Archives of:
Monsieur Renaissance : le forum de discussion
Hello, and welcome to the Mr. Renaissance discussion forum archives. While the entries below can no longer be added to or edited, you may post your thoughts and interact with others at the current forum.
Re (1): doubting doubt
IP: 146.7.16.164
Posted on July 15, 2005 at 00:25:45 AM by Eric
Hello,
On its surface, doubt appears to be purely intellectual because it is an activity we intuitively believe is carried out by the mental faculties. Yet I am convinced that doubt, at least of the spiritual variety, actually has an emotional core, even if it is not readily apparent. Admittedly, that is a product of my own introspection and may not typify everyone else or at least say anything meaningful: that is to say, not say anything meaningful in the sense that as Evelyn Underhill reminds us, all intellection is ultimately the result of interest and interest involves feeling (or, in other words, involves an emotional component). Thus, in a sense, all intellectual activity has an emotional component, but we still find it useful to separate the two concepts: emotional versus intellectual. That being said, I am arguing that there is a much stronger emotional core to at least spiritual doubt—the kind of doubt that I naturally would have in mind in the newsletters—than we commonly believe. I think that with this kind of doubt there is a very strong need or at least desire to have certainty and/or a sense of security. And of course, if there is such a need or desire, neither needs nor desires are exactly what we would call intellectual creatures. In fact, I think that recognizing the emotional core to spiritual doubt is a vital key in learning to doubt it: not because emotions are inherently untrustworthy, but that emotions are by their very nature arational and thus, when they masquerade as "intellectual" entities in the form of doubt, what can they tell us of objective truth? If we agree that spiritual doubt does have this type of emotional component, the main thing that it tells us is that we have a desire or a felt need to have certainty and security. And built into that desire is also a fear: do you not see why doubts can be reflections of fear as well? The stronger the desire for certainty, the more anxiety and fear is produced when it cannot be guaranteed. That is why I suggest that "doubt is often little more than fearfulness superimposed over the unknown that lies ahead" (Coconuts and Caterpillars: Learning to Doubt Doubt).
Now then, about this business of "will" versus "intention." Certainly it helps to clarify our terms, but after doing some digging and some thinking, I think that there is a definite distinction between the two. Intention has to do with the end result of a given action whereas the will is a driving force that may be present even when there is no action. I will the clock to hurry up to 5:00; clearly seeing that he is in danger of crashing into the ravine from my privileged position atop the overpass, I will him to brake though he can neither see nor hear me. In these examples, there is a visceral projection but no antecedent action. By contrast, "intention" is the reason why I perform—or do not perform—a given action: I'm looking at a desired outcome. The intention is at the back end of the process in the results section; will is at the front end of a process as the impetus or driving force.
I proofread an interesting article—actually the first chapter out of Boys to Men: The Transforming Power of Virtue—for J. Fraser Field today that first cites the dilemma the Apostle Paul describes in Romans 7: notice the use of the word "will": "I can will what is right, but I cannot do it." The authors Tim Gray and Curtis Martin go on to describe the role of the will and virtue, two interlocking ideas that must both be presented to gain the better understanding of the will that you seek (in particular, note how the second paragraph anchors the first):
To be a morally good person takes more than wishing to be good or having the right values. Rather, it takes a rock-solid character that has the strength to will what is right, not just value what is good. The will is that spiritual power of the soul by which we choose to do something. The strength to will the right thing is what is meant by the term virtue. "A virtue is an habitual and firm disposition to do the good" (Catechism, no. 1803). A virtue is a good, habitual action of the will, and not only is a virtue an action that is habitual, it is an action that is done with promptness and, in a certain sense, pleasure. For example, to truly have the virtue of honesty, it is not enough to tell the truth repeatedly, but to tell the truth repeatedly with ease and promptitude.
