Mark Charlebois

4938186
Pragmatism and Critical
Theory Phil-498l
Professor K. Nielsen

My Definition is this

Someone once said to me ‘you can’t argue about morals,

morals are subjective’. So do morals have to be defined by the

individual? Is morality completely subjective and to be defined

differently by each individual to suit their own personal account

of the world? It at least seems that there is a strong link

between cultural circumstances and the morals held by people

within that culture. But what the hell is a culture? How many are

there? Who gets to name one? All of these concepts are abstract.

It has occurred to me that a lot of what moral philosophy has to

do with is trying to flesh out abstract concepts by using other

abstract concepts. It’s like we are playing metaphorical games

about the abstract and the concrete.

What does it mean for someone to say ‘I am a moral person.’

or ‘I am not a moral person?’

The primary focus of this essay to hopefully further my own

understanding concerning moral philosophy and what needs to be

established in order to enable an understanding pertaining to the

accessibility of moral knowledge.

understanding as to the possible answers to the questions posed

above.

I have come to the belief that Richard Rorty is completely

correct in asserting that “metaphilosophical issues – issues

about what, if any thing, philosophy is good for and about how it

is best pursued – are inseparable from issues about the nature of

knowledge, truth, and meaning.”i And if you go one on one against

reality you’re screwed.

There is a question of morals that I am presently struggling

with. And in writing and researching this paper, hope to resolve.

It has been a hobby of mine for the last couple of years to fix

and maintain bicycles. It is simply something that I enjoy

doing. The question I am struggling with is whether or not it is

immoral to steal a bicycle that appears to have been discarded,

though might still be locked up, in order to fix it and pass it

on to a friend who may benefit from owning a bicycle.

I have found myself to be somewhat enamored with the

neutralist’s position on morality. How interesting it is to

suppose that person’s morals are so closely linked with their

actions that the definition of their morality is simply what

actions were overridden at what point. To assess my question of

at which point if any is stealing a bike morally justified from

this position it seems that justification can be sidestepped.

“For the neutralist, the question ‘Why be moral?’ plainly cannot

arise, for there can be no gap between recognizing that something

is in accord with one’s moral principles and one’s rational

decision to do that action.”ii Whether or not this position is

just an easy way to circumvent an objective definition of

morality I have yet to form an opinion. It does sound good

though. I admit that in writing this paper I am in fact looking

for a moral position that I can adopt. Neutralism it seems would

allows me easy justification to continue following any impulse I

might have without having to adhere to any ‘formal requirements

like... being acceptable to an impartial observer or being

approved by a rational agent on reflection.”iii A question that

comes to mind when considering the neutralist position is, if in

fact a “person’s moral principles are the principles, whatever

they may be, which that person takes to be overriding”iv, then

where do these overriding principles come from? It doesn’t seem

likely that they are arbitrary and born in the instance of action

for people, I imagine even neutralists, tend to hold to fairly

consistent moral character. Another thing to consider, as

Nielsen goes on to point out is that from this position “there is

no discovery of what in truth we ought to do from discovering the

facts.”v The questions concerning morality gets overstepped and

thus not answered.

i
Rorty, A House Divided, 20.
 Can morality be defined roughly through common consensus or

ultimate consensus? It seems that if this were the case then it

would be seemingly impossible to pinpoint an adequate definition

of morality. Moral boundaries must be looked at as a constantly

evolving arena. I am not sure if the common consensus standpoint

on morality would help us determine any better what is morally

acceptable and what is not in regards to certain issues.

Although, it might allow us to use history as a framework in

which to map the progress that morality has made in terms its

evolution. Many things in the past that were considered to be

immoral have lost the stigma they once had. Through the study of

such things might it not be possible to spot trends and through

analysis, make predictions as to the route that moral evolution

might take. As to what value these, or any, predictions about the

future could hold is very much beyond me. A problem that arises

is that, while commonsense is a medium of language which governs

our social world, commonsense remains as an astonishingly obscure

notion. For example; How far away from objective scientific

consciousness is mythic consciousness? I cannot imagine any

possible answer to this.

