It’s interesting that you discuss “mob psychology” because a concern with similar phenomena underlies my argument in Caught in Play. In other words, I think your questions are similar to mine, although you are coming at them from a different angle. The title “Caught in Play” refers to experiences of immersion in entertainment, and I think one thing that produces these mental states is the same sort of emotional contagion that occurs in an excited group. We “catch” emotions from actors on a screen, just as we can “catch” them from other persons who surround us. One could ask, then, whether entertainment sometimes functions as a mob can—whether it influences people’s emotions in ways that may direct their behavior, even so much so that they do things that they would normally reject as immoral. That’s my question, I don’t have the answer. (but see my posts on “shadow values” if you’re interested)

I think that in order to further advance this discussion I’m going to need to address your original criticism, which is that I need to clarify the relationships between entertainment and relativism. As I noted, I intend to do this, although I’ll probably have to wait until next year. For my blog at Psychology Today I want to write some stuff appropriate to the season, that seems to be what a lot of folks want to read about now. (maybe I can connect relativism and Santa…doubtful, I admit)

This post was mentioned on Twitter by mrteacup: The cultural relativism of science: http://bit.ly/5PFdJ9...

Ah, no worry. You can’t wear out my interest in this thread. I merely was worried it might be inappropriate to keep going on about this on your blog.
Like you, I think it’s really getting interesting at this point.
Legalities. To sharpen my point here, I agree that society has the right and the responsibility to communally set limits on ‘acceptable behavior’. The social sphere has limits of what it can and will tolerate. I do not classify these judgements as morality, or, moral truths. They lie in the domain of the “social discourse”. Personally, I prefer the social and the individual levels to remain seperate domains, in the sense that I determine my conscience and my actions. I am influenced by and influence the social realm, but, one does not determine the other. To me this is the reason ‘mob psychology’ gets so ‘ugly’. People will do things en mass they would never do singly. They become anonymous in the crowd and surrender their personal judgement and responsibility. Nazism as an extreme example of this, lynchings as another. Riots, not uncommon these days in the world, as another case. Your work on play, on entertainment, I think probably ties in to this very issue very well. Entertainment is a mass industry. It appeals to mobs of people, not individuals. It blurs the individual to appeal to as many as possible. The persons exposed to it are in turn affected by it. As they become more and more exposed they begin to imitate and emulate because they see it as the ‘mainstream’, the ‘weight of human knowledge’ must be with it because everybody likes it. Entertainment and play are to me forces of homogenization – even the heterogeneous productions and activities.
That is why I place morality on the shoulders of the individual. One must hold oneself to account for ones actions. The social can set limits on behavior, but, morality remains in the domain of the subject, the individual.

Your response to Greyson really does clarify much. It speaks of “the weight of human knowledge” and “strong evaluation”. Also, your discussion of ‘why’ as very illuminating. In your response to me you mention limits on our access to the level of certainty I wholly agree.

Thank you.

I don’t want to prolong this thread past the point of your interest, but I did want to make a couple of quick comments. First, I’m an old math guy myself, and I like the notion of domain and range here, I think you could do a lot with that. More broadly, even when we discover the truths of mathematics, they hold within the parameters of the system we have set up. 5 + 5=10 in our familiar base ten system; to say 5+5=10 is a universal truth extending beyond any numerical system is simple nonsense. This bears on your mention of “true once and for all.” Here I would say that we don’t have access to that level of certainty, all our truths must be considered revisable in the light of new evidence. Newtonian mechanics provided the truth until Einstein came along. Finally, why be moral, if one’s convictions are not based in religion? Because, as we have been struggling to establish, there are moral truths. You still seem to want to call these legalities, but as you point out this seems to be more a semantic issue than anything else. Good discussion, it’s been fun.

Now, obviously I’ve picked extreme examples, there will be lots of questions where we might really have some trouble figuring out “is this just a preference?” or is this an area of strong evaluation? In order to figure it out we will have to talk about why we think that this may be an area of strong evaluation, and we will answer that “why” question by talking about evidence from the realms of science, values, culture, etc.

Hope that helps. Glad to have your input.

The problem I think of as one of ‘range and domain’, used in the mathematical sense. What is the domain of the function and it’s range of values. Morality, as a study and a discipline, differs from physical science. Both ask ‘why’, both require ‘evidence’, both have conditions for ‘truth’ – yet, they vary in that physical sciences have substantial, material subjects to work with. Morality does not. The types of evidence differ from each other. The conditions for ‘true’ differ from one another. They strike me as somewhat incompatible in comparison.
I think the problem in discourses on morality and moral judgements run into problems when neither party has firmly established terminology in common. Both use a shared terminology, english words in common usage, but they don’t agree in their respective usage.

I also agree with J. Greyson on the “why” of morality, particularly in general. One’s answer to this illuminates any discussion of morality.
“Why be moral?” – to avoid social conflict? to get in heaven? obedience to the way you were raised? to fit in? to feel better, or superior to others? These answers occur and I feel they occur as bad reasons that actually reject morality as an expression of conscience. In my case, I ‘feel’ that I can live a life that gives satisfaction and worth if I follow a course of action that accords with my conscience. I ‘feel’ that I must live within the constraints of that conscience and not give in to impulsive actions. In this, the domain and range remains limitted to me alone. I do not qualify to act as judge of others morality, even though I will make judgements. Society will judge actions and attempt to judge motives, this is not morality but legality. To me, seperate domains.

