INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

• COMMON SENSE REVISITED •
A Reply to Silliman

• ON SARTREAN ETHICS •
A Reply to Moore

• RADICAL CONSTRUCTIVISM AND EDUCATION •

• THE GREAT APE PROJECT •
A Review

Jason Macauley

In her reply to my article "Anthropology and Absolute Truth" (Thesis XII, 3.3), Diana Fox agrees that the assertion that all cultural beliefs are true beliefs is unfounded and ill-conceived.  In the place of this more radical understanding of cultural relativism, Fox asserts that, as understood by anthropologists, cultural relativism is merely a tool for understanding cultural practices.  I find that I cannot disagree with this non-metaphysical brand of relativism, for it does make a great deal of sense to suspend one's judgment of an act until one has an understanding of that act.  I will persist in maintaining, however, that when an adequate understanding of the act in question is obtained, relativism must be discarded and a judgment made.

I will also agree with Fox that seemingly identical acts committed within two distinctly different contexts need to be evaluated in light of those contexts, perhaps causing one to arrive at different judgments concerning those acts.  For if moral truths are dependent upon the state of the world, then the situation or state of the world that surrounds each of those acts must play a part in determining the moral truths that obtain.  However, to arrive at different conclusions concerning the acts, it is not sufficient to identify differences in context; one must be able to identify morally relevant differences, which would not include the beliefs of the cultures which either embrace or abhor the act, for truth is not dependent in anyway upon our perception of it.

Fox raises another valuable point in identifying the connection between belief and practice.  This connection can help in answering the final question of the implementation of moral truths within their respective contexts.  Since it is upon belief that these acts are predicated, it would seem reasonable to claim that the injustice of immoral acts is not grounded within the acts themselves, but rather within the system of false beliefs that surround those acts.  Therefore, when attempting to implement moral truth, one cannot merely prohibit the acts themselves, but must instead attempt to eliminate the acceptance of the surrounding false beliefs.  It may be objected that people have a right to believe what they wish, and this is most likely true.  However, when this right comes into conflict with the right of a woman not to be forced to undergo a life threatening procedure or of a child to continue living, it seems obvious that it must be overridden.

Finally, I would add that though cultural relativism has its place, is should be limited to the role of an epistemological tool, and never function as the sole line of defense for a culture's beliefs and practices.

Jason Macauley is a former NASC student.  He now works for the Moscow State Ballet in Pittsfield, MA

Diana Fox

I have one minor and one, I think, rather major point to make about your response.  First, you state that I define cultural relativism as "merely a tool" for uncovering ethnographic data.  Perhaps I am being picky, but your use of the term "merely" is reductive, and overlooks the enormous difficulty of the task of implementing a relativist stance as a heuristic device.

The act of suspending judgment -- until one understands the so-called native's point of view -- involves a constantly challenging process of evaluating one's own cultural assumptions and emotional responses with respect to the encounter with "the other."  It seems to me that interesting epistemological questions arise out of this "mere "methodology -- not to mention serious psychological duress(!).  At what point in the research process do we social scientists say: "Yes, I understand, my knowledge of practice X is sufficient now to introduce a judgment"?  How do we know that we are putting aside -- such a casual phrase -- our cultural assumptions when these assumptions are often unconscious and manifested through the body as well as the mind?  I'm not suggesting these points to say that they are insurmountable obstacles, but that the task imposed by the methodology of cultural relativism is also problematic, although one that I think is worthwhile, even necessary, to pursue.

Second, you state that truth is not dependent on our perception of it.  Of course I do not disagree with this statement.  My question again points to my concern for methodology.  The question is, what is the method you propose to use to arrive at truth?  Is it the scientific method?  If the tools we use to work toward truth are context-bound, along with the questions we ask, shouldn't we always say that what we call truth is constrained by the tools available to us and the questions they permit us to ask and investigate?  If so, isn't it possible that given the ways in which power relations privilege particular tools over others, that indigenous societies may have developed methods that are unknown to us, so that their claims to truth present us with a distinct understanding which may appear to contradict our own?

