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Aristotle, Benjamin C. Kinney, Carl Sagan, Jabali108 (commenter), Jim Wilton, justice, law, Margaret Thatcher, religion, T.R. (Thill) Raghunath
There’s been a great discussion going on in the comments to last week’s post on humility and science. This week I’m going to focus on only one of the themes mentioned, which takes us in a different direction from that post but is interesting in its own right.
My post recounted Carl Sagan’s claim that although “religions” claimed an ideal of humility, science was actually more humble; I argued that the two were in fact very similar. A comment from Ben acutely pointed out something I had been missing, a way in which Sagan was right that the tradition was different. Sagan, Ben points out, is defending “not the humility of individuals, but the humility of the whole tradition.” Science as a whole is able to admit when it is wrong, in a way that Christianity and Buddhism are not. In a following dialogue, Ben and I agree that science maintains an institutional humility that “religious” traditions do not, though those other traditions likely do a better job of promoting individual humility.
Other commenters took issue with this agreement, however. If you follow the comment threads on this site with any regularity, you will know that Thill and Jim Wilton do not usually agree on very much. But this time, they unanimously condemn the point shared by Ben and myself: “There is a category mistake here,” says Thill. “Traditions cannot be said to be humble or arrogant. Only individuals can be said to be humble or arrogant.”
And this is a question that well deserves further philosophical exploration. Can an institution or a tradition possess a virtue? Can a government be courageous? Can a corporation be honest? Can a tradition be humble?
The answer will necessarily be “no” if we define “virtue” (or any of its species) strictly, so that virtue is by definition individual. But I see no clear reason why we should do this. Going back to earliest accounts of the concept, Aristotle does not limit virtue to individuals; in explaining aretē, the word we translate as “virtue,” he speaks of the aretē of a knife: a virtuous (or excellent) knife is one that cuts well. Even thinking of common English usage, we can speak of an honest car dealership, one where all the sales staff are genuinely expected to be upfront with their customers and act accordingly. We can speak of a courageous action taken by a political party, when it adopts a platform that is politically unpopular but is nevertheless the principled thing to do.
Now common usage can and should be criticized; everyday speech is often inaccurate. Are these examples of category mistakes? Virtue is realized and expressed in action; if human collectivities can take action, that fact suggests that they can also be virtuous. But is it inaccurate to speak of an action taken by a collectivity? When we speak of an honest car dealership, a generous government or a humble tradition, is this merely an inexact way to say that these collectivities are generally made up of honest, generous or humble individuals?
I don’t think so, at least not necessarily. The idea that the virtues or actions of collectivities are merely those of their constituent individuals – this puts me in mind of Margaret Thatcher’s famous quip that “there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.” But in this very quote Thatcher shows that she’s not ready to carry a reductionist individualism all the way: there are families, which she grants an existence distinct from the individuals who make them up. If families are not merely the individuals that make them up, then surely other institutions – including society itself – can also be more than their constituent individuals.
Collectivities can take on a life of their own. (I say “collectivities” rather than “groups” because the latter term tends to connote a mere aggregation of individuals, prejudicing the discussion in that direction.) We understand this point when we make the important distinction between the rule of law and the rule of men (or women). A government (or a corporation) works best when its members act not according to their arbitrary individual preferences, but according to the interest of the whole organization and the precedents that have been collectively established. When an organization successfully acts according to the rule of law, it is that organization as a unit and a whole, and not merely the individual members who make it up, that is acting justly. It is a just organization, not merely a bunch of individuals who happen to be just by themselves. To describe the organization as just is no category mistake; it is correct.
It is in terms similar to these that I think one may accurately speak of the humility of a tradition – and as something quite separate from the humility of individuals. As Jabali108 noted, defining the terms matters here. I set out a basic sketch of the idea of a tradition two weeks ago, as consisting of both a normative ideal and a set of institutions which often does not live up to that ideal. Thill, rightly I think, pointed out a third separable element of a tradition: its body of accumulated knowledge.
As for humility, I take it to mean the awareness of one’s limits and weaknesses, not only in an intellectual sense but also in a practical one – acting on the recognition that one is fallible and dependent on others. In a more specifically intellectual or epistemological sense, it means listening carefully, recognizing that one has never thought of everything, that others very often have something valuable to contribute – even when one maintains the courage to defend one’s own sincerely held convictions. Above all, perhaps, the readiness to admit when one has been wrong. A mean between the vices of arrogance on one hand and meekness or timidity on the other, as I said to Thill. (If this definition seems imprecise, that’s intentional: spelling out the nature of a virtue too precisely implies that one already knows exactly what to strive for, which in my books itself demonstrates a lack of humility.)
On these terms I defend my previous claim, developed with Ben: natural science maintains an institutional humility as a tradition, because it does not take its claims as infallible, is ready to see them overturned when better evidence comes to light. The ideals of scientific tradition encourage its institutions to act in a humble way. This institutional humility is a very different thing from encouraging the humility of individuals; and indeed the two are in distinct tension with one another. When a tradition emphasizes its own unchanging rightness, as Buddhism or Christianity does, it is much more likely to foster a sense of individual humility – a recognition that one as an individual doesn’t have all the answers, that one has been wrong before. I think this is typically a good thing for the individual within the tradition; but it’s not so good for the health of the tradition itself. Science is a whole made humble by its arrogant members; the “religions” are wholes made arrogant by their humble members.
Thill said:
This is a very interesting and thought-provoking post which deserves a good and sustained dialogue on and critical analysis of its central claims.
“Collectivities can take on a life of their own. (I say “collectivities” rather than “groups” because the latter term tends to connote a mere aggregation of individuals, prejudicing the discussion in that direction.)”
This reminds me of Hegelian mysticism (or mystification?) concerning the State, Volk, and such, and also Aurobindo’s mysticism (or mystification?) purveying notions such “Nation-soul”, “Group-Soul”, etc. Both accord (or concoct) a transcendent status to “collectivities” going far beyond the roles and interactions of individuals constituting them. There’s also more than an echo of Marxist mysticism (or mystification) hinging on the attribution of extraordinary powers of agency to “collectivities” such as “Class”. And, again, there’s also more than a touch of Rousseau’s mysticism concerning the awfully baneful effects of institutions on individuals (as though institutions were entities independent of individuals who constitute and operate them.)
All this raises two crucial questions: What on earth is a “collectivity” and how is it different from a group? How is the “agency” of a “collectivity” such as a corporation, the IRS, “the family”, or any other institution, not reducible to the actions and decisions (in accordance with policies and procedures crafted, agreed upon, and enforced by individuals) of individuals constituting it?
If I say that the well-known Indian violinist L. Subramaniam comes from a musical family, how is my claim not reducible to the claim that he comes from a family whose members have musical accomplishments? What else is there to the claim other than that he comes from a group of individuals who are closely related genetically all of whom have musical accomplishments? The onus squarely rests on the proponent of the thesis that a “musical family” is something over and above a group of genetically-related individuals who have musical accomplishments.
If a feminist claims that marriage is an oppressive institution, what could this actually mean other than that there is a great deal of oppression in the relations between individuals who have entered into a marital relationship, an oppression which is a function of how they interpret and apply the laws and rules (explicit and tacit) of marriage? (These laws and rules, again, did not descend from heaven, but were formulated by individuals.) How is the alleged oppression of the institution of marriage not reducible to the typical behaviors (based on an understanding of the laws and rules) of individuals in marital relationship?
The fact that any example of the alleged agency of a “collectivity” boils down to an account of the actions of individuals based on laws, rules, policies, and procedures they either formulated and/or accepted raises serious doubts on the coherence of the claim that a “collectivity” and its “agency” is not reducible to the actions of individuals constituting it.
Take the claim that recent developments on the budget, at the federal and state levels, in the U.S. allegedly provides evidence of “class war”. I am not interested now in whether this claim is plausible. What I want to show is that any description of the alleged evidence for a “class war” is constituted of nothing but a description of the relevant actions or decisions of individuals. You did exactly this when you referred to the actions of the governors of Maine and Wisconsin in an earlier post and claimed that this indicated “class war”.
