitively meaningless unless a valuer is specified, or at least implied. I.e., "X has value V" is meaningless. "X has value V to P" is meaningful.
which rather cuts to the chase. All very familiar. Let's say Alfie values X (and forget all the rest you have Alfie doing, which is incidental). Let's agree about the valuer being specified, because, well, it is specified that someone values X and it's Alfie. It is your final move where the issue finds its mark: "X has value V" is meaningless. You think like this because you believe it is possible to isolate value from factual existence, but what you really have is the same old thing: Assume there are X's that are free of value, like rocks and fence posts, that sits alone, unattended by any agency of value ascription. So, we have here a world in which value is here, and not there, to put it simply. Let's further reduce the description to just the essentials, for it hardly matter if it is a human's value conferring system. All that matters is that value IS when conditions are such that allow. And the same can be said for, say, the weather: there are storms here and there, but such things are contextually realized only, that is, the solid fact that is it raining requires, just as with value, conditions.
Now, this really doesn't put the case I find most compelling on the table. But I do wonder, given your terms of description, how it is that you would feel the one, that it is raining, to be set apart from the other, X has Value V. Look, ALL facts are contextual, and this is not a reference to Derrida. It is simply for every fact you can name, you also have an objective body of circumstances that make it so. It is not until you get to the universal concepts of the laws of physics (if you want to talk like this) that you encounter what might pass for an unqualified condition of matter-itself. But then, being a responsible philosopher, you must further realize that, as Rorty put it, brain is not a "mirror of nature". This is where it gets interesting.
That is a misquote of Derrida. His actual phrase was, "There is no out-of-context." But Derrida is wrong about that, as he was about most things. The terms of a language do indeed "point out things in the world" --- by virtue of the conventions for their use within a speech community. And, of course, the entire universe (excluding the language itself) lies "outside the text" (and any "context").
But if it is a misquote, it is an extremely popular one. And there is a reason for this: what you call conventions in a speech community is close to what he has on mind, though, of course, his position is radical, and to see this one should read Saussure, then his annoying essay Differance, and the, I think third chapter of Of Grammatology. Then his Structure, Sign and Play, which is easy by comparison. You are right to say we do point things out in the world, and he agrees, of course. He just says pointing out is a manifestation of the system of a language, speaking broadly.
He is right about this. It really isn't such a big deal to admit this, since it is so obvious. Did you really think a word is some stand alone meaning bearing entity?
Now, why would you conclude that the subjectivity of judgmental terms entails that things deemed "good" or "evil" are "dismissible"? It has no such implication. Indeed, their subjectivity must be taken into account in order to correctly pronounce something to be good or evil --- the spear in the kidney and the burning child are evils only because we assume the victims would not welcome those states of affairs, and would prefer to avoid them. That assumption sometimes proves to be unwarranted --- a shamed samurai may deem the spear through the kidney a good
Interesting way to put it. But the matter goes not to the "preferring" on the subjective side. It goes to that which is being preferred. There are two sides to every value judgment. If you would like to conflate them, the welcoming of X and the X itself, then fine, but this grounds the welcoming in something that is solidly there: the pleasure. True, what is pleasurable for one person may not be so for another, but so what: It may be raining in Cincinnati but not in Paris. Is it not raining? Again, there are NO conditions called objective that are free of contingencies.
The shamed samurai would certainly not tell you the spear in the side was a walk through the park. But more importantly, while the context that confers meaning can change the nature of the event, we would simply allow for the modification as we might allow for, say, more salt on a porkchop. Value conditions are not the point. The point is value, its presence, its existence. It is there, in the salted pork more so than in the unsalted park; its presence rises and falls, depends on this and that, just like everything else.
But the real issue of value ha not even been hinted at. This goes to the infamous GOOD and BAD.
The early Wittgenstein was mystified by ethics and aesthetics. The later Wittgenstein considered both unamenable to philosophical elucidation. He was wrong on both occasions.
He understood that the world is a given presence, and this was beyond analysis. Simple as that. Value, the screaming pain, say, is given. We may have invented an entire culture and language AROUND what is given, and this is all too true, but no one invented pain. The notion is patently absurd.
- By Good_Egg
- By Fried Egg