Judy,
I think you are the first in this thread so far to actually provide a
straightforwarrd statement as to what is meant by "morality" when you write:
"n other words, the objective meaning is infused with subiectivity(ies).
Moreover, as Jay glosses Deborah's gloss on Bakhtin, the moral 'word'
(i.e., encounter with another) is ipso facto a realization of the _other's_
subjectivity within one's response to him or her. "
It seems that something is being slipped in the back door, as it were, with
this description. The notion that meaning is "infused with subjectivity"
seems almost trivial when taken in the limited sense that all meaning is
given to a subject, occurs for a subject, etc. On the other hand, to extend
it much farther is problematic. Individuals don't create meaning or have
private meanings in any "objective" sense, meaning is the product of
social-historical action, of practice, of labor. From the activity
theoretic perspective, as far as I understand it (cf. Toulmin's essay in
Perspectives on Activity Theory) the creation of meaning in activity
generates he possibility of subjectivity, that is as subject of a higher
order mental process, a subject capable of reflecting on its own experience,
a subject capable of what Bateson might have called Level III learning.
This is subject beyond the reflex stage at which a dog is taught to salivate
or any organism recoils from pain, is drawn to pleasure.
What seems to come through the backdoor in Jay's gloss of Deborah's gloss of
Bakhtin (we've gotten pretty far from Bakhtin himself haven't we? I still
don't know what Deborah said and don't recognize Jay's gloss of Deborah's
gloss as having anything to do with Bakhtin) is the idea that morality for
Bakhtin might have something to do with taking into account an other's
emotions in framing "one's response". I have never seen anything even
approaching this in anything I've read by Bakhtin and I'm wondering if
anyone can point me to such a passage in any of his works.
You have to admit that it would be a terribly weak foundation for morality.
One can give any number of examples but it should suffice to point to the
way in which children are taught morality which usually involves ignoring if
not purposefully seeking to modify the emotional responses that comes from
their short-term, selfish interests. I agree that taking the "other" into
account is fundamental in defining morality (cf., Habermas 1974) but I
really question the proposed role for "the other's emotions" in any
consistent moral framework. That is I don't think you can produce a
coherent moral theory on such a basis.
Paul H. Dillon
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