Thursday 2 April 2015

Morality and Reasoning

"Here's a fascinating fact about us: Contradictions bother us, at least when we're forced to confront them, which is just another way of saying that we are susceptible to reason. And if you look at the history of moral progress, you can trace a direct pathway from reasoned arguments to changes in the way that we actually feel. Time and again, a thinker would lay out an argument as to why some practice was indefensible, irrational, inconsistent with values already held. Their essay would go viral, get translated into many languages, get debated at pubs and coffee houses and salons, and at dinner parties, and influence leaders, legislators, popular opinion. Eventually their conclusions get absorbed into the common sense of decency, erasing the tracks of the original argument that had gotten us there. Few of us today feel any need to put forth a rigorous philosophical argument as to why slavery is wrong or public hangings or beating children. By now, these things just feel wrong. But just those arguments had to be made, and they were, in centuries past."




One can only hope the debates at "pubs and coffee houses and salons, and at dinner parties, and influence leaders, legislators, popular opinion" are possible so that we can reach reasoned conclusions that can be "absorbed into the common sense of decency".

Wednesday 1 April 2015

Covenants

Singapore hasn't seen as much discourse as the last week or two in a long, long time. I'm glad for it.

I'm surprised (but also maybe not really surprised) though that I haven't quite heard anyone raise the argument of the social contract from Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan as a metaphor for the state. Given the recent squabbling because of the conflation of freedoms with security/safety, it's useful to consider the Hobbesian notion of social contracts or covenants, which can materialize because people are willing to giving up some individual liberty in exchange for some common security.