27th April 1999 : Michael Nisbet
COMMENTS ON C96
For now, just a note to tie up one or two loose ends.
Apologies for the blunder pointed out in your footnote at C96/10. The sentence should read: 'Now, if the predicate exists in the mind as well as the subject, it must either (1) exist in the mind in the same way as the subject or (2) it must exist in the mind in a different way.'
I think the core of Moore's argument is that there is a sensation e.g. of blue that is not itself blue, yet we tend to confound the sensation with what it is of, which allows what he considered to be an idealist fallacy to arise. It is interesting to note that S.T. Coleridge, in some philosophical excursion of his, apparently drew up a distinction that seems to relate to this. According to him, a 'conscious presentation' is (1) a sensation in so far as it relates to a 'modification of one's own being' and (2) a perception in so far as it refers or relates to an object.
As for my attempted analysis of a tautological element in statements such as 'I see blue', of course my identity does not consist in any particular sensation or group of sensations or in sensations generally. But personal identity, it seems to me, arises within the context of perceptions and actions, which in language are reduced to subject-object terms. The core of my personal identity is the 'l' that acts and perceives (and subsequently thinks), and language encourages me to see that 'I' as having in itself an identity or substance that transcends any given action or perception. But in the last analysis that 'I' exists relative to what it perceives, thinks and does in the same way that what is perceived, thought and done exists in relation to that 'I'. In the sentences "I see blue" the prior term (if anything) is not either 'I' or 'blue'; it is that which relates the two: 'see'.
The Escher staircase provides a kind of inverse analogy. The unity of the staircase is revealed as an illusion from any perspective apart from a particular one. The dichotomy of subject and object, and of mind and matter, is revealed as an illusion from a relation-as-prior perspective.
On the morality and personhood front, the denial of the personhood of a human entity is rarely complete. This does of course happen from time to time, as where lynchings occur. Some measure of personhood (and hence last rites etc.) may be accorded to the condemned criminal by a society that has adopted humanitarian notions of a universal personhood, at least so far as its own members are concerned; and the football in no-man's land bears witness to such notions applying temporarily beyond national boundaries. There is always a tension between the identity of the group, which defines personhood in terms of that group and in contradistinction to the human entities excluded from it, and the perception that any entity capable of reflexive awareness is potentially a person. A human entity can both be and not be a person. Personhood is relative to the defining group, and the perceptions of the members of a group are subject to change. We cannot with a good conscience kill an entity admitted to the person category. If we kill someone whom the group that we belong to authorises us to kill in so far as that someone has been excluded from the category, and subsequently that person is admitted, then a quandary of conscience is inevitable.
To kill an entity maliciously when that entity has been admitted to the person category is murder. Euthanasia is not malicious, but there are circumstances in which a malicious killing could masquerade as euthanasia. I think that this is the core of the euthanasia problem.
I agree that my statement about the nature of objective fact towards the end of my C96 contribution is a bit too gnomic, but it will have served a useful purpose if, as you hope, it sparks off debate. I shall refrain for the present from commenting further, other than to say that perhaps I should have said something like : A statement intended to relate to 'objective matters of fact' pertains to a context of agreement, or to a shared context.
Objectivity cannot be established save where agreement is possible. Conversely, a subjective statement pertains to a private world that cannot be shared. Yet there are degrees of subjectivity that shade over into degrees of objectivity: in other words, a continuum that has been severed by the subject-object dichotomy.
I hope to be able to respond to some of the various and interesting contributions to C96 shortly, although possibly post-Braziers.
Michael Nisbet