* * * * *
Virtues, as has already been stated, strengthen the will and dispose it to right action. Think of your will as a muscle. Just as an athlete strengthens and trains his muscles, be it a basketball player practicing a 3-point shot or a golfer working on his swing, we too must develop, strengthen, and train our wills to live virtuously. Just as Michael Jordan has developed the habit of making basketball shots, the virtuous person habitually, and with similar ease, does what is good. In the moral life, it is by practicing a virtue that we train and strengthen our wills and ultimately acquire the virtue. Similarly, just as muscles that are not exercised become flabby and weak, so too do our wills become weak if we are not exercising them by the practice of virtue. (Men and Virtue)
* * * * *
Virtues, as has already been stated, strengthen the will and dispose it to right action. Think of your will as a muscle. Just as an athlete strengthens and trains his muscles, be it a basketball player practicing a 3-point shot or a golfer working on his swing, we too must develop, strengthen, and train our wills to live virtuously. Just as Michael Jordan has developed the habit of making basketball shots, the virtuous person habitually, and with similar ease, does what is good. In the moral life, it is by practicing a virtue that we train and strengthen our wills and ultimately acquire the virtue. Similarly, just as muscles that are not exercised become flabby and weak, so too do our wills become weak if we are not exercising them by the practice of virtue. (Men and Virtue)
So you see, if the will needs to be strengthened, then it does not always involve action. But when it comes to intention, that is the thing to which will ascribes. Again, intention is at the back end as the desired outcome; will is at the front end as the impetus. Something else that I found interesting in my search as well was a twenty-nine page paper from Princeton presented in PDF on the difference between suggesting that someone had a certain intention versus saying that someone did something intentionally. I admit that I have only read to page twelve, but what I have managed to glean thus far is best set up as an illustration: if I know that by writing this reply I will be staying up later than I intended but I also believe that you will appreciate and benefit from my doing so, then my staying up later than I intended was not my intention but I did do it intentionally. But Joshua Knobe and Arudra Burra do not just stop there. They go on to present empirical research in the form of testing the intuitive responses of subjects to the following scenarios. (Note that in the original, the scenarios are set off by block quotes—since this board has limited formatting options, I italicize them here):
A question now arises as to how the concept of acting intentionally relates to the concepts of intention [to provide something you would appreciate and benefit from] and foresight [my awareness of both the desirable and undesirable outcomes]. Recent experimental evidence points to a surprisingly complex relationship among these three concepts. Specifically, it appears that different behaviors differ from each other, with foresight being felt to be relevant to morally bad behaviors in a way that it is not relevant to morally good behaviors. Thus, there can be no single answer as to whether the corporate executive intentionally brought about 'some effect x.' The only possible answer is that it depends on whether effect x happens to be morally good or morally bad.
For a simple example, let us introduce the story that we will call the harm vignette:
The vice-president of a company went to the chairman of the board and said, 'We are thinking of starting a new program. It will help us increase profits, but it will also harm the environment.'
The chairman of the board answered, 'I don't care at all about harming the environment. I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let's start the new program.'
They started the new program. Sure enough, the environment was harmed.
And now let us contrast this vignette with another — the help vignette — that is constructed by replacing the word 'harm' with 'help.'
The vice-president of a company went to the chairman of the board and said, 'We are thinking of starting a new program. It will help us increase profits, and it will also help the environment.'
The chairman of the board answered, 'I don't care at all about helping the environment. I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let's start the new program.'
They started the new program. Sure enough, the environment was helped.
A question arises as to how people would apply the concepts of intention and acting intentionally to each of these vignettes. Confronted with the harm vignette, would people ordinarily say that it was the chairman's intention to harm the environment? Would they say that the chairman intentionally harmed the environment? And parallel questions apply to the help vignette. Would people say that the chairman intentionally helped the environment? That it was his intention to help the environment? (The Folk Concepts of Intention and Intentional Action: A Cross-Cultural Study 6–7.)
For a simple example, let us introduce the story that we will call the harm vignette:
The vice-president of a company went to the chairman of the board and said, 'We are thinking of starting a new program. It will help us increase profits, but it will also harm the environment.'
The chairman of the board answered, 'I don't care at all about harming the environment. I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let's start the new program.'
They started the new program. Sure enough, the environment was harmed.
And now let us contrast this vignette with another — the help vignette — that is constructed by replacing the word 'harm' with 'help.'
The vice-president of a company went to the chairman of the board and said, 'We are thinking of starting a new program. It will help us increase profits, and it will also help the environment.'
The chairman of the board answered, 'I don't care at all about helping the environment. I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let's start the new program.'
They started the new program. Sure enough, the environment was helped.
