I find myself intellectually disagreeing with this article, while finding it surprisingly emotionally appealing:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/02/why-our-children-dont-think-there-are-moral-facts/?_r=0
Maybe this is a copout, but i think there is one moral truth, and with it one responsibility: Human good counts, and we shoudl strive to improve it. As a corollary, as the nerdfighters might say, reduce world suck. This is something similar to a utilitarian categorical imperative.
Everything else -- whether its All Men Are Created Equal, the wrongness of cheating, or the relationship between security and freedom -- is in support of this.
Now, granted, I'm not sure that's what we should be teaching. Because I'm not sure it will create the best people, which is the point of schools. Maybe we should be teaching children that there are moral truths -- slavery and murder are wrong, one person one vote, all that good stuff.
But, then, I think there are different levels of truth. And that what we teach should be careful lies, designed to create the right sort of people.
If we're not careful in our lies, then we'll wind up telling schoolchildren the wrong lies.
And that would be wrong.
Edit: Something occured to me. I even disagree with his definition of fact. While there is a "universe", and in that universe there are or are not aliens, from where we sit it is only conjecture. That is, I'm such a subjectivist that I do think facts change from observer to observer.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_absolutism
ReplyDeleteTodd Sprang I'm aware of deontological moral standards. Please expand.
ReplyDeleteflip response was what is apparently no longer real: that there is actual, real morality.
ReplyDeletebut seriously, i'm not surprised. in a burgeoning culture where "everyone's a winner", no one's opinion is wrong. this is intellectually lazy and shameful, breeding ignorance and potentially immoral/amoral people! there's no "it depends" answer to "is it ok to kill people?"
if the question is whether to teach morality and ethics in school, i'm all for it! too many people think morality and ethics are informed and disseminated solely through religion, which is demonstrably wrong. i'd rather they be taught properly in a secular environment.
Todd Sprang I think it does depend, even on whether it is OK to kill people. In general, sure, that's the rule -- and a good one. But there are specific cases where you can violate that rule and remain morally upright, I would claim. Which tells me that it is in service to another good.
ReplyDeleteNoah Stevens Not knowing Kant and talking about morality is weird. Not knowing Shakespeare is just sad.
tough call there... if looking at the specific case of killing another human, i can imagine extenuating circumstances where society might give you the go-ahead to execute your execution: war, reciprocity for wrongdoing. however, i think the ethics/morality of murder is not really in question (hard to find anyone who would say those are ever ethical/moral behaviors), just whether circumstances can affect or inform your ethics/morality, and i think there's little doubt that's the case. if someone came up and shot gina, they had better have another bullet for me or fleet feet, cuz i'd be enraged and trying to take them out despite my pacifistic tendencies.
ReplyDeleteTodd Sprang Those are pragmatic reasons, and are certain common ones. It is debateable if war is morally justifiable, and vengeance very well not be.
ReplyDeleteTodd Sprang, if society can "give you the go ahead", then you just imagined a case where taking a human life is "ethical/moral behavior." So now we have to start qualifying what we mean by "murder", and we end up with a Beard Argument. Is this murder? Is that? If "circumstances can inform... morality," I don't see that morality as absolute.
ReplyDeleteOr, that society is a moral evil, which I suppose could be an internally consistent stance.
ReplyDeleteWhich is an interesting question, Parker D Hicks : If society tells you it is permissible to take an action, does that make it morally justifiable?
ReplyDeleteBecause I tend (tend!) toward the relativist side of the spectrum, I think that is a question each must answer for themselves. If society permits it, it becomes a matter of what that person can live with inside their head, "when your own heart asks."
ReplyDeleteHaving now read the article, I have to ask the author, what about the Leviathan, or some other form of binding social contract? His dismissal of the elementary school's regulations is disingenuous. The school, as a community (probably an autocratic one) chose to enforce those moral standards as applicable within its boundaries. How is that invalidated by their admission that different boundaries may come with different standards?
Parker D Hicks I think that answer suggests a different truth: That morality is not in our society, but in ourselves. Hobbes might not like that, and Kant would fine both just as silly. If this suggests that morality is simply what we can live with, then is it valuing our internal prejudices over rationality?
ReplyDeleteTo take a charitable interpretation, the author could easily be suggesting that we shoudl teach kiddoes a unified and consistent set of lessons. That is, if we teach them that theft being wrong is an opinion, then perhaps we should not attempt to enforce that opinion upon them. Upon what right does the school create standards, if morality is subjective?
I think (believe?) our selves are a microcosm of our society. It's all a feedback loop. I think some people have an internal prejudice toward rationality, and that's where our cultural veneration of rationalism comes from- they're winning. After all, a lot of really ugly things can be rationalized- logic is not an unmitigated good.
ReplyDeleteAnd I've got problems with education focusing on unified theory. The world is a subtle place. It should be acceptable to tell our children "we don't know." On a scientific front, I felt absolutely betrayed when I learned that electrons did not orbit nuclei like planets to stars- and worse, that we had known that for decades before I was taught chemistry.
Which I realize now doesn't exactly answer your question. The school imposes those standards on no right, but with the intent of what you talked about in your initial post, molding children into "the right sort of people."
Parker D Hicks We certainly don't exist in a vacuum. I think it is key to note that our beliefs -- including what we think of as universal -- is a part of the system we belong to. If we can get that, then most of the notion of universal morality falls aside.
ReplyDeleteAs for Chemistry and the lies we tell children -- I'm going to disagree. I think it is important to create shorthand. Electrons orbiting like planets is just that -- a short code. Everything we tell children is a lie of this sort -- because before you can understand probability shrouds, you should get a notion that electrons are tiny little things.
Which exactly folds into the overall point of school - creating citizens. While we want everyone to finish, we also want (ideally) for a small duration to be valuable. And for that, electrons as planets around the nucleus works.