Major influences
–In After Virtue, MacIntyre tries to explain another element of what is missing in modern life through his use of the concept of a practice. He illustrates this with the example of a person wishing to teach a disinterested child how to play chess.
The teaching process may begin with the teacher offering the child candy to play and enough additional candy if the child wins to motivate the child to play. It might be assumed that this is sufficient to motivate the child to learn to play chess well, but as MacIntyre notes, it is sufficient only to motivate the child to learn to win – which may mean cheating if the opportunity arises. However, over time, the child may come to appreciate the unique combination of skills and abilities that chess calls on, and may learn to enjoy exercising and developing those skills and abilities. At this point, the child will be interested in learning to play chess well for its own sake. Cheating to win will, from this point on, be a form of losing, not winning, because the child will be denying themselves the true rewards of chess playing, which are internal to the game. The child will also, it should be noted, enjoy playing chess; there is pleasure associated with developing one’s skills and abilities that cannot come if one cheats in order to win.
MacIntyre concludes that there are two kinds of goods attached to the practice of chess-playing and to practices in general. One kind, external goods, are goods attached to the practice “by the accidents of social circumstance” – in his example, the candy given to the child, but in the real world typically money, power, and fame (After Virtue 188). These can be achieved in any number of ways. Internal goods are the goods that can only be achieved by participating in the practice itself. If you want the benefits to be gained by playing chess, you will have to play chess. And in pursuing them while playing chess, you gain other goods as well – you will get an education in the virtues. The two kinds of goods differ as well in that external goods end up as someone’s property, and the more one person has of any of them the less there is for anyone else (money, power, and fame are often of this nature). Internal goods are competed for as well, “but it is characteristic of them that their achievement is a good for the whole community who participate in the practice” (After Virtue 190-191). A well played chess game benefits both the winner and loser, and the community as a whole can learn from the play of the game and develop their own skills and talents by learning from it.
MacIntyre believes that politics should be a practice with internal goods, but as it is now it only leads to external goods. Some win, others lose; there is no good achieved that is good for the whole community; cheating and exploitation are frequent, and this damages the community as a whole.
– [Political Philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre[url=https://iep.utm.edu/p-macint/] – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
One alternative is a prefigurative or practical anarchism, based on a social account of the virtues (based on a revision of MacIntyre’s virtue theory). This identifies goods as being inherent to social practices, which have their own rules, which are negotiable and alter over time. It stresses the immanent values of particular practices rather than on the externally decided (consequentialist) values that will accrue.
Thus, those tactics which are consistent with anarchism are those that are rewarding in their own terms rather than on the basis of external benefits alone. The different approaches to political-social organisation provide an illustration, in which Leninism exemplifies the instrumental approach, whilst a case from contemporary anarchism provides a contrast. Leninism concentrates on the external goods of the disciplined party, its success is primarily judged on its efficiency in reaching the desired goal of revolution. However, a different non-consequentialist approach to political organisation is to view political structures as the manifestation of internal goods, such as enhancing wisdom and the embodiment of social relationships that disperse social power. Standards are generated by, and help to form, anti-hierarchical social practices. For instance the norms required for secretly subverting corporate advertising or state propaganda are not identical to those required to maintain an inclusive, multi-functional social centre. Whilst different, the norms of both are open, to those entering these practices, they are open to critical dialogue and can alter over time.
Each anarchist practice produces their own standards, which overlap with others. The norms by which a successful social centre is run, will be different to, but bear some similarities with an inclusive, participatory website or periodical. Thus the standards for the goods, the types of social relationship that constitute (and are constituted by) non- or anti-hierarchical practice are observable and assessable within a domain – and between adjacent domains. So that the relatively stable, and common, norms of bravery (opposing dominating power), solidarity (reciprocal assistance between those in a subjugated position) and wisdom (coming to understand the structures of oppression and the means by which ‘other values’ can be created) are identifiable within anarchist practices, but are not necessarily universal. Similar practices involving subtly different actors will generate distinctive other goods (or bads).
Like the Stirnerite subject, there is no universal agent of change, but one in constant flux, resisting, challenging or fleeing the changing dominating powers within a given context. Within these radical practices, it produces its own immanent values. Because social practices are not distinct but overlap there are possibilities for links of solidarity across the different domains between different agents, although there is no universal agent who participates in all practices. A narrative of anti-hierarchical liberation, might provide a link between different practices, and provide routes for new social practices (and new agents to develop). The contestation of hierarchy, however, does not represent a new universal value. There are contexts in which goods are immanently developed but a challenge to structures that maintain inequalities of power is not generated – for instance, children playing in a sandbox. Thus, the rejection of hierarchy is not a universal guide to action, though, given the persistence of economic structures and institutions that enforce and legitimise these inequalities of power, it is highly likely that the contestation of hierarchy will remain a core anarchist value.