A question arises as to how people would apply the concepts of intention and acting intentionally to each of these vignettes. Confronted with the harm vignette, would people ordinarily say that it was the chairman's intention to harm the environment? Would they say that the chairman intentionally harmed the environment? And parallel questions apply to the help vignette. Would people say that the chairman intentionally helped the environment? That it was his intention to help the environment? (The Folk Concepts of Intention and Intentional Action: A Cross-Cultural Study 6–7.)
They have thrown a monkey wrench in the gears. I do not know what your intuitive reaction was, but mine followed the norm: in neither instance did the chairman intend to harm or to help the environment: these were unintended side-effects. Along with everyone else, I felt that the boss intentionally harmed the environment but that he unintentionally helped it. The researchers suggest that we have now upped the ante to a moral judgment: "There seems to be an asymmetry whereby people are willing to blame the agent for foreseen side-effects that are bad but not to praise the agent for foreseen side-effects that are good" (8-9). I find this most interesting, particularly in light of what I was recently reading on depression and changing our thought patterns (my recent post on depression and dreams references the same site). Basically, people prone to depression tend to make the most of the bad and the least of the good. So, if a teenager gets bad grades, the girl's mother thinks: "I'm such a lousy mother, it's all my fault." But when the same woman is promoted to another department at work, she thinks: "I was just lucky: I'll bet mine was the only application and they just needed a warm body." I would happily reproduce the handy charts that take these concepts to much greater detail—some fascinating stuff—but I am so ridiculously limited on my formatting options on this forum as to be a sin. :) (The forum uses a very simplified code common to discussion boards that protects against hijacking and in general confuses people to death; besides, most users aren't going to be posting complicated tables in their replies anyway. So then, if you want to see exactly what I am talking about, you will need to go to How Depression Causes 'Negative Spin'.)
Okay, well that is about it: one last little bit of vanity: the article referenced on the first page that I proofread for Fraser? Tim Gray and Curtis Martin pay a tribute to Aristotle: "Indeed, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that substantial happiness and human flourishing could only be grasped through the virtues." But what they fail to footnote, however, is that they pay him an oblique tribute when they write:
From another perspective, a virtue can be understood as the balance between opposing extremes. For example, courage is the virtue between cowardliness and rashness. Cowardice is to let fear overrun one's reason, while rashness is to be dull to all fear and act foolishly. In contrast, courage moderates fear and keeps it under the control of reason, avoiding the two extremes of caving into fear or being so numb to it as to act imprudently. The vices of cowardice and rashness lack the balance of the virtue of courage. As we examine the virtues, we shall briefly look at their opposing vices. It is important to realize that, just as the good habits we call virtues give us freedom and strength to do good, the bad habits we call vices take our freedom from us and incline us toward evil. (Men and Virtue)
Remember those five asterisks (* * * * *) in the earlier quotation on the first page separating the two paragraphs regarding the role of the will in securing virtue? This paragraph was the paragraph that was cropped from between those two. And why is this paragraph a great tribute to Aristotle? In Book II of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics (1107b) are found these words (as translated by Martin Ostwald):
In feelings of fear and confidence courage is the mean [or average]. As for the excesses, there is no name that describes a man who exceeds in fearlessness—many virtues and vices have no name; but a man who exceeds in confidence is reckless, and a man who exceeds in fear and is deficient in confidence is cowardly.
Here Aristotle (or more likely, one of his students, as if I am not mistaken these are essentially lecture notes) is outlining particular examples of what has been described as the "Golden Mean." It is clear, however, that he originated the view that Gray and Martin put forth, or at least was almost certainly the source of their inspiration even if he was not the actual originator of the concept in the whole of history. Since these are such excellent thoughts, we will simply close out with three of the preceding paragraphs from Nichomachean Ethics and then leave off.
[E]xcess, deficiency, and the median can also be found in actions. Now virtue is concerned with emotions and actions: and in emotions and actions excess and deficiency miss the mark, whereas the median is praised and constitutes success. But both praise and success are signs of virtue or excellence. Consequently, virtue is a mean in the sense that it aims at the median. This is corroborated by the fact that there are many ways of going wrong, but only one way which is right—for evil belongs to the indeterminate, as the Pythagoreans imagined, but good to the determinate. This, by the way, is also the reason why the one is easy and the other hard: it is easy to miss the target but hard to hit it. Here, then, is an additional proof that excess and deficiency characterize vice, while the mean characterizes virtue: for "bad men have many ways, good men but one."
