@Wayfarer and @Count Timothy von Icarus may enjoy a recent piece written by James Ungureanu, "The Perfume of an Empty Vase: The Rise and Fall of Evidential Religion."

Which claims do you have in mind? — Janus

The claim that <Such experiences do not yield determinate knowledge> or <Such experience-inferences are unverifiable>.

That's bullshit—I have not said that post hoc claims based on, or interpretations of, religious experiences, are false—I have merely claimed that they cannot be verified to be true. — Janus

So you don't claim that someone engages in a false inference when they claim that one of their religious experiences produces determinate knowledge? It seems to me that that is precisely what you are saying, ergo:

Perhaps he thinks that when someone makes a claim based on a religious experience, that claim is unverifiable? But he himself asserts that such claims are false. Is his assertion verifiable? If it is not, then it probably doesn’t count as a meaningful assertion. If it is, then the claim he is scrutinizing must also be verifiable (given that he is purporting to falsify it). — Leontiskos

Someone claims that their experience-inference (i.e. the inference they are basing on their religious experience) is verifiable. You claim that it is not verifiable, and that the inference is false or invalid. If the inference is verifiably false/invalid, then the basic claim has been falsified, and what is falsifiable is verifiable. Therefore, your own falsification of the claim shows it to be verifiable. We need not say that the conclusion is false. We need only say that the inference to the conclusion is false or invalid. This nevertheless falsifies the argument-claim in question.

(So if your response is to say, "I am claiming that their conclusion is invalid, not false," my response would be that invalidity secures the point just as well. In that case verification has to do with validity, and invalidity entails verifiability. In that case we can redact my sentence to be, "But he himself asserts that such experience-inferences are false or invalid. Is his assertion verifiable?")

Claims are verifiable by observational evidence or logic (self-evidence). I cannot see how Buddhist claims can be definitively verified, just as claims that one artwork is better than another cannot be definitively verified. — Janus

Is that an argument, though? It sounds like you are saying, "I can't see how it could be verifiable, therefore it is unverifiable" (which is invalid). And I think @Count Timothy von Icarus is right when he points out that if your methodology is consistently applied there will be nothing at all that is "definitively verifiable." I find that folks who criticize religion or ethics in this manner tend to overestimate the certainty and apodicticity of science.

So, I ask how can the claimed supreme enlightenment of the Buddha, a claimed lack of enlightenemnet of Osho, be verified to an unbiased subject? — Janus

Didn't I already provide you with a method? Does my method not count because it isn't a "microscope"? The relevance of the microscope is the relevance of arbitrary criteria for verification.

If you think such claims are verifiable, whereas I don't believe they are simply because I cannot see how they could be, then the burden is on you to explain how they could verifiable. — Janus

If you "cannot see how they could be," then you do not have logical grounds for your claim that they are unverifiable. If you want to maintain your claim that they are unverifiable, then you will at least need a valid argument for that claim.

- Sounds good. I was planning to write one more post before declaring myself "out of steam" (or else time), so this works out well. Thanks to you too.

If I construe the spirit of an obligation as "engendering the kind of world that obligation seeks to create" and the obligation's letter as "the acts constitutive of its duty", maybe that makes it clearer. Satisfying the spirit of an obligation has something like a success criterion for fulfilling a purpose or higher cause, and a duty doesn't need such a purpose or a higher cause but often {typically} has them. — fdrake

Okay, but do we have to distinguish between a duty and a hypothetical imperative? Not every goal of betterment implicates duty.

Some duties are relatively transparent in their spirit and letter. The letter of my duty to take out the trashing is... taking out the trash. The spirit is a bunch of things like "letting rubbish pile up in your house is negligent" {a vice}, "letting rubbish pile up in your house degrades the quality of your and your neighbours lives" {disrespect to community}, just general ethical principles. If one took out the trash and left it in the street, you've satisfied the letter of your duty of taking out the trash, but contradicted some of the tenets that act is supposed to embody. You definitely took out the trash, you were nevertheless not considerate to your neighbours. — fdrake

Let me quote the earlier point I referred to:

I don’t see how the parts are going to help you get to the conclusion that supererogation is obligatory (or required). Suppose there is an obligatory end and multiple independently sufficient means [...] to that end. Obligation then applies to the means qua end. One is not obliged to utilize any given means, but one is obliged to utilize some means or combination of means that is sufficient to achieve the obligatory end. — Leontiskos

So on my view an obligatory means always presupposes an obligatory end. When you want to create a strong distinction between the duty-act and the reason for the duty-act, such that the first is obligatory and the second bears on supererogation, I think you have inappropriately sundered the means from the end, and thus sundered the wholeness and rationale of the duty. Granted, your letter/spirit distinction is a little bit different than your act/reason distinction, but I think the wholeness of means-end is very similar to the wholeness of letter-spirit. Sundering this wholeness results in incorrect reasoning.

One may be perversely or minimally compliant, one may also do minor violations of the spirit of ones duties and count as satisfying them. — fdrake

Agreed.

That's a tyrannical and absurd standard, no one can live chasing after every piece of trash like that - metaphorically and literally. — fdrake

You've here identified the reason why we are not obliged to do such a thing - why it does not fall within the duty.

The room opened up by perverse compliance and minor violations of a duty's spirit is also room for the failure of the aims of duty while satisfying its letter. — fdrake

I think this is too loose. Perverse compliance != minor violations != non-violations (such as the gale carrying away a loose piece of trash). This seems to be your argument:

1. Someone can fulfill the letter of a duty without fulfilling the spirit of a duty
2. If the letter is fulfilled then the duty is fulfilled
3. Therefore, the duty can be fulfilled without its spirit being fulfilled
4. Therefore, the fulfilling of the spirit of the duty is supererogatory

I see the error coming in (2), which sunders the wholeness of the letter-spirit unity.

Nevertheless, the world demands you relate to yourself and others as such a tyrant in order to fulfil your duties about the things which matter in spirit and not just in letter. — fdrake

I don't see how requiring someone to fulfill the spirit of their duty is tyrannical.

I understand something as supererogatory if it is laudable but not required for one's duties, like chasing after the trash in a gale. Laudability arises from embodying the spirit of one's duties to a high degree, heights of considerateness and self sacrifice. — fdrake

Okay so:

Edit: I think a big part of the issue is this question: How is a properly supererogatory act motivated? Can someone self-consciously engage in a supererogatory act, or will every heroic act be self-consciously viewed as obligatory? — Leontiskos

...you want to say that a supererogatory act is motivated by, "embodying the spirit of one's duties to a high degree," or basically by interpolating duty.

The food bank example I think is a good one. I want to take it as given that no one is duty bound to work full time for free in a food bank, it isn't a moral requirement for anyone to do that, but some people take up the burden. What would happen if some people did not take up the burden? The poor would starve. Working as a volunteer full time in a food bank is laudable. Thus, working as a volunteer full time in a food bank is supererogatory, as it's laudable and goes above and beyond one's duties of care for humanity.

But let's have a look at what happens if no one takes up the burden - which is, no one does something which is always permissible not to do -, the poor then starve. Some people working at the foodbank in that manner is necessary for the poor not to starve - necessary as a logical requirement, the poor would starve without it. But it was also shown not to be a moral duty to work full time there as a volunteer.

The aporia arises because if some people did not compel themselves to go above and beyond their duties, the poor would starve. The state of things thus requires {logically} that people go above and beyond their duties to ensure that widely held requirements for a just society. That is a much greater imposition than occasionally chasing after trash in a strong wind. That's the monstrosity I'm speaking about. — fdrake

Okay, good. What are some of the conflicting intuitions at play here, regarding X and Y (from above)?

