Cicero and the objectively good or bad
Ken Quirici
In Michael Grant's Foreword to his History of Rome (preface dated 1978)
- pb -MG cites Cicero as saying - in MG's words:
it remains objectively true, in spite of debatable marginal cases, that
some sorts of behavior are good, and others bad, and no vicissitudes of
taste or special circumstances can make them otherwise.
Anybody know where Cicero says this?
Thanks.
Ken
Ed Cryer
"Ken Quirici" <ken.q...@excite.com> wrote in message
news:1139972501.6...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
Have you tried "De Finibus.."? It could turn out that it's from the lips of
one of the defenders of the various philosophical schools; perhaps Cato on
Stoicism.
Ed
Ken Quirici
Thanks.
I googled: cicero de finibus. There's the latin, if I should prove
ambitious, at www.thelatinlibrary.com, and an English translation
on www.epicurus.net. As far as epicurean vs. stoicism, I think
some Romans started out as epicureans and 'converted' to
stoicism. Maybe Cicero was one (to explain why epicurus.net
has the text. and given my understanding that Cicero was a Stoic).
Or, maybe www.epicurus.net believes in 'know thy enemy'.
Ken
Ed Cryer
I think Cicero was a skeptic on knowledge and this idea of being
"objectively true" sounds very unCiceronian.
How do you reckon you'd put it in Latin? "Re vera"? And apply the
correspondence theory of truth, even for ethical facts?
Ed
Ed Cryer
"Ed Cryer" <e...@somewhere.in.the.UK> wrote in message
news:dt4i50$shq$1...@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...
unphilosophical. It's that common error of truth/reality.
And I think Cicero could distinguish these two notions. But could Michael
Grant?
Ed
Ken Quirici
You're right, it certainly would be nice to check the source.
I'll look again - there may be a bibliography or notes at the
end that are more specific.
> I think Cicero was a skeptic on knowledge and this idea of being
> "objectively true" sounds very unCiceronian.
> How do you reckon you'd put it in Latin? "Re vera"?
Yes, that sounds right. 'Actual facts'?
> And apply the
> correspondence theory of truth,
You got me there. What's the correspondence theory of truth?
>even for ethical facts?
>
> Ed
That sounds like the basic question of ethics - the
epistemology of ethics.Which I've avoided for the most part.
Actually I almost subscribe to the proposition ascribed to
Cicero. Some things just ARE wrong or right.
Thanks.
Ken
Ed Cryer
"Ken Quirici" <kqui...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1140200182....@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Would that be an "intuitive truth"?
Ed
Ken Quirici
That some things just ARE wrong or right? Yes, I think so. If
intuitive refers to a judgement you make without a conscious
logical structure backing it. Kind of a seat-of-the-pants, up
til now my experience has shown me, kind of thing. I tend to
think of it more as inductive than deductive. Does that sound
right? Could that be Kant's a priori synthetic? Or a posteriori
analytic, or whatever the heck the darn thing was? The thing
nobody believes in any more. Actually maybe he was the
only one who ever believed it. But that's WAY off the subject.
I was very interested in what you meant by the correspondence
theory of truth. It sounds like it might be one of the main
theories.
Thanks.
Ken
Ken Quirici
OK, I just googled 'correspondence theory of truth' and hit the
Stanford Encyclopedia. Looks very interesting. Started by
some early twentieth c. English philosophers. Truth as
correspondence to reality. Leaves out math and logic and
the like, it seems. But I would agree with it with the proviso
that the correspondence is via the fallible senses - that
we don't really know EXACTLY what it is we're
'corresponding to'.
This leaves me in the unenviable position of almost
NEEDING Plato's forms - what EXACTLY it is we're
corresponding to, and I definitely don't consider myself
a Platonist. After alll, can I say reality is as fuzzy
as our sensory impressions of it?
Thanks.
Ken
Ed Cryer
It's that word "objective" that hits me. For me it refers to some underlying
reality; some transcendent noumenal world, to stick with Kant. Most people
call it "matter".
Realists argue that what makes an empirical proposition true is some kind of
correspondence with that world-beyond-sense-perception; idealists have
different notions of truth-values.
Now, no philosopher that I know would use the phrase "objective truth". One
might talk about "objective reality", but truth belongs to propositions.
Ed
Ken Quirici
Well I at first felt perfectly comfortable with it. I interpreted it
to mean, 'everyone would agree that ' thus-and-such, providing
they're in an objective mood (:-) That is one of the definitions
of objective - true if regarded without any 'bias'.
However I now, after your posts, have second thoughts.
For everyone to agree that Jennifer Gardner (sp?) is hot doesn't
mean it's objectively true that Jennifer Gardner is hot, because 'hot'
in this case is not something that can be 'objectively'
determined.
By saying this, I'm saying a human being can only be 'objective'
about certain things, and being 'hot' is not one of them. I think
'objective' somewhere merges into 'scientifically verifiable' -
that is, it's only about the basic physical properties of
something. For example, physical location - were you in fact in
Lady M's boudoir one hour before she was found murdered, etc.
So with moral judgments.
But this is still a rather strange situation. We can create a list
of properties describing situations and ascribing ethical goodness
or badness to them; we can make it precise enuf so that it is
usually capable of assigning a 'good' or 'bad' to an issue.
So what we have that is objectively true about ethical statements
is something like 'according to theory A, action B is ethically
wrong'.
This really doesn't have any ethical 'weight', to be able to assert
that kind of ethical statement.