Diana Fox teaches anthropology at North Adams State College

Peter Vreeland

In my essay "The Metaphysics of Common Sense" (Thesis XII, 3.2),  I claimed that common sense supports metaphysical realism.  I still stand by this claim.  On further examination of this essay, however, it appears that common sense is the only defense I offer in support of realism.  In his response "The Uncommon Sense of Metaphysics" (Thesis XII, 3.3),  Matt Silliman correctly pointed out that common sense alone is insufficient as a defense of realism.  He illustrated his claim with the example of "the alleged flatness of the earth, a view once held as commonsensical and now widely ridiculed as obviously false. ...for most practical purposes, we behave as though it were flat."  Silliman's comment on behavior was occasioned by my statement "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."

I recognize the mistake in using common sense as the sole supporting argument for realism.  While this was not my intention in my article, I also realize that I did not make this properly clear.  I did, however, refer to David Johnson's article "Language, Thought, and World," in which he distinguishes history as a linguistic construction from the reality it hopes to describe.  Consider also Ernst von Glasersfeld's constructivist claims in his "Cognition, Construction of Knowledge, and Teaching."  Regarding "all the furniture of [our] experiential field," he states:  "...[Radical constructivists] want to avoid assuming any cognitive structures or categories as innate."

This would mean that we create the furniture of our experience, including other people with whom we interact.  Yet it is a well known, commonsensical fact that the furniture of our experiential field sometimes (especially the people with whom we interact) makes our experience less than ideal.  I am not referring here to pollution and other conditions we really have imposed on our environment.  I maintain that the environment upon which we impose these conditions exists independently
of us and our linguistic constructions used to describe it.  I quote from "Language, Thought and World:" 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).

Common sense may not work well standing alone, but it makes an excellent reinforcement!

REFERENCES

David K. Johnson, "Language, Thought and World:  Confronting the Postmodern Challenge to Knowledge," Inquiry,  1993.
Ernst von Glasersfeld,  "Cognition, Construction of Knowledge, and Teaching," Synthese, 1989.

Peter Vreeland is a student at North Adams State College

Gail Linsenbard

In responding to my article on Sartre's ethics, Eric Moore lists four propositions which he finds either controversial, in need of justification, or simply false.  I want to address each of Moore's questions about these propositions, and show the ways in which I think he has not understood how a Sartrean perspective could be helpful to us in confronting moral problems.

Before I do this, however, I would like briefly to address a more general objection that Moore offers; namely, that I fail to offer a formal argument that would show how a Sartrean moral perspective logically entails these four propositions.  It is clear that producing formal logical proofs and demonstrating logical entailment is not the only way in which one may engage in philosophical discussions.  Indeed, a long-standing feminist critique of the way in which philosophy has been done is that, in its demand for logical rigor, philosophy has confined itself to a kind of methodology that precludes the creative and open exchange of ideas.  I would suggest, moreover, that creativity is especially needed in the area of ethics, since even the most internally consistent and sound ethical systems have been unable to answer some of our deepest moral concerns.  Now clearly this is not to say that logical analysis is unimportant, or that it may simply be set aside.  The point is that while logical argument and analysis are important -- indeed often central -- to philosophy, it does not follow that the failure to include them in a philosophical discussion renders that discussion unworthy of our interest and attention.  With respect to the rigor and exactness of logical analysis in ethics in particular, Aristotle has observed that ethics is an inexact inquiry, a discipline that fails to attain that ideal of exactness we associate with the most pure and rigorous disciplines.

I would now like to address each of the propositions Moore has identified as being problematic for a Sartrean moral perspective, beginning with his (1) and (4).  (1) states that "when doing ethics, we ought to be mindful of our own social and economic positions, for this can influence our reflections"; and (4) states that "a Sartrean moral perspective suggests that we ought to align ourselves with the oppressed, and work to eliminate class division and oppression."  Moore states that (1) and (4) are not in themselves controversial and, moreover, are not unique to a Sartrean moral perspective.  Now, while I did not claim that (1) and (4) are unique to a Sartrean moral position, I did want to suggest that, unlike other moral perspectives, Sartre's view reminds that it is all too easy for us to ignore the ways in which our economic and social standing affects the lives of others.

