Tag Archives: Culture

David Hume on Morality

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David Hume, an 18th century philosopher, stated that morality is based on sentiments rather than reason. He concluded this after he developed his “theory” of knowledge which stated that everything we could know was observable by the senses — he was a naturalistic philosopher. He then looked at situations in which he thought that there was an obvious “wrong” and he tried to identify the “matter of fact” vice in the situation. He immediately found that he could not find the vice within the facts of the situations.

For example, let us examine a boy who steals a toy at a store. A matter of fact about this situation is that a young human male has taken an item from a store. This is what happened. The senses and reason tell us a few other things too: the toy was a plastic squirt gun; the boy used his hands to take the toy; it took only a second for the boy to do this. Hume argued that no matter what we find about the situation with our senses and our reason, we will never find the actual existence or quality of vice. So then, if morality is not intrinsic to objects in a situation, what is morality?

Hume said that morality can be found within. When you observe an immoral act, you do not find any right or wrong about the situation when you consider only the objects involved in the act. “Only when you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation” will you find a right or wrong about the situation. Hume said that this was only a feeling or sentiment though.

Therefore morality is not something of our reason, for we could not find the existence of good or bad while examining the situation with our reason. Our reason only told us facts about what happened and how it happened. Morality then must a sentiment or feeling. Hume uses the example of the philosophical view of colors, heat and other such “qualities”. Hume says that modern philosophy considers such things as colors, heat and sound as simply perceptions and not definite qualities of any object. Colors and heat are objects of our observation, to be sure, but it can not be said for sure that such things are properties of an object. Take an apple for example. We see red, but red is our perception and is not necessarily an actual quality of the apple. To go even further we cannot even say for fact that an apple exists, and if the apple does not exist than surely red can not be a quality of it. All we really know is that we perceive an apple and in our perceptions it is red. This does not also imply the existence or qualities of the apple. Hume compares this type of thought to morality. Hume is trying to show that like observations of color and heat, morality is not something that can be found, for us, in an object, but instead morality is something which only exists within our world and comes from the sentiments in us.

Hume seems to be correct in declaring morality cannot be judge through the senses. We can only know what is afforded to us by our senses and our senses do not tell us when something is wrong or right. Something only becomes wrong or right when someone applies their feelings about certain actions to what they have seen or heard. The evidence for this is the disparity in people’s moral beliefs: what offends one person’s moral sentiments does not always offend another. While many people believe it is morally offensive to commit suicide in any situation, but in many cultures thought it more honorable to kill oneself than to admit defeat in a battle. These people did not see suicide in that situation as immoral. Morality is not something that is intrinsic in the objects or the action, since two different people would come to two different conclusions about the action of suicide. Instead it must be as Hume says; morality must be within us as a personal sentiment

Is globalism hazardous to your health?

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“Globalism is a most vile institution that rapes weaker cultures of the world and homogenizes them into a single unit devoid of variety.” Agree? Disagree? Agree somewhat? While most would not agree with the statement, many agree with the sentiment. Opponents of globalism often see it as the forcing of a super-power’s culture onto other smaller cultures. Not to be blunt, but it isn’t.

The spread of the most powerful culture to the rest of the word has been occurring for all of history. Those without power mimic those who have it to improve themselves. The Mayans, Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Hindus, Arabs, Romans, French, British etc ad infinitum have all been mimicked at one point in time or another in the past 4,000 Years. At no point did the world’s cultures fuse into a super-organism: coliseums were built and gladiators were trained, but provinces didn’t cast off their traditions and become purely Roman — had they done so the Roman Empire would have lasted beyond 1,500 C.E. As anyone who has listened to Hindi Pop will notice, just because the world mimics American popular culture, it does not destroy the cultural influences. Drinking Coke and eating a Big Mac does not mean a person abandons their culture.

