Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Without Normative statements, CAN I come to a moral decision?

I have been told that Normative thinking mal-appropriates intellectual freedom. Normative statements are thought to be bad in psychological circles.

This is (A-normatively) both good and bad.
It is good, because I learn a great deal from exploring all the branching binary moral trees that develop as I let my intellect run woolly-wild in search of boundaries to check it.

It is bad, because those who deplore "Normativism," (in all its abusive forms,) review me as BOTH indecisive AND abusive. BOTH indecisive when I do not come to a moral decision and act, AND abusive when I do, early or late.
I regard this, at the very least, as a loss of freedom.

My question is this: Are these Psychologists documenting the fruits of all the investigation that this [in my opinion excessive] overhead of moral computation yields? I ask this question because many pursuits are justified in the name of research.
In Physics and Computational exploration, Research is a hack; attempting the impossible is a waste of time and money [together with the other resource factors of intellectual production.] - M.E.
If the moral dilemmas and happenstances predicted by this new and freer view of Moral Values actually occur in nature at frequencies of probability that exceed 1.25 x 10E-10 [the smallest useful probability for human application,] then they _must_ be documented for us to even have a bite at the apple of observation [logically speaking; this is not solely normative.]

I suppose that if we can NEVER observe them, then we can NEVER make a normative evaluation of them. Sadly, guilt can still be conceived, even if there is no preceptor to perceive moral law-breaking.

I am more concerned that this paralyzing assault on my system of moral navigation [replete with moral compass, moral grounds, moral values, moral standpoints and, for me at least, moral VIEWpoints,] may ask me to allow for a great many more things to be possible than those we can observe in Nature.

Take for example the old adage:
Why won't an Authentic Texan be caught DEAD in a Wolsey?

The authoritative answer is: Because you've got to CATCH one to kill him, and they take their hats of to die OUT OF PURE RESPECT!
I can contrive a situation in which an Authentic Texan is actually caught dead in a Wolsey as follows:

He is actually wearing a Wolsey. I catch him in a football field sized man-trap of a net, but he is alive in the middle, all unsuspecting, and has not taken off his hat at the same time as he has not yet triggered the mechanism. I then dispense with formalities, and double-tap him in the head with a long-arm, triggering the mechanism before his lifeless body hits the turf.

Magic has occurred: He is demonstrably "caught," in a state of DEAD, with his Wolsey still ON!

I don't worry about scenarios like this. They just don't happen in nature, and the moral games the Psychologists ask me to play, attempting to accommodate ALL POSSIBLE moral possibilities, eventuate moral emasculation.

No comments:

Post a Comment