My last post generated some interesting comments. All the responses were well thought out and had strong arguments. I think this was due to the ability of the issues in the post to help us be better people. I’m writing this post in response to the three viewpoints advanced by the comments. My hope is that members of these three viewpoints (not necessarily the authors) can clarify some questions I had regarding their positions. Also I would like this post to provide some inspiration to the three viewpoints, maybe helping to further clarity your point or expanding the ideas in them to situations you may not have contemplated. I’ve labeled the viewpoints as the following (because I can): Hume’s Principle of Anonymous Causation, God be Willing, and Jimmy’s Definition is “Dan”gerous. I plan to make three posts, one addressing each viewpoint. Well on to the viewpoints.
People of Hume’s Principle of Anonymous Causation:
I think for the most part you are correct in the assertion that knowledge of the physical world is done via induction. I don’t want to get into a huge debate between Hume, Kant, and Wittgenstein (and other assorted people only geeks read) regarding the nature of knowledge. It is enough to say that in regards to how we formulate opinions about a certain group of people I think your position is correct. However this doesn’t answer the following issues:
1) Now that we know how our ideas about groups of people are derived are we slaves to that idea (classification)? Or are we free to modify them? Not the lip service modify, but a true change in the nature of our what we believe to be true.
2) If we can modify then should we modify them? If we should, under what conditions should we?
3) This still doesn’t address evaluative assertions about objective facts that have been associated with a group. For instance all people of religion X have hairstyle Y (say it’s a fact proven by excommunication if you don’t have hairstyle Y). By definition if you don’t have hairstyle Y you are not a part of religion X. Then you make the evaluation I think hairstyle Y is ugly, so people in religion X look ugly. People being in X or having hairstyle Y is an objective fact. Something being ugly is an evaluation completely independent of fact. When should we be concerned about those kinds of evaluations?
Your response also mentioned the topic of dispelling simpler stereotypes. The two examples you pointed out I think can easily be dispelled by facts. For instances you could look up accident statistics or the percentage of people who are terrorist in relation to population. As with most “simpler stereotypes” I think mere fact finding and evaluation will dispel the stereotypes. The issue that concerns me isn’t stereotypes so much as the evaluations we make on the stereotypes. (See unanswered question 3) Now I know that stereotypes are a serious issue but the focus of my post was to ponder the question of evaluations.
On your issue of being offended at good willed intentions, I first have to quote my friend. My friend lets call them, Beef Jerky stated while we were watching the God Father 1, “the pathway to Hell is paved with good intentions.” Cloaking bad judgments in the guise of good intentions does a couple of dangerous things. Fist it lets the person doing things that might be hurt full to perpetuate the action. Second it gives the person who is making bad judgments a cover so they don’t’ have to evaluate their thoughts, they can simply go on not having any motivation to improve.
I have an example to ponder; most of the facts will be made up so bare with me. Peggy is the most popular girl in her high school. She’s beautiful everyone loves her. (I know people should be loved for their minds but we are talking about high school). A new girl moves into town. She’s from a land far away where the people of her land shave half of their head. Everyone as school is sort of weirded out by this new girl. She has a hard time making friends. Well our hero Peggy decides to help. She befriends our new girl. In fact she decides to take her shopping to buy her some clothes so she can fit in better. Our new girl is very thankful. Peggy decides to take it up a notch, she says to our new girl, lets go get your hair fixed; your people would be pretty if you didn’t cut your hair that way. Now if we retreat to good intentions we shouldn’t be offended at Peggy. Nor should Peggy have any problems, her heart was in the right place. It seems that good intentions insulates the individual from searching deep and improving as a person in this instance.
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