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protagoras, moral sensibilities, very little otr

OtR content:

Over the Rhine is a good band from Cincinnatti.
Amy Smiles is a good person from Cincinnatti who listens to Over the
Rhine.
Cincinnatti is a native American word meaning, "place where Over the
Rhine makes music."

Other:

>Good: anything that improves the human condition
>Evil: anything that detracts from the human condition

I don't think this implies humanism or relativism as answers.

For example, something that improves the human condition might be death
to self, humility, sacrifice.

Something that detracts from the human condition might be relativism
itself.

Basically, the formula above only works within a particular definition of
"human condition," which must come from outside the formula.  Brian has
provided one possible definition.

>i guess that's classic humanism;  'man is 
>the measure of all things'.  (was it some mathematician who said that?  
>pythaga-somethin')  a rephrase of that statement is, 'man is the
absolute 
>standard'.

"Man is the measure of all things, of the things that are that they are,
and of the things that are not, that they are not."  A better paraphrase.
 Protagoras of Abderra.  A traveling teacher.  Plato grouped him with a
bunch of other traveling teachers and called them all Sophists, even
though there really is no convincing definition of Sophist that fits the
whole "school."  Plato named this school and in the process split
rhetoric from philsophy, as the search for success versus the search for
truth, in an attempt to discredit a rival school down the road, led by
Isocrates (an extremely effective teacher of young Greek leaders, NOT to
be confused with Socrates).  The splitting of rhetoric and philosophy was
a mistake, imho, because the use of words is integral to philosophical
inquiry, period.  

Point: Protagoras was teaching young Greek leaders.  He was teaching them
to make decisions and to take stands.  He was not teaching them to be
nihilists (cowards, see The Big Lebowski) or relativists.  However, as a
traveler, he was in a unique (at the time) position to understand that
social rules work differently from place to place, that language and
communal knowledge effect what can be said and known and how it can said
and known.  This does not mean there is no Truth, only that we have
limited and contingent access to Truth.

What he acknowledges in his above statement was not that there are no
eternal, transcendent Truths (a la Plato).  What he acknowledged is a
matter of access: man does not have access to eternal truths.  We are
limited.  It's a matter of humility.  We only have our minds to work
with, and that's not Truth, big T, it's truth, small t.

BTW, this still works in Christianity (or other revealed relgions). 
Certain Truths have been revealed, but we are still asked to understand
those truths with our finite minds.  Total understanding of Truth is
beyond us (thus the conept of faith).  

Classic humanism, in contrast to Protagoras, would suggest that total
Truth will belong to humanity if only we work hard enough, study hard
enough, accumulate enough knowledge.  Protagoras knew what the whole
world found out when all its little utopian schemes led only to nuclear
bombing: there ain't no perfect world gonna be set up by no stinkin'
finite minded humanity.  So let's see who we are, where we are, what we
can do: and then let's take a stand.

Not nihilism.  Not cowardice.  A stand.

Thus ends today's classical rhetoric overview.


>since the human condition is, 
>presumably within your philosophical framework, transient and sporatic,
then 
>therefore man's conception of good and evil must also be transient and 
>sporatic, and thus a mere figment.  man is ironically the "product" of 
>chance.

I refer you to Fish, Stanley, "Is There a Text in This Class?," a classic
essay which should be available in any self-respecting college library. 
Fish looks at the limits of our ability to actually be relativists. 
Which we can't do.  This is a totally secular essay, looking at how
utterances are decoded and understood by the human mind.  It's from about
1980, but it really is the limit to postmodernism that most people don't
see.

What I'm saying is that humanity is not exactly, necessarily a product of
chance.

If we were made (as some of us believe), then the string of "chance" was
set up by God, and therefore not really chance at all.  Only context
multiplying upon context, as enabled by God.  And, if you believe in
divine revelation, God continually works on the context, adds to it,
takes away from it, uses it to build us into human beings.

If we were not made . . . well . . . then you're right.  It's a ll about
chance, baby.


>but can we 
>really validly call hurting someone wrong?  can we call killing a race 
>wrong?  sure, they don't like it, pain sucks.  but what makes it wrong?

It's evil.  You know it.  In your gut, in your brain, in your soul.  hth.

>we all talk about love and benevolence.  love and the decisions that go
with 
>it is just a bunch of chemicals reactions in our respective brains.

Just because there is a chemical reaction involved in a love reaction
does not mean that the love reaction is merely chemical.  Just because
there is a body does not mean there is no such thing as a moral sense. 
Just because there is a body does not mean there is no soul.

BTW, CS Lewis couldn't get around the moral sense.

Neither could Hume.

And, uh,  lots of other people.

>we are humanity, hear us roar.  then watch us burn up.

Umm.

What?

Let's stop roaring, hug, make some coffee, listen to Karin sing.

Well . . . gotta run.

the dude abides,

Fred
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