• Y is required for a just society, and therefore we are required to bring it about
• X is not obligatory
• -
• If something is required, then it is obligatory
• An obligatory end entails obligatory means

I am more and more confident in the thesis that the issue is incorrect reasoning rather than a monstrosity (although we can always look at the phenomenology of the "monstrosity").

Engaging with modern views of morality almost always involves engaging modern notions of justice, and my conversation with Bob Ross was no exception. Ross was using "injustice" in a loose, and in my opinion inaccurate, sense. I think the same thing is happening here. Your premise is, "If someone starves, then an injustice has occurred." But what does that really mean? People and animals have been starving for a very long time, and it's hard to see what this has to do with injustice in any precise sense. Much of this thread strikes me as an issue of language being used poetically, and then arguments being drawn from that poetic usage. "Justice" seems to be a case in point. What do you really mean by that word, "justice"? Is it really unjust that someone should starve? Why?

To revisit the question of how a properly supererogatory act is motivated, I don't think it is as closely aligned to duty as you do. On my view the supererogatory has to do with what is better or what is ideal, and this is quite different from what is obligatory. This is why 's point about "the best of all possible worlds" is perhaps more pertinent than it first appears to be. The better and the best are not obligatory. And note how different solving starvation is from solving climate change. The former is an appeal to what is better or best, whereas the latter is more essentially an appeal to what is necessary qua survival.

I'll leave it there for now, even though I am doing little more than touching on further considerations.

- That's true, but one could agree with the OP regarding the objectivity of health without going on to agree with Harris' whole project. In fact Harris' health analogy receives a lot of pushback from ethicists who don't grant the measure of objectivity that Harris puts forward. This is all non-professional, amateur philosophy, to be sure (as is most of TPF).

That is a good angle of approach. As I reflect on your post, the first thing that comes to mind is that the whole neo-religious and systematic framing of Comte's sociology seems mistaken. The sociological lens is unhelpful when it is given primacy over all else. It leads naturally to dehumanization and despair. Here I think of Mother Teresa's quip about loving the poor rather than merely fighting poverty. The "fight against poverty" reifies and depersonalizes the issue.

But beyond that and regarding @fdrake's "monstrosity," I think subsidiarity is the most necessary political doctrine at the moment. People think they should solve worldwide hunger because they confuse themselves for God. The better thing to do is to address hunger in your own neighborhood and let the other neighborhoods address their own problems. The "moral imagination" is often tripping over itself by "making the best the enemy of the good." If it were not so busy fretting over world hunger, it would have already had a real impact on local hunger. And in fighting local hunger one learns grassroots strategies which achieve more than mere symptom-relief. Indeed the whole concept of "solving a problem" via interventionism may be a non-starter.

Earlier I critiqued the "moral imagination" for failing to understand the importance of stability and conservatism—for failing to avoid the French Revolution. More generally, the problem lies in salivating over "the final solution," and this goes back to Mother Teresa's quote. The problem lies in becoming so fixated on solving the problem once and for all, that one fails to see progress short of a solution, and one fails to see contextualizing and countervailing forces. In particular, one fails to see the finitude of means. There is a failure to see, for example, that if all resources are marshaled in favor of Green Energy, then severely detrimental effects will occur as a result of this misappropriation of resources. It is said that the demons characteristically destroy humans by giving them true knowledge at the wrong time.

In some sense, to draw the dilemma between evil and monstrosity is to have already justified monstrosity. Maybe the monstrosity does not exist after all, if the problem of starvation is not up to one man, or is not to be solved in one year. Even heroic acts will not solve such problems quickly, and one could easily destroy themselves with burnout, thus creating a counterfactually inferior contribution to the problem. Many of our problems are much bigger and older than we are, and it is therefore unrealistic to map them on the small scales of decades or of individuals.

This post is rather unfocused, but in general I think we need to be realistic about the proportion between the contributions of finite agents to large problems. Second, I think we need to distinguish between self-created problems and pre-existing problems. Self-created problems such as recycling or vice have more cause for despair than pre-existing problems where progress has occurred over time, such as hunger.

Yes, thanks for pointing that out—the "can" should have been a "cannot". — Janus

Okay. :up:

I haven't addressed anything as silly as verufying Buddhist claims with a microscope. so that seems like a red herring to me. — Janus

Silly examples are helpful. So what is your "microscope"? Why do you say a Buddhist claim is unverifiable?

So, you are saying that if I became supremely enlightened, I would know whether the Buddha was supremely enlightened? — Janus

I am saying that if you achieve the same level of proficiency as Gautama, then you would be in a very good position to judge that level of proficiency.

Can the claim that it is possible to become supremely enlightened be verified in the first place? If I thought I was supremely enlightened, allowing for the sake of argument that I could know such a thing, how could I know the same thing about someone I had never met? And even if I had met him or her, how could I know? And further even if I could know, how could I demonstrate that knowledge to someone else? And all that aside, how could I rule out self-deception in my own case? — Janus

Sorry, but this is gish gallop. You are just throwing as many random objections out onto the table as you can. If you have an argument it will need to be much more focused.

But I cannot demonstrate even that possibility to anyone who has not experience an altered state themselves, and then I don't need to demonstrate anything—my experience is irrelevant to them. It is their own experience that might lead them to belive. — Janus

Okay, so what? Do you think someone is saying that experience-claims must be verifiable by all in order to be verifiable? That they must be verifiable even to those who do not possess microscopes? Because not even science works that way.

That said, I just don't believe that such experiences yield any determinate knowledge, other than that such experiences may happen. The rest is interpretation after the fact, and usually culturally mediated. That is if people interpret such experience religiously, then they will usually do so in terms of the religion they are familiar with. Of course, such experiences may yield a profound sense of knowing, but that is a different thing and although they might serve to determine my own personal beliefs, they cannot serve to justify anyone else's. They would need to have their own experience. — Janus

And do you think your claims here are verifiable?

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Buddhism was often said by its early 20th century exponents to be a 'scientific religion' with the principle of karma being compared to Newton's laws of action and reaction. But I think that was fanciful. — Wayfarer

Okay, but I think Christian claims are also verifiable. I did not mean to speak only about Buddhism. I just know that you and Janus like to talk about it.

They will recognise the possibility of veridical religious experience, but insist that they are subjective and meaningful only to those who have them, and cannot be conveyed, nor form the basis of any real philosophy. Thereby vitiating the whole tradition of Buddhist philosophy, among others. — Wayfarer

Yes, that seems accurate, namely that @Janus has some bone to pick with truth-claims which flow out of religious experience. Perhaps he thinks that when someone makes a claim based on a religious experience, that claim is unverifiable? But he himself asserts that such claims are false. Is his assertion verifiable? If it is not, then it probably doesn’t count as a meaningful assertion. If it is, then the claim he is scrutinizing must also be verifiable (given that he is purporting to falsify it). So I don’t think claims based on religious experience are unverifiable, even though they are more difficult to substantively verify or falsify.

(As a further issue, @Janus might say that an individual can make unverifiable assertions, such as, “There is a teapot orbiting Jupiter.” I would object by saying that if someone does not have grounds for an assertion, then they are not making an assertion. They can form an unverifiable proposition, but they cannot assert it without grounds. The fundamental point of inquiry for any assertion are the (subjective) grounds upon which it stands, and this is why <falsifiability and the principle of sufficient reason> go hand in hand. ...Incidentally, the pluralists on TPF have a tendency to trade in faux assertions, namely by pretending to assert something that they do not in fact assert – an endless “what if?” game.)

