Quote of the Day

[coalescent]

Ted Chiang responds to this post by Sarah Monette and suggests a way of looking at the differences between sf and fantasy:

I submit that what distinguishes magic from science--even imaginary science--is the role of consciousness. Magic has a subjective component--the intention, desire, or willpower of the practitioner--that is explicitly excluded from scientific experimentation.

[...]

This perspective helps illustrate why, even though fantasy doesn't have to be pre-industrial, fantasy works so well with a pre-industrial setting. Before industrialization, it was easier to believe that we lived in a universe that recognized persons. And even though fantasy doesn't have to be nostalgic, it's easy to romanticize the days when an individual's labor mattered, and you couldn't be replaced by a machine.

Similarly, this perspective illustrates why, even though science fiction doesn't have to be about technological advancement, it is so often concerned with the notion of progress. Once conscious intention was removed from the creation of devices, inventions could spread so rapidly that you could see society change within a single lifetime. And even though SF doesn't have to be cautionary, it's easy to worry about the dehumanization that can result when conscious intention is removed from too many aspects of life.

EDIT: Jeff Vandermeer (and Evil Monkey) respond here.

EDIT: And truepenny completes the circle here by arguing that definitions are useful after all.

Comments

[peake.livejournal.com]

morality has naught to be based on _but_ emotion

Since at least John Locke until at least R.M. Hare, all moral philosophy has been based on reason, the sense that there was a rational basis for understanding and explaining our actions and our motives.

I'm not saying that morality is not based on emotion rather than reason, but that development in moral philosophy is a dramatic reversal of over 300 years of a theory of ethics based on reason.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

I think there has been more variation in moral philosophy than that. What about utilitarianism - that was an attempt to fuse the two. Or existentialism? And the idea that the separation of reason and emotion is a false dichotomy. I'm of that latter view.

[peake.livejournal.com]

Utilitarianism is a strictly reason-based philosophy, it all builds on a rational calculation of what might constitute the greater good for the greater number. Emotion has absolutely no place in that philosophy.

And existentialism uses an understanding of what it is to 'be' as the foundation upon which a system of morality can be rationally developed.

Again, I am not saying that the separation of reason and emotion is a good or right thing, I am simply saying that such separation was the most basic layer upon which rational philosophy was built. By now simply considering that it might be a false dichotomy we are already separating ourselves from the systems of thought that held general sway in Europe and America throughout the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and into the early years of the 20th century.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

For instance, John Stuart Mill

'Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.'

In other words, the calculation is made on the basis of the degree of an emotion - specifically happiness.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

In other words, the calculation is made on the basis of the degree of an emotion - specifically happiness.

No, the calculation is made on the basis of producing the greatest good. That is a rational basis. It is the unit of measurement that Mill uses that is the emotion.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

That's a circular argument, because the whole point of moral philosphy is to define what 'the good' is. Utilitarianism defines it as human happiness, or pleasure. This was to get away from the idea that the good was what god told us was good.

Mill tried to distinguish higher pleasures from lower ones, while primitive utilitarianism said all pleasures were equal.

I've got to leave the computer now, so I can't follow this conversation for a while.

[peake.livejournal.com]

But it is still a rational philosophy, emotion is not something that creates the moral theory, it is something that can be rationally measured as the target for that theory.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

(Damn - this comment won't come out in the right place - hope it's OK now)

Or, now I think about it, the most rationalistic of philosophers, David Hume:

"every quality of the mind, which is useful or agreeable to the person himself or to others, communicates a pleasure to the spectator, engages his esteem ... is admitted under the honourable denomination of virtue or merit"

Hume thought that reason was the servant of emotion.

[andrewducker]

we have,indeed, gone from "God will tell us what is morally right!" to "We will discover what is morally right ourselves!" to "There's no such thing as morally right!" but the move from the middle stage to the latter hasn't been a regression backwards, but a step forwards in understanding of what "morally right" means.

Basically - those people who turn to religion for moral answers aren't postmodern - they're premodern.

[peake.livejournal.com]

I neither know nor, really, care whether it is a step backwards, forwards or sideways, the only thing i am saying is that it is a step away from.

The rise of rationalism was marked by the movement you describe from 'God will tell us what is morally right' to 'we will decide what is morally right' to 'there is no such thing as morally right'.

World War II put paid to that last position, ever since then the movement has been towards 'maybe there is a morally right after all' and now we are getting political positions built upon the belief that 'God will tell us what is morally right'.

[andrewducker]

World War II put paid to that last position, ever since then the movement has been towards 'maybe there is a morally right after all'

I've not seen that at all. The average person here in the UK is much less religious than they used to be, and much less likely to listen to someone telling them what is morally right or wrong.

now we are getting political positions built upon the belief that 'God will tell us what is morally right'.

But that hasn't changed, and isn't at all new. It's the same majority of believers that are doing that. It's more noticable to us, because our own leaders are less obviously religious than they used to be, but I suspect that politicians in the US are actually less religious than they used to be.

kettle of fish

[applez.livejournal.com]

Define 'religious' ... faith, spirituality, and churchgoing behaviour are not necessarily all the same.