So I agree with you, in being uncomfortable with "objectively true'
in the ethical case. It will be interesting to see what Aristotle
actually says.I suspect he says 'everyone would agree that',
with which I agree.
> Realists argue that what makes an empirical proposition true is some kind of
> correspondence with that world-beyond-sense-perception;
check out this article on realism:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism/
It more or less says realism is the view that there is a world 'out
there' that exists independently of anybody's perception of it.
So there IS a sound when a tree falls in the wilderness!
But it doesn't deal with epistemology in its introductory generic
statement of what realism is. Which I take to me realism is
an ontological position. Does that sound right?
(It DOES say that realism is HOT these days in philosophical
circles).
The encyclopedia also has an article on 'moral realism' which
is the notion that precisely the sort of statement Grant puts into
Cicero's mouth in that Foreword can be 'true' or 'false'.
This as I said above is something I agree to disagree with,
except in that narrow and not very useful case of truth
or falsity about such propositions as 'good by conforming to
a list of ethical 'axioms''.
> idealists have
> different notions of truth-values.
>
> Now, no philosopher that I know would use the phrase "objective truth". One
> might talk about "objective reality", but truth belongs to propositions.
>
> Ed
Well then what meaning do you give to this adjective, 'objective'?
Actually, to be more precise, how do you describe 'objective reality'?
Thanks.
Ken
Ken Quirici
Freudian slip. I meant Cicero.
Ed Cryer
Definition 1; external to the mind; actually existing; real.
Now, that's how I take it. Mind you, I am British and I learned philosophy
from the British empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume), and this "in the
mind/outside the mind" dichotomy is central there. It begins in Descartes.
But I saw "objectivism", and the definition "Philos; the belief that certain
things (esp. moral truths) exist apart from human knowledge or perception of
them". And this recalled for me Ayn Rand, very USA.
But I think this brings us round to Cicero again. Or rather to Plato.
Because Platonic realism includes moral truths. Summum Bonum in Latin. The
highest good. And this (or should it be "these"?) were real for Plato. The
form of goodness; the form of beauty etc. If we can isolate the concept
mentally ("a clear and distinct notion") then it must exist somewhere. And
perhaps we saw it as our souls passed through heaven.
Blimey! Am I still making sense? Well, anyway I'll crack on.
I come to "objectively true". I still have difficulty with it, but it's
taking on some kind of substance as we get to Platonism. Absolute goodness.
Beauty, Truth and Justice. Ontological realities because we can form "clear
and distinct ideas" of them (or, at least so is the claim).
Truth and Reality. They blur as you move toward Platonism. And Cicero was
closer to that than we are.
Ed
Ken Quirici
It occurs to me, reading your above, in particular the phrase
'Platonic realism', that I once saw a definition of realism that was:
IDEAS actually existed somehow. And there is an opposite belief, that
ideas don't exist anywhere - is that idealism? These are peculiar
definitions, at least from the point of view of the naive non-
philosopher. In fact they seem the opposite of what 'common sense'
would ascribe as meaning to the words.
> Blimey! Am I still making sense?
Yes you are. And I agree - I like the phrase, too - 'a clear and
distinct
notion' implies existence somewhere.
> Well, anyway I'll crack on.
> I come to "objectively true". I still have difficulty with it, but it's
> taking on some kind of substance as we get to Platonism. Absolute goodness.
> Beauty, Truth and Justice. Ontological realities because we can form "clear
> and distinct ideas" of them (or, at least so is the claim).
>
This is where Platonism makes me uncomfortable. I get a distinct
whiff of authoritarianism from Platonism. Absolute Beauty? Who
decides? Absolute Justice? We started out with SOME ethical
propositions being objectively true, but NOT with the thesis that
Absolute Justice exists, or at least can be determined.
> Truth and Reality. They blur as you move toward Platonism. And Cicero was
> closer to that than we are.
>
> Ed
I don't follow the distinction you draw between Truth and Reality.
My only 'take' on it is that mathematics and logic are a realm in which
Truth exists as a property that propositions can have or not have.
And Reality has, instead of this precise and absolute property, a
kind of fuzziness dependent on our senses and their 'accuracy' - and
the 'accuracy' of the instruments we use as extenders of our
'accuracy'.
When I sit here and think about it, I agree with you that 'objectively
true' doesn't seem like a property that more than the exceptional
few ethical propositions can have. (I'm not sure you'd even go
that far). But I LIKE the idea of insisting that there is a kind of
core
ethics - it's wrong to kill someone in order to steal their money, e.g.
I'm not any more (since our discussion) sure that the phrase
'objectively true' is applicable to such core propositions, though.
I doubt if there is a Platonic Form of Justice. A real one, at any
rate. Imagine someone sacrificing themselves for the good of
others all their lives. Is that a good life? I would doubt it. It's
the kind of good life a fundamentalist preacher would preach
while he did what was good for himself everytime there was a
choice.
I've rambled on too long.
Thanks.
Ken
Ed Cryer
"Ken Quirici" <ken.q...@excite.com> wrote in message
news:1139972501.6...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
Right, then, back to this quote.
I have all the texts of Cicero available for searching. All I need is some
string to use as the search parameter. Any suggestions?
Ed
Ken Quirici
So we have to start all over? I guess I was getting tangled up there.
You did give me the reference, gratias tibi ago. I'll find an English
translation (stil working on Catullus) and see what the man has to
say for himself.
Thanks for the workout.
Ken