The notion that a “collectivity” has a transcendental status (i.e., over and above individuals) is not only mistaken , but also dangerous. It underpins developments in capitalism according rights to corporations which can override the rights of individuals! It also underpins attempts to let the constitutive members of the management of a corporation “off the hook” in cases of serious wrongdoing, including environmental crimes. And, we know from history, such notions have provided a means of legitimation of the crimes of power-wielding individuals in fascist and totalitarian regimes.
Ben said:
I am indeed no philosopher, but maybe my background in cognitive science here helps me here- this is getting from a philosophical discussion towards a discussion of psychological fact. And to such ears, the following sounds like a rather shocking claim:
>The fact that any example of the alleged agency of a “collectivity” boils down to an account of the actions of individuals based on laws, rules, policies, and procedures they either formulated and/or accepted raises serious doubts on the coherence of the claim that a “collectivity” and its “agency” is not reducible to the actions of individuals constituting it.
People do not merely choose to follow rules and procedures; people are also *led* by rules and procedures. Inculcate somebody in a tradition, and they will come to see it as necessary, normal and good. Furthermore, particularly in non-humble institutions, individuals have little opportunity to influence an institution’s traditions. In theory they can choose to leave, but once they’re engaged in the tradition, confirmation bias will make it hard for a member to think along such lines.
A group-related event can surely be traced back to individuals acting at some point, but that occludes the situation rather than clarifying it. People behave differently when organizing and acting in groups; the group shapes the individual, not just the other way around.
Group behavior is not wholly/usefully reducible to individual actions and choices. I can dig up some references if you like (when I have more time), but I would describe that as an empirical psychological fact.
Thill said:
Philosophical claims can be shocking or crude. In any case, the arguments are the most important.
“People do not merely choose to follow rules and procedures; people are also *led* by rules and procedures.”
This is a strange claim. Rules and procedures are not mystical entities which have these powers independently of individuals who coerce or exert pressure on others to obey the rules and procedures. This is done by setting up a system of incentives and punishment and some individuals then enforce or apply this system.
Humility is a complex cognitive and affective state. It is incoherent to attribute complex cognitive and affective states to traditions or institutions. Only self-conscious beings with reasoning powers can be humble. To speak of “humble institution” or “non-humble institution” is to speak figuratively or metaphorically. It is an odd manner of speaking about policies and/or practices (constitutive of a tradition or institution)which inculcate the value of humility in individuals.
“the group shapes the individual, not just the other way around. Group behavior is not wholly/usefully reducible to individual actions and choices.”
This seems to rest on a conceptual confusion concerning the individuation or identification of a group. What is a group? How do you identify a group without reference to the individuals who constitute it?
Talk of the group shaping the individual is nothing more than talk of a majority of individuals in the group shaping or coercing other individuals. “Peer pressure” does not refer to some mystical force of a mystical entity other than the coercion exerted by a number of individuals on given individual.
If you can give a good example of group behavior “not wholly reducible to individual actions and choices”, then you would have supported your claim. We need to bear in mind that it is not just a matter of individual actions and choices, but also interactions among individuals by way of those actions and choices.
Thill said:
“people are also *led* by rules and procedures.”
Another way in which this happens is by internalizing those rules and procedures, e.g., language use. But then it is individuals who internalize these rules and procedures and conscious choice does play a role even if the internalization leads to automatic output in a large number of cases.
Ben said:
If you’re doubting the assertion that a group can be more than the sum of its parts, then it’s more a matter of scientific concepts not making it out into the general world. (I’m likely overstating your position here, but I’ll lay out this part of the argument too, just in case I’m not.) Emergent properties –that is, system properties that aren’t explainable by individual elements– are a powerful and well-supported concept in neuroscience and psychology. One metaphor is a car. Yes, it’s all made up of atoms and molecules, but you’ll never understand how the car works by studying the molecular interactions. Instead, you need to learn about metals (collections of atoms), and mechanical engineering (collections of metal objects, to oversimplify). You will probably never ever be able to explain a car’s performance in molecular terms. Even if you somehow did, it would be a much more opaque and unhelpful explanation, than a story told in terms of mechanical engineering.
Here’s where it gets more interesting: Human groups also exhibit emergent properties. In a classic example, experimenters got 1 participant, and 3-4 “stooges” (people who pretended to be participants, but were in on the trick, and acted on prior instructions from the experimenter), and sat them all together. They presented VERY simple tasks, e.g. “which of these lines is longest?” In some conditions, all the stooges gave the same wrong answer- an answer that should be obviously incorrect. If the participant argues with them, they hold firm. After a little bit of this, the participant starts joining in the group consensus, making the (should be) obviously incorrect answers with everyone else. If, at the end, you ask them why, they’ll say that they stopped trusting their initial perceptions and judgment. This serves as an example of how group membership can change decision-making, even without any intentional buy-in from the member.
An even more compelling example, from a study just this year: researchers put people into random groups, and had each group solve some tasks and puzzles (stuff that would be classically “intelligence”-based). Group performance did not depend on group average intelligence, or the highest individual intelligence in the group. Instead, group performance depended only on average *social perceptiveness* in the group. This demonstrates that people use different tools and procedures when they act in groups, and also that these group behaviors depend heavily on inter-personal interaction over individual characteristics.
Thill said:
I don’ think that a whole is merely a sum of its parts. In fact, I mentioned “interactions of individuals” in my response to Amod’s post. So, you are attacking a strawman.
However, I think that any properties ascribed to wholes are a function of properties shared by, or characterize the interactions of, a majority of the constituent elements, or parts, or individuals, of wholes or collectivities.
Nothing in your response undermines this point.
Jesse said:
“If you can give a good example of group behavior “not wholly reducible to individual actions and choices”, then you would have supported your claim. We need to bear in mind that it is not just a matter of individual actions and choices, but also interactions among individuals by way of those actions and choices.”
You can always describe the behavior of an entire group as the sum of individual actions. However, if you do so you will quickly find that the actions of the individuals begin to look highly irrational and sometimes outright self destructive when viewed only from this position.
You run into similar problems if you ONLY view group activities from the macro level – actions as a group – because you will see these strange and seemingly irrational collective decisions popping up out of apparently no-where, due in fact to rational individual factors beneath to which you have blinded yourself.
This is basically why our economics are so #$%#@-ed up these days. Each camp insists on viewing economics either ONLY as the cumulative rational actions of individuals, or ONLY as macro-economic equations.
Both. You cannot begin to understand either unless you are willing to examine them both at the same time and try to understand how individual actions affect larger group dynamics, and how macro factors push the individual actors around and change their respective positions.
This is a classical feedback loop – both layers are important, and there is no cause and effect, no ‘originator’, no chicken to come before the egg, just a continuous cycle of individual factors feeding into macro conditions that continuously force the individual actors to re-consider their positions.
That’s an area of fundamental mathematics that affects all of society, whether it be economics, warfare, morality, social group dynamics or what have you. Probably only the military has put enough pragmatic study into the problem to speak of it in useful terms.
Ben said:
Additional thought: You say “We need to bear in mind that it is not just a matter of individual actions and choices, but also interactions among individuals by way of those actions and choices.” I think this misses your point (or, perhaps, proves my point). Those interactions are a major part of what makes a group distinct from a bunch of individuals. They lead people to behave differently than they would on their own. You cannot adequately describe the causes of a group-member’s actions and choices without describing the rest of the group.
That group can have many characteristics, potentially including humility- depending, of course, on how we look at the idea of humility. If you a priori declare humility to only be defined as a cognitive and affective state, then that would exclude groups- but I think that just begs the question. The claim here is that it’s useful and enlightening to define humility in a more behavioral and functional way, as actions and dispositions rather than affective states. Of course individual humility and institutional humility are not 100% identical; but are they alike enough to find value, clarity, and utility in comparing them on the same terms? I think so.
And FWIW, I actually think it’s more useful to think of virtues in behavioral terms even when you’re only looking at humans, but that’s a discussion for another day!
Thill said:
“If you a priori declare humility to only be defined as a cognitive and affective state, then that would exclude groups- but I think that just begs the question. The claim here is that it’s useful and enlightening to define humility in a more behavioral and functional way, as actions and dispositions rather than affective states.”
