Volume 3 • Number 2                    March 1996

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

• NASC's COMMUNITY CLASSROOM •
Some Reflections

• THE MEANING OF MEANING •

• BEYOND PREJUDICE •
A Review

• ANTHROPOLOGY & ABSOLUTE TRUTH •

• THE METAPHYSICS OF COMMON SENSE •

Gail Evelyn Linsenbard

In the posthumously published Notebooks for an Ethics (1983), Sartre reflects on the problem of oppression and suggests that the struggle against oppression reveals freedom finding a way out of its chains.  In this sense, Sartre says that the struggle against oppression is enlightening because it invites us to attain a particular kind of moral sensitivity; namely, one that allows us to view the world from the position of the most disadvantaged and oppressed members of society.  It is not that Sartre regards the particular situation of the oppressed and disadvantaged as itself enlightened; it is rather that by aligning ourselves with their unique situation we may see that we have an intimate bond with them.  This intimate bond exists because the very context within which our freedom works is conditioned by others as they act on us.

One way, then, in which Sartre might justify the moral claim that we ought to help the poor and oppressed would be to show how dependent we are on others, and how "the look" of the oppressed reveals to us that we are the oppressors.  In this sense we may see that our own privileged existence is based on the oppression and poverty of others.  And we may begin to understand and appreciate the sense in which our obligation to the oppressed arises because we are the beneficiaries of their inhuman condition.

Sartre has distinguished himself from other moral philosophers (Kant and Mill, for example) in claiming that our bond with the oppressed and poor exists not in any general moral principle, but in the very structure of repressive or oppressive acts.  Reflectively formulating moral principles is a secondary project; what counts primarily is the way in which our acts as such mirror our inhumanity or humanity.  Thus, Sartre's moral perspective is unique in that it is primarily directed toward disclosing the intelligibility of our individual and collective actions -- including the forging of moral principles themselves -- as these reveal to us what it means to be human.

Sartre emphasizes the importance of "the adventure of moral creativity," and attempts to uncover how we create new ideals out of old ones and then move beyond these.  But this focus on "creation" does not mean that Sartre endorses an absolute notion of freedom -- that we can do whatever we want.  Freedom for Sartre has always been thoroughly situational, which is to say that it is not only limited by our bodies and the "facts" of our existence (eg., the time and place of our birth, our skin color, and our "genetic blueprint"), but also by the Other:  the Other, Sartre says in Being and Nothingness, "steals my freedom from me."  Although this view is modified in the Notebooks so that the Other may enhance and promote, rather than steal my freedom from me, it is more often the case that the Other fails to regard my freedom in various ways because she hides her own freedom from herself in an attitude Sartre calls "bad faith."  Even in bad faith, Sartre tells us, a "strange creativity" may be present.  We may for example, express creativity in the ways in which we individually and collectively forge the chains that bind us to one another, while simultaneously and paradoxically creating and sustaining a social structure that is ultimately alienating.

A Sartrean moral perspective requires that those reflecting on ethics become mindful of their situation in the social structure and sensitive to their social standing.  An awareness of one's position in the larger social and economic structure may condition one's ethical concerns.  A Sartrean moral perspective requires us to align ourselves with the oppressed and to direct our freedom in ways that forge values and norms that will reduce and finally eliminate class division and oppression.  It recognizes that the creation of new values takes place against a background of values that have already been made.  A Sartrean ethics recognizes, finally and most importantly, that our individual and collective action lies at the heart of the human adventure, and that it is only in human action and commitment that our world can be altered for better or for worse.

Gail Evelyn Linsenbard teaches philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder

Matt Silliman

I maintained throughout the planning of last month's day-long conference on diversity that there is no necessary distinction between celebrating diversity and talking seriously about it.  There should, however, be a thoughtful balance of these two activities, and we must agree on certain things as the fulcrum of that balance.  I submit the following propositions as indispensable to a working community which is affirmingly diverse.

1) What counts as a "culture" must remain an open question.  Whether any particular person or group constitutes a separate "cultural" presence cannot be determined a priori, but is up to that person or group in dialogue with the rest of the community.  I take this to preclude one species of cultural essentialism.

2) We are not entitled to presume that any given example of difference is thereby necessarily a good thing, just as we must not presume without careful deliberation that it is to be condemned.  The value any particular content of diversity (beliefs, practices, etc.) must be decided through a collective process of respectful dialogue (and inconclusive dialogue is not prejudicial either for or against a belief or practice).  In other words, epistemological relativism is no more consistent with a functionally diverse community than is dogmatic absolutism.  This form of relativism may appear to promote tolerance, but in fact it undermines concrete respect and understanding.