We may thus conclude that virtue or excellence is a characteristic involving choice, and that it consists in observing the mean relative to us, a mean which is defined by a rational principle, such as a man of practical wisdom would use to determine it. It is the mean by reference to two vices: the one of excess and the other of deficiency. It is, moreover, a mean because some vices exceed and others fall short of what is required in emotion and in action, whereas virtue finds and chooses the median, Hence, in respect of its essence and the definition of its essential nature virtue is a mean, but in regard to goodness and excellence it is an extreme.
Not every action nor every emotion admits of a mean. There are some actions and emotions whose very names connote baseness. e.g. spite, shamelessness, envy; and among actions, adultery, theft, and murder. These and similar emotions and actions imply by their very names that they are bad: it is not their excess nor their deficiency which is called bad. It is, therefore, impossible ever to do right in performing them: to perform them is always to do wrong. In cases of this sort, let us say adultery, rightness and wrongness do not depend on committing it with the right woman at the right time and in the right manner, but the mere fact of committing such action at all is to do wrong. It would he just as absurd to suppose that there is a mean, an excess, and a deficiency in an unjust or a cowardly or a self-indulgent act. For if there were, we would have a mean of excess and a mean of deficiency and an excess of excess and a deficiency of deficiency. Just as there cannot be an excess and a deficiency of self-control and courage—because the intermediate is, in a sense, an extreme—so there cannot be a mean, excess, and deficiency in their respective opposites: their opposites are wrong regardless of how they are performed: for, in general, there is no such thing as the mean of an excess or a deficiency, or the excess and deficiency of a mean.
We may thus conclude that virtue or excellence is a characteristic involving choice, and that it consists in observing the mean relative to us, a mean which is defined by a rational principle, such as a man of practical wisdom would use to determine it. It is the mean by reference to two vices: the one of excess and the other of deficiency. It is, moreover, a mean because some vices exceed and others fall short of what is required in emotion and in action, whereas virtue finds and chooses the median, Hence, in respect of its essence and the definition of its essential nature virtue is a mean, but in regard to goodness and excellence it is an extreme.
Not every action nor every emotion admits of a mean. There are some actions and emotions whose very names connote baseness. e.g. spite, shamelessness, envy; and among actions, adultery, theft, and murder. These and similar emotions and actions imply by their very names that they are bad: it is not their excess nor their deficiency which is called bad. It is, therefore, impossible ever to do right in performing them: to perform them is always to do wrong. In cases of this sort, let us say adultery, rightness and wrongness do not depend on committing it with the right woman at the right time and in the right manner, but the mere fact of committing such action at all is to do wrong. It would he just as absurd to suppose that there is a mean, an excess, and a deficiency in an unjust or a cowardly or a self-indulgent act. For if there were, we would have a mean of excess and a mean of deficiency and an excess of excess and a deficiency of deficiency. Just as there cannot be an excess and a deficiency of self-control and courage—because the intermediate is, in a sense, an extreme—so there cannot be a mean, excess, and deficiency in their respective opposites: their opposites are wrong regardless of how they are performed: for, in general, there is no such thing as the mean of an excess or a deficiency, or the excess and deficiency of a mean.
God bless,
Eric
Replies:
- Re(1): doubting doubt - By Jim Cox July 15, 2005 at 03:23:51 PM
- Re(2): doubting doubt - By karen July 15, 2005 at 01:45:36 PM
- Re(3): doubting doubt - By Sara July 15, 2005 at 05:22:49 PM
- Re(4): doubting doubt - By Sara July 17, 2005 at 07:27:22 AM
- Re(5): doubting doubt - By Eric July 29, 2005 at 04:35:35 PM
- Re(4): doubting doubt - By Sara July 17, 2005 at 07:27:22 AM
- Re(3): doubting doubt - By Sara July 15, 2005 at 09:30:09 AM
- Re(3): doubting doubt - By Sara July 15, 2005 at 05:22:49 PM
- Re(2): doubting doubt - By karen July 15, 2005 at 01:45:36 PM