Through Wittgenstein’s A Lecture on Ethics I have come to

realize that the discussion of all things ethical is a discussion

ii
Nielsen Why There is a Problem about Ethics, 79.
iii
Nielsen Why There is a Problem about Ethics, 78.
iv
Nielsen Why There is a Problem about Ethics, 78.
v
Nielsen Why There is a Problem about Ethics, 79
 of a metaphysical nature. Being able to understand the

definition of either ethics or morals implies being able to

understand certain abstract concepts. Some of the abstract

concepts which are invariably involved with the definition of

either ethics or morals are the concepts of good, bad, right, and

wrong. These concepts imply value judgments. “There is no

language-use without justification, no ability to believe without

an ability to argue about what beliefs to have.”vi There is no

getting away from this. Any statement made of ethical character

is a statement that imposes a certain judgment. Wittgenstein

states; “…all judgments of relative value can be shown to be mere

statements of facts, no statement of fact can ever be, or imply,

a judgment of absolute value.”vii A judgment of relative value

might be a claim that I can bike faster than you can run. Whether

or not this judgment of relative value is true it pertains to a

fact. Having a judgment that pertains to a fact is in no way a

contradictory notion. Having a fact that pertains to a judgment

on the other hand is inherently contradictory. For instance, to

say that 2+2=4 implies goodness or badness doesn’t make any

sense. All statements of moral or ethical nature imply that facts

give rise to similar judgments. Sentences, in general are not

true or false independent of human purposes. This conclusion is

seemingly irrefutable, but it doesn’t sit well with me. The only

thing to be gained from this is more evidence to the fact that

human knowledge is bounded so sharply that it becomes nearly

vi
Rorty Universality and Truth,15.
vii
Wittgenstein A Lecture on Ethics, 39.
impossible to really know anything at all. Because at this point

I cannot see any solution, I am going to disregard this problem

for the time being. It might be true that the solution to this

problem might not come from philosophy. Philosophical thought

might have nothing more substantial to offer on the subject of

ethics.

To say that ethical claims are contradictory seems only to

be relevant to moral philosophers. When I am not in a

philosophical mind set I feel very comfortable stating what it is

that I think is moral or immoral. It is because of this that I

feel that the moral philosopher is not the right person who

should be charged with the job of defining what constitutes as

being moral. I am going to refrain from speculating where the

definition should come from whether an individual or perhaps

somehow derived from a society.

I agree that traditional Philosophy, such as the search for

knowledge and truth, metaphysics and the like, seem to lead to a

dead-end. I think Rorty and Nielsen are both right in saying that

what comes after the demise of tradition is roughly historical

narratives, utopian proposals and, or critical theory. All three

of these can and do exist. And I fully agree with Nielsen that if

we “work very hard at seeking clarity, accuracy, and sincerity,

yield some sorting out of narratives giving us ones we could

adequate account.”viii A constant revising and sorting would have

to be taking place. The question that arises is; where would

morals come into play? Is it possible to analyze something that

we cannot separate ourselves from? The term moral, in my opinion,

loses all significance if not bounded to objectivism. In my

opinion a concept of morals in inevitably linked to society. The

social world has to be grasped as a skilled accomplishment. But

to understand the social world is to understand something whose

boundaries are more or less obscure.

In order to analyze the social world one must use language,

which turns out to be an important part of what is being

analyzed. Societies are made, nature just is. The social world is

a self-referential world. To understand it one has to penetrate

frames of meaning.

There is no direct access to a something not linguistically

saturated. And everything skilled and meaningful depends on

language. To understand a sentence as being true we must first

understand it. So it follows that truth depends on understanding

and understand depends on language. It seems important to note

that a large part of the way we understand things is inherently

metaphorical. Our conceptual systems are defined largely

metaphorically, by showing how metaphors can be true. Even our

viii
Nielsen, 7 A kind of Critical Theory with a Pragmatic Turn.
 understanding of physical systems is in a sense reliant on

metaphors because all experiences and observations are

subjective.

It is this point where everything in question seems to

become skewed in talk of abstract theory. But I tend to be

enamored by theory. As a generalization I think that human beings

do not put enough credit in theory. It does not make sense to me

to say that something can be too theoretical to be useful. Theory

is so ingrained in everything we do that even the idea of trying

to disregard it becomes a theoretical one.

I side whole-heartedly with Rorty on the grounds that I too

cannot understand how it is possible to draw distinction between

context-dependent and context-independent claims. So long as they

are relevant, “all assertions are context-dependent.”ix

It seems to be the case that morality and what we can know

about morality is ultimately an epistemic question. It is

interesting when Putnam, who is quoting James, speaks of a world

in which there is only one sentiment being. He says; “In such a

universe as that, it would of course be absurd to raise the

question of whether the solitary thinker’s judgments of good and

ill are true or not. Truth supposes a standard outside of the

ix
Rorty Universality and Truth, 10.
 thinker to which he must conform.”x This last sentence has become

very troubling to me. It seems that in this world truth,

inherently linked to the solitary thinker, lives and dies with

that person. So truth becomes relative to this individual and

transcends them as well. This concept baffling to me. I cannot

grasp how it is that the existence of truth relies on this

solitary thinker and transcends them as well.

