Words&Dirt

“‘You have been to London before, Dr. Leibniz?’

‘I have been studying London-paintings.’

‘I’m afraid most of those became antiquarian curiosities after the Fire––like street plans of Atlantis.’

‘And yet viewing several depictions of even an imaginary city, is enlightening in a way,’ Leibniz said.  ‘Each painter can view the city from only one standpoint at a time, so he will move about the place, and paint it from a hilltop on one side, then a tower on the other, then from a grand intersection in the middle––all on the same canvas.  When we look at the canvas, then, we glimpse in a small way how God understands the universe––for he sees it from every point of view at once.  By populating the world with so many different minds, each with its own point of view, God gives us a suggestion of what it means to be omniscient.’

Daniel decided to step back and let Leibniz’s words reverberate, as organ-chords must do in Lutheran churches.  Meanwhile they reached the north end of the Bridge, where the racket of waterwheels, confined and focused in the stone vault of the gatehouse, made conversation impossible.  Not until they’d made it out onto dry land, and begun to ascend the Fish Street hill, did Daniel ask, ‘I note you’ve already been in communication with the Dutch Ambassador.  May I assume that your mission is not entirely natural-philosophick in nature?’

‘A rational question––in a way,’ Leibniz grumbled.  ‘We are about the same age, you and I?’ he asked, giving Daniel a quick inspection.  His eyes were unsettling.  Depending on what kind of monster he was, either beady, or penetrating.

‘I am twenty-six.’

‘So am I.  We were born about sixteen forty-six.  The Swedes took Prague that year, and invaded Bavaria.  The Inquisition was burning Jews in Mexico.  Similar terrible things were happening in England, I assume?’

‘Cromwell crushed the King’s army at Newark––chased him out of the country––John Comstock was wounded––’

‘And we are speaking only of kings and noblemen.  Imagine the sufferings of common people and Vagabonds, who possess equal stature in God’s eyes.  And yet you ask me whether my mission is philosophick or diplomatic, as if those two things can neatly be separated.’

‘Rude and stupid I know, but it is my duty to make conversation.  You are saying that it should be the goal of all natural philosophers to restore peace and harmony to the world of men.  This I cannot dispute.'”

––Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson, pg. 265-6

“In the introduction, I articulated in a simplified manner two radically opposed options for the sources of moral values and principles.  Either they descend from outside or beyond natural experience, from some allegedly supernatural or transcendent origin, or else they must emerge from the evolutionary process of our embodied, interpersonal, and cultural experience.  If our values do not drop down from above, then they must work their way up from our embodied engagement with our physical/interpersonal/cultural environments.  It is from this latter perspective that Damasio posits ‘the regulation of life in a particular environment’ as the means of ‘promoting life and avoiding death and enhancing well-being and reducing suffering’ (167).  This is the crux of morality.  There is an intimate connection between individual and communal well-being, both of which require finding a balance (i.e., a dynamic equilibrium) among competing needs, desires, interests, goals, and practices.  As we have repeatedly noted, Damasio takes the key value to be homeostasis, whether within the individual or among a group of individuals:

Social conventions and ethical rules may be seen in part as expressions of the basic homeostatic arrangements at the level of society and culture.  The outcome of applying the rules is the same as the outcome of basic homeostatic devices such as metabolic regulation or appetites: a balance of life to ensure survival and well-being. (168-9)

Dewey (1922) was right when he saw this life regulation as a form of problem-solving––where the problems run the gamut from basic maintenance of life processes to enhancing the quality of the organism’s existence to composing a harmonious community of social creatures.  What mostly separates human morality from the morality of certain non-human species is the complexity of human mind and society, especially as mediated by elaborate forms of symbolic interaction.  Increasing complexity of organism-environment transactions can result in the emergence of new functional capacities of mind, thought, and language (including all forms of symbolic interaction, such as gesture, ritual, art, literature, architecture, music, and dance).  The primary results of this increasing complexity are the multiple varieties of human well-being and flourishing. Flourishing is no longer merely bio-regulation, growth of the organism, and fluid action in a physical environment, bust also includes many forms of individual, interpersonal, and group flourishing and meaning-making.

The dramatic consequence of this increased complexity of experience is that success in living a life of well-being can no longer be handled entirely by intuitive, automated, nonconscious, unreflective cognitive processes.  We need a more deliberative, critical, reflective track for assessing how things are going, grasping the fine textures of nuanced social interactions, proposing alternative solutions, and deciding what our best course of action might be within a problematic situation from our current perspective.  We need this critical reflection because we need a way to evaluate competing values and courses of action in highly complex, indeterminate individual and social situations.”

––Morality for Humans: Ethical Understanding from the Perspective of Cognitive Science, by Mark Johnson, pg. 86-7