Wisdom and Cheese- Deadly Thigamajiggers (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, December 06, 2011, 19:42 (4736 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Tony is still trying to convert me to functionality, which he believes to be objective, while I stand up for morality, which I defined as follows: “Relating to human behaviour, esp. the distinction between good and bad or right and wrong behaviour.” (Collins)

TONY: For morality as it stands today, this is a perfect definition and a perfect example of WHY I think the distinction needs to be made. Good/Bad, Right/Wrong, what are these things? Show me a good thing. Prove to me that it is good. Show me a bad thing and prove to me that it is bad.

Hold on, you’ve left out the next stage, which was finding a criterion for good/bad. Mine was whether behaviour is beneficial or harmful to the individual and/or to those who are affected by it. This is crucial to our discussion.

TONY: Functional means something works as it is supposed to work without causing dysfunction in another, unless that is it's intended purpose. And later: Functional and dysfunctional are not only universal in application, but they are also suitable for all situations at all times and all states, because they are specific criteria that only take into account the intended function. Something either works, or it does not.

I don’t agree that functional means “something works as it is supposed to work without causing dysfunction in another, unless that is its intended purpose.” Functional means “something works as it is supposed to work”. “Without causing dysfunction in another” is the point at which your concept intersects with morality. Functionality depends entirely on the intention of the action. (You knew this was coming, didn’t you, as you wrote: “We can argue about how something is ‘supposed to work’!) Who defines the intention? You also say that morality “holds no meaning at all beyond that which a given person assigns to it.” Exactly the same comment applies to intention and hence to functionality. You can say that “homosexuality is dysfunctional in that using the reproductive organs in that manner will never produce the outcome of reproduction. There is no judgement there, only truth.” And I can say that homosexuality fulfils the purpose of producing pleasure, and is therefore functional. No judgement, only truth. So homosexuality is both dysfunctional and functional. Using your line of argument, one could say rape is dysfunctional unless it produces a child, in which case it’s functional. A suicide bomber’s intention is to fulfil what he believes to be God’s intention, so if he kills a hundred Christians his action must be deemed functional. Hurting someone does not make his behaviour dysfunctional for HIM or for his fundamentalist mentors, because he has achieved his intention, his actions have worked, and there is no universal, objective authority that can relate his intentions to their effect on other people.

You were clearly aware of this dilemma when you wrote about causing dysfunction in another, and earlier when you said: “All of these things are things that will hurt you, hurt someone else, or degrade the functionality of the group.” These qualifications are the very basis of morality as I have defined it above (substitute harm for hurt). You want to strip various biblical passages of any moral content and endow them with universal objectivity, but instead your functional/dysfunctional dichotomy is just as open to subjectivity as moral codes (I don’t disagree about that). Do by all means assign functionality to the successful lies/rape/theft/murder that have fulfilled my (subjective) intentions, but I think most of us would argue (subjectively) that since my lies/rape/theft/ murder do harm to other people, my actions are morally wrong and I should not perform them. Which interpretation do you think comes closer to St Paul’s intentions?