While not specifically stated, it is a subtext of most discussions of globalism. Culture is often seen as a static institution that should not be allowed to change lest some “unique” features of it are lost to history. However, cultures have come and gone for millennium because its practitioners have changed or found a “better” way to live. The spread of the internet and globalism does not damage cultures, but allows them to adapt to the changing world. While one may bemoan the passing of cultures, sociology as a whole should not forget that its origins are based on “rapid social change.” The way cultures adapt reveals far more about a society than the way it stagnates itself.

Globalism has beneficial effects on societies, as information spreads it is able to penetrate all corners of the world instantaneously. It took 5 centuries for the concept of a ’0′ to spread from India to Europe: a distance than can now be covered by a person in only a couple hours. Now it takes an hour for the latest news from Tibet — and most of that is because it takes time to write an article. The negative aspects of globalism are far outweighed by the positives, and although the anthropologist can bemoan the lose, sociologists should revel in it.

Creative Commons License Image credit: woodleywonderworks

My politicians are crazier than yours.

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It started with a post on Aardvarchaeology which was then linked by Pharyngula and responded to with a post on Uncertain Principles. Martin Rundkvist, of Aardvarchaeology, declares that US Politics Have No Left Wing which was quickly responded to by Chad Orzel, of Uncertain Prinicples, who retorted that it could just as easily said that European Politics Have No Right Wing. I agree with their base statements: Europe is left of America which is right of Europe, Europeans and Americans both got where they are through trial and error, and that many American politicians are very right-wing, but…To argue that higher taxes are fundamentally better than lower ones, and that certain political positions are better than others, and that religious politicians — regardless of how they publicly use their religion — are inherently inferior to their counterparts is a little too broad for my tastes.

Martin says that mentioning ones religious beliefs in public are part of the evidence for American politician’s extremist views, but I disagree. The way a politician follows their religion is extremely important, and before making any decisions, it is better to know for sure that a politician is going to follow all 10 commandments and most of Leviticus than have them ignore the issue whilst they campaign, and eventually force their secret beliefs on their constituents who didn’t have the chance to hear them. European politicians are more private in their beliefs, but all of one’s beliefs — either in the open or in private — affect their decisions. He mentions the Christian Democrat party in Sweden as evidence of private beliefs, but their beliefs are literally the banner under which they run; they may not mention them, but they are there, and they do affect the decision-making process.

Beyond this point, the issue devolves into Socialism vs. Liberalism vs. Conservatism — for simplicity I’ll define liberalism as the half-way mark between socialism and conservatism even though, as Martin notes, it isn’t. The American and European countries have always had one humongous difference: the European countries have a lineage and a population who is often part of the same country for generations, America doesn’t. America is quote unquote a “melting pot” where diverse groups come together to work and play, but often keep to themselves. There is an overreaching American culture through which people are united, but on a deeper more social level, many Americans couldn’t care less about the rest of America: more people vote for American Idol than the next president, and relatively few people vote in local elections. It can often seem that the way America is run only matters for a few short weeks and it is back to focusing on one’s own life with a few “bursts” of charity and caring, so one feels good about themselves. It seems that Americans tend to not have a good reason to care about all the other Americans, so in the American mindset there is no reason to take from oneself to ensure everyone is happy.

However, the issue is deeper than perceptions of a people. American politics are heavily based on Equality of Opportunity while European politics are based on Equality of Outcome. In America, the individual overrules the group, but in Europe, the group overrules the individual. America favours the hard-luck cases where someone drags themselves out from a lowly start into positions of wealth and influence — before tearing them down for daring to overreach the rest — because this is the ideal on which America was founded. So, yes, America has lower taxes, and Europeans have free health care or all, but it is the philosophical foundations of a society that dictates how it is run, not any egotistical desire or innate “betterness.” It is only time that can say which one is preferable.

Google Question and Answer: Religion in the Roman Empire

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Some people search search engines by using a few keywords, but others ask entire questions. This series of posts is dedicated to them. Over the next couple weeks I’m going to pick full questions from my logs and answer them. It is the least I could do.

The first question in this series comes from an American using Windows and Internet Explorer, and they ask “What religion did the People of the Roman Empire follow?” Well I’m glad you asked that… um…let’s call you Fred… while your search landed on a very popular article entitled Causes and Effects of the Popularization of Christianity in the Roman Empire, I’m afraid that it won’t answer your question entirely.

