Thursday, January 20, 2005

Raz On Contempory Philosophy

Joseph Raz, a commissioning editor at Oxford University Press, made the following observation in a conversation:

Perhaps in our hyperactive world the mode of progress in philosophy has changed. Perhaps it now lies less with the singular achievements of exceptional thinkers like the classics of modern philosophy: Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, and others, and more in the cumulative products of hundreds of worker ants. This would suggest that the history of philosophy may assume the relation to philosophy that the history of physics has to physics. It would even make the ephemerality and forgetfulness of the age less regrettable. I doubt, however, that that can be the whole story. It is probably yet another manifestation of the lack of clear horizons in contemporary philosophical thought.

3 comments:

MH said...

That the purpose of ethics, post modern or otherwise, is to develop means of shirking responsibility is a dangerous interpretation. Dangerous because it opens up fields of action that may not have any ethical basis.

A posibly better position would be to take the view that ethics is about trying to find ways of 'creating self'. If we view the ethical process as the process of determining action, and we take the position that we are, to a great extent the history of our actions, then the actions we chose become us. To this extent we cannot shirk responsibility for our actions.

MH said...

In a sense I am saying that responsibility and identity are related; perhaps not that responsibility is a basis for identity, but that they are related.

Basically, the suggestion is that an individual must take responsibility first and foremost for them-self. If there is to be any sort of ethics there must agents and these agents must take responsibility for their own existence; they cannot shirk that primary responsibility by saying that their existence is another’s fault and that their actions should be blamed on this other. If the first act of an ethical agent is to take responsibility for them-self, then they are taking responsibility for those things attributed to self, such as identity. Further, if the agent takes responsibility for them-self, then the agent must also take responsibility for all other actions they undertake (including the shirking of responsibility – is there more than one genus of responsibility?) even in if the whole field of ethical action is far more complicated and strewn with moral chance.

Now, in such fields of action, it is in the process of taking responsibility for self that the agent actually begins the process of valuing actions. A and B exist in relation to each other, A is an agent and B is an event. Now it is only if A takes some level of responsibility for B that B can actually be valued by A. In explanation (using a current example); A does not like his sister’s boyfriend and plans to end their relationship. The event of terminating the relationship is B. Now to determine whether the exercise of power is ethical, A must understand that he is able of causing event B; effectually he must take responsibility for B upon himself. In realising that he can cause B, A must then determine if he should. One of the factors in his determination is going to be the fact that he must take some level of responsibility for causing B. Of course, in actuality, the whole process is much more complicated, but this should make my idea more straightforward.

Further, it is the process of determining actions that agents to the point where they actually have to make such decisions. In many ways they have to take responsibility, not for the outside factors, but for their response to them – which the agent can control.

Samuel Douglas said...

Reponsibility, pah!
Hume would not accuse one billiard ball of malicious intent when it collided with another ball causing it to travel away, would he?
I think we can safely say that Humes balls prove that all this talk of responsibility is bunk.