– [Anarchism; Ethics & Meta-Ethics[url=viewtopic.php?f=17&p=32706) by Benjamin Franks
Purpose & Meaning
We are born with biological drives and grow up being taught environmental drives we have to grapple with and make sense of.
We can’t quantify for the abused person what level of suffering it is right that they owe themselves to muddle through to acheive some level of happiness later on.
We can only say if a persons reason for ending one’s own life, is to desire to make a meaningful decision, in the face of unfair meaninglessness, the sum of one’s existence only becomes more absurd. So, suicide being viewed as meaningfull, is simply an attempt to deny that meaninglessness or no one stable meaning is the foundation to all life.
So, grappling with these biologically and environmentally bestowed drives is a goal in which acheiving some headway, brings us happy flourishing.
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What constitutes right and wrong?
Now, if you’re a consequentialist, you can simply relate to this philosophy as through persuing your own happy flourishing, either the goals are related to other people or it’s more easily acheived by helping others, so we have an obligation to be altruistic and acheive a global calculus of happy flourishing.Because human beings are complex, their flourishing takes complex forms: we can flourish intellectually – hence, the “intellectual virtues” (both practical and theoretical); we can flourish as builders and makers and artists – hence, the “virtues of craft” – and we can flourish in terms of our non-technical, social and civic activities – hence, the “moral” virtues.
But, I would simply appeal to what is good for any one person being more complicated than an external calculation of ends:
So, if how a person was raised to understand virtue is primarily respecing the shared rule that the dignity of a person not be violated then, in so far as practicing that virtue is meaningful to that person, it will bring that person happy flourishing.Virtues and therefore morality can only make sense in the context of a practice: they require a shared end, shared rules, and shared standards of evaluation. The virtues also define the relationships among those who share a practice: “….the virtues are those goods by reference to which, whether we like it or not, we define our relationships to those other people with whom we share the kind of purposes and standards which inform practices” (After Virtue 191). We must have the virtues if we are to have healthy practices and healthy communities.
It goes beyond the contractarian view in its starting point, a basic wonder at living beings, and a wish for their flourishing and for a world in which creatures of many types flourish. It goes beyond the intuitive starting point of utilitarianism because it takes an interest not just in pleasure and pain [and interests], but in complex forms of life. It wants to see each thing flourish as the sort of thing it is. . . [and] that the dignity of living organisms not be violated.
Socialist Entailments
Due to the unfair distribution of power in society in the hands of very few, the good any one person can strive to acheive is a large amount, because one can imagine weilding the kind of power those at the top currently have to do good.
So, like Bernie Sanders educating the masses on the positives to socialised government institutions and, if he’d gotten into power, mobilising a grassroots movement to demonstrate and strike to push through bills.
Or the personal heroism of people flying to Syria to fight Islamic Fascism.
But, counter-intuitively, the goal should be to move to a world where grand feats of good deed aren’t necessary or possible. So that more people get a chance to strive to do good.
Either, because government power has been devolved through a move to a multi-party system through preferential voting, to… Some local gov positions being elected by sortition, to… The majority of society being so content with worker-co-ops and syndicalist unions that we transition from representative democracy to direct democracy. So, a chamber of ministers to federated spokes councils.
Or, because border conflicts are fought between well meaning soldiers, where their only heroism is being willing to sacrifice their lives when representatives of opposing government systems fail to communicate.
Legal animal rights entailments
If the wonder that we experience in viewing wild animals is not ‘how similar to us they are’, but their ‘real opportunities to do and be what they have reason to value’ and one sufficient reason we grant this freedom at least to a basic extent to humans is they have a desire to achieve what they find valuable then; the fact non-human animals experience this desire too means we ought extend these freedoms to animals.
So, a holistic world-view of not wanting to reduce both the quality and quantity of positive experiences humans can have with animals, as well as animals with other animals for low-order pleasures such as taste/texture.
In Summary
Any highest good we can acheive, would also be seen as a practice that in some way serves as an example that can be replicated.
Therefore, what’s most important is devolving power to a larger body of people to be able to strive to a higher good.
Though the governance model needs to be built up slowly enough to match expertise, so as not to falter with people pushing for ideals before having adequately put them to the test. As well, so as not to cause a whiplash effect, where people desire a reactionairy politics of conformity, under more rigid hierarchy of just the few:
I plan to write more soon on the diagram below about how people can identify with conservativism as a virtue philosophy and happen to be a virtue exemplar for devolving power to those without it. Like Malcolm X denouncing drug taking, to keep minority communities strong, in response to the flooding of the streets with drugs by the CIA to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. But, how I still view co-operation as a virtue as providing a more stable foundation for building up institutions with social virtue.