Well, first, I just realized this is a different anti-vaccine female doctor who was convicted. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay.

Does the fact that some George Floyd protestors didn't come face to face with any rioting or police brutality mean it didn't happen, or that all rioters should be given pardons? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Is that what is being claimed? The question here is, "Why was Gold charged with a 20-year evidence-tampering sentence?"

However, the original discussion here was the charge that all the prosecutions were unjust and thus that the wholesale pardons were just. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That looks like a straightforward strawman.

What's the idea here, that no crimes were committed that day? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Maybe it's somewhere between these crazy extremes? It doesn't do much good to strawman the opposite extreme when Hochschild or Gold demonstrate that the initial extreme does not obtain. That's like saying, "Gold said not everyone (or every time) was violent, therefore she is claiming that no one (and no time) was violent!" This is a way of rhetorically propping up the thesis that is under fire.

I am saying that. Though I imagine it can appear that I am saying something different since I see the flavour of agency that institutions and ideologies have as principally inhuman. And at a push I'd commit to human agency being kind of inhuman at its root. That's by the by though. — fdrake

Hmm, okay...

Yes. I assumed you were using the obligation of X into obligation of parts of X inference in a prior post. I then attacked the inference as if it were yours. I am making no use of the inference in my arguments. The failure of the inference is part of what leaves me the room to say that some obligations require supererogations, with the requirement being a logical one. The issue is part of the OP, but me writing about it like I have is because I believed you were using the inference against the OP, and I was attacking the inference without using the principle it embodies. I care that supererogatory acts aren't obligatory, I don't want to collapse any supererogations into obligations. That our obligations can require us going above and beyond our obligations in some sense is one of my central theses. That particular sense being {achieving the spirit of our duties or bringing about the kind of world living our obligations aims to bring about or the intended outcome of following our duties to begin with}}. — fdrake

I'm still not getting a lot of traction on this stuff. I would say that if someone ignores the spirit of an obligation and clings to the letter of the obligation, then they are failing in their obligations. I don't think the spirit of an obligation can be a supererogation. It still feels like you are conflating obligation and supererogation.

The failure of the inference is part of what leaves me the room to say that some obligations require supererogations, with the requirement being a logical one. — fdrake

Can you say more explicitly what you mean by "the inference"? I tried to speak to the general issue with the paragraph beginning, "..."

The Count Timothy von Icarus leveraged this to form a counterargument of sorts, by inflating our obligations above and beyond my rather quotidian portrayal of them, our collective failures then become true "moral failings" of our duties, rather than some failure inherent in our moral conscience and the satisfaction of our duties to begin with. The latter is what I'm advocating. That we really do fulfil our duties, that they are quotidian in comparison to why we follow them, why we follow them casts a shadow on our conduct that renders our duties insufficient. Nevertheless we "do our bit", and it isn't enough. — fdrake

Creating a strong distinction between the letter and the spirit of an obligation feels much the same as creating a strong distinction between the duty and the reason for the duty. Just as I would say that merely fulfilling the letter is not fulfilling the obligation, so too I would say that performing a duty without understanding and involving the reason behind the duty is a failure in the duty. From what I can see, the "why" is not supererogatory.

The monstrosity that makes running food banks required to feed people despite massive food surpluses is one that those food banks volunteers' face, if they stop going above and beyond people go hungry. They're thus "expected" to in a manner that goes beyond their duties, and life presents them a threat in the form of a modus tollens impact, if you don't do this then that will not happen. Stop going to work for free and the poor starve. — fdrake

The concrete example is very much welcome.

Let's take a concrete example like this and do the following:

"If I do X, then Y occurs. Y cannot occur without X, and Y must occur."

Then we want to ask whether X is obligatory, supererogatory, arduous, heroic, unsustainable, etc. And whether Y is obligatory, supererogatory, necessary, etc.

If we were to take the food bank example then we would say that X = <produce food surplus or food waste> and Y = <people do not go hungry>. I won't hold you to that example, but we can use it if you want. I want to analyze a concrete example and see if the word "supererogatory" is being used accurately, and if not, what better words could be used.

Yes. Telling people that they must do more to do enough, when we already can't do enough, doesn't work. — fdrake

I'm glad we agree on this.

Answers to the problem aren't really about what to do, I think, they're about how to cope with our condition of being unable to do "enough". One way of dealing with that is to try to do enough. Or to try to bring about a state of things were people can do enough. — fdrake

Okay, but it seems like these fold right back into the problem of what to do.

I see an appeal to absurd as a metacognitive trap, it's how you think you think, but you only think that because you're not looking at how you think. It's also metaphysical stopgap, a refusal to inquire or do more. It's a refusal to be troubled by the troubling. — fdrake

Yes, I can definitely see that.

...extreme leftism, which I see as a secular form of faith. — fdrake

I agree, but I also think that more moderate issues have a tendency to become a secular proxy for religion, such as climate concerns, civil rights concerns, etc.

The people I'm aware of who are troubled by these problems are generally socialists or communists, and treat The Revolution in eschatological terms. It will be Kingdom come, but of our own making. The faith they have in a future end-state with no means of imagining how to bring it about. — fdrake

Right: nothing apart from bringing about the Revolution.

CS Lewis has excellent commentary on this in The Screwtape Letters. — fdrake

Yes, that was a highly appropriate quote from Lewis. It is a better way of illustrating my point above about . But I think it also goes back to the issue of . Lewis admires the man who does his work but then, "washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment."

Elsewhere Lewis writes on the importance of putting first things first and second things second; and that idolatry occurs when second things are put first. This mixes in well with . An entailment of Przywara's project is that when the transcendent God is removed from the picture, everything falls out of proportion (and this is a bit like the way that the Sun orders the solar system). How, for example, is the secular to apply proportion and moderation to their concern for recycling? Is it at all strange that extreme leftism looks like fundamentalist religion? When we move away from the rural setting and into the ideational setting of the city-dweller, how are proportion and moderation to be brought to the issues that the extreme leftist champions? I'm not sure that the secular can ultimately contextualize issues at all, given the way that the "moral imagination" is so variable and malleable.

Notably Lewis sees our duties tomorrow as "acts of justice and charity", which are duties in the expanded sense... — fdrake

Charity is a duty for the Christian.
("That's not to say that what is obligatory for a Christian is the same as what is obligatory for a non-Christian" - .)

But the bar for good human conduct raises to a level that it becomes practically unattainable. — fdrake

For Lewis? Why?

And I do see us as referring to ourselves as good accurately, so what is good must be more quotidian than the world transforming eternal present of Lewis', or Count Timothy von Icarus's, moral hero. — fdrake

But it seems you are now back to the idea that good = attainable = insufficient = non-transformative. "We are all good even though we will ultimately fail to do what must be done."

I mean, people like to say they're good. They like to say that everyone does their duty. Especially in a democracy. Because then everyone can pat each other on the back and feel good about themselves, despite the fact that the ship is clearly going down. I admit it's all rather bewildering once you catch a glimpse of what is actually going on, but it really does seem to be going on.

The latter moral hero functioning as someone to aspire to, or as the regulative ideal of our moral imagination? I can agree with that. But then we circle the inherency of failure again, and of the impossibility to fulfil that ideal, despite being required to do so by the state of things. — fdrake

It must eventually be brought up that Screwtape is not equally concerned with Christians and non-Christians. If failure were inherent then Wormwood need not apply for the job, for the job is otiose. Failure is not inherent for Lewis. But Lewis would agree that if success is found by "pursuit of the rainbow's end," then failure is inherent. That is Screwtape's goal. Does Screwtape need to tempt the secular at all? Should he be concerned that the secular (social justice warrior) might not pursue the rainbow's end?