1. To say that humility is a cognitive and affective state is not to exclude behaviors or behavioral manifestations from the concept.
2. I characterized humility as a cognitive and affective state based on Amod’s definition of humility.
3. Even if humility is described in terms of disposition and/or behavior, it is incoherent to attribute humility to traditions or institutions since it is incoherent to attribute behaviors or dispositions to traditions or institutions per se. It is an entirely different claim if one were to say that humble behaviors are praised or valued in certain traditions or institutions.
Ben said:
Ugh, comment-thread-splitting! My fault, though. Briefly:
I do believe that virtues are more usefully defined in terms of action, preferentially over identifying them as cognitive/affective states. (Here I may well depart from Amod.) Explaining the “why” would take a whole new discussion, so for now take just that as a statement of my perspective.
In terms of your #3, we’ve gotten stuck on a terminology disagreement: according to my dictionary, “behavior” can refer to natural phenomena and machines, not just people. (I had intended to use “disposition” to describe a statistical predilection with no intrinsic claims of agency, though I admit my dictionary doesn’t back me up on that one!)
Thill said:
“I think this misses your point (or, perhaps, proves my point). Those interactions are a major part of what makes a group distinct from a bunch of individuals. They lead people to behave differently than they would on their own.”
No, it doesn’t. Who would think that a group is just a bunch of isolated individuals??? A group by definition involves some sort of cohesion among its constitutive members. So, the point that a group is not a bunch of individuals who have no interaction with each other is a tautology.
My point has simply been that a group or collectivity IS a bunch of individuals in certain forms of relationship to each other based on shared beliefs and values. Therefore, it makes no sense to claim that the actions of a collectivity or group can be described or explained without recourse to its constitutive members and their interactions, or that one can attribute any quality to the collectivity which is not reducible to a quality of its constitutive members.
Ben said:
Thill, you make this claim: “My point has simply been that a group or collectivity IS a bunch of individuals in certain forms of relationship to each other based on shared beliefs and values. Therefore, it makes no sense to claim that the actions of a collectivity or group can be described or explained without recourse to its constitutive members and their interactions, or that one can attribute any quality to the collectivity which is not reducible to a quality of its constitutive members.”
I’m with you up to the last clause. You certainly can’t describe a group fully without also describing its members, agreed. But you also can’t describe a group fully by *only* describing its members one at a time. The interactions and synergies between them must also be described. These interactions arise, by definition, because of the presence of other actors- the group.
Another way to phrase my issue with your last clause: if you mean “ALL its constitutive members”, then you and I are saying the same thing. Do you then claim that multi-person interactions are reducible to any single individual’s identity or choices? This seems misleading, because an individual will behave differently depending on whom else is in the group to interact with.
Jesse said:
I think the key point we need to pin down regarding collective vs. individual activities, is that the one is former is quite possibly dramatically different from the simple sum of the latter.
You can take a group of people who are in sum agreement that murder is a bad thing, and yet a group formed entirely of such people may ultimately find itself engaged in intentionally murderous activity.
Basically, in terms of group morality, it’s fairly easy to find examples of 1+1+1+1+1= -5. In short, the sum of the individual’s morality has NOT resulted in the expected value. It has somehow come to an intuitively unexpected value through emergent behavior.
Is that morality still ultimately the result of all the individual’s viewpoints and actions – yes, plus additional factors such as broader social conditions. This complex sum becomes very hard to predict – so much so that in my view it is generally easier to call it the collective’s morality or virtue, rather than the individuals.
Indeed, even society’s legal systems have difficulty dealing with the confusing conflicts in morality when law-breaking results from this kind of dichotomy between basically ‘virtuous’ individuals and ‘un-virtuous’ mobs.
Do you punish all the individuals involved – possibly destroying an entire community as a result?
Do you ignore it because the group mentality dissolved after the deed was done, and no longer ‘exists’ as such?
Do you go after those who brought the rope?
Do you round up a few inciters or ring-leaders and try them, even if their hands remain completely clean of the action?
If all virtue was personal, this kind of problem wouldn’t arise. The virtuous would not engage in wrongdoing, and the wrongdoers would never be virtuous. But there have been so many examples of this kind of thing happening that I think we can rule out such a simple model of virtue.
Amod Lele said:
I generally share Ben’s thoughts on the matter. Even without reference to the social world, the idea of a whole not reducible to its parts is important. You won’t understand the way a car works if all you know is the way its constituent parts are built. The whole has an agency distinct from the agency of its individual parts. The same is true of a cell, whose behaviours as a unit are very different from the behaviours it would take if divided into constituent molecules. Granted, take away the car parts and there is no car; take away the molecules and there is no cell. But you make a mistake in your inference from these basic facts. The agency of the parts is a necessary condition for the agency of the whole; but it is not a sufficient condition. Whether we are speaking of a car, a cell or a social institution, you will not understand the whole without understanding the parts, but you will also not understand the whole if you think only in terms of the parts.
So Ben is correct. “It makes no sense to claim that the actions of a collectivity or group can be described or explained without recourse to its constitutive members and their interactions”: yes, that does make no sense, but I was not trying to do so; the virtuous behaviours of individual members of a collectivity are an essential part of the collectivity’s virtue. “[It makes no sense] that one can attribute any quality to the collectivity which is not reducible to a quality of its constitutive members”: no, it makes good sense, and the claim does not follow from the fact that the collectivity would not exist without its constituent individuals.
Incidentally, I endorse certain forms of mysticism, so there’s little rhetorical effect to be had by your treating “mysticism” as a dirty word.
Jesse said:
“Science is a whole made humble by its arrogant members; the “religions” are wholes made arrogant by their humble members.”
This.
There’s a mathematical description behind this that leads to a very literal shift in power dynamics between science and most any religion – and it is a fundamental difference.
In the fields of science any sufficiently talented and knowledgeable individual has the right to quite literally upend a thousand years of belief and supposition via some new discovery – and the entire institution is at its very core required to accept serious findings no matter how disruptive they are to the existing order.
Indeed, members of the scientific community are encouraged to attack it continuously. This doesn’t lead to a particularly coherent community – but instead leads to an almost frighteningly prolific growth in knowledge and understanding by the institution as a whole.
As a result, the scientific community is very difficult to use as a societal weapon. Despite a very simple set of guiding rules, it will never agree with anything monolithically and it has no master.
Religion is almost entirely the opposite. It creates communities by asking each member to humbly set aside any part of their own beliefs that does not mesh with the larger whole – and that larger whole is for the most part considered sacrosanct, and to even suggest that it is wrong or could be improved is often labeled a heresy sufficient to deny membership (or worse).
It is as a result often an ideal weapon, easily used to focus the attention and energies of thousands or millions of people towards a particular goal – for good or ill. Nationalism is essentially identical to religion in this regard – you’re just worshiping a flag in that case, but dogma trumps pragmatism and individuality all the same.
Most real-world societies land somewhere in between these poles. They require a degree of subservience to country and flag for the sake of social coherence, but the pragmatic requirements of managing and defending a physical society demand a somewhat more ‘scientific’ approach allowing for change and adaptation – countries that ignore this in the modern world tend to be left horribly backwards and defenseless against the ravages of modern economics and military incursions (much like most of the Middle East and Africa)
Amod Lele said:
Jesse, I think this criticism of religion ties surprisingly closely into the other comments about desert islands. The individual humility encouraged by “religious” traditions is valuable despite the lack of institutional humility to go with it. This is one of the reasons that 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous have been so wildly popular, and indeed successful enough to be recommended by the American Psychiatric Association: for many people, recovery requires exactly this humble admission of individual weakness, and submission to a tradition that has proven effective.
And I should note that while these groups cultivate virtues socially, the virtues at issue – self-discipline in particular – are desert-island virtues. If you’re addicted to opium and your island has enough supply of it to stop you from securing food and shelter, controlling your addiction is a highly virtuous act.
Jesse said:
I think a lot of my disagreement is frankly semantic.
I think of humility in the form you are describing it as a ‘trait’ or a ‘quality’ – rather separate from the ‘virtue’ of humility. Not in that it is inherent or can’t be learned, but that one is internal, and the other is observed.
