Friday, June 18, 2010

Unthinkable Thoughts

I wanted to move this up from the comments section, and see what everybody thought-

CM said...
Speaking of Fahrenheit 451, have you guys seen this article before? It's an oldie but goodie. It was mentioned on Benatar's UCT page, but there was no link, so I'd never read it until a couple days ago.

The author (a U of Helsinki Philosophy prof - I can't imagine how Matti Hayry must feel when in company with that specimen) basically says that some ideas are so unthinkable (and so outside of the human moral framework) that they should not be tolerated, no matter how logical the arguments may be, and he uses Benatar as an example. It's not like he's advocating burning his book, per se. He doesn't even suggest it shouldn't have been allowed to go to print. All he asks is merely that no one read it or think about it. That is all. Also, "there are indeed culturally loaded ethical limits to what we may truly think and still remain human beings"
.


What's interesting to me is that this comes from a Philosophy professor. "Please, students, neither read nor think about this subject. Das ist verboten!" Not that we're unfamiliar with this sentiment, but to see it emerge from this particular corner, and proclaimed so unashamedly, well...I guess I can still be surprised.

UPDATE: I was just mentioning to Chip in the comments section that it might be nice if he'd write something substantial addressing the essay offered by CM. Considering the subjects he often grapples with, I'd imagine he's faced this sort of challenge on more than one occasion. I was also thinking that others might like to give it a shot, plus it would allow me to shine a light on some the brainpower that drops by here on a frequent basis. If you're interested, mail your piece to quidproquo55@rocketmail.com, and I'll put it up. Make sure you label it 'unthinkable', as this is my public email addy, I receive 5 to 10 Nigerian email scams per day, and so am quick with the trigger finger.

Please don't feel rushed. Whenever they come in is fine with me. I'll go ahead and tag them so anyone interested can pull them up all together. I just thought this subject warranted a real group-think, and I'm hoping everyone will participate.

29 comments:

CM said...

link :-)

Chip said...

The argument is older than the hills, and seductive in its own way. For a restatement with some curious (and prurient) intellectual history attached, see Roger Shattuck's Forbidden Knowledge.

metamorphhh said...

CM: I was hoping you'd drop by with that :) Oh, and thanks for your Amazon review, and thanks also to the other reviewer in case they happen to be lurking here.

Chip: Thanks for the reference. I just finished reading the essay, and there's a lot not to like. I can't dive into it tonight, but I'm hoping maybe you and some of the others might address some the (non?) arguments. What I'd REALLY appreciate is an essay I could post up front. Or 2 or 3, even! Thanks in advance!

CM said...

Sorry, I thought I posted the link right after that comment, but it must be those hallucinogenic fumes again:)
Happy to review your book because IT IS AWESOME.

As for Philstrom's essay... aside from the rest of his bullshit, he's trying to argue (at least he's conscious of that) that we shouldn't follow arguments that lead to "unthinkable" conclusions. So all we have to do is declare his conclusion unthinkable and urge people not to think about it. Which is really all he deserves, but, just like you, I found the fact that this came from a professional philosopher particularly fucked up. What the hell are they paying him to do? I hope some students of his read it. Should give them an easy way out of having to do homework.

Chip said...

Jim,

Consider switching to Gmail. The spam filter doesn't fuck around.

I'd be happy to unpack the ad consequentiam fallacy in context, as it fits in with the broader project of The Hoover Hog and Nine-Banded Books. OK if I cross-post at the Hog? Give me a few days, as I'm working on a lot of things at once (and I take naps).

Shadow said...

For starters, I´d say that he began correctly. He began his text analysing and providing background in philosophy Benatar´s works.

It´s his conclusion that is not maybe the most happy.

Shadow said...

"Moreover, and more important, maintaining such views is morally wrong, as they violate fundamental moral structures of our common humanity, including the humanity of those individuals who do suffer from their existence (and about whom Benatar thus is, in a sense, correct)."

I confess I am kind of puzzled by this sentence...

metamorphhh said...

Chip:

That would be great! And the more exhaustive, the better. If you decide to do a series, I'll post it all. Looking forward to your treatment.

metamorphhh said...

Shadow:

I have problems with the thing at several key junctures. I hope you'll consider contributing an essay.

CM said...

Shadow - I think the guy's main thesis is that there are just some things that we ought to be puzzled by instead of thinking logically about them. Why? Who the fuck knows...

Looking forward to Chip's essay.

Rob said...

No respectable philosophy journal would publish such an execrable pile of shit. It might be more constructive to deal with reviews by real philosophers, like those by Harmon and Bradley, both of which were written in light of comments from Benatar, and Smilansky (who, by the way, makes a case for why we should be sorry that we exist, a nice companion to this scene from Storytelling).

Ann Sterzinger said...

I just read the essay in question, and I actually loved it! :) It made me feel so much better. :) :) I decided that the MY idea of an unthinkable thought was "there's a man-made disaster spewing plumes of oil into the ocean and we can't stop it till August," so I simply refused to accept it as an hypothesis! Problem totes solved. You preverts can 'argue' all you like, I'm sleeping easy tonight. :) :) :) (Huh, I can't figure out how to make an emoticon vomit...)

metamorphhh said...

Ann:

There's the spirit! You've inspired me to think about not thinking about world hunger. Any thoughts?

metamorphhh said...

Rob:

Thanks for the links. I moved the one paper over to the link library.

Ann Sterzinger said...

Not really, I'm busy ignoring this dent in my skull...

Shadow said...

Jim:

Well, I appreciate the request. I guess I can try.

CM:

Yeah!

TGGP said...

Rough attempt at a puking smiley
:-(######==B
As you can see, it has yet to reach the feet.

metamorphhh said...