(Edit: The eschatological issue is definitely interesting. I had intended to speak to it more directly than I did... Time is not on my side, as I am trying to fit in a number of threads before I have to take off this evening...)

It's like how people within art or literary or musical movements intersubjectively validate their mutual aesthetic judgements. It only works if you're already converted, so to speak. There can be definitive intersubjective validation of the kind that would convince the unbiased. — Janus

Does that bolded sentence contain a typo?

If a Buddhist says that her claims are verifiable, and the skeptic remarks that they are not verifiable with a microscope, the Buddhist would reasonably respond, "I was not claiming that they are verifiable with a microscope. You are talking past me." If we correctly situate the claim then it seems to me that this problem of "objectivity" never arises. If the Buddhist says that her claims are verifiable with a microscope, then it would be appropriate to oppose the idea that her claims are verifiable with a microscope. If she isn't saying that, then it isn't appropriate.

For example, do you think the Buddhist claim that Gautama was supremely enlightened can be verified? — Janus

I think someone could achieve the same level of proficiency as Gautama, and at that point they would be positioned to vet such a claim. A person in that position would be capable of verifying or falsifying such a claim. The same thing could be done to a lesser extent by someone who has not achieved that state, but has learned to recognize proficiency or hierarchy in that realm. These are all forms of verification, are they not?

And the same applies to other domains of discourse, which may exist in various cultural forms, and within which what is nowadays called ‘inter-subjective validation’ might be available, even if not conforming to the standards of modern empirical science. — Wayfarer

Right, which is to say that something can be verifiable even if it is not verifiable according to some particular metric. For example, a Buddhist claim can be verified, but not with a microscope.

Scientism is the idea that the only meaningful forms of verification are those of the (hard) sciences, and it is widely recognized to be not only wrong, but incoherent. I think we agree on this. I'm not sure where @Janus fits into this.

Because she's lying lol. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What is she lying about? Quote her lie.

Yes, people lie about events they are at in person all the time, and they edit video to support their lies. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So the surveillance video that was shown was just edited? That's your solution?

What is missing in this discussion is the basic skill of identifying the assertions of others. You and Wayfarer want to say that someone is lying, but you won't quote that person or put any effort into demonstrating what was asserted. Wayfarer explicitly refuses to even watch the video, despite maintaining his claim of lying. It's pretty important to be able to identify and present the claims of others on a philosophy forum, so the fact that we've resorting to accusations of lying without any effort in identifying claims is a remarkably big problem.

- Short on time, but I would say that if either of you think it makes sense to have special abilities or special knowledge which is unverifiable, then you should try to spell that out and give examples. For the reasons already set out, I think you're wielding a contradiction. There can only be unverifiable abilities or knowledge if the bearer is irretrievably separated from all other subjects.

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Apparently 's knowledge of historical Christianity is as superficial as his knowledge of historical philosophy. This looks like the same trite political ideology pretending to reprimand Christianity.

- The Search Algorithm knowest thee better than thou knowest thyself. It knowest thy needs even before ye asketh. :razz:

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- I have not, but thanks for the reference. :up:

"The situation is hopeless, we must take the next step." — Tom Storm

Yes, that's basically it. And I think you end up with a critique similar to Chesterton's critique of the slogan, "You just have to grin and bear it."

Can you say some more about this? — Tom Storm

It could go in a lot of directions, which is why I left it vague. The two basic options seem to be either hope or desperation, and they lead down very different roads. The darker road justifies the unjustifiable on account of being "in extremis." Making supererogation obligatory seems like a minor case of that.

A Christian writer like Tolkien incorporates "eucatastrophe." For example, in The Hobbit during the battle of the five armies the hopeless situation is spun on its head with the unanticipated arrival of the Eagles (the servants of Manwe). That is an example of a characteristically Christian hope or possibility. You fight with no understanding of how you could win, and yet with the knowledge that the unexpected is possible. And you do not act out of a rationalizing desperation.

Faith in God requires belief without reason-based thought. — DifferentiatingEgg

Rubbish.

If someone could make, not just one or two accurate predictions, but could consistently make accurate predictions that were not based on observation and calculation, then we might assume they had some hidden way of knowing what will happen. I know of no such case, so it is just speculation, unless you can present a well-documented case. — Janus

I've pointed to the psychics that the FBI uses any number of times now.

The claims they make are not testable predictions — Janus

Sure they are. I've already shown that. You just keep asserting the contrary. Again:

If someone claims to have special knowledge, and that knowledge is in no way confirmable by any other person, then their knowledge cannot be confirmed. But that case seems like it would be quite rare. — Leontiskos

Imagine yourself in the ancient world with your thesis, "Okay, so you can reliably predict eclipses, and no one else can do this. But that doesn't mean you have special knowledge of nature." Of course it does! You are drawing up some fiction where someone is supposed to have a special ability which is in no way verifiable. What is an example of that? As far as I can tell, if a putative ability is in no way verifiable, then it isn't an ability at all. It certainly isn't an ability to do anything.

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I think that is the domain that you're referring to, as defining the entire scope of knowledge, and anything beyond that being 'speculative'. But it goes on [to procedural, perspectival, and participatory knowledge]... — Wayfarer

I think this is sort of the mirror error of @Janus'. These other forms of knowledge are not unverifiable or unconfirmable. If someone says that they have a special form of knowledge but there is no way for anyone else to confirm that they have a special form of knowledge, then they are probably flubbing. This applies to all knowledge, including procedural et al.

So perhaps you have consistently proposed forms of knowledge that are unverifiable, and Janus has been led to believe that such a thing makes sense. Or rather, in reaction to this sort of claim Janus goes to the other extreme and claims that anyone who claims to have special knowledge or special abilities can by definition provide no way for others to verify those abilities.

This is entirely wrong, and counterexamples abound. To take a single example, why does God give Moses the ability to turn his hand leprous and turn his walking staff into a snake? Because Moses knows that no one will believe that he has been sent by God if he can provide no evidence for that claim. These abilities are a direct response to Moses' claim:

Then Moses answered, “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The LORD did not appear to you.’ ” — Exodus 4:1, RSV

Our culture is really, really averse to signs, and there are all sorts of complicated reasons for that. But the basic logic nevertheless holds: abilities produce acts (or as Aristotle says, the power is known through the act). To claim an ability without any accompanying act is to admit that there is no ability. To claim knowledge without being able to demonstrate the proper effect of that knowledge is to admit that there is no knowledge.

They're stuck in my head as Christian hippies. But an attempt to live by a moral code, like they do, makes me respect them more than I would a hippie stereotype. — fdrake

Yes, I agree. :grin:

I see that. I enjoyed her willingness to dive into the questions and sustain her belief despite the pain of aporias. From what I gathered she and hers were quite fond of Kierkegaard. The students that the Fransiscan group drew in had Christian flavoured Wittgenstein epistemology too {make everything difficult a hinge proposition}. Lots of existentialist stuff in there. — fdrake

That’s fine, but I see it as secondary. Either God aligns with the world as it now exists or he doesn’t. If someone thinks that God aligns with the world as it now exists (and the world has not fallen away from God in any real way), then they effectively believe in a different God than the orthodox Christian. To try to solve that discrepancy with existentialism looks to be a band-aid on a mortal wound. In fact the same basic issue underlies different forms of existentialism. By my lights to be reading Kierkegaard is to already be reading someone who presupposes a fallen condition.

