sarahmichigan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sarahmichigan) wrote2007-02-12 09:36 am
sarahmichigan) wrote2007-02-12 09:36 am
Questions about Logic and Reason
Some questions have come up in my mind or the mind of my LJ friends as I've been putting up logical fallacies, with examples, for discussion.
1. How much should we rely on reason and how much on emotion when making decisions about our personal lives? Setting law? Other decisions?
2. Are there circumstances where purely reason should be used to make decisions? Only emotion?
3. How much of our laws are based on morality? How much should be?
I tend to agree with the position that other people shouldn't be able to force their morality on me in the form of laws about private consensual adult behavior. And yet, some of our laws obviously reflect the majority's moral stance on various issues (i.e. "murder is wrong"). However, I think that while there is an *overlap* between morality and law, morality isn't the sole or even most important factor for determining law, because morals vary from good person to another good person, based on personal experience, religious and cultural background, etc. What I think is going on is a sort of "societal contract," in which we agree not to murder one another not so much for moral reasons as for practical ones. There's a reason that banishment was a terrible judgment thousands of years ago; especially in primitive environments, it's much harder to survive on your own than in a cooperative group. People who violate the unspoken social contract put the good of the group in danger, and that's why we agree to many laws that restrict our freedom-- it's because they're for the good of the whole group, even when they infringe on individual's rights.
Anyhow, additional thoughts on any of these questions?
1. How much should we rely on reason and how much on emotion when making decisions about our personal lives? Setting law? Other decisions?
2. Are there circumstances where purely reason should be used to make decisions? Only emotion?
3. How much of our laws are based on morality? How much should be?
I tend to agree with the position that other people shouldn't be able to force their morality on me in the form of laws about private consensual adult behavior. And yet, some of our laws obviously reflect the majority's moral stance on various issues (i.e. "murder is wrong"). However, I think that while there is an *overlap* between morality and law, morality isn't the sole or even most important factor for determining law, because morals vary from good person to another good person, based on personal experience, religious and cultural background, etc. What I think is going on is a sort of "societal contract," in which we agree not to murder one another not so much for moral reasons as for practical ones. There's a reason that banishment was a terrible judgment thousands of years ago; especially in primitive environments, it's much harder to survive on your own than in a cooperative group. People who violate the unspoken social contract put the good of the group in danger, and that's why we agree to many laws that restrict our freedom-- it's because they're for the good of the whole group, even when they infringe on individual's rights.
Anyhow, additional thoughts on any of these questions?
no subject
Legal decisions are best made on a basis that is generalisable. Emotional decisions are seldom generalisable; thus, evidence and logic form the best basis for law.
This seldom happens in practise.On a personal level, no. There is never basis for completely ignoring your emotional reaction to a situation- doing so can be quite dangerous (http://www.amazon.com/Gift-Fear-Gavin-Becker/dp/0440226198)- or for refusing to consider logical consideration.
There may well be reason to defer a logical discussion with a particular person, but that's another issue.
All of our laws should be founded in morality. The catch is this: law should be founded in moral consensus- no smarmy minorities trying to sneak in laws that are against other people's beliefs. If you want me to buy in to your morality, persuade me politely.
Further, I believe that law should focus on that subset of immorality that (a) is enforceable, and (b) constitutes significant public threat.
Am I making sense?
no subject
Yet moral values are, by their very nature, subjective, and therefore unlikely to be subject to universal consensus. And if you simply accept a moral value because more tan half the population accepts it, you run the risk of what Thomas Jefferson called "the tyrrany of the many over the few."Just because 51% of the people in a given place agree that X is immoral does not necessarily mean that X is, in fact, immoral.
You also will quickly encounter a difficulty when you try to reach morality by consensus: whose consensus do you use? A community's? An entire nation's? It's quite common for one region in a nation to subscribe to different moral values from another region. Even in a single town, you can have a problem, because any town of any decent size is not really a community--it's a collection of hundreds or perhaps thousands of communities, some of which overlap and some of which don't. In Atlanta, for example, the moral values of the BDSM community are significantly at odds with the moral values of the evangelical community; if you accept the notion of morality by consensus, then whichever community happens to be largest wins.
no subject
It's horribly difficult to pass laws that comprehensively represent everyone's morality.
It's not particularly difficult to pass laws that represent the overlap, and only the overlap.