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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 [livejournal.com profile] truepenny completes the circle here by arguing that definitions are useful after all.

Date: 2005-12-01 04:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 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.

Date: 2005-12-01 04:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 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.

Date: 2005-12-01 04:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 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.

Date: 2005-12-01 05:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 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.

Date: 2005-12-01 05:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 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.

Date: 2005-12-02 09:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 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.

Date: 2005-12-01 04:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 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.

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