Involvement is quite a different concept from direct cause though right? — fdrake

Sure, and many realities represent a confluence of agents, such as law.

I think I've embraced "both" in my prior posts. — fdrake

If you’re only saying that some forms of agency are diffuse and collective, then I have no problem with that. The OP struck me as going farther than that, and claiming that there is monstrosity apart from the acts/creations/effects of agents.

And again, although it’s not something I tend to broach on TPF, I believe in angelic and demonic powers, and therefore there is room in my thought for very broad and diffuse forms of agency. Indeed, the reason an OP like this is somewhat intuitive is because those broad and diffuse forms of agency are intuitive. But I don’t think the claims will make much sense apart from that religious context. Prima facie, there are “monstrosities” that are not due to human agency. But I think it’s a dead end to hold this while eschewing non-human agents. Prometheus has no one to rail against if there is no Zeus, in which case there simply is no catharsis in identifying a supposed “monstrosity.”

I don't think this works. The reason being that there are loads of substitutable acts for the bacterial wipes. — fdrake

I’d say you’re missing 1c, which is an explicit conjunct in the antecedent. All you’re saying is that if 1c is not present then 2 does not follow, and my reasoning explicitly agrees with this.

One is not. My point was broader. I've got in mind something like the following:

1 ) People ought recycle.
2 ) Recycling is done to reduce climate impact.
3 ) Recycling isn't sufficient to reduce climate impact meaningfully.
4 ) Reducing climate impact meaningfully requires supererogatory acts, like high commitment activism. — fdrake

There is an equivocal term between (2) and (3), and once that is removed your (contradictory) supererogatory obligation dissolves. Namely, you added the word “meaningfully” in (3). Remove the equivocation by adding that adverb to (2) or removing it from (3) and the contradiction dissolves.

The thing regarding parts is to block a modification of the above. One could reason as follows. People ought recycle, this derives from the obligation to reduce climate impact, reducing climate impact requires activism, therefore activism is obligate, what is obligate is not supererogatory, therefore activism isn't supererogatory. The parthood thing blocks going from "reducing climate impact requires actvism" to "activism is obligate". — fdrake

I don’t see how the parts are going to help you get to the conclusion that supererogation is obligatory (or required). Suppose there is an obligatory end and multiple independently sufficient means to that end. Obligation then applies to the means qua end. One is not obliged to utilize any given means, but one is obliged to utilize some means or combination of means that is sufficient to achieve the obligatory end.

Your conclusion (4) is simply invalid. If we fixed the equivocation by adding “meaningfully” to (2), then what follows is not (4), but rather the conclusion that recycling is insufficient to fulfill the obligatory end associated with (1). Ergo: we are obliged to do more than recycle (or we ought to do more than recycle).

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My attitude toward us and our duties is that, by and large, we fulfil our duties. And I think to @Count Timothy von Icarus' point, our duties as we tend to circumscribe them are our duties. I think that most people are decent and have a good moral conscience, and follow most of their duties. Most people don't steal, cheat, harm others needlessly. Most people keep their promises and do their best to honour duties of care. I want to insist that by and large those duties are fulfilled. I just also want to insist that the broader purpose of those duties - their spirit, what they're done for, the kind of world following them is supposed to engender - is not fulfilled without going above and beyond them. That here is an inherent failure in the aggregate of just doing one's duties, that kind of conduct alone cannot bring about the world those duties are imagined to play a part in. — fdrake

I think you’re contradicting yourself. If the obligatory end is not fulfilled by the duties we are fulfilling, then we are not fulfilling all our duties. We are not fulfilling our duties. Is the daughter’s duty to remove the stains or merely to wash the clothes? You’re basically saying, “She fulfilled all her duties by washing the clothes, even though the clothes are still stained.” If her duty was to wash the clothes but her duty did not extend to getting the clothes clean, then what you say makes sense. But it doesn’t make sense to construe her duty that way.

But I think that supposed is holding ourselves to our better natures, principally in our imagination. We make ourselves aim for something better, even if we always fail in doing so. And that's good. — fdrake

I agree: “If you don’t do more than you believe to be necessary, then you will not succeed.” This strikes me as a matter of correcting a mistaken level of effort, not a matter of supererogation. In fact if someone exerts a level of effort that is insufficient to achieve their goals or duties, then they are being negligent and are failing to act in such a way to achieve their goals or fulfill their duties.

That to go above and beyond is, indeed, not expected on the basis of duty. And it cannot be, as to insist to go above duty is duty is a contradiction in terms. — fdrake

Indeed, and when we add to this the idea that we are obliged to undertake means which fulfill our obligatory ends, your notion that the truly sufficient means are supererogatory is undone.

That failure, our perpetual inability to act in accordance with our better natures, and our ranging ability to absolve ourselves of responsibility for this, far from being an awfulness which can be excised from humanity is our essential condition. — fdrake

I think the fact that we fail to fulfill our means-obligations proves that either we are fallen or else our notions of morality and duty are fundamentally confused. To my mind this essentially proves our need for salvation.

But let’s suppose that unregenerate man fails to fulfill his means-obligations. What then? Will telling him that he must do the supererogatory fix the situation? I don’t see how it would. If he isn’t fulfilling his means-obligations it’s not clear why he would fulfill his means-supererogations.

I would say that for the non-religious, or for those who believe that this state is our inevitable and perpetual condition, the only option is some form of resignation (to failure). To reuse the recycling analogy, this would be resigning oneself to fail to correct climate impact. You can still recycle, but only with the knowledge that you will not succeed—with the knowledge that you are only delaying the inevitable. And one can play Camus all they like, but that burns out fast enough.

At the end of the day we must ask for help. We know we can’t do it on our own. The crucial question then becomes: where to turn for help? There are many options.

- :up:

If someone went to a prestigious health conference and said their definition of good health was being in pain and vomiting until you die the other guests would laugh at them at best and ask them to leave at worst and they wouldn’t get invited back. — Captain Homicide

Harris' point here is salutary. It is that just because there is disagreement does not mean there is no truth to the matter. If there were no truth to the matter of health then the claim that health is "being in pain and vomiting until you die," would be no more true or false than any other claim about health. But this is clearly wrong. Therefore health is truth-apt. I make this sort of argument a lot to the many skeptics and pluralists of TPF, .

In Aristotelian language we would say that certain first principles are readily known even if there is disagreement about some entailments of those first principles. We do not disagree on the foundation, even though we can disagree on the more speculative matters which are not as easy to see as the foundation.

Aristotle even grounds disagreement itself in the agreement on the . In Metaphysics IV he shows that anyone who rejects the PNC will reduce their utterances to nonsense.

If they were using observation and calculation and I did not understand how that was possible I would probably have believed that they must have direct non-empirically derived knowledge. — Janus

But you're begging the question of your own paradigm again. The question is whether you would think they have knowledge you don't understand if they could make accurate predictions, but you had no idea how. That means you do not understand them to be using "observation and calculation," which are the tools of your own scientific paradigm. Again, see my references to the FBI psychics above.

From above:

What kind if argument could possibly show that such knowledge is possible, in fact not merely possible, but real for some? — Janus

The effects of the knowledge show that it is possessed, in the way of a sign. If someone can make an accurate prediction then this is a sign that they had knowledge of the future. This holds even if you have no idea how they obtained such knowledge. Your idea that it is impossible to provide evidence for non-standard forms of knowledge is simply not true.

