Geoff's Miscellany

As far as I can tell, there are three major problems in ethical thinking today:

1. Disconnecting ethics from happiness and therefore thinking that personal well-being and pleasure have nothing to do with ethics.
2. Hedonism: The idea that right and wrong is only a matter of what leads to the highest personal pleasure. In social ethics, this means allowing people to do whatever they think/feel will make them feel the best. We might call this unscientific utilitarianism (because it isn’t based upon actual knowledge of what is good for the individual or collective human organism.
3. The is/ought problem: That since knowledge is all descriptive, no understanding of what is can lead to a conclusion about what one ought to do.

Below are the paragraphs where he introduces the axiom in his book, 10 Philosophical Mistakes:

One of the ideas that emerges from the first two chapters of Genesis is the distinction between creation and cultivation, nature and art, or even chaos and order.

For instance, when God makes the world it is a chaotic emptiness (Genesis 1:1-2), but through the next several verses, he organizes it into a series of useful categories. Then he makes humanity, explaining that not only would they reproduce and eat, like the other creatures, but that they would be blessed, take dominion, and bear the image of God. So man is to subdue (or cultivate in context) the created world.

In the past I’ve written pretty extensively about the difference between rhetoric and dialectic. The distinction between the two, I think, can be quite important for understanding Scripture. Here’s a short review:

1. Dialectic is the art of using logic and facts in order to find what is true. In reference to discourse (written or spoken) it is essentially the posture of either science or exposition. It's purpose is chiefly truth.
2. Rhetoric is the art of determining what is persuasive use well as using it. It's purpose is chiefly feeling.

When reading the gospels (themselves a form of rhetoric) one of the places where Jesus is pretty clear about what makes for a morally whole and upright existence is his endorsement of honoring your parents by caring for them financially:

There are two modes of public discourse that deal with syllogisms:

1. Rhetoric – the art of persuasion
2. Dialectic – the art of discovering/explaining what must or may be true or false based upon facts and reasoning.

1. Pure dialectic – Exact discourse using facts and logic (think math lectures)
2. Truthful Rhetoric – Rhetoric that appeals to emotions while being backed up by careful research or absolute truth.
3. False-Dialectic – Attempted dialectic that the wielder does not realize is actually rhetoric.
4. Sophistry – the intentional use of emotional rhetoric to convince people to act/feel/believe without reference to the truth.

1. Deliberative Meant to persuade people to act.

2. Judicial Meant to convict or defend people based on their deeds.

3. Epideictic Used to raise support for and adherence to group values. In other words, it is meant to inspire or please the hearers. A secondary use is to portray a person, group, or idea as honorable or shameful.

For instance, Christians often use epideictic rhetoric that is designed to inspire deeper commitment to Christ amongst believers to share the gospel with outsiders.

One of the persistent themes of recent psychological literature on success is the inner voice. Thought it has many names, the inner voice describes sort of things we tell ourselves to psych ourselves up, out, or distract ourselves from ourselves. The Christian tradition, especially the Puritan and Greek Orthodox branches of soul care, did not leave these sorts of questions out. For examples of writing about using the inner monolog to grow in virtue I highly recommend the works of Evagrius of Pontus and, Thomas Brooks, and Richard Baxter.

One of the most important philosophers to read for your personal development is Aristotle. Also, read the book of Proverbs. It has hints for becoming charismatic, managing your money, flirting, being happy, and even going to heaven.

In his rhetorical manual, Aristotle observes this (just read the bold to get the main point):

But since rhetoric exists to affect the giving of decisions—the hearers decide between one political speaker and another, and a legal verdict is a decision—the orator must not only try to make the argument of his speech demonstrative and worthy of belief; he must also make his own character look right and put his hearers, who are to decide, into the right frame of mind. Particularly in political oratory, but [25] also in lawsuits, it adds much to an orator’s influence that his own character should look right and that he should be thought to entertain the right feelings towards his hearers; and also that his hearers themselves should be in just the right frame of mind. That the orator’s own character should look right is particularly important in political [30] speaking: that the audience should be in the right frame of mind, in lawsuits. When people are feeling friendly and placable, they think one sort of thing; when they are feeling angry or hostile, they think either something totally [1378a] different or the same thing with a different intensity: when they feel friendly to the man who comes before them for judgement, they regard him as having done little wrong, if any; when they feel hostile, they take the opposite view. Again, if they are eager for, and have good hopes of, a thing that will be pleasant if it happens, they think that it certainly will happen and be good for them: whereas if [5] they are indifferent or annoyed, they do not think so.

W. Rhys Roberts, “RHETORICA,” in The Works of Aristotle, ed. W. D. Ross, trans. W. Rhys Roberts, E. S. Forster, and Ingram Bywater, vol. 11 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1924).

Ever since the days of Bacon and Newton philosophers and scientists have bothered themselves with determining the material and efficient causes of various objects and events. They, as a matter of course neglected, ignored, and repudiated the use of the concepts of formal and final causality. That was a brief summary of a truncation of thinking about nature that occurred during the Enlightenment era. This truncation, because of its laser like focus on determining what things are made of (material causes) and what events precede others and lead to them (efficient causes). Edward Feser, in his excellent intro to Aquinas' thought notes a lame duck critique of final causes (the idea that something either has a function, tendency, or goal in its nature):