In that regard, a group probably cannot possess what I would call the ‘trait’ of humility – at least not as a human would understand it. Collectives and individuals behave too different for such complex concepts to be transferable, IMNSHO.
However, I feel it would be perfectly acceptable for an observer to ascribe humility to that group as a virtue. Or to a rock, if the individual is so inclined.
I believe a number of philosophers have been fond of presenting inanimate objects or phenomena as exemplars of some virtue or other that they are attempting to describe. But they wouldn’t usually describe humility as a ‘quality’ of the rock – they don’t actually believe the rock is humble – merely that it might exemplify humility perhaps due to its static and enduring nature.
To me, when we use the word ‘virtue’ in particular we are perforce describing something as a subjective example, when we use words like trait or quality, then we are describing something that we believe to be inherent to the entity referenced. Classical definitions of the word ‘Virtue’ seem to hew to this difference fairly closely.
While we often believe or hope that these are the same, that is by no means the necessary case.
Jesse said:
Thill, I think you would need to define a collective as any group of individuals working towards a particular PURPOSE, for any reason.
They can otherwise be as simple or complex as you wish to define. If you can name a purpose for them, they are a collective. They may overlap with any number of other collectives in any bizarre Venn Diagram you care to imagine. The number of meaningful collectives in the world is enormous, even if you limited your count to those with thousands of ‘members’.
Purpose is the one and only key to a collectivity. There is nothing transcendental or mystical about the concept – except that it represents the possibility of FOCUSED effort, which will tend to quickly overwhelm any individual effort to the contrary.
Thill said:
The notion of a collectivity as an entity independent of its constitutive members, having greater value than its individual members, and exercising causal powers over all of them is a mystical notion.
I am not objecting to the notion of a collectivity. I am objecting to the notion that the collectivity has an agency of its own not reducible to the actions of its constitutive members.
skholiast said:
A gorgeous post and an eloquent comment from Thill. My own 2 cents are pale in comparison (not to mention a mixed metaphor). Collectivities, institutions, and traditions cannot strictly speaking be virtuous, but they can be the sort of contexts in which virtue is cultivated, is more likely to develop (or even ‘succeed’). A tremendous amount of social and political thought chimes in here, not to mention empirical findings, e.g. the recent book by NY Times columnist David Brooks The Social Animal which recapitulates a lot of recent research showing that one is more likely to be, e.g., overweight, happy, religious, generally healthy, etc. etc., if one’s friends are too. Why not, then, virtuous as well? The applications are not obvious — should laws aim to cultivate virtue, for instance? — but I think an argument can be made that philosophy itself is such a tradition. So too are the debates over the place of the humanities in university curricula.
skholiast said:
Sorry– that last sentence is awkward. I just meant that the university curriculum debates also pertain to this question of the value of the humanities (do they better one’s dollar-earning potential? Do they make one “more well-rounded,” more creative, more intelligent, more questioning, etc?) And this is pertinent because universities are institutions and the societies which support them are collectives.
Thill said:
Thanks, Skholiast. I concur with your insightful claim that “Collectivities, institutions, and traditions cannot strictly speaking be virtuous, but they can be the sort of contexts in which virtue is cultivated, is more likely to develop (or even ’succeed’).” Would you agree that the “context” here obviously includes the actions, decisions, behaviors and interactions of individuals in addition to policies, procedures, etc? A monastery may provide a context for the development of certain virtues and/or vices, but interactions of individuals seem to be an essential aspect of the context.
Jabali108 said:
If we cannot understand the concept of a tradition or institution independently of a set of practices, then it follows that interactions of individuals is essential to a tradition or institution. It makes no sense to speak of a set of practices as existing or continuing independently of the adherence and actions of individuals.
Jesse said:
Technically speaking, Christianity would basically disagree with you on that point.
Much of their morality is intentionally codified within a certain text, believed to exist in an essential and vital sense outside of the prevue or influence of all humanity. No social group necessary to make it ‘moral’ or ‘virtuous’.
I disagree with that premise mind you, but I thought it bore mentioning that a great deal of humanity puts great weight on the institutionalization of morality in ‘permanent’ and supposedly unchanging documents such as the Bible, Koran, the Constitution, and so on, to the point where some of them will kill you for defacing said font of morality. :P
Neocarvaka said:
That ain’t unique to Christianity! The Hindus also believe that their scriptures, the Vedas, have no authors.
In any case, it should be obvious that it is a bunch of people who are making these sorts of claims on behalf of a scripture which is written or transmitted and interpreted in a human language. The practices enjoined by these scriptures again, obviously, require human interpretation and participation.
Ben said:
“In any case, it should be obvious that it is a bunch of people who are making these sorts of claims on behalf of a scripture which is written or transmitted and interpreted in a human language.”
Devil’s advocate: I agree with you entirely, but there IS a counter-argument, along these lines: These “human” interpretations and predictions are guided by divine intent. Changes in scripture over time reflect a more full revelation of divine will. Each transmission and translation is inspired, just as were the original authors to put pen to paper.
Pleasantly circular, isn’t it? If everything is divine will, then there can be no counter-evidence :)
Neocarvaka said:
“These “human” interpretations and predictions are guided by divine intent. Changes in scripture over time reflect a more full revelation of divine will. Each transmission and translation is inspired, just as were the original authors to put pen to paper.”
These are, again, and obviously, claims made by some human beings about their own interpretations of scriptures of their own making! And just because some human beings claim or imagine that their interpretations of their scriptures are guided by divine intent does not make it so.
How does anyone know that his or her interpretation is guided by “divine intent”? And how does another person know that so-called St. X’s interpretation was guided by “divine intent”? Merely on grounds of so-called St. X’s own claims to that effect?
JimWilton said:
It is worth pointing out that there is a difference between virtue and morality.
Amod Lele said:
Also, as a side note, this characterizes Protestantism much more accurately than Catholicism. Luther’s new development was to say that everything was contained in the unchanging text. The Catholic understanding had been that that text cannot be understood without the help of the church, as a social institution and a tradition.
Jabali108 said:
A: “As for humility, I take it to mean the awareness of one’s limits and weaknesses…it means listening carefully, recognizing that one has never thought of everything, that others very often have something valuable to contribute – even when one maintains the courage to defend one’s own sincerely held convictions…Above all, perhaps, the readiness to admit when one has been wrong.”
B: “On these terms I defend my previous claim, developed with Ben: natural science maintains an institutional humility as a tradition, because it does not take its claims as infallible, is ready to see them overturned when better evidence comes to light. The ideals of scientific tradition encourage its institutions to act in a humble way. This institutional humility is a very different thing from encouraging the humility of individuals;”
I fail to see how A supports B. A implies that humility is an attribute or disposition of a self-conscious entity. How, then, can humility be attributed to traditions or institutions unless you also assume that traditions or institutions are literally (and not metaphorically) self-conscious entities? Are you prepared to go so far as to claim that “collectivities” such as traditions and institutions are literally self-conscious entities?
How does the claim that there is “institutional humility” in science differ from the claim that there is “institutionalized humility” in science? If they are the same, then how is the claim that there is “institutionalized humility” in science not reducible to the claim that the policies and procedures of the institutions of science are designed to inculcate humility in the practitioners of science and members of those institutions of science?
Amod Lele said:
Jabali, these are important points to be clarified. Thank you.
There are differences between individuals and institutions, to be sure; and I do think that what counts as a virtue for an individual and for an institution are often not the same, though they are usually closely related. On your specific points, much seems to hinge on the definition of “self-consciousness.” Especially, what is “literal” self-consciousness, as opposed to “metaphorical”? If it simply means that an entity is in some sense aware of its own existence (which seems to be what’s required for A), it would seem that that does indeed apply to institutions. A government, for example, produces documents written by its members together – often anonymously – which refer back to itself as an existing entity. One can try to say that the government is nothing more than the sum of the individuals who make it up; but one could similarly reduce an individual. If only the individuals are self-conscious and the government is not, couldn’t we also say that my brain, mouth and hands are self-conscious but I as a whole am not?
Jabali108 said:
Thanks for the clarification.
