Jason Samuel as Judge Poser

A Repeat of MacIntyre

I'd like to repost a quotation from Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue for your consumption.  What triggered my interest in this passage--though, I don't require much a trigger to re-read MacIntyre--is that I have a friend who is currently writing manuals for activism.  I'll save the specifics for another time, if ever at all.  Suffice it to say, however, I wanted to share with him what MacIntyre said about protest. 

It is easy also to understand why protest becomes a distinctive moral feature of the modern age and why indignation is a predominant modern emotion. 'To protest' and its Latin predecessors and French cognates are originally as often or more often positive as negative; to protest was once to bear witness to something and only as a consequence of that allegiance to bear witness against something else.

But protest is now almost entirely that negative phenomenon which characteristically occurs as a reaction to the alleged invasion of someone’s rights in the name of someone else’s utility. The self-assertive shrillness of protest arises because the facts of incommensurability ensure that protestors can never win an argument; the indignant self-righteousness arises because the facts of incommensurability ensure equally that the protestor can never lose an argument either. Hence the utterance of protest is characteristically addressed to those who already share the protestors’ premises. The effects of incommensurability ensure that the protestors rarely have anyone else to talk to but themselves. This is not to say that protest cannot be effective; it is to say that it cannot be rationally effective and that its dominant modes of expression give evidence of a certain perhaps unconscious awareness of this.

MacIntyre consistently returns to the idea that indignation ensues because no one can ever "win."  To determine a winner, we'd have to have some agreement on what would constitute or determine a win.  As the entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy captures the problem:

MacIntyre claims that protest and indignation are hallmarks of public "debate" in the modern world. Since no one can ever win an argument – because there's no agreement about how someone could "win" – anyone can resort to protesting; since no one can ever lose an argument – how can they, if no one can win? – anyone can become indignant if they don't get their way. If no one can persuade anyone else to do what they want, then only coercion, whether open or hidden (for example, in the form of deception) remains. This is why, MacIntyre says, political arguments are not just interminable but extremely loud and angry, and why modern politics is simply a form of civil war. 

My friend's task, as I see it, is to write his manuals, acknowledging that he will be speaking to those with whom he already agrees, or, in the least, already shares foundational presumptions.  But how can he universalize his message?

Imago Dei

I've discovered a new blog, which I will now follow regularly, that I thought I'd share with you.  Here's a post having to do with the concept of potentiality, the author fills in both active and passive potentiality. 

From Fides et Ratio

25. “All human beings desire to know”,(23) and truth is the proper object of this desire. Everyday life shows how concerned each of us is to discover for ourselves, beyond mere opinions, how things really are.  Within visible creation, man is the only creature who not only is capable of knowing but who knows that he knows, and is therefore interested in the real truth of what he perceives. People cannot be genuinely indifferent to the question of whether what they know is true or not. If they discover       that it is false, they reject it; but if they can establish its truth, they feel themselves rewarded. It is this that Saint Augustine teaches when he writes: “I have met many who wanted to deceive, but none who wanted to be deceived”.(24) It is rightly claimed that persons have reached adulthood when they can distinguish independently between truth and falsehood, making up their own minds about the objective reality of       things. This is what has driven so many enquiries, especially in the scientific field, which in recent centuries have produced important results, leading to genuine progress for all humanity.

John Paul II. (1998). Fides et Ratio. Available: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-ratio_en.html. Last accessed 13 October 2005.

Ethical Pluralism

During the question and answer period of a lecture held on campus today, a classmate posited that since there exist many different ethical systems/theories, each must have something beneficial to offer.  How does this follow?  Why must each have something beneficial to offer given there exists more than one system?  I disagreed with him and suggested that we can take nothing from the existence of competing moral theories (or traditions, as MacIntyre would call them)--at least nothing that would help us decide which of those theories was the best one (read: consistent with objective truth), let alone that they all have something beneficial to contribute to our moral dialogue. 

Each theory has the opportunity to vindicate itself through answering (or not answering) difficult moral questions consistent with the first principles of that system.  But we cannot determine which, among the many systems, is the best at answering our moral dilemmas.  I suppose we'd have to define 'best' and outlay our presuppositions, such as, for instance, my belief in objective truth.

