Joan Didion in Morality

[Nearly Sane]

This is rather lovely


https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/12/05/joan-didion-on-morality/

[Shaker]

I'm glad that she's predominantly a writer of fiction, as she's no philosopher, on that account.

[SteveH]

I'm glad that she's predominantly a writer of fiction, as she's no philosopher, on that account.

Not a very helpful response. Why is she no philosopher?

[jeremyp]

I'm glad that she's predominantly a writer of fiction, as she's no philosopher, on that account.

Classic ad hominem.

What does it matter whether she is a philosopher or not? If you think her opinion is wrong, criticise the opinion not the person.

[Shaker]

Not a very helpful response. Why is she no philosopher?

Because she offers no real definition of the concept of morality (unlike James Baldwin, however simply, briefly quoted in the piece) and no account of its origins. Maybe she did/does so in the rest of the piece, but not in this snippet.

[jeremyp]

Because she offers no real definition of the concept of morality

I haven't read her actual essay, only the quotes in the article, but it seems to me that her thesis is you can't define morality in an objective way.

[Shaker]

I haven't read her actual essay, only the quotes in the article, but it seems to me that her thesis is you can't define morality in an objective way.

Well there's quite the debate there, isn't there? Suffering is an objective fact, but to say that suffering is A Bad Thing (and therefore to be avoided where- and whenever possible) immediately puts it in the realm of the subjective.

[jeremyp]

Well there's quite the debate there, isn't there? Suffering is an objective fact, but to say that suffering is A Bad Thing (and therefore to be avoided where- and whenever possible) immediately puts it in the realm of the subjective.

Not really. You could simply define "bad" as "increases overall suffering" and "good" as "decreases overall suffering". There's still the problem that it's really hard to quantify suffering but I don't see that as a fundamental issue, although it may turn out to be intractable.

[Udayana]

hmm .. all we have to do now is work out the maths of suffering...

[SteveH]

hmm .. all we have to do now is work out the maths of suffering...

Jeremyh Bentham thought he'd done that about 200 years ago, with his "felicific calculus".

[Robbie]

  That's rather cunning.

[Udayana]

That's rather cunning.

?? Sorry, didn't understand .

"felicific calculus" has most been replaced by game theory in the modern world, not sure if it tells us anything about morality though.