It’s good that you see a distinction between saying that an individual is virtuous and saying that an institution or tradition (which include groups of members or adherents) is virtuous.
You have made it clear what it means to say that an individual is humble or has the virtue of humility, but it is unclear to me what you think is the sense, if any, in which one can say that an institution or tradition is humble or virtuous.
What other sense does the claim that “The traditions and institutions of science are humble.” have than that their policies, procedures, and practices, reflect the importance of humility and require the practitioners of science to cultivate this virtue or value?
Your claim that a tradition or institution is literally “self-conscious” in just the way an individual is open to the charge of absurdity.
What is the difference between saying that something is literally self-conscious and speaking figuratively or metaphorically?
Well, when we say that something is literally self-conscious we mean at least that it has consciousness or self-awareness, can and does distinguish between itself and others, etc. But it is obvious that a tradition or institution does not possess the property of consciousness or awareness. Marriage or Buddhism cannot be aware of itself.
To speak figuratively, and we can only do that, of the “self-consciousness” of marriage or Buddhism is just to say that married individuals can and do reflect on marriage and/or their marital relationship, or that Buddhists can and do reflect on the tenets of Buddhism and not a whit more or less.
“Marriage”, or “Buddhism”, or “government” are not entities with minds and it is a classic case of falling into the traps of language to think that just because we speak of marriage or Buddhism, or make statements about them, that they are self-conscious entities or individuals. This sort of bizarre thinking, akin to Plato’s so-called “realism”, which engages in the reification or “entification” (make an entity out of) of nouns is a peril which assails philosophical reflection when it becomes untethered from ordinary language and commonsense.
“A government, for example, produces documents written by its members together – often anonymously – which refer back to itself as an existing entity.”
It should go without saying that a government produces nothing, least of all documents! Only government officials or individuals in governmental positions can do that! Does a government talk or write in Spanish? Sure, it does! And we mean by this only that the officials of a government do that!
Can a tradition or institution or government have a gender or sexual orientation? Can a “collectivity” literally love or hate another “collectivity”? Does Islam hate Judaism? Is Judaism envious of Christianity? Does it make sense to say that Hinduism is bisexual, or that Buddhism is homosexual, or that Christianity is heterosexual??? Can Buddhism lust after Islam? Can “penis envy” be attributed to Saivism? Is the Sakta tradition lesbian?
Consider the slippery slope the thesis that a “collectivity” can be literally self-conscious and virtuous leads to.
“One can try to say that the government is nothing more than the sum of the individuals who make it up; but one could similarly reduce an individual. If only the individuals are self-conscious and the government is not, couldn’t we also say that my brain, mouth and hands are self-conscious but I as a whole am not?”
It is not that a “collectivity” such as a government is “nothing more than the sum of the individuals who make it up”. The point I am making is that a “collectivity” consists of individuals who stand in certain relationships to each other based on their position or role in the “collectivity” and policies and procedures. Hence, a “collectivity” does not refer to an independent entity, an entity independent of its members.
I suspect that a form of Platonic “realism” underlies your approach to “collectivity”. Indeed, there is an eerie resemblance between your treatment of the status of a “collectivity” vis-a-vis individuals and Plato’s treatment of “forms”, allegedly corresponding to general terms, vis-a-vis particulars.
Needless to say, Plato’s approach is a mystification and rests on a misunderstanding of the logic and use of general terms.
Thill said:
“One can try to say that the government is nothing more than the sum of the individuals who make it up; but one could similarly reduce an individual. If only the individuals are self-conscious and the government is not, couldn’t we also say that my brain, mouth and hands are self-conscious but I as a whole am not?”
I agree that there is a fallacy of division (if we attribute a property x to a group or collectivity, then all its individual members must have that property x.) in thinking that if we attribute a property to a “collectivity”, then all its members must have that property, or that to say that a collectivity or group has a property is to say that ALL of its members have that property.
However, there is no fallacy of division at all in holding that if a “collectivity” or group has a property, then a majority of its constitutive members have that property, or that to say that a collectivity or group has a property is to say that a majority of its constitutive members have that property.
Thus, there is no fallacy of division in holding that to say that the American government is imperialist, or militant, or devious in its dealings with the developing countries is to say that a majority of American government officials in the relevant positions are imperialist, or militant, or devious in their dealings with the developing countries. In fact, this is the only plausible interpretation of the meaning of that claim.
Thill said:
“If only the individuals are self-conscious and the government is not, couldn’t we also say that my brain, mouth and hands are self-conscious but I as a whole am not?”
Neither a government nor a body is merely a sum of its parts, but neither of them can exist independently of all the parts. Clearly, they are wholes constituted by the parts in certain relations and interactions. Clearly, some or most of the parts are essential to their existence. Clearly, any property attributed to them is a function of the attributes of most, but not all, of their parts.
Ramachandra1008 said:
“Sage” Jabali, if you say that a property ascribed to a collectivity is a function of the properties of MOST of its constituent parts or members, this is still open to the question “Why then can’t we say that the property of self-consciousness we ascribe to an individual is a function of the properties of MOST of the constituent parts of the individual such as bones, muscles, nerves, organs, etc?”.
Amod’s excellent question has not been answered.
Jabali108 said:
There are different kinds of “collectivities”. A group is a different sort of collectivity from an institution or tradition. An institution differs from a tradition in important ways. What is applicable to one form of collectivity may not be applicable to another. Amod seems to ignore these differences.
Properties or qualities of collectivities may be a function of interaction of individuals rather than a simple reflection of properties of those individuals taken in isolation. I have granted this. But since the qualities of those individuals determine their interactions, any explanation of the properties of a collectivity must include a reference to the interactions and qualities of individuals.
Thus if we assume physicalism or materialism, self-consciousness is a property of the human brain, but this does not entail that we must ascribe self-consciousness to every part or component of the brain or the body. What it entails is that, within the assumed framework of physicalism or materialism, this self-consciousness cannot be understood independently of the interacting parts or components of the brain and even the body and the attributes of those parts.
From a dualist, or non-physicalist, or immaterialist point of view, the mind or individual consciousness has no parts or components, not to mention physical parts or components. Hence, even the possibility of reducing its attributes to the attributes of its parts or components does not arise.
Jesse said:
I think collective concepts of virtue are likely stronger and MORE important than individual ones.
In a world populated by billions of people, the virtue of the individual, while appreciated, carries little weight. The virtue of a societal group however, is vital – and if anything tends to apply itself to the individual more than the other way around.
History is rife with examples where otherwise virtuous individuals have behaved in utterly pathological fashions when their social group became pathological – Nazi Germany perhaps being the ultimate example, but much more common themes being looting and rioting.
On the flip side we have the recent example of the Japanese society virtuously rejecting all such behavior on a massive scale – Indeed, this was such a rare and remarkable response in the face of disaster on that scale that the rest of the world was all but shocked at it.
So I would put your question back to you, not whether collectives can be virtuous or not – but indeed, whether INDIVIDUALS be meaningfully virtuous in the face of overwhelming collective pathologies? I would say that the evidence weighs somewhat against the individual, with the collective response overwhelming the individual mandate to the point of almost questioning free will.
Jabali108 said:
“otherwise virtuous individuals have behaved in utterly pathological fashions when their social group became pathological”
In other words, and in plain English:
many individuals, including some powerful ones, in one’s group had “gone pathological” and this, in addition to coercive policies and harsh punitive measures for non-conformity, ensured or brought about the conformity of other and hitherto well-behaved individuals.
“we have the recent example of the Japanese society virtuously rejecting all such behavior on a massive scale”
In other words, an overwhelming number of Japanese individuals living in Japan eschewed unlawful behaviors or actions despite their horrendous tragedy.
“So I would put your question back to you, not whether collectives can be virtuous or not – but indeed, whether INDIVIDUALS be meaningfully virtuous in the face of overwhelming collective pathologies?”
It should be obvious from your own examples of Nazi Germany and Japan in the aftermath of the recent earthquakes and Tsunami that you are basically and ultimately talking about individuals in Nazi Germany and Japan and that the bearers of virtues and vices are individuals.