Yes, for a portion of its history the Roman Empire was Christian, but for most of its history Rome itself (including the period of the Republic and the Empire) followed a mythopoeic religion that was closely related the classical Greek religion. It wasn’t until Constantine realized that a single unified religion could revitalize the Roman empire that Christianity actually became a quasi-official religion. Prior to this the Roman Empire as a whole did not have an official religion: each culture was allowed to worship their own gods as long as they paid tribute to the gods of Rome and did not deny their existence. Even this requirement was ignored for a time and the Jewish peoples were allowed to live peaceably under Roman rule for many years. However, as the Roman economy degraded and the Empire spread to encompass many different cultures, it began to fracture and there was little to integrate the different groups or the classes. Read that article if you want to know more.)

For the rest of Roman history, the Romans followed a pagan religion and allowed people to believe whatever they wanted. That was the long way of saying: there was no one religion of the Roman empire, there were many.

My next question comes from … let’s say Sarah … who hails from Canada and also uses Windows and Internet Explorer. Sarah asks Did the church unite the Roman Empire?” Sarah landed on the same page as Fred and again the question is not fully answered. The real answer is both yes and no because individually the Eastern Empire and Western Empire were united through Christianity, but because they both had a slightly different view of Christianity (this is the divide between the Greek Orthodox and Catholic sects) the two parts of the empire slowly separate because of the religion.

You see Sarah, as Christianity spread in its early days, certain cities became the founding cities of the religion think Québec and Toronto or New York City and Boston, so they had a relatively large Christian population with widespread influence. However, in what was to become the Western Roman Empire, there was only one city: Rome, but in the Eastern Roman Empire there were several cities such as Jerusalem and Antioch.

Each of these major cities basically had someone, think a bishop, who was sort of a guide to the people under their influence, so while the Eastern Empire had several religious leaders to look up to, the Western Empire had only one: the Pope. As the two empires split the Western side looked only to their Pope for religious guidance and over time the two churches separated because the Western Pope was seen as the single most influential person in the religion by his own people, but the Eastern Empire was used to following several different religious leaders, so the religious structure of the two sides slowly separated.

So the short and sweet answer is yes, Christianity did unite the Roman Empire, but it united it in two slightly different styles.

Areté

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Aret̩ literal translates to English as virtue or excellence, but to the ancient Greeks it is the concept of being the best at anything. Originally only applied to soldiers and their combat prowess, the concept eventually spread throughout Greek society to apply to anyone who was good at a skillРa potters aret̩ was pottery. However, the term was not just a word the the Greeks, it was the driving force of the culture, and promoted the isolationism and the patriotism of the individual Greek polies. By promoting competition in everything it drove the development of technology, poetry and drama and touched every aspect of Greek life. Interestingly enough it also made the Greeks value cunning because it did not matter how one became the best as long as they were.

Culture Based on Instinct: Creation of the Human Family

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Abstract

In non-human mammals, the family group is a heterologic system. Only three percent of mammalian species are monogamous with their mates and have both parents involved in the raising of the young. Humans rank in this three percent. Humans require both parents to ensure the survival of the young and humans, across all cultures, form pair bonds. This leads to a family group far removed from the groups of other mammals. The creation of the human family rests on three foundations: (1) the cultural phenomenon of the human family group evolved because of the instinct to protect ones genes; (2) the basis of the family group, the pair bond, is the result of the female desire to have an economically supportive mate during the developmental years of her offspring’s lives; it is also a result of the males desire to have a suitable mate for multiple children and ensure all offspring are genetically his, and (3) the extended family group is a result of the desire to pass on ones genes through any means available even if it means helping blood relatives to reproduce [kin selection], the extended family is also preferable because social and instinctual taboos prevent mating with blood relatives, thus further protecting the pair bond. The result of these instincts for modern humans is the cultural family unit, the provision of resources for offspring, and to pass on genes. Continue reading »