Again, sorry to jump in on this. I had intended to stop with my last post but Greyson’s post raised what I thought was an important issue.

Aha, I think we are on the same page – just we disagree, perhaps, semantically. Yes, you are right to call me out on making an assumption. I was wrong in doing so. For some reason, I thought you were arguing from a theistic standpoint. To me it seems most who assert access to “moral truth” come from a theistic position. My apology for allowing that bias to cloud the discourse.
Where we disagree, I think, lies in the usage of ‘truth’ and ‘evidence’. I think we both argue as ‘moral people’, as person’s who seek to act in a conscientious way. Obviously you examine your actions and judgements and seek a ‘correctness’ in living a good life. I do too, as well. So, without terminology, we agree in our actions. We both judge murder as wrong, for example. We do seem to differ in the terminology we would use to describe our process. I can live with that.
-Thanks for the referral to Taylor, I am looking into him. I tend to be more up to date on ‘dead philosophers’ rather than living one’s. (From the reference to ‘authenticity’ I gather he is referring to Sartre or Heidegger. I am more familiar with Sartre. Heidegger’s involvement in National Socialism tends to put me off him, though, of late I have had more of a look at him. Gadamer was a student of his. Hated his involvement with the Nazi’s, but still examines his philosophy. I lean more towards Nietzsche’s attitude, if the man is rot so too his philosophy.)
Finally, your right. I disagree that truth is ‘simple’. I know what you mean, and am sympathetic to the position. I just dislike the common usage of the word ‘truth’, as if it were self-evident without any consideration. I don’t think truth just smacks us in the face and says, “Here I am. Look at me. I am true.” I agree ‘true’ only makes sense from the framework of human knowledge, from human reason and human discernment. That we must judge with both our mind and with our feelings, our conscience. Not all truth is based on evidence that can be touched. But, in the end, I feel that the word true implies that the issue is settled once and for all. That it assumes an objective position. If one qualifies it as in, “I find it true for me in my judgement that murder is wrong and can not be justified except in self-defense,” then it sounds right. It expresses my opinion, my judgement. It doesn’t classify itself as ‘the correct position’ unless one is referring to my position. That is all I really meant to argue, when I consider it more.

Again, thank you for the exchange of viewpoints and clarifications. I look forward to reading more of your posts and your work. I intend to look around more on your website as it is of interest to me.

“…there are many things that can be established as true without that having been established scientifically.” – Oh, I do agree. I just disagree with how easily the word ‘true’ gets thrown around in common usage. We rarely qualify what we mean by true. For most people, true means true. Truth and certainty have a difficult history in philosophy, science, and, psychology.

“In your final paragraph you are arguing for the importance of tolerance: if someone is raised in a different culture, with different morals, what right do we have to judge their actions? I agree that in some cases we want to be tolerant of beliefs and actions we think are wrong, but we can do that without saying “there is no truth in moral matters.” That statement is both wrong and dangerous, and I urge you to at least reflect carefully on your position here. You imply that we cannot judge the morality of the behavior of others, although it may be judged illegal. So was slavery morally OK in South Carolina in 1860, since it was legal?”
- Sorry to quote the whole paragraph, it’s just that you use the description of “wrong and dangerous” and that bothered me. I am not arguing for tolerance, in any way, shape, or, form. You are arguing that there occur “truths” in moral arguments. It implies that an objective standard exists somewhere. Where? Morality remains an abstraction and a judgement. Morality I locate in the subject, in his conscience. What I see as “dangerous” is the giving up of one’s conscience to the collective. The Germans following Hitler though they knew what they were doing in many instances went against their conscience. That, to me, as immoral.
Your case, was slavery ok because it was practiced in the South? Not from your perspective nor mine, here and now. We judge it with our conscience. I do not say “there is no truth in moral matters”. I do say we do not have an absolute-truth in moral matters. I don’t have access to the ‘scales of true-right and true-wrong’. No one does. We must judge for ourselves. We must weigh matters for ourselves. Finally, we must never give up the right to draw our own conclusions and surrender our conscience to the collective, the media, nor any other.
Your ‘slavery’ argument makes an emotional argument. You are judging it retrospectively from current, modern attitudes. You make a judgement here for yourself, from your perspective. You don’t have to abstain from judging it, but, you must be aware of how and why. You probably can’t convince me that if you had been born to a plantation back then you’d have freed your slaves and let yourself go broke. Again, I am not saying it was right. I do not condone it. However, I see it from here and now, not then and there.
To approach it differently, murder. Murder is wrong. When a cop shoots a man who’s about to shoot another, who is wrong then? In war, who is wrong? You seem to argue that an absolute scale of right and wrong exists. I do not see this scale of rightness. I know I have a conscience, that it pokes and prods me, advises me. I know that others pressure me to act in conformative ways and that I must judge for myself if I feel those actions are moral or not. What I argue for is that each of us must sharpen our perception of our own conscience, and, listen to it. I do not argue for tolerance. Societies have laws that govern social behavior that it will and will not tolerate. That doesn’t override my access to conscience. I’d like to think that in slavery times, or, in Nazi Germany, I’d have acted against what was accepted as right, as moral for then and there, and objected that it was in both cases against my conscience to participate in these injustices. That I felt them to be immoral and would act against them.
I do not argue for ‘moral relativism’ but for the development of conscience in the individual.

“You ask in your second paragraph if I am the one to judge the truth in aesthetic matters…” – My mistake. I meant more generally as in one can only judge one’s “taste” for oneself. Worded it poorly.