Phil,
When Wittgensten abandoned the theory of meaning given in the Tractatus he
also abandoned the theory of propositions given in the Tractatus. So his
statement about "no moral propositions" loses all the force and significance
he had intended to give it in the earlier, written at the beach on a summer
vacation, turned out to be good enough for Ph.D. dissertation, work. Of
course he still discussed "propositions" after 1929 but not at all in the
sense they were discussed before he came back to England.
More to the point, Phil, are you saying that there can be no theory of what
people take as moral or immoral? From an AT perspective I look at morality
as part of the rules that govern the interaction of a community in an
activity system. My interest is to understand why certain things are
considered moral in certain communities, why the same thing can be either
immoral or highly moral depending on the community. I don't see at all how
else one should approach the question of morality. This helps me understand
the moral practices that I myself follow which I also realize are
historically given. Is that the difference: normativity being the morality
that we describe others to follow, morality itself restricted to the way we
see our own actions as right or wrong. But I very much am concerned not to
dissolve all this into relativism which means some grounding must be given
why I consider certain practices as moral or immoral which means
understanding my own historical existence in an evolving cultural-historical
world..
Your distinction between "normative practice" and "morality" seems very
specious from a historical perspective.
> Your treatment of "incest" is most certainly theoretical -- a very high
> abstraction --- since you use it to encompass a whole range of acts and
> definitions thereof across the totality of human experience throughout the
> whole of history.
>
My discussion of incest is based on what is found in the ethnographic
literature.
You are confusing normative
> praxis with morality (which either leads to cultural relativism or a
> normatively derived utilitarianism),
i find the distinction you make here to be confusing,
> If we take that as the basis for a moral framework, then the act
> that offends the least people is the most moral act? Regardless, you
> contradict yourself with this next example:
No you misunderstood again, Phil, the point is that what isn't done usually
isn't prohibited.
>
> >On the other hand, not all rape is considered immoral everywhere and some
> >is deemed socially appropriate. Among the Yanamomo and other lowland
south
> >american tribes, gang rape of girls who do not take a boy friend is
> >considered to be a morally acceptable, i.e.., the people (including
> >family members) basically say:: "she had it coming", which is about as
> >clear an expression of what a people deems moral as one could make.
>
> How is "she had it coming" in relation to gang rape the clearest
expression
> of what a people deems moral?! Are you saying that the (theoretetical)
girl
> is considered immoral for not taking a boyfriend?
Excatly. That is exactly how they take the real girls who were really raped
were really viewed by the real people that were really observed by people
who really went there.
Or are you saying that
> the endorsement of gang rape ("she deserved that pain") is an expression
of
> morality in itself (i.e. a moral proposition)?
No, the endorsemenet of the gang rape was a recognition that that kind of
outcome was a fitting outcome for the violation of the norm of taking a
boyfriend. This is pretty basic: when people break social norms, the norms
for their treatment by the rest of society is also transformed: hence
imprisonment, hence the death penalty, hence whatever other punishment. In
the cases that I've read, gang rape was the expected consequent upon a
girl's breaking the norm of taking a boyfriend.
>Or are you saying that just
> because everyone in the community endorses inflicting a young woman with
> the unquestionable agony of gang rape (which I refuse to believe in any
> case) that that is a statement of morality!? (the worst pain for the least
> number of people [the transgressors] defines what is moral).
Phil, refuse to believe what you will as you wish. I'll just provide you
with another example of "ceremonial rape" that is part of the Akwe-Shavante
"wai'a" ceremony by David Maybury Lewis (1974: 262) "The men took out one
of the women who had been selected for this wai'a and escorted her into the
forest. They then returned twice more for other women, so that eventually
they had taken a woman from each clan. The three women were obliged to have
sexual intercourse with the celebrants of the wai'a, on the completion of
which they were painted scarlet and given the same black leg paint as the
men wore, down to moiety markings. They also wore white bark wristlets and
anklets just as men do for the wai'a." .
You can read about "gang rape as a social control mechanism" in Peter G.
Roe's _The Cosmic Zygote_ where rape is used to control women who use
objects restricted to males: "In keeping with the role-reversal myth, if the
primal dominant woman uses the flute as a phallus for her own pleasure, it
is later used against her by men to keep her in her place. As punishment
for stealing the flutes "The women are gang rapped, have the flutes rammed
uip their vaginas and are made to menstruate. (1982: 164). Or you can see
Chagnon's descriptions of the practice.
Such practices are well known to people who know anything about the south
american lowland tribes.
From my perspective as an individual living in the XXI century in an
advanced capitalist society there is little more abominable than gang-rape.
Clearly the cases of the lowland amazonian tribes reflect systems in which
women are being subjugated to the men . As Marx and Engels were the first
to point out, the first exploitative division of labor in human history was
the sexual division of labor. But that's the point. We also live in a
class society and accept things as moral that humans who come after us might
also view with abomination (e.g., wearing tennis shoes made by people who
were paid a miserable wage and lived in shanty towns while we lived in nice
big houses with a room for each child, living off the fruits of exploitative
labor systems generally) --but the point is that the way we live (wearing
tennis shoes, consuming energy that kills the planet's atmosphere, etc. etc)
is not immoral here and now in this culturally and historically specific
moment. Moreover, it would be very hard to live without doing these things
even though we might feel that they are immoral (that is: WRONG, that is:
BAD). If we are to understand the relationship between morality (as rules
in activity theory) and the activity systems within which and through which
we live our lives, I think that we need to adopt some evolutionary framework
(a problem mike seemed to allude to in the note concerning evolutionary
psychology). Nevertheless, incest, which remains as universal as language
although like language it might use different "words" and "grammars", is
peculiar in that it remains something that is considered morally abhorrent
across the full range of known human cultural historical experience. This
isn't a theoretical statement, its a simple description of the way things in
the world really are.
> >But discussions of incest should not be confused with discussions of rape
> >within the family.
>
> Here you invoke an arbitrary ought (I should not confuse...)
Yes, here I am using a normative "ought" but it isn't a moral one, it's a
methodological one. Incest can be discussed without discussing rape and
unless there is some very good reason for including rape in the discussion
of incest it shouldn't be since it confuses things.
.
>
> You equate normativity with morality. That would make genocidal
conventions
> moral (i.e. "good") acts.
>
> Is that the case?
It isn't the case, it is the problem. Killing off native Americans was
considered the right thing to do by lots of people who according to the
moral standards of their day lived very moral lives. Very, very few people
thought it immoral at the time and I think it more fruitful to ask why
something is or isn't considered moral than to prescribe some overarching
moral imperative especially one that doesn't take into account it's own
cultural and historical relativity. >
>
> What is *your* coherent theory of morality?
I don't have a coherent theory of morality although I might have some
elements of one. But I do know what doesn't fulfill the requirements of
one. I think that a theory of morality will have to take into account
socio-cultural evolution. Moral systems are determined by the conditions of
production and reproduction of the society; what is or isn't moral for any
given society at any given stage of its development will most certainly be
bound up very closely with the maintenance of the conditions of its own
reproduction, just as the moral codes of different groups will reflect the
conditions of existence of those groups.
Enuff' now I have the Hicks article and intend to read it.
Paul H. Dillon
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