3) By the same token, we are not entitled to assume that a gulf of understanding between persons or groups is inherently unbridgeable (though we may perfectly well point to the great difficulty there may be in bridging it).  I take this to preclude another species of essentialism, whereby cultural groups are consigned to rigidly-defined cultural identities, not as sources of creativity, strength, and support, but as prisons.

4) Cultural diversity in practice demands a shared discursive context characterized by civility.  In particular, the skills and dispositions of actively showing respect, of listening carefully, and of being ready to examine and explain one's own experience (over and over) to others, are indispensable.  We might call these into question as culturally specific modes of discourse, but by what process could we discuss the question?

Matt Silliman teaches philosophy at North Adams State College

Janice Stephane

Understanding language begins with meaning.  To explain meaning, one must consider the roles of truth, reference, and sense as constituents of meaning.

Reference and sense give meaning an objective and a subjective element.  Reference, the denotative element of meaning, supplies objectivity to meaning in that the referent is real and exists in the world.  The referent of "water," for example, is real; it exists independently of the observer.  Sense, the connotative element of meaning, supplies subjectivity to meaning in that sense relates to perception.  Sense allows us to relate to the referent from our experience.  The properties of water (reflective, liquid, blue, clear, green) occur as experienced by the observer.

The question of reality versus perception now appears.  How do we explain the difference between what is real and how we perceive it?  In relating perception to meaning, meaning cannot be objective except in referring to the referent.  Sense allows meaning to take on subjective characteristics.  The question needs to be asked: does the subjectivity of meaning make meaning any less meaningful?

Janice Stephane is a student at North Adams State College

David K. Johnson

In this philosophically rigorous and important work, "second generation" animal rights theorist Evelyn Pluhar clarifies and extends the arguments of earlier, like-minded philosophers (most notably, Tom Regan, Peter Singer, Steve Sapontzis, and Bernard Rollin) in a highly successful effort to deflate recent homocentric claims that humans alone are deserving of the most extensive and direct moral consideration.

Corresponding to Kenneth Goodpaster's distinction between moral considerability and moral significance, two fundamental questions guide Pluhar's inquiry:  (1) What sorts of beings are the proper subjects of our direct moral concern? and (2) Are all those beings identified in (1) equally morally significant?  Traditionally, humans have assigned maximum moral significance either to humans alone (homocentrism) or, in a effort to avoid the manifest prejudice of homocentrism, to persons (what Pluhar calls the "full personhood view").  Pluhar devotes the first half of her book to show, in exquisite analytic detail, how even this latter, more refined, position offers no adequate response to the so-called "argument from marginal cases" -- that any effort to restrict moral consider-ability to persons must reject as well the moral significance of human nonpersons (fetuses, very young children, and the temporarily or permanently mentally impaired).  In short, "Either both sentient nonhumans and marginal humans are maximally morally considerable or neither is" (p. 178).

Philosophers committed to the first half of this disjunction (Regan, Singer, etc.) have looked either to rights-based theories or to utilitarianism to secure the impartial consideration of interests among all sentient beings.  In chapter 4, Pluhar rehearses several traditional arguments against utilitarianism which clearly demonstrate the failure of that theory to respect the legitimate interests of individuals (whether human or nonhuman).  Utility will always trump even the most basic of rights, if the suffering of one being can be shown to benefit others sufficiently (a possibility which no utilitarian can afford to ignore).

The final chapter combines a defense of the rights view with an argument opposed to the second half of the disjunction (that neither sentient nonhumans nor marginal humans are maximally morally significant).  Pluhar's strategy (in contrast to Regan, Rollin, and Singer, who are content merely to cite the consequences of ignoring the argument from marginal cases) is to provide a positive argument for the full moral significance of these subjects.  She invokes a suitably refined version of Alan Gewith's principle of "generic consistency" (act in accord with the generic rights of your recipients as well as of yourself) to show that any rational human being will act to respect the rights of all other purposive beings.

Pluhar concludes her book with a wide-ranging (though often too brief) discussion of the implications of her theory.  She mentions abortion (fetuses acquire rights only at a certain point in their development); the identification of nonhuman purposive beings (all sentient or conative beings qualify); the moral status of nonconative or insentient beings or systems (they have a sort of nonmoral value); the rights of domesticated and wild animals; and the proper method for resolving conflicts in rights (she rejects Regan's "worse-off principle" for ignoring irreducibly subjective inter-pretations of levels of harm).