I also presume that you know that history furnishes us with many examples of individuals who have displayed virtues in striking contrast to the vices exhibited by other individuals belonging to the same group and examples of individuals who have displayed vices in striking contrast to the virtues exhibited by other members of their group.
Group or “collectivity” judgments are statistical in nature and refer to varying numbers of individuals in that group or collectivity who possess a virtue, or vice, or any trait. Obviously, such judgments allow for the fact that a varying number of individuals in that same group or collectivity don’t possess that virtue, or vice, or trait.
The point that a quality attributed to a group or collectivity is reducible to a quality of (the majority of) individuals in that group or collectivity must be understood in light of this statistical nature of group or collectivity judgments.
Jesse said:
“The point that a quality attributed to a group or collectivity is reducible to a quality of (the majority of) individuals in that group or collectivity must be understood in light of this statistical nature of group or collectivity judgments.”
As a point I’ve been trying to drill home repeatedly, a statistical accumulation of individual tendencies and behaviors is NOT sufficient to describe group behavior.
Individuals are always individuals – even when they are in a group. They retain free will, they are able to make their own decisions. It is simply that those decisions are heavily weighted by the actions of those around them – and often it requires only the smallest trigger impetus to create a large-scale dynamic change in the entire group’s behavior.
Thus the penalties for invoking panic in a movie theater or crowd. If I cry fire, I will affect the behavior of hundreds of individuals around me – quite possibly in a calamitous fashion.
If the group in question is sufficiently trained, they may successfully resist certain forms of negative impetus, they walk to the exits rather than running – but if they see a few people bolt even the trained crowd may be tipped into panicked flight.
Similarly well trained troops are much less likely to rout from battle when an ally dies next to them – but they are never wholly immune to panic. The Japanese are well conditioned by extremely low crime rates to trust each other during crisis, but it would not have taken all that long for that resolve to crumble had the government not moved swiftly to make its presence felt.
The correlation to a critical mass in nuclear physics holds fairly well for the simpler cases of mob mentality. If unstable atoms exist in sufficient density, one may set off a cascading chain reaction, forming a criticality that releases a great deal of energy.
Reduce the density slightly, or add some damping element, or simply change the size of the sample and the chain reaction cannot start.
The quantitative difference between the two samples may be statistically minute, – but the qualitative differences become enormous. One is a harmless lump of metal, the other a kilometer-wide fireball.
Jesse said:
“It should be obvious from your own examples of Nazi Germany and Japan in the aftermath of the recent earthquakes and Tsunami that you are basically and ultimately talking about individuals in Nazi Germany and Japan and that the bearers of virtues and vices are individuals. ”
I wholly and completely disagree with this statement.
I can look at Nazi Germany as a whole, and with clear conscience decry it as one of the most misguided, evil civilizations to grace the surface of our planet. It’s virtues are so strongly impressed upon our culture that they now occupy a mythical moral position – an archetype of what it is to BE evil.
From that EXACT SAME SAMPLE, I would very much expect to find a majority of good German people, struggling to be virtuous in a world that appears to have gone inexplicably mad around them. Many accounts of the war – even from the victor’s side – describe exactly that.
Indeed, within a few years, they were once again those people as a nation, working virtuously and humbly to rebuild a shattered nation and atone for that inexplicable madness.
Explain that split viewpoint if you will, without ascribing virtue to a group.
Jesse said:
I could also take the time to describe in clear detail a particular form of individual vs. collective virtue – namely the virtue of Bravery in the line of battle.
In any larger scale battle you can watch how lines of soldiers move and interact, and begin to understand the dynamics and importance of individual vs. collective bravery.
In some cases when forces are closely balanced you will see points where an individual’s virtue – or lack of it – will cause an entire group’s virtue to collapse. By dint of one person losing their nerve at a moment when they should have stepped forwards, an entire line or unit can become compromised.
By the same token – and more commonly when forces are properly trained to create a sense of coherence – you will see how the virtue of the group makes individual acts of bravery or cowardice meaningless factors in an overwhelming tide. Bravery in the face of a well organized assault is clearly no more than pointless suicide – it is an individual virtue turned against itself destructively when flight would perhaps have allowed for a later stand.
The concepts of individual bravery we instinctively know were honed to days when 10 or 20 men untrained in the arts of war would contest with each other on the African savanna. Modern concepts of unit organization, coherence and deployment render them – not meaningless certainly, but in some cases even worse than that.
Individuals drawn into socially repugnant acts are often responding to the same mathematical underpinnings. The mores of the group overwhelming and washing away – at least temporarily – the mores of the individual.
Critically, this can even happen when the considerable majority of the individuals involved would normally oppose the activities executed by that group – an active and visible minority of extreme individuals is quite capable of shifting the group morality in a decidedly more unpleasant direction. This happens CONSTANTLY in the modern world, and is probably one of the single most dangerous aspects of modern civilization.
JimWilton said:
I have to agree with Thill and Jabali. Humility is a human virtue, just as arrogance and pretentiousness are human flaws. It can apply to institutions only by analogy.
None of this diminishes the importance of institutions in passing on culture and cultural values (and Amod, Skholiast, Ben and Jesse make valid points). But it is sufficient to say that an institution can facilitate or encourage virtue or that it is founded on and embodies virtuous ideals.
I think the more interesting question is one that I noted in the last thread. “Is humility appropriate or a virtue only in situations where one’s views may be wrong?” The answer to this (to my mind) is no. One can be right — a Noble Prize winner or a chess champion like Bobby Fischer — and also arrogant. This is because the truth is not personal property. A claim that “I am right” always has an extraneous element — the “I” is unnecessary. The same can be said for beauty.
Amod, who doesn’t believe that certainty exists, may get to the same point of agreeing that humility is a virtue in all circumstances. But I think you get there more directly from this different route and I think that the distinction is important.
Jesse said:
I’m still not sure that individuals can be virtuous. I am of the developing opinion that virtue only holds any meaning within the context of a wider group or collective.
Consider this thought experiment:
You are Alone. The literal Last Person on Earth.
How would you prove yourself virtuous?
The apparently intractable nature of this challenge suggests to me that an individual can only be considered virtuous within such a wider social context – meaning that virtue is in essence an external attribute, NOT an internal one, and as such can be as easily applied BY a group to an individual, group, or even an object.
In short, an individual cannot possesses virtue – virtue can only be bestowed upon them by others.
Amod Lele said:
Jesse, welcome to the blog and thank you very much for your many thoughtful comments!
I think there is a fairly straightforward answer to this rhetorical question. Not every virtue can be exercised by a person alone on a desert island – leadership or generosity, for example, would be quite difficult. But other virtues can be exercised with little difficulty. If you save your coconuts for the unproductive season even though they’d be tasty now, you act with temperance and self-discipline. If you keep working away on building a shelter even though your first attempts are failure, you act with patience. If you go into the water to find the fish you need to survive despite the presence of sharks, you act with courage.
Jesse said:
Ah good, if we expand the discussion to physical traits such as strength, and personal mental traits such as perseverance then the argument does indeed become more complex. Humility really wasn’t doing it for me in this regard.
I can understand and describe individual perseverance in a social vacuum, potentially marking it as an objective trait. That being said, I don’t know that it can be described as a virtue outside of both physical and social contexts.
What after all, is the ‘right’ amount of perseverance? If I am unsuited to some task, should I persevere at it until I starve, or is it more virtuous to recognize my limitations and try something else? If I do that have I ‘failed’ to persevere, even though further perseverance would likely have killed me?
Also, I can’t get away from the change of values in social and physical context.
If I work for the mafia, my, uh ‘virtues’ are probably a bit different than most people’s, but no less well recognized and lauded by my peers. I might describe some objective reasons why these virtues are ‘wrong’ on a large scale – but on the micro scale of individual decision making my larger thesis could clearly be challenged.
Bear in mind that a strongman ‘mafia’ is often the first stage of civilization amongst newly forming groups. It may in fact be a virtuous improvement over an anarchic band, but a distinct aggravation in a more developed society.
Then there’s the matter of group vs. individual morality – always tinged by pragmatism.