Moore seems to suggest that Sartre isn't really saying anything new or important in claiming (1) and (4).  But this easy dismissal misses what is most profound in Sartre's perspective.  The point is not that Sartre is saying something new in (1) and (4) -- of course he is not.  The point is rather that (1) and (4), while embraced by other moral perspectives, are meaningless abstractions unless they are acted upon in concrete situations.  In this sense, Sartre's contribution to ethics is that he tries to make us see how we have forged for ourselves not only accepted norms of behavior, but ideals as well.  Moore goes on to object that proposition (2), which states that "only human action and commitment can make our world better or worse," is overstated, if not false.  As a counterexample, he offers (a) the fact that there may be other moral beings besides humans who make the world better, and (b) the possibility of our world being struck by a large meteorite, which would certainly make our world worse.  Taking (b) first, it is important to note that when Sartre claims (2) he is making a conceptual, rather than a causal, claim.  Thus, while it may indeed be true that a large meteorite could make our world far worse than it is now, the world will only be worse because there are persons for whom it will be worse.  With respect to (a), since Sartre never discusses other beings besides "human beings," it is too strong to suggest, as Moore seems to, that non-human animals are not moral beings.

Lastly, (3) states that "new values can be created, but only against a background of values that have already been made."  Moore suggests that this proposition is the most controversial and in need of justification because it claims, quite radically, that we create value rather than discover it.  If value is merely created, Moore objects, then how is it possible to adjudicate between two opposing values?  Doesn't the claim that value is created imply that value is merely relative, and that there can be no moral truth?  Here, Moore joins a long list of critics who have been scandalized by the Sartrean notion that we create value.  These critics have often failed to understand Sartre's position.  As a phenomenologist, Sartre does not deny that phenomena and the everyday claims of morality are part of our lives.  And he does not deny that we discover value.   But for him, moral values are a part of our lives only insofar as we have made them to be so.  Even the a priori demands and imperatives of morality have been historically constituted and are sustained by us daily.  Sartre endorses a strong anthropocentrism so that neither God, Nature, nor a kind of "Heideggerian Being" exists as a guide that can show us the path to a more moral life.

Yet this same anthropocentrism also shows us that values exist in the world independently of our private conceptions. What Sartre wishes to point out is that those values that are expressed in our human relationships, such as love, hate, violence, and fraternity, are the products of our individual and collective efforts.  As (3) states, "new values may only be created against a background of values that have already been made."  Sartre's view is that we freely create or invent values through the choices we make, and these choices must constantly be made against a background of what has already been given.  Do we choose to continue building nuclear power plants or do we investigate the technological possibilities of solar energy?  Should we spend our tax dollars on education or defense?  Sartre's point is that in making certain choices over against others, we may sustain existing values or move beyond them.  The important point to keep in mind is that it is we who, through our choices and actions, become the incontestable authors of our own lives and choose what kind of world we wish to inhabit.  The problem of moral relativism would emerge for Sartre only if he claimed that all of our choices are on equal footing so long as they are freely chosen.  But he does not make this claim; rather, he suggests that  many of our choices are made in "bad faith," a condition whereby we deny our own freedom and the freedom of others.

Gail Linsenbard teaches philosophy at North Adams State College

Thomas Dean

In his article “Cognition, Construction of Knowledge, and Teaching,” Ernst von Glasersfeld argues that constructivism, a theory of knowledge based on the viability of the knower’s conceptual constructs, has profound implications for educators. Constructivism, states Glasersfeld, “deliberately discards the notion that knowledge could or should be a representation of an observer-independent world-in-itself.”  In other words, constructivism ignores both 1) the possibility of forming verifiable truth propositions and 2) the need to form verifiable truth propositions.  I contend that position 1 is self-inconsistent, and that positions 1 and 2 are both counter-educational.