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Further Reading
Egoist
The Politics of Postanarchism by Saul Newman
Science, Perception, and Reality Kindle Edition by Wilfrid SellarsHowever, can we assume that the possibilities of human freedom lie rooted in the natural order, as a secret waiting to be discovered, as a flower waiting to blossom, to use Bookchin’s metaphor? Can we assume that there is a rational unfolding of possibilities, driven by a certain historical and social logic? This would seem to fall into the trap of essentialism, whereby there is a rational essence or being at the foundation of society whose truth we must perceive. There is an implicit positivism here, in which political and social phenomena are seen as conditioned by natural principles and scientifically observable conditions. Here I think one should reject this view of a social order founded on deep rational principles. In the words of Stirner, ‘The essence of the world, so attractive and splendid, is for him who looks to the bottom of it – emptiness.’ In other words, rather than there being a rational objectivity at the foundation of society, an immanent wholeness embodying the potential for human freedom, there is a certain void or emptiness, one that produces radical contingency and indeterminacy rather than scientific objectivity. This idea has been elaborated by Laclau and Mouffe, who eschew the idea of society as a rationally intelligible totality, and instead see it as a field of antagonisms which function as its discursive limit. In other words, what gives society its definitional limit at the same time subverts it as a coherent, whole identity. Therefore, they argue, ‘Society never manages fully to be society, because everything in it is penetrated by its limits, which prevent it from constituting itself as an objective reality.’ Antagonism should not be thought of here in the sense of the Hobbesian state of nature, as a war of everyman against everyman, but rather as a kind of rupturing or displacement of social identities that prevents the closure of society as a coherent identity.
It’s Just a Feeling: The Philosophy of Desirism by Joel Marks
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Moral Relativism
Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge by Jerry Gershenhorn
–Is a prescriptive position adopted initially by many anthropologists reacting against the ethnocentrism characteristic of the colonial era. Melvelle Herskovits, for instance, affirms that “… in practice, the philosophy of relativism is a philosophy of tolerance” (Cultural Relativism, p. 31).
Preference Consequentialism
Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality by Douglas W. Portmore
Nonzero: History, Evolution & Human Cooperation: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright
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Hedonistic Utilitarianism
Utiltarianism by John Stuart Mill
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Co-operative Virtue Ethics
Anarchism and Moral Philosophy by Benjamin Franks
Freedom and Democracy in an Imperial Context: Dialogues with James Tully by Robert Nichols and Jakeet Singh
Stoic virtue ethics by Matthew Sharpe
Feral Children and Clever Animals; Reflections on Human Nature
–Our common way of thinking about the difference between physical and behavioral science, described in Chapter 3, is that the goal of the first is to eliminate variance, while the second accepts variance as the essential characteristic of the subject worthy of study. The physical sciences seek to eliminate variation because variation confounds accuracy of prediction. The behavioral sciences should accept variation as the essential aspect of living beings, and thereby strive to measure variance as a technique of describing the nature of life itself. We often confuse the legitimacy of these different goals, thereby leading us to the conclusion, for example, that the physical sciences are more “scientific” than the behavioral because they strive for accuracy and prediction. Some appear to think that a measure of the applicability of science is accuracy of prediction, but variance, too, is a legitimate interest of the scientific method. Science is a unique method, a method independent of what it studies. Measures of variance can be just as reliable as formulas that strive to eliminate or reduce variance. As always, the meaningful issue is what one wants to know, what one wants to accomplish through the application of the methods of science. Let us put to rest the notion that there can be no science of living beings or that scientific procedures somehow diminish and degrade the awesomeness of life. The chief characteristic of life forms, as opposed to physical objects, is variation. It is variation that permits evolution, for without variation, there is nothing for natural selection to select. The study of variation may be done in two ways: by study of the unique or by study of the general. In this book, we have examined examples of both, although study of the unique case dominates, to be sure; but what Thorndike, Haggerty, and Hamilton contributed is the importance of general variation. Both ways must be investigated because we cannot know what is unique without knowing what is general. Behavioral science, therefore, proceeds on two fronts: the study of the unusual and the study of the variation characteristic of groups.
Conservative Virtue Ethics
After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory by Alasdair MacIntyre
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Intuitionist Deontology
Nichomachean Ethics by Aristotle & W. D. Ross
Daniel Kaufman On Intuitionism and Folk Psychology
Of the Standard of Taste by David Hume (1909)
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Absolutist Deontology
The Sources of Normativity by Christine M. Korsgaard
Consequentialism and Deontology in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right by Dean Moyar
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Absurdism
Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007 by Nick Land
Tiqqun 1: Conscious Organ of The Imaginary Party by Tiqqun
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Liberation Theology
The Selfless Mind; Personality, Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism by Peter Harvey
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