Overall, Pluhar's reasoned defense of the rights of nonhuman animals (along with their human counterparts) exceeds all previous efforts in scope and completeness, and will force careful readers to bring their anthropocentric sentiments in line with their reason.  As Pluhar concludes:  "when all our feelings echo our arguments, we will have moved, at last, beyond prejudice" (p. 301).

David K. Johnson teaches philosophy at North Adams State College

Jason Macauley

Does anthropology constitute an argument against "absolute truth?"  The term  is ambiguous in its common usage, so we must begin by clarifying what we mean by "absolute truth."

"Absolute" implies that the truth it refers to satisfies one or both of the following conditions:  (1) the truth is constant or unchanging; and/or (2) the truth is universal and true for all.  Truth (and falsity) is a property of statements, and according to the correspondence theory of truth, a statement is true if and only if that statement accurately reflects the state of the world to which it refers.  For example, the statement "I am writing this on a computer" is only true if I in fact am writing this on a computer.  That is, the statement is true if it reflects a state of affairs that obtains independently of the statement.  So, the truth value of a statement is dependent on the state of reality, whereas reality is not dependent on what we think or say about it.  From this we can conclude that any (indicative) statement is either true or false, and its truth or falsity is dependent on the world irrespective of us.  So, its truth or falsity could be described as universal or absolute.  Furthermore, if the goal of any science (including anthropology) is to explain the world, then the truth or falsity of those claims must depend on the state of the world.  For to say otherwise is to claim that it is possible to explain the world using claims that fail to reflect the nature of that world.

Perhaps this is not what the anthropologist means by "absolute truth."  Maybe it is "absolute moral truth" that they hope to deflate.  Anthropologists have found that different cultures have different moral systems and beliefs.  The argument against "absolute moral truth" could be formulated as follows:

(1) Different cultures have adopted different moral systems and beliefs.
(2) Therefore, morality must be relative to the culture that adopts that morality.

The hidden premise, of course, is that the beliefs of a culture are true beliefs.  If we add this hidden premise we complete the argument, but do we have any reason to think that this premise itself is true?  As I argued above, truth depends on the relations between a statement and reality, such that a statement cannot be both true and false at once.  For if a statement is true it reflects some objective fact;  if it is false, it fails to reflect an objective fact.  This is true even of moral statements.  So, to claim that ethics are relative to a particular culture is to claim that an ethical statement can be both true and false at once.  (Since culture X believes that infanticide is wrong, and since culture Y believes that infanticide is not wrong, then it is both true that infanticide is moral and false that infanticide is moral -- an obvious contradiction.)  Furthermore, the claim that ethics are relative to a culture often leads to the further claim that we should not make moral judgments about other cultures  -- another moral claim that is insupportable if the truth of ethical statements are indeed relative to culture.

I offer this one final thought:  is the statement "there is no absolute truth" an attempt to state an absolute truth?  Consequently, if this statement is true, then must it not also be false?

Jason Macauley is a student at North Adams State College

Peter Vreeland

  When I read the various debates between realists and anti-realists, I sometimes wonder why such a debate needs to exist.  Consider:  the antirealist claims that all of the things which exist in our environment are simply our linguistic or conceptual constructions.  The realist, however, claims that our environment exists independently of all thought and language.  I believe that common sense supports the latter claim.

In his article "Language, Thought, and World," David Johnson criticizes the antirealist claim that "the world is all a text" (p. 4).  He distinguishes history as a linguistic construction or narrative from the reality it hopes to describe.  For example, hearing a story about his dog Tanya is very different from actually meeting her.  It follows that:

...realism does rest on a principled distinction between schemes and a world outside those schemes....  Now the many objects of inquiry have an intrinsic but discoverable form of their own, and so remain logically (not causally) independent of our descriptions for their existence and nature (p.  5).

I mentioned earlier that common sense dictated our acceptance of realism.  In fact, the philosophers Michael Devitt and Kim Sterelny refer to "common sense realism" and define it as "the view that the ordinary furniture of our environment...exist[s] independently of our thoughts on the matter" (p.  10).
I find it interesting that although antirealists do not accept the truth of realist claims, they have no choice but to live their lives as if realist claims are true.  In my own life, I find such inconsistency unacceptable.

Peter Vreeland is a student at North Adams State College

REFERENCES

Michael Devitt & Kim Sterelny, Language & Reality:  An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language, 1987,  MIT Press.

David Johnson, "Language, Thought, & World:  Confronting the Postmodern Challenge to Knowledge", in Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines, February, 1993.