Should I pay protection money to the mob in the larger social sense? No. Clearly wrong. Should I do it as an individual? Probably yes, unless I am confident in local law enforcement, or willing to risk my life in a meaningless gesture.
What if I’m threatened with collective punishment? Is it a virtue to stand out and see my entire community bombed as a result? What if I believed I had some chance of success? When does it change over from pointless antagonism to righteous resistance?
I likewise challenge you to think of what would be considered virtuous – either as a group or as an individual – in more extreme settings, such as the Native American world of the 1700-1800 period. The European Dark Ages are a another interesting case. In the real world, the Apocalypse has come and gone many times.
As humans, we must survive as best we can through all of these conditions, and that our moral flexibility is likely a result of adaptive necessity – and yes, I see today’s virtue as tomorrow’s vice in many of these cases, with only a few rather basic core moral ‘rules’ persisting over the longer scales.
Neocarvaka said:
“Amod, who doesn’t believe that certainty exists…”
He surely is certain that he doesn’t believe that certainty exists! Otherwise, he cannot say that he doesn’t believe that certainty exists!
Is he certain that there is no certainty? If he is, then he refutes himself! If he isn’t, then his claim or belief should be “We don’t know whether we have certainty or not.”
Now, is he certain that we don’t know whether we can be certain or not?
………
In any case, his claim is false since to assert it he must know with certainty that this is what he believes and also what the words in his assertion mean.
Amod Lele said:
I get confused by this somewhat bizarre line of reasoning (which Thill has also expressed in the past). There is a large and significant difference between certainty and knowledge. Wittgenstein asserts that there isn’t, but I tire of Wittgenstein’s often unsupported assertions and commands.
If I am not certain of something, it doesn’t mean that I know nothing about it. I am not certain that I will be alive next week. But I am pretty confident of it, and that’s enough for it to count as knowledge. It’s certainly enough for me to act accordingly.
Jesse said:
Not to be flippant, but Heisenberg has some things to say about certainty that place it into a rather unreachable realm.
Information theory presents similarly irreducible problems. Absolute knowledge of a system represents the entirety of that system itself (an exact copy, at a minimum). Unfortunately, because the observing system is itself inevitably a factor, it must analyze itself in an infinitely recursive series.
In the end our computer designed to perfectly predict the Earth’s weather ends up being infinitely larger than the Earth.
So much for that idea. :P
Thus all systemic models without exception use some form of abstraction, which by definition represents an incomplete state of certainty. Frequently useful, but imperfect.
Thill said:
There are three elements here: knowledge, certainty, and completeness.
It is not bizarre to say that we can claim to know something without also claiming that our knowledge of it is complete. Our knowledge could be partial knowledge.
But it is certainly bizarre to claim that we know something (as contrasted with believing something) and at the same time are not certain in our knowledge. If I know that P, then this implies that P is true. And if P is true, then it is certainly true!
Partial or incomplete knowledge is also certain within its bounds. If I know only about aspects x and y concerning the Sun, then my knowledge about those aspects is certain. If the only thing I know about the heart is that it pumps blood, then I am certain and it is certainly true that the heart pumps blood.
JimWilton said:
I’m not following.
For me, virtue has to be understood internally first. And having understood one’s own mind and motives, we understand others — because we are not all that different from each other.
And when we check our moral compass, aren’t we all alone at that moment?
Can you explain your developing view?
Jesse said:
I rather wonder what the point of a purely personal virtue would be? Who to offend? To harm? To rescue? Yourself?
Who would you be more or less humble than? How would you compare your virtue? What lens to view it through?
Virtue isn’t a thing we possess, it is a quality that others imagine in us.
Another proof of this concept is how the virtue of those long dead shifts in the eyes of each generation to follow, gaining and losing relevance.
One virtue is held above another as a reflection of society’s current mores, then it is demoted or forgotten as they shift again. Sometimes the hero’s virtues are simply re-written or re-imagined for a new treatise, their original virtues lost or intentionally discarded as worthless.
Let us sum up the virtues of Jesus, first north, and then south of the Mason/Dixon line. They will be different – VERY different – simply because they are not ‘his’ virtues. They are the virtues everyone else chose to impose upon the words he spoke, and the actions he took.
Achieving virtue for yourself? Perhaps, but it sounds no more meaningful than practicing jokes in a mirror. You’ll never really know if they are funny until you find an audience to appreciate or scorn them.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try to understand ourselves internally. I’m simply saying that ‘virtue’ is a social concept that has no meaning – indeed, no purpose whatsoever – outside of a wider social context.
Neocarvaka said:
You are confusing the issues of how we can ascribe virtues to others, how anyone can know that they possess a virtue, and the issue of what can properly be the bearer of a virtue.
The first and second issues presuppose that individuals are bearers of virtues. So, you would be saddled with the charge of nonsense if you were to raise the first and second issues and at the same time deny that individuals are the bearers of virtues.
If the criteria of ascription of virtue or criteria of knowledge that one possesses a virtue are social or inter-subjective, this in no way entails that groups can be bearers of virtues in an irreducible way, i.e., not reducible to the virtues of its constitutive members.
Jesse said:
The first point I am trying to make is that the concept of virtue is an ascribed one – it is not an *inherent* property of any entity whatsoever. No-one can bear a virtue – that is a transposition that can occur only in the mind of another observer. Modern media makes the abundantly clear at a glance.
In other words it is purely subjective. There is no objective concept of humility. No standard of measurement against which any emotional virtue can be weighed and found either sufficient or wanting.
In short, Virtues have no mass, no energy – they do not exist beyond the social realm.
As for the concept of collective virtues being (or not being) irreducible. The well recognized phenomenon of groups displaying dramatically different behaviors and virtues than their component individuals suggests that group’s morality operates in a fundamentally different way than an individual’s morality. It is described as an emergent behavior.
Indeed, mob mentality or stampedes are considered some of the most classical examples of emergent behavior within the field of study!
In practice emergent behavior has proven to be extremely hard to predict or intuit without a considerable amount of prior knowledge of that system’s behavior.
Knowledge only of the initial state of its components generally proves quite insufficient. It would be like knowing all the values needed to solve a mathematical problem, but being ignorant of the formula into which they must be entered.
Similarly, we continually speak as if these individuals are relating only to themselves and each other – we haven’t even delved into the wider context of external individuals, groups, and of course the all important physical environment in which decisions are made. A mob in the summer heat behaves entirely different than the rain-drenched mob, and good luck even forming a mob in the dead of a northern winter.
As such I see it as more utilitarian to speak of the group’s morality as related to and interacting with – but still essentially separate from – that of its component individuals.
After all, for as long as you cannot accurately derive one from the other, they remain FUNCTIONALLY separate albeit related concepts.
Thill said:
What do you mean by a “group”? How do you identify a group? What sort of evidence do you appeal to in justifying your attributions of qualities to a group, qualities you consider irreducible to those of individuals in the group? (Hint: Consider how you arrived at those judgments on “Japanese society” or “Nazi Germany”.)
If you can clearly answer these three questions with a simple example, I would greatly appreciate it.
Neocarvaka said:
“The well recognized phenomenon of groups displaying dramatically different behaviors and virtues than their component individuals”
If you are saying that individuals behave differently in groups than they would if they were not part of a group, I am not denying that. But this claim does not entail that any given instance of group behavior, e.g., gang behavior, is not a function of the behavior of individuals composing that gang.
This is so obvious that I don’t know how it can elude anyone’s grasp. If a gang loots a shop, this obviously means that individuals composing that gang have looted that shop! The gang isn’t a mysterious entity existing apart from its individual members.
If all of the gang members involved in looting have been identified, imagine cops responding in this “Platonic” way: “Yeah, we know that all these individuals were involved in the looting, but we want the gang itself since it is above and beyond and irreducible to its individual members.”!!!!
Neocarvaka said:
“If a gang loots a shop, this obviously means that individuals composing that gang have looted that shop!”
Of course, I am assuming that in this case all the members of this gang have participated in the looting of that shop.
Jabali said:
“the group’s morality as related to and interacting with – but still essentially separate from – that of its component individuals.”
How do you identify a group and its morality? Pl. give an example. Thanks for your time.
Jesse said:
“How do you identify a group and its morality? Pl. give an example. Thanks for your time.”