TGGP:

And on top of everything else, you're an artist! LOL!

Chip said...

Rob:

That scene from Storytelling, it's a skeleton key. In fact, there seems to be at least one wicked giveaway in every Solondz film, yet critics -- pro and con -- fall back on the same adjectivally cushioned safety net. Unthinkable thoughts indeed.

TGGP said...

Karl Smith has a credible example of something true the public is better off not knowing.

The volume was too low for that "Storytelling" vid. I just stopped watching.

Chip said...

TGGP,

Similarly, Elizabeth Loftus has argued that side effects for certain medications should only be disclosed upon request due to the likelihood of psychosomatic manifestation.

Sister Y makes a credible argument that evidence for the "Werther Effect" is weaker than generally assumed, but if strong evidence for a similar effect involving violence were ever presented, that might provide some basis (depending on one's premises) to revisit the "right to know" presumption in certain contexts.

One lightning rod example where there is wide and seldom challenged agreement in favor of a codified restriction on knowledge concerns child pornography. If the standard arguments in favor of this proscription turn out to be strange or flawed upon examination, almost no one notices. Those who do notice become, for all intents and purposes, suspects.

Of course, I'm constitutionally inclined to opt for full frontal across the board no matter the stakes, and I am aware that my ultimate reasons largely reduce to romance and aesthetics (i.e., emotivism). I try to take other views into account.

Constant said...

This article should be prohibited as torture in virtue of its utter asininity... I'm not sure if I've ever seen such excessively awful arguments. The worst philosophical article I remember were all so bad because they lacked arguments altogether instead of presenting such bad ones.

Rob, thank's for bringing to attention these other reviews. I found that on Benatar's webpage, there is a list of reviews, complete with citations, so one can tell by the journals which one may be worth reading (although the place of publication is by no means a guarantee for anything).

I'm not really happy with the Smilansky stuff though. His case is prima facie very plausible, but the problem is that he doesn't dig deep enough; he doesn't analyse enough what it means to regret or be glad about something and what it means to have preferences about the past. And he unreflectingly assumes that there are no worlds where the holocaust didn't happen and I still exist. While such worlds are definitely impossible in one sense, it's not clear to me that they're not out there in logical space. Or maybe this whole thing has something to do with hyperintensionality (2+2=4 is something different from 2+3=5, even though they're true in all the same possible worlds - that's sometimes called hyperintensionality).

If someone's interested in problems of this kind, there's an article by David Velleman, which I think is also accessible on his wegpage, entitled "Love and Non-Existence", which also deals with the issue of regret and gladness about past things.

Rob said...

The full text of the reviews by Harmon and Bradley can be found by Googling their titles.

Smilanksy is presenting his paper at this year's ROME conference, where he will likely face objections of the kind and caliber raised by Constant.

By the way, a crumbling edition of this book I had never heard of leaped out at me the other day while randomly browsing a library shelf.

Ann Sterzinger said...

Chip -- If you mean to imply that the question of whether there are any thoughts at all which we should not consider/cause others to consider, for our/their good is more interesting than any of Philstrom's specific points regarding Benatar's argument, I agree with bells on. When he began to drop the word 'antinatalist' in favor of 'pro-death,' I began to wonder whether it's worthwhile to argue with such miserable obtuseness.

Garrett said...

I think Pihlstrom has convinced me that, as an antinatalist, it's impossible for me to have friends. I guess I'll have go and tell everyone that I care about that we can't be friends anymore... because Sami says so :P Oh, and all of you, you may go and @#$& yourselves :D

What a drip.

filrabat said...

"Please, students, neither read nor think about this subject. Das ist verboten!"

So say all establishment thinkers down through the millenia. Don't think about verboten subjects like: heliocentric theory, evolution, millions-of-year 'creationism', racial or religious or gender or sexual lifestyle equality. Heck, don't even think about the mistakes of Marx or the Communist Party (said to Soviet citizens in 1978).

Yeah, that's the ticket!

Chip said...

Ann,

That was what I meant to imply -- that the deeper question may be open, at least empirically. I agree with the general sentiment expressed in this thread that Philstrom's argument for philosophical intolerance wrt Benatar's views is shit. A stack of non-sequiturs topped off with poorly supported pronouncements. I intend to use it as a springboard -- one of several.

CM said...

Rob, I totally forgot that was even in Storytelling! Make me want to rewatch it. I also just added Happiness to my Netflix queue.

I agree with you about Harman and Bradley at least trying to engage Benatar's arguments; a lot of the issues with their reviews seem to be explained by endnote 3 in the first text and footnote 1 in the second.

I was wondering, Jim, if we are allowed to write essays about something other than Philstrom's crap (which is best responded to with something like PR efforts, not writing an essay, IMHO). I noticed that both Harman and Bradley (and Jeff McMahan in this book) have trouble with the fact that the asymmetry is supposed to be understood only in terms of goodness and badness for someone; they either say that there is a symmetry, or that the asymmetry can be rescued by introducing impersonal value for things like goodness and badness, which Benatar refuses to do. I'd like to write an essay that tries to address it. What do you think?

metamorphhh said...

CM:

Feel free to expand the subject/issue as you see fit. I've always said that it's impossible to establish an unanchored syllogistic approach here, disconnected from the primary, experience-based valuations. But I'm not that great at hashing out the formal approaches to this stuff, and I'm always looking for fresh perspectives to flesh out the arguments.

I'd also like to hear from those with more from-the-gut approaches. I'm a firm believer in the idea that there are different voices for different ears, y'know? If this little experiment works out, I plan on encouraging a lot more guest blogging. Consider this blog to be the community opera house, where all comers are invited to drop by and belt one out! :)