I am in a philosophical mood so its time to waffle on about value judgements.
In our day to day life we make all kinds of judgements about people and events. It seems to me that most people categorise things (events, actions and other people) along polarised lines applying labels such as good or bad, natural or unnatural, normal or abnormal etc. People also seem to associate / align certain polarities together into two clusters to create a 'good' cluster and a 'bad' cluster. Hence the good-bad polarity is aligned with the natural-unnatural polarity and the normal-abnormal polarity.
Broadly speaking it seems that values judgements such as good, right, divine, normal, natural, healthy, legal, civilised, desirable, familiar, alive, creative, safe are all grouped together as one cluster of 'good' values in opposition to a cluster of 'bad' values including bad, wrong, satanic, abnormal, perverted, unnatural, unhealthy, illegal, uncivilised, anti-social, undesirable, unfamiliar, dead, destructive, unsafe, threatening.
Hence, when trying to explain why certain activities are morally wrong, people often claim that the particualr activities are immoral because they are unnatural or abnormal or perverted (and lts face it, 'perverted' basically means abnormal). This kind of argument is quite commonplace in discussions of sexual morality and gender identity but it also occurs in debates concerning moral or cultural values generally.
This kind of thinking is not restricted to debates about morality. For some real life examples, consider
1. the person who told me that he didn't use LSD because it was a chemical but that magic mushrooms were ok because they were natural
2. the person who by way of refutation of the claim that smoking causes cancer announced that it was ok to smoke tobacco and cannabis because they come out of the ground and they are gifts from the Goddess
In both of these examples, judgements concerning whether something is natural have influenced a person's judgement concerning whether something is healthy or safe.
This clustering of value judgements around a 'good' - 'bad' polarity is something which I regard as a false dichotomy but one which unfortunately underlies a lot of our everyday thinking about morality, cultural value judgements, health (especially the issue of whether to choose convential versus complimentary medicene), environmentalism and a whole lot of judgements about all kinds of other vague things (such as "So and so is a complete wierdo!").
I would be interested to know what everyone else thinks about this. Have you also noticed that people seem to think and argue this way? Have you ever noticed yourself thinking this way? Do you think that this is a valid way to think or do you think that it provides a good example of the way that people acquire certain lazy mental habits over their life which end up becoming obstacles to further intellectual development? Alternatively, do you just want me to stop phrasing my questions in polar either-or terms? (
) Can you think of any other lazy mental habits which people commonly engage in which act as barriers to understanding?
In our day to day life we make all kinds of judgements about people and events. It seems to me that most people categorise things (events, actions and other people) along polarised lines applying labels such as good or bad, natural or unnatural, normal or abnormal etc. People also seem to associate / align certain polarities together into two clusters to create a 'good' cluster and a 'bad' cluster. Hence the good-bad polarity is aligned with the natural-unnatural polarity and the normal-abnormal polarity.
Broadly speaking it seems that values judgements such as good, right, divine, normal, natural, healthy, legal, civilised, desirable, familiar, alive, creative, safe are all grouped together as one cluster of 'good' values in opposition to a cluster of 'bad' values including bad, wrong, satanic, abnormal, perverted, unnatural, unhealthy, illegal, uncivilised, anti-social, undesirable, unfamiliar, dead, destructive, unsafe, threatening.
Hence, when trying to explain why certain activities are morally wrong, people often claim that the particualr activities are immoral because they are unnatural or abnormal or perverted (and lts face it, 'perverted' basically means abnormal). This kind of argument is quite commonplace in discussions of sexual morality and gender identity but it also occurs in debates concerning moral or cultural values generally.
This kind of thinking is not restricted to debates about morality. For some real life examples, consider
1. the person who told me that he didn't use LSD because it was a chemical but that magic mushrooms were ok because they were natural
2. the person who by way of refutation of the claim that smoking causes cancer announced that it was ok to smoke tobacco and cannabis because they come out of the ground and they are gifts from the Goddess
In both of these examples, judgements concerning whether something is natural have influenced a person's judgement concerning whether something is healthy or safe.
This clustering of value judgements around a 'good' - 'bad' polarity is something which I regard as a false dichotomy but one which unfortunately underlies a lot of our everyday thinking about morality, cultural value judgements, health (especially the issue of whether to choose convential versus complimentary medicene), environmentalism and a whole lot of judgements about all kinds of other vague things (such as "So and so is a complete wierdo!").
I would be interested to know what everyone else thinks about this. Have you also noticed that people seem to think and argue this way? Have you ever noticed yourself thinking this way? Do you think that this is a valid way to think or do you think that it provides a good example of the way that people acquire certain lazy mental habits over their life which end up becoming obstacles to further intellectual development? Alternatively, do you just want me to stop phrasing my questions in polar either-or terms? (
) Can you think of any other lazy mental habits which people commonly engage in which act as barriers to understanding?
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An example: My landlady asked me last summer, "You're a goth, right?" Well, I do wear a lot of black, and I do happen to have a pair of Edward Gorey style bat wings painted on the back of my Cavalier wagon.... but I don't really consider myself gothic by definition. (My recurring bat symbolism is personal, having nothing to do with vampiric or gothic connotation.) I told her if that's the label she'd arrived at then I was comfortable with it. She was a little flustered by this.
On drug consumption, I wouldn't say certain ones are bad or good, just the way they're used/abused. I tend to gravitate towards those which are grown like cannabis or "shrooms" rather than formulated, such as ecstasy or lsd. I have trouble trusting my body to someone's laboratory cooking.
On a personal level, I have my own set of values or morals. They're somewhat archaic but serve me and my philosophy well. One of my biggest faults is loyalty, another is honesty, and fairness. Sometimes I will champion these to my own destruction.