I know MacIntyre, somewhere in his project, answers the question of how are we to communicate when we reside in an ethical tradition, which is largely incommensurable to other, competing traditions.  Any help with MacIntyre or other sources who have attempted to answer the metaethical question of which tradition is best, I would appreciate.

Students' Editorial Begs the Question

Francis Beckwith, whom I enjoy following, posted on Right Reason about a recent editorial in the Baylor University student newspaper on the "right to die."  The argument Beckwith suggests is such: "But people have a lot choices to make during the course of their lives. Shouldn't they be able to choose when and how to end it?"

I think a more accurate capture of their argument is:
1) "People in our society have rights, freedoms and choices throughout their lives."
2) "[Choosing] death is just another one of those decisions."
T 3) We should have the right to choose death.

If I'm wrong, I trust Professor Beckwith will correct me.  I'd welcome that.

In any event, if either of us are correct in our assessments, their argument fails on account of its question-begging or it's first premise.  In regards to its first premise, that we have rights, freedoms, and make choices throughout our lives is clear and verifiable.  What is false, however, is the position that we have the right to do everything.

Why religious motives [should] matter?

Link: Right Reason.

Because of the Dover case, there has been much discussion about the religious motives of those citizens who support Intelligent Design. In fact, there has been a sort of back and forth between me and Nick Matzke in the blogosphere in which Mr. Matzke has appealed to religious motive as part of his legal critique of the Dover policy. I would like to address that here.

I would like to take the discussion to a higher level of abstraction and question whether the appeal to religious motive should be part of the jurisprudence of our courts. In order to accomplish this, I will offer a largely philosophical critique of the jurisprudence on which Matzke and his allies rely.

Ayn Rand's Objectivism, in short take

Edward Feser posted on the the Conservative Philsopher blog a cheer for Ayn Rand; sorta.

Ayn Rand’s faults are readily apparent. As a philosopher, she was an amateur, and her philosophical musings were, accordingly, often amateurish. She was a village atheist of the most shallow and boorish kind.

Philosophers as Experts?

Anal Philosopher observes this:

There is a disturbing tendency among philosophers to think that their technical training—we're nothing more than logicians—qualifies them to speak with authority on every issue. In fact, the contribution of philosophy to public affairs is quite small, which is why few laypeople can name even one living philosopher. For those who are interested in such things, I recommend Richard A. Posner's book The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1999).

Comments?  Also, has anyone read this book from Judge Posner?

Catholic Legal Theory @ Objective Justice

I've started a regular thread on the topic of Catholic Legal Theory at Objective Justice, which is edited by Sean Sirrine [here too], a fellow law school student.

Sean invited me some time ago to contribute weekly on the topic but I have only gotten the time today to begin.  It's a modest beginning to a topic to which I hope to one day contribute substantively.  Please visit! (And comment!)

Do I need a Phd?

There's an interesting debate here on the necessity/sufficiency of having a doctorate degree in a cognate discipline for JDs who do interdisciplinary work. [HT Mirror of Justice]  Dan Solove, it should be clear from reading his post, is responding to Brian Lieter's post, who has a PhD in philosophy and is a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas's law school. 

I had asked The Maverick Philosopher a similar question.

Before I considered going to law school I considered going to graduate school. Sometimes I believe I should've done just that. Since starting law school, and having professors here who have advanced degrees in disciplines other than law, I believe a doctorate in a cognate discipline can enhance one's scholarship. And while it may enhance one's scholarship, it doesn't have to do so necessarily.

Brian Lieter says, however, that to do cutting edge interdisciplinary work the PhD training is essential. Some searching of the academic, peer-reviewed journals would answer this question, but I wonder how many professors with just JDs are published in peer reviewed journals? I understand the inherent deficiency of journals that aren't peer reviewed, (i.e. law reviews) but to believe the sin qua non of doing cutting edge work is publication in a peer reviewed journal might be overstating the case. One commenter reminded us of using the usefulness of scholarly work as a measure of "cutting edge," which isn't too bad an indicator if you ask me. If the likes of Leiter (JD, PhD) get to define "cutting edge" then we may unfairly discount what might otherwise be novel, noteworthy scholarship were not the lack of letters after its author's name.

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