By choosing to base constructivism on a theory of knowledge and denying even the possibility of objective truth, Glasersfeld erases any ontological ground on which to stand.  This is, I
believe, his fundamental misstep and explains the contorted stance with which the constructivist must face the world. He asserts that interaction with others is necessary for the cognitive development of the subject, but admits “it is clear that, from the constructivist perspective, the others with whom the subject may interact socially cannot be posited as an ontological given."  Not only can he not account for the existence of things which his epistemology requires, but Glasersfeld also suspends this epistemology when suspending it serves his purpose, citing scientific evidence from Piaget, Darwin, and this quote from D. O. Hebb:  “At a certain level of physiological analysis there is no reality but the firing of single neurons."  With this quote Glasersfeld certainly asserts something about the nature of reality.   Apparently, he believes that neurophysiological reality is an unverifiable reality, and that this proposition is compatible with constructivism.  Or, in skeletal terms:  1) we know enough about reality to know that 2) reality can’t be known, and that,  therefore, 3) we cannot know about reality.

Constructivist knowledge is essentially adaptive.  Learning occurs when a student constructs a conceptual map or model that “in the light of human experience, turns out to be feasible."  The educator helps the student to generate and modify these models, but because language cannot convey meaning, and because there is no objective truth to be told, the educator cannot instruct with universal intent.  It follows from constructivist principles that a teacher cannot tell his or her students that the earth isn’t flat.  It also follows that a teacher need not correct the student who claims that the Holocaust didn’t happen.  The scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi wrote “It is the act of commitment in its full structure that saves personal knowledge from being merely subjective."  For the constructivist, commitment to anything outside the self would be incompatible with his or her theory of knowledge.

REFERENCES

Ernst von Glasersfeld, “Cognition, Construction of Knowledge, and Teaching,” Synthese, 1989.

Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 1962.

Thomas Dean is a student at North Adams State College

David K. Johnson

The central aim of this text is to identify and exploit a "first breach" in the species barrier that has traditionally and arbitrarily denied the full moral considerability of all nonhuman animals.  Given the present infeasibilty of any global admission of (qualifying) nonhumans to the community of moral equals, the authors have chosen to direct their moral and scientific attention to those species who most resemble us in their intellectual and emotional capacities:  the great apes (a category that includes humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans).  The 30 essays of this volume collectively represent the ethologist's encounter with ethics, where the observations of the former serve to bolster the prescriptive aims of the latter -- in particular, to forge a non-speciesist vision of the moral community that recognizes the moral implications of our (biological) status as apes.

Sections I and II include scientific and literary essays from Jane Goodall, Douglas Adams, and an impressive list of others, detailing the complex emotional, intellectual, and social lives of (nonhuman) great apes and underscoring the poverty of common human resistance to the idea of basic animal rights.  Section III addresses the conceptually thorny issues of "similarity" and "difference," notions often used to support ("we are all animals") or dismiss ("they are just animals") claims about our inter-specific moral obligations.  The philosophical essays of sections IV and V deepen the discussion of the morally relevant similarities between all species of great apes, inviting the reader to rethink conventional restrictions on the proper referents of such terms as "person," "moral equal," and "moral community."  In this section, James Rachels addresses the moral implications of Darwinism (suggesting that the theory provides evidence for the claim that many nonhuman animals have basic moral rights); Tom Regan argues that the effective use of animals in medical experimentation is simply a source of "ill-gotten gains"; and Dale Jamieson traces popular misgivings about animal rights to anxieties about our own animality and fears of difference.  Section VI documents the current status of the great apes and the abuse that inevitably attends the human use of these animals for research or entertainment purposes.

One nagging doubt may linger concerning the implicit speciesism of a project whose initial appeal rests on making ever closer comparisons between us and other species of great apes:  Will the Great Ape Project make us less or more inclined to ignore our obligations to those (like whales, dolphins, pigs, cows, and turkeys, for example) who differ from humans to a greater degree?  Or does this project represent, as the editors argue in the Epilogue, a first and best step toward a more general "manumission" for all sentient beings?  Despite these questions (which I think the authors collectively address in a satisfactory manner), this volume represents a source of valuable information and normative theorizing that should be accessible to and interesting for a diverse audience, ranging from practicing zoologist to beginning student of philosophy.

David K. Johnson teaches philosophy at North Adams State College