- I am saying that if you were living in the ancient world you would be the guy claiming that no one has special knowledge and eclipses cannot be predicted, because the science does not allow for it.

The kind oif direct knowledge I have in mind is the supposed knowledge of the sage into the true nature of reality, not foreknowledge of temporal events. — Janus

My point is that the sage who has insight into the true nature of reality will be able to do verifiable things that most people cannot do. This is exactly what happened with ancient philosophers and eclipses. If you don't think that same thing can happen today, then it seems you do think we have reached the end of science. ...that if our scientific rules preclude some form of knowledge, then that form of knowledge is simply impossible because our scientific rules are final. Every scientific age ends when it is learned that the science was not as final as was believed.

Yes, but that is empirical knowledge. We were discussing the confirmability so-called "direct knowledge" or intellectual intuition I thought. — Janus

Who's to say that he doesn't know it directly? I could have direct knowledge that some future event will occur, and this would in no way preclude the future occurrence from being verified. Direct knowledge and empirical confirmation are not mutually exclusive.

I'm not sure if you saw my edit above:

There is no intrinsic barrier to the FBI using a psychic to help in an investigation, even though the FBI agents are not themselves psychics and are not able to reproduce the psychic's method. — Leontiskos

If those "theses" cannot be confirmed by logical or emprical evidence, then how will they be confirmed? — Janus

If someone claims to have special knowledge, and that knowledge is in no way confirmable by any other person, then their knowledge cannot be confirmed. But that case seems like it would be quite rare.

For example, if an ancient philosopher claimed to have knowledge of an eclipse, and the eclipse occurred when they said it would, then their knowledge was confirmable. All we have to do is check and see if the eclipse occurs at the predicted time. It's pretty straightforward, and if the current science holds that predicting eclipses is impossible, then the successful prediction counts as evidence against that scientific paradigm.

What kind if argument could possibly show that such knowledge is possible, in fact not merely possible, but real for some? — Janus

The person who claims to have that sort of knowledge propounds theses that are not accessible to the current paradigm, and if those theses are verified then you have evidence for their knowledge. This is the same way any new paradigm establishes itself.

More simply: special abilities signify special knowledge or special faculties. All they have to do is demonstrate the abilities.

For example, think about the way that the FBI will leverage psychics in difficult cases, and the way in which they have certain psychics who have a good track record, and whom they trust to provide aid in their investigations. There is no intrinsic barrier to the FBI using a psychic to help in an investigation, even though the FBI agents are not themselves psychics and are not able to reproduce the psychic's method.

Someone who thinks the FBI couldn't possibly use psychics may well reflect J's theory:

There's a natural tendency to regard "science" as meaning "everything we know now, which is all there is to know." — J

-

I don't know what led you to think I was suggesting that we have reached the "end of Science". We know what science consists in as it is practiced. — Janus

To say that we know what is and isn't science with some sort of perfect certainty implies that one thinks there can be no further scientific paradigm shifts. That mindset occurs in every age ...at least until the next scientific paradigm shift.

- I agree with most of that. :up:

My point would be that what appears as supererogation from the frame of history/man, and thus monstrous to compel, need not appear so from a corrected perspective.

To "take up one's cross," and "be crucified with Christ," are beyond the duties fallen man recognizes for man, for instance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's fair, but I am not convinced that arduous acts like "taking up one's cross" are compelled, unless we are talking about Christians:

That's not to say that what is obligatory for a Christian is the same as what is obligatory for a non-Christian, but I don't think Christians should impose specifically Christian obligations on non-Christians. — Leontiskos

So I want to say that "to take up one's cross" is also beyond the duties that Christians recognize for non-Christians.

In general, to coerce or compel a non-duty is to require someone to do what they are not required to do, and this is unjust. Compelled supererogation is but one instance of this.

Hence, supererogation is neither monstrous (sub-natural) nor angelic (supernatural), but the original, natural state intended for God's image bearer. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think you mean "deification," not "supererogation." They seem quite different.

Twice now in this thread I've wondered if I simply don't understand the word "supererogation" and reached for the dictionary:

the act of performing more than is required by duty, obligation, or need — Supererogation | Merriam-Webster Dictionary

doing more than necessary:

-An act of supererogation is an act that is "beyond the call of duty" - it is an act that is over and above what a person is required to do.
-A man may do more than the law requires of him, and perform works of supererogation. — Supererogation | Cambridge Dictionary

I have never heard the nature/grace debate couched in terms of supererogation or duty/obligation. You could fanagle the term into that debate via the route of "necessity," but that whole paradigm seems largely foreign to the issue. It is foreign in large part because, "When you have done all that is commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’" (Luke 17:10).

Science was born out of the quest for Truth, capital T, — Wayfarer

What does "capital T truth" mean? I hear that phrase a lot but I never know what it means.

...Meister Eckhart. A medieval monastic and mystic — Wayfarer

FYI, Eckhart was a Dominican, not a monastic. The monastics mostly hated the new mendicant Orders. In fact he was a scholastic who served two terms at the University of Paris as a magister—the first to do so since Aquinas. He is one example of the confluence of mysticism and scholasticism.

I used to live with a Fransiscan nun who did lots of outreach work. I'm thus quite fond of Fransiscans. — fdrake

Very cool. Individual Franciscans are hit or miss for me, but I do appreciate their overall ethos and I have met some remarkable individuals.

...though we ended up having a lot of heated discussions regarding whether brutal tragedies, like miscarriages, should be seen as other parts of God's artwork. I was of the impression that all of creation meant all of it, the nun agreed. Neither of us could quite stomach loving the majesty of suffering and indifference. The damnedest thing we spoke about was that it was ultimately our senses of compassion and espirit de corps with humanity that stopped both of us from also loving pain. — fdrake

I'm an orthodox Christian, and the orthodox answer is that the state which brings about tragedy flows out of the Fall. Christians have not traditionally accepted tragedy as part of God's (primary) plan, and that's why. It doesn't surprise me that Christians who throw out those doctrines run into these problems. The doctrines are there for a reason. You get the same thing in Catholic theology with limbo. Limbo is thrown out and then you end up with all sorts of intractable problems with the stark heaven/hell dichotomy. We forget that the doctrines were there for a reason, and cannot be thrown out indiscriminately.

When I've been referring to supererogatory acts, I've been wondering if I should've come up with another construct like "acts that would be considered supererogatory if they were not coerced or compelled in any sense". — fdrake

Yes, that would quell many of my critiques. "That would have been a heroic act if he had chosen it himself!"

I kept referring to them as supererogatory to play with the question I just asked you regarding that distinguishes an act which one feels compelled to do and an act which one is really compelled to do. It is a hard question, as it seems you agree? — fdrake

Well the simple answer is that self-compulsion is not possible, and that one cannot be compelled by something which is not an agent. Or more precisely, that the "mixed nature" of an act like jettisoning cargo does not count as involuntary. But at that point we're picking at your attempt to blur the line between being compelled by an agent and being compelled by a circumstance.

To be blunt, I don't see how injustice (or monstrosity) can arise via compulsion unless there is an actual agent doing the compelling. One might feel—or be—compelled to jettison cargo, and they can feel frustrated about that, but I don't see anything unjust or monstrous about this. If you bring in the idea of gods or demons and say that Poseidon is a monster for compelling you to jettison cargo, then all of the logic is restored (and I wonder if this sense of "monstrosity" is a hangover from that view of gods). I'm not really opposed to that view of gods or angels/demons, so this isn't a full-scale criticism of that sense of monstrosity, but it is a criticism of the idea that one can be unjustly or monstrously compelled when no other agent is involved.