I truly believe stealing to be wrong. Although, because of

my background in studying philosophy, I can confidently argue

that the concept of wrong is to abstract to really mean anything.

Stating that I have a true belief in regards to an abstract

concept seems to pose another problem. Philosophy is in a sense

the inverse of science for science starts with one or more

questions and relentlessly pursues an answer. Philosophy on the

other hand starts with a question and, in pursuing an answer,

tends to arrive at more and more questions. To really get

anywhere in terms of understanding morality it seems that the

standards must first be lowered. This is the problem of/with

philosophy. Philosophers seem to continually be trying to escape

the boundaries of what it is that we can know. Questions of

morality are just a branch of traditional philosophy, which I

have recently become disenchanted with. It just seems that the

starting point, just like any of the natural sciences, is one

question. For instance, if someone asked me if it would be

philosophical mood would probably answer with a question, like;

what is the definition of being moral? And they would say ‘to be

moral is to be good’. And I might say ‘who decides what gets to

be considered to be good? The problem here is that the answer

never comes. My problem is that everyone except philosophers

seems to have a grasp on what could be considered moral or what

could be considered to not be moral. Commonsense understands

morality but philosophers do not. Maybe philosophy has something

wrong with it. To quote Rorty out of context; “Any view which

makes you unable to understand a distinction everyone else

understands must have something wrong with it.”xi

Rorty says in A House Divided that he is “content to see

philosophy professors as making contributions to culture by

suggesting changes in the uses of words, and by putting new words

in circulation—thereby breaking down impasses and making

conversation more fruitful.” Rorty continues to say that he is

“quite willing to give up the goal of getting things right, and

to substitute that of enlarging our repertoire of individual and

cultural self-descriptions.”xii It seems like a very nice idea.

Although it is discouraging that even if we were to able to

continuously revise the language we use to describe reality we

would still never be able to get past the fact that the knowledge

xi
Rorty Universality and Truth, 13
xii
Rorty, Analytic and conversational philosophy. 22.
 we derive from almost everything we communicate to each other is

depended on imagination and reference, both of which are

naturally and inherently metaphorical. At most, all it seems that

we could do is gain access to better metaphors.

I feel certain things must be taken into consideration and

certain things need to be put aside, if there was to be an

attempt to lay down a foundation from which to proceed. Firstly,

it seems increasingly important to take into consideration that a

surprisingly vast amount of the way in which we understand

reality is inherently metaphorical. This is a real problem, with

real repercussions that we will inevitably face daily for the

rest of our lives. There is no solution to this problem. It is

impossible to describe one aspect of life without reference to

another. We should be careful as to how much credit we put into

language for “the ability to use language is, like the prehensile

thumb, just one more gimmick which organisms have developed to

increase their chance of survival.”xiii

All knowing is human knowing. When trying to understand

what, in terms of knowledge, the human mind is capable of we are

inevitably speaking of the human mind as such and not the mind of

anyone in particular. It seems we tend to use an abstract notion

of abstract individualism. We think we can talk of the human mind

as such, but all this as suchness turns out to be primarily amino

acids and their combinations.

of morality it seems important to first fully understand the

tools necessary in our pursuit. At the present time it seems

increasingly important to understand morals as an optimal

guideline limiting avoidable actions, which could create negative

effects on humankind. In the past it was more widely accepted

that god was the judge of which actions were of moral character.

I think it has come to a point when we have to impose morals onto

ourselves. I feel this solely because human beings, through

technology, are gaining more power and control in our ability to

create and change our environments. The role that god has played

in the past will be played out more and more by man,

technologically.

The types of things we should search for should be the

type’s things that enable possibilities of a better future for

all of humankind. We should trust that there is such a path. Just

as K. Nielsen states in Pragmatism as Atheoreticism: Richard

Rorty; “We cannot avoid being in touch with the world. We have no

idea of what it would be not to be in touch with it.”xiv The world

is our necessary medium, and our ability to alter our perspective

is our tool for change.

Through the writing of this essay my understanding of the

nature of morality and ethics has become more vague and a skewed.
xiv
Nielsen Pragmatism as Atheoreticism; Richard Rorty, 7
Previous to writing this essay I was content to make claims as to

whether or not I found something to be moral. More and more I am

finding that pinpointing a definition on a notion like morality

involves a type of understand that is not available to us. I do

want to be optimistic towards the possibility of humans someday

arriving at a more comprehensive understanding of the world in

and around them.

In closing, I still believe that any progress towards this

type of understanding is a step in a good direction. There is a

constant stream of new more encompassing outlooks and perspectives

in which we can force ourselves upon. There are kinks to be worked

out along the way, but ingenuity and progressive thinking can lead

to a new plateau in human understanding.