12 hours ago, Jonathan Weissberg said:
There’s a passage from OPAR I’m finding interest but not understanding. It states that some objects have no evaluative standing:
If an object is obtained through behavior in conflict with moral principle isn’t it the case that the object is evaluated as bad? Why is it that the object is deprived of “any evaluative standing”? I’m not really following how you can say an object can be detached from evaluation in the same way that a conclusion can be detached from cognition.
I think a parsing of this:
12 hours ago, Jonathan Weissberg said:
irrational mental processes detach a conclusion from the realm of cognition
means that the conclusion as reached through an irrational mental process is not a cognitive product… it is not, in a sense, even a thought. In that case a conclusion is like a random set of words which may or may not happen to be true, but in no way “resides” in the realm of cognition. It neither was produced nor arose their by virtue of the mind in its “doings”. Now, the end resulting words can separately be analyzed, ex post facto, by third persons, but that third person’s cognition is a new action which IS in the realm of cognition.
In a sense here, we are dealing with “conclusion” as a process.
So the following be careful to note the wording:
12 hours ago, Jonathan Weissberg said:
Whenever an object, spiritual or material, is sought or obtained by behavior in conflict with moral principle—whether the behavior involves fraud, improper compromise, the initiation of force, or any other evil—the means employed , by their very nature, clash with reality and thereby deprive the object in that context of any evaluative standing. Once the guidance of principle is dropped , there is no rational method of evaluating an object.
implies context.
A person who is not using principles, is acting irrationally, and hence is not engaged in the exercise of evaluation in the context. An act has attached to it all consequences, some would emphasize and separate out outcomes flowing from the “means” separately (as in the aphorism, the “ends do not justify the means”), but in truth an evaluation of an act as valuable, i.e. concluding to do X leads to flourishing, necessitates a rational assessment of all the consequences.
A hearty breakfast, when eaten in the context of a peacefully obtained earned meal, is valuable… it leads to long term flourishing. But eating breakfast, if its costs you your house, or sacrificing your child to a psychopath to buy it, is something different entirely in context. Evaluation is not simply a question of that food in your belly, and ignoring everything else, but must be in context what are all the results. If you have no principles, i.e. rational thought, in focusing on that concrete breakfast alone, you lose any chance of evaluating that transaction from a larger and more general standpoint.
THAT breakfast, as achieved in context, might have been part of an action/context which in total was a disvalue, or a value, but if you are not applying reason and principle, you literally have no way of knowing, or are purposefully avoiding, knowing. Since you are not omniscient, often the only way you can know whether some action on balance is valuable or not is with reliance on principle, which is much larger than simply looking at a plate of bacon and eggs.
If the specific acts ARE consistent with principles, and the concrete object pursued in such contexts are usually of value, the likelihood is that your action can be evaluated as good.
In the specific case where the acts actually are contrary to principle, then you could be hurting yourself, but it is impossible to know how much, the facts are too complex, and your concrete object then is some arbitrary thing in the balance scale , it might be good enough to tip the scales but it might not be. Without the guidance of principle you have no idea and evaluating the breakfast in context becomes impossible.