The more mundane question here is whether it is rational to get angry at a circumstance which is no one's fault. It's not an uninteresting question given that we do get angry in that manner quite often.

I should then perhaps conclude {on the same basis as the previous paragraph} that I was obliged to use two antibacterial wipes to clean my kitchen counter. Which means using three would've been a dereliction of duty. Which is absurd. — fdrake

I would say that:

1. If
1a. You are obliged to clean your flat, and
1b. Cleaning your flat entails cleaning the kitchen counter, and
1c. You decide to clean the counter with antibacterial wipes, and if 1c...
1d. ...Then two antibacterial wipes are required to clean the counter
-then-
2. You are obliged to use at least two antibacterial wipes when cleaning your kitchen counter

<(1a ∧ 1b ∧ 1c ∧ (1c → 1d)) → 2>

If we omitted the words "at least" from (2) then the conditional would be false, as there is no obligation to use exactly two wipes (unless we want to bring in another premise, say, about wasting wipes). That is, your claim that using three would be a dereliction of duty is false.

This is relevant because Y could be a supererogation, and you could not derive a contradiction from X entails Y and one-ought-X due to the failure of the syllogism.

Which is the situation I am construing us as being in. We have obligations, those obligations entail supererogatory acts, but nevertheless we are not obliged to do them. — fdrake

I don't see that this is correct. If we let Y = 3 antibacterial wipes (which is supererogatory), then the entailment fails. It fails because at that point X no longer entails Y. Being obliged to do X does not oblige us to do Y.

Even though we are required to do them to fulfil our obligations in some sense. — fdrake

In what sense is one required to use three antibacterial wipes in order to clean the kitchen counter?

So if one believes one ought to do something about climate change, "your bit" is recycling, but everyone knows it's not enough. — fdrake

As I said previously, if recycling is not enough then one who has recycled has not yet done their bit, at least if the joint "bits" are supposed to be sufficient.

Nevertheless I want to insist that you really have succeeded in your duties if you do your bit. It's just that succeeding in your duties doesn't correspond to your duties fulfilling their intended function or purpose. Like addressing the existential threat climate change poses to human civilisation on the basis of putting the sardine tin in the green bin. — fdrake

Again, I would describe this as naïveté about what is required, or sufficient, or obligatory. If someone believes that putting the sardine tin in the green bin is sufficient to address climate change, then they believe a false proposition.

Earlier I said:

Unless you're just saying that the many are lazy and therefore the few have to pick up the slack, but that seems like a different argument. — Leontiskos

Even though that's not a very poetic or interesting way to phrase it, it's basically how I see the issue. If we view humans as social and hierarchical creatures rather than as atomic individuals, then the human community will require disproportionate sacrifice from the few in order that the whole community may thrive. This disproportionate sacrifice is arguably supererogatory (on a democratic-individualistic paradigm), and it is also a hypothetical imperative unto the end of communal flourishing (or in some cases, communal survival). But on an ancient paradigm the disproportionate work is not a burden, for the model of excellence was the heavenly spheres, which are constantly "working," and on which everything else depends to the utmost, but yet which have the most excellent and beautiful job of all.

Historically that is also how the saint or prophet would tend to view themselves (excepting the many saints who are too humble to think too long on themselves). It's not that they have a monstrous, burdensome, supererogatory job.* Rather, it's that they have been blessed to sit at the head of the table, near the Host, and that "the greatest is the servant of all." They imitate the Host who is kenotically pouring Himself out ceaselessly—who moves "the sun and the other stars." Besides, your point still finds a home in the idea that, "To whom much has been given, much will be demanded" (Luke 12:48).

This is why lots of Christians find the liberal-democratic paradigm rotten at its core, for it cannot but help view disproportionate service as tyrannical or monstrous.

* With certain exceptions such as Jeremiah or Jonah

Under what conditions would you say someone is really compelled to do something vs if they merely feel compelled to do so something? — fdrake

Allow me to reframe it. Your monstrosity depends on the relation between volition and compulsion. Here is Aristotle:

Throwing a cargo overboard in a storm is a somewhat analogous case. No one voluntarily throws away his property if nothing is to come of it, but any sensible person would do so to save the life of himself and the crew.

Acts of this kind, then, are of a mixed nature, but they more nearly resemble voluntary acts. — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, III.1

No monstrosity is occurring in an act with this sort of "mixed nature." Thus even certain forms of true compulsion are not involuntary. You haven't given a clear definition of what you mean by "monstrosity," but presumably it has to do with the kind of compulsion and constraint that makes an act involuntary.

Or put it this way: if you are the only man on Earth and you ran into Aron Lee Ralston's conundrum, you might be tempted to say that cutting off your arm is supererogatory (and therefore not obligatory), but I would be hard pressed to understand why it has anything at all to do with obligation. I would be hard pressed to tell you in what this obligation consists. (Let's also suppose you're an atheist.)

Edit: I think a big part of the issue is this question: How is a properly supererogatory act motivated? Can someone self-consciously engage in a supererogatory act, or will every heroic act be self-consciously viewed as obligatory?

Nah I'm going back to the Society of St. Francis. — fdrake

A friar, a gyrovague! That takes me back. Dominic and Francis were only ten years apart.

There are things which will not improve without some acts of supererogation. If someone believes that those things must improve, then they believe some acts of supererogation are required. The model I have of this is giving up your life as an activist for a noble cause - really a necessary cause, like making sure people don't starve to death. — fdrake

Okay, but what are these "things" that cannot improve without some acts of supererogation? I think most religious people would agree that there are such things, but I don't see how something like feeding the hungry could be one of those things. Is it really true that starvation is something that cannot improve without acts of supererogation? Ironically, it may be that starvation is one of those issues that will never improve if it depends on supererogation.

The mirror of your argument is this: supererogation is difficult and rare, and therefore if things are to improve they should not depend on supererogation. Again granting your premise that some things do require supererogation, nevertheless I do not see how the basic goals of require supererogation. For example, it seems to me that the problem of hunger would certainly improve if everyone simply did their obligatory part. The notion that simple acts get us "no closer" to the goal is simply not true. Indeed, an important question is whether humans require unattainable goals in order to entertain hope, and whether they will cook up new unattainable goals when they become restless and stagnant.

I've spoken with several Christians who saw bringing about the kingdom of god as their greatest moral imperative — fdrake

But note the word "their." There is no reason why supererogation cannot be imperative, but your OP is about compelled supererogation. I think what you probably mean to say is that one feels compelled to do something heroic. To say that they are compelled is stretching language too far. I can feel constrained or compelled to propose to the woman I love, but I am not in fact compelled to do so. There is no compulsion, strictly speaking.

Which is all well and good, it's just that if someone were to believe that one was obliged to do what one must to bring about that better state, one would then be committed to the supererogatory. — fdrake

If this isn't a contradiction, then I would invite you to go ahead and define "supererogatory" and "obligatory" and work out how you haven't just uttered a contradiction. Presumably you are just using poetic and inaccurate language to say that our obligations are more than we assumed. What is your definition of "supererogatory"? Is a supererogatory act something that goes beyond obligation, or is it merely an act that is uncommonly arduous?