Well, in the practical realm I think you can trivially find a wide range of solid examples.
Uniforms exist (fashion statements aside) for the primary purpose of identifying individuals as members of an established and organized group.
There are countless forms of regalia all dedicated to this one sole purpose – signifying group membership.
Flags, badges, sashes, signs, silly hats, more silly hats – really an amazingly bizarre array of silly hats actually. (ok, I’m going to admit here that all the silly hats actually kind of creep me out.)
There are likewise ritualistic devotions – patterns of behavior, pledges, prayers, and so on, most of which serve, at least in part, to declare one’s membership in a group.
In fact, the sheer historical volume and prominence of these ‘group insignia’ should be more than sufficient to hint at the intense importance groups, group membership, and group morality hold for humans – particularly given just how many of them have an express or implied goal of messing with human morality.
Then of course there are the particularly problematic ones – race, skin color, gender, even illness. Problematic because they force us into groups against our will.
Which brings up an important point. I need not declare my membership in a group – it can be declared for me by others in the form of exclusion, exile, or typing. If I do not declare myself part of a group, I risk the likelihood that I will be declared ‘other’ by default.
Now, insofar as BEHAVIOR is defined by groups
(or a group is defined by its member’s behavior) that’s usually a somewhat more restrictive interaction – and interaction is the key word there.
I need to associate with other people, either through direct observation, by the assumption of a set of behavioral creeds, or some other means that allows me to judge the merits of my own behavior in regards to that larger group. Simply putting on the silly hat doesn’t quite cut it behaviorally speaking – but on the other hand, I can easily be incorporated into a group by simple proximity.
JimWilton said:
I appreciate the thoughtful post, but I have to disagree. Virtue is something more than fashion.
In fact, actions meant to conform with the consensus of others are almost by definition not virtuous actions because they are motivated by concern for reputation and status in the community.
Virtue is discovered through self-reflection — often times first discovered through seeing non-virtue (selfishness, arrogance, etc.). Through understanding non-virtue thoroughly, an understanding of virtue arises.
You do make the good point that, eventually, personal spiritual development is somewhat limited. You do have to take it out into the world. But without the hard work of self-reflection, any action in the world is likely not to be based on wisdom and will tend to make matters worse.
Jesse said:
I think I would agree that Morality can at least be described in a more objective sense – Virtue, it seems to me, must remain a purely subjective concept in order to have value.
Morality is examined to a considerable degree in Game Theory. Within purely mathematical confines, one can construct entities that must make competitive or cooperative decisions that quickly outline a recognizable concept of moral decision making.
Simple moral rules arise quickly out of pure numbers – treat others as you wish to be treated, predictable behavior engenders trust, etc. A mindless algorithm can fairly quickly discover these fundamentals of morality if the conditions for their success prevail. No consciousness or awareness whatsoever is needed to prove their value.
But within any such model, virtue is not a value I can ascribe to myself. I can STRIVE to present such a virtue to others through words and/or deeds, to make it known that I am trustworthy – but it always comes down to the Others’ opinion of me to make that true, or not. And it will vary with every individual that observes me.
I can conclude every deal in my life honestly, and yet if another influential entity speaks ill of me my virtue is likely to be besmirched in the eyes of others. It does not matter that my personal morality is absolute, because others will not treat me that way.
It works the other way around for the Pope, obviously. His virtues are all automatically set to 100%. ;P
Thill said:
Yes, many of the virtues are social or inter-subjective in the sense that they pertain to other beings or involve reference to other beings and are identified in these terms, e.g., benevolence, tactfulness, politeness, etc.
But some virtues such as courage, perseverance, and “presence of mind” are not necessarily social or inter-subjective. A solitary climber who braves a storm and scales Mt. Everest still has the virtues of courage, perseverance, and possibly “presence of mind” in the face of formidable challenges and dangers presented by the elements.
Some virtues, notably, wisdom, may have both subjective (insight into one’s own thoughts and feelings) and inter-subjective aspects.
JimWilton said:
I find the concept of virtue being determined by consensus interesting, but bizarre. I am trying to figure out the philosophical underpinnings of this view — maybe utilitarianism?
Under your view, it seems that a person can’t act with virtue unless another sees it and approves. Truly bizarre.
“Only a sweet and virtuous soul like seasoned timber never gives; but though the whole world turns to coal, then chiefly lives.”
Jesse said:
“Under your view, it seems that a person can’t act with virtue unless another sees it and approves. Truly bizarre. ”
Nope. Other way around – How am I to KNOW whether I am virtuous if others do not see and approve, or at the very least I am able to see that I have helped another? I can tell myself that I am generous, or humble, I can think about these things a great deal – but without some basis for comparison there can be no real understanding.
Even on the desert island, I will only be able to judge whether I live or not – whether I am comfortable perhaps. I still will not know whether I am sufficiently brave, sufficiently humble, or really much else about myself.
I can compare myself against a cliff face, or a rushing stream, or even a wild beast, but these things are all fundamentally different than I am – these are imbalanced relationships. I can only know if I’ve failed should I die, but it is difficult or impossible to know to what DEGREE I have succeeded.
This issue comes up a lot when you are doing any form of US/OTHER comparison in game theory or economics. Are we spending enough on our military forces? That question can’t really be answered unless you have some idea how powerful other countries forces are, and whether they are allied or opposed to you, and then compare that against how you expect to interact with them in the future.
You see it all the time in sports, where a small league plays and some teams excel and others do not – but then one day the league arranges a series with another league and discovers to their dismay that there is a vast gulf between them.
Where the leading teams once thought themselves virtuous, they now discover that they are by comparison to these new peers, wholly inadequate, thought their skills have not changed in the slightest between yesterday and today.
Similarly, most people do not compare whether their living standards are sufficient by objectively examining Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – they are much more prone to compare themselves to their neighbors and decide by that comparison whether or not their standard is sufficient to make them ‘happy’.
And so yes, I maintain my contention that virtues while they may be ‘possessed’ by the individual alone, remain essentially unknown until they are exposed to some reasonable basis for comparison. A context in which they have wider meaning.
JimWilton said:
Our understanding of virtue comes through self-reflection. It does not require comparison with others — and certainly not the approval of others!
If we pay attention and are honest and not engaging in self-deception, we know if we are truly humble or if we are exhibiting false modesty in order to impress others. We know if we are acting selfishly or if we have a generous attitude that is concerned with the welfare of others.
We also see our flaws. But that just means that we have an opportunity to cultivate virtue. And seeing our flaws and recognizing that we are imperfect is a basis for cultivating gentleness and compassion.
Our minds are very quick and, of course, we have a lot of capacity for self-deception. However, the interesting thing is that to effectively deceive ourselves we have to first see the truth — and then we may choose to ignore it and engage in rationalization or self-deception. But there is always the possibility that we can wake up. Virtue can be cultivated. People have been doing it in various traditions (including Western philosophical traditions) through various methods for thousands of years.
Input from others — if they are wise and compassionate — can be helpful. But it is not required. Input from others whose vision is clouded by their own self-deception is less helpful.
Jesse said:
I guess I agree that the development of virtue is often an internal process – sort of?
But its expression must involve the real world to have meaning. At the end of the day, the terms Good and Evil – and virtue – are social ones, not personal ones.
If I contemplate generosity, but never help, I cannot be generous. If consider perseverance, but never choose to walk the difficult path, I cannot persevere.
I may learn through thought but I must prove myself through example.
Even the self-contemplative study of humility is just a form of overt egotism if one is unwilling to humble oneself before the wisdom and advice of others in the search for enlightenment.
Contemplation of the self can help me understand the problem, but if it remains always apart from the world it is nothing but and extended bout of solipsism.
Jabali108 said:
“A NATO airstrike Saturday night killed the youngest son of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Saif al-Arab, and three grandchildren, a Libyan government spokesman said.”
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/04/30/world/africa/international-us-libya-attack.html?_r=1&emc=na
So, the Anglo-American and European psychopaths in three-piece suits and military uniforms can hide their responsibility for planning and executing these and other egregiously murderous crimes behind the screen of the “collectivity” of NATO?
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