An example, this is very much the logic behind "doing your bit". Someone {usually incorrectly} sorts their recycling and doesn't go join a group to help with the supply side of climate crisis issues, 30 years of zealous recycling ever and we're no closer. "Doing your bit" was never enough. People will absolutely get irritated at those who recycle incorrectly, or don't recycle at all, even though they are also putting the wrong things in the wrong bins due to design failures, and much plastic that ends up in the right bins can't be recycled anyway. You can do your bit forever and it's fine, but "just fine" forever means the quality of forever degrades. — fdrake

1. We are obliged to solve the recycling problem
2. If everyone "does their bit" then the recycling problem will be solved
3. "Doing your bit" was never enough {Contradiction}

Your response is, "Supererogation is necessary to solve the recycling problem." The better response is that we underestimated what "doing your bit" entails. If (1) is true then (2) entails that we are obliged to "do our bit," and that if X bit is insufficient to make (2) true then we are obliged to do more than X. As far as I'm concerned, (3) is an equivocation which assumes that "doing your bit" is some contribution less than "your bit."

Unless you're just saying that the many are lazy and therefore the few have to pick up the slack, but that seems like a different argument.

water is composed of H20 — J

water = H20 — Banno

It is interesting that 39% of the references to the molecular structure of water on TPF are given as 'H20' (H-twenty) rather than as 'H2O'. It makes those discussions elusive to a search.

In that case I should go to all the “God” threads, ignore the specific topic, and just bring the conversation back to how God doesn’t exist. — Mikie

It happens constantly, and it's not against the ethos of the forum.

What you could do is, instead of asking for a special stricture in your thread, propose a new forum approach that would apply to all threads.

I'm not trying to say that only acts of supererogation improve things, I'm saying that some acts of supererogation are required to improve things and trying to draw out a consequence. — fdrake

I read you as saying that things cannot improve without (compelled) supererogation, and that is what I was responding to. Do you say that things cannot improve without (compelled) supererogation?

What I have in mind with a moral imagination is, roughly, a psychological and social concept. — fdrake

Okay, understood. I certainly agree that if we cannot think about how things might be better, then we will never effectively improve things. But I don't agree that thinking about how things might be better is necessarily supererogatory. Some parts of the moral imagination are supererogatory (both for the individual thinking and for the goals he is thinking), and some parts are not.

I'm sure you can see the Christian theological undertones there, they are quite intentional. I trial ran this discussion with a priest. — fdrake

Okay, interesting. I certainly see it, but I also disagree with Christians who would make the supererogatory obligatory. I'm a traditional Catholic in that sense. And I think things can improve without saints, just as bread can be edible without yeast. That's not to say that what is obligatory for a Christian is the same as what is obligatory for a non-Christian, but I don't think Christians should impose specifically Christian obligations on non-Christians. I don't know whether you would disagree with this.

So are you leaving TPF to become a monk after Eärendil? :smile:

What is monstrous is any state of affairs that requires some people to act in a supererogatory fashion at some times in order to improve the world. — fdrake

Okay, and I don't really agree with that, but I would distinguish "improvement." I would only agree with the claim <What is monstrous is any state of affairs that requires some people to act in a supererogatory fashion at some time in order to meet a mere obligation of improvement> (where the meeting of a mere obligation is not supererogatory). Some morally imagined improvements involve supererogation, some require mere obligation, and some require neither.

I'm making an argument that "the moral floor" is sinking, or too low, if you are only required to act in accordance with it. The minimum effort is not enough to attain what the minimum effort aims for, a kind world. If people act as they do in accordance with their moral imagination to be kind, for a kinder world, then the bar of duty isn't high enough. And because it's not high enough, existence compels us to a largely unachievable higher nature. This is monstrous, but not necessarily wrong. — fdrake

Okay. Aristotle's way of phrasing that is to say that society cannot survive on justice alone. That if we do not bail out more water than we believe to be flowing into the boat then we will sink.

In any case, I agree with most of your claims in this final paragraph, so maybe I agree with your conclusion but disagree with some of the argumentation. ...Or else I am not reading it in a sufficiently poetic register.

existence compels us to a largely unachievable higher nature — fdrake

Is it something like Eliot's, "In order to arrive at what you are not / You must go through the way in which you are not"? Or, "When you stop growing you start dying"? Or that to give up the stretching and tension of transcendent aspirations is to have become subhuman?

Ultimately it is the Pelagian themes that worry me. The monstrosity takes a different form if God is tangential to the picture, for then there is no surgeon other than ourselves:

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good. — T. S. Eliot's East Coker

The "supererogation" takes on a very different form when one is a patient.

Can it count as a doer of evil if it isn’t a human? — fdrake

It can count as (natural) evil, but it can't count as a doer. So when you go on to say that an ideology isn't an agent, you are simultaneously saying that it isn't a doer, and hence is not a doer of evil.

We could say that rocks are evil insofar as rocks can kill people, either via moral agents or apart from them. But a law or an ideology really isn't like a rock. In that case we can prescind from the agency of the people who fashioned or uphold the law or ideology, but we can't pretend that the agency doesn't exist at all.

Something which "requires acts of supererogation" must be an agent (or a "doer"). This is because in order to require an act of supererogation one must understand what is obligatory and then require an act that is not obligatory. So a law could require supererogation via the agents who create it, but a rock cannot require supererogation.** Or consider something that requires one to give all their earthly possessions away, namely death. Death is not requiring a supererogatory act, even though it does require us to give all our possessions away, and the reason it does not require a supererogatory act is because it possesses no agency. Someone can meet their death in a supererogatory way, but death does not require supererogation in requiring one to yield up all their possessions. At best the natural reality of death predisposes us to supererogatory acts, but does not require them.

A pure passion is never supererogatory, because "in order for an act to count as supererogatory, it must be classified as a choice," and (pure) passions are merely things that we suffer, things that happen to us. So when you claim that some reality without agency requires acts of supererogation, you seem to err twice, both in thinking that something without knowledge can require supererogatory acts, and in thinking that because someone undergoes a passion—say, of losing all their possessions—they have therefore performed an act, and even a supererogatory act, namely the act of giving up all their possessions. One can lose without giving up.

Nevertheless, I agree that it is a "monstrosity" when someone requires as due what is in fact supererogatory. But it is not an inevitability. In the case you reference we should simply remind them that we are not obliged to "improve things," and certainly not according to their criteria. The same can be said to ourselves. When the day is done and it is time for sleep, even the atheist can say, "I am not God. It does not all depend on me."

** And in a more precise sense, coerced supererogation is not supererogatory, as noted above. So in the end even things which can implore acts of supererogation cannot require or demand them.

Not much rescuing of the subject there, insofar as the subject still has the functional necessity for understanding the content the study of looking implicates. — Mww

Bernstein goes on to make an interesting point. He says that Husserl "fails to stress the dialectical similarity" between objectivism and transcendentalism — J

Yep.

But what does part 2 achieve in relation to part 1? It achieves a form of philosophy which more fully incorporates the subject. There are lots of targets involved in part 1, and phenomenology hits some and misses others. At the same time, I am not sure if Wayfarer targets certitude in the way that J does. That Husserl wants a foundation that will withstand historical vicissitudes may not be a problem at all, even for Wayfarer.

Then it’s truly remarkable how wanting to avoid those discussions by narrowing the conversation down in a separate thread is considered problematic. — Mikie

Making a separate thread is no help. You could make a million threads on geophysics and flat-earthers could post in all of them.

According to you, there’s basically no way to do so. Fine—point made. I don’t agree. — Mikie

And yet you're faced with the contradiction that even according to the topic of your new thread climate change skepticism is on-topic given that climate change skepticism has to do with the effects of climate change. Your Holocaust counterpoint was . But we will agree to disagree.

Granted, I don't think the way TPF is set up is inevitable. Other approaches are possible. But TPF's approach is not particularly bad.