If I may summarize: you’re saying that we tend to assume certain traits, like attachment to seeking the truth even at high cost, are self-evidently morally praiseworthy—an assumption not shared by the rest of society, which values other things more highly. Moreover, this assumption of ours comes ultimately from an impulse to status-seeking. Does that do it justice?
Assuming I do understand you, first, I would say that explaining a belief of this community as purely a result of status-seeking considerations is a Fully General Counterargument against any & all beliefs of any groups… you will be able to find status motives for almost all human actions, but this does not mean status is the primary cause or even is a cause at all, rather than an effect. One is reminded of how psychological egoists define altruism out of existence by finding some supposedly selfish positive motive in the altruist, like satisfaction at having helped.
I think there is a moral fact of the matter in whether the ability to face hard facts & force others to do so (within reason) is good or bad. You can prove to me that my endorsement of the ability is motivated by status, but I’ll still want to know how to actually act.
Well, first off it’s an impulse grounded in the desire to feel high status (feeling this is reinforcing), not an adaptive impulse to seek status. Second The impulse that outsiders would find not to be a virtue is less the courage of facing the truth than the callousness of inflicting it on others who lack that courage against their preferences and potentially against their interests as well.
When groups differ in values in a predictable manner, each choosing values that confer greater status upon itself, this is not a fully general counterargument. Nietzsche and others who display intellectual virtue in arguing for the primacy of physical and emotional virtues, for instance, can’t sensibly be accused of this. He may be seeking status with the quality of his rhetoric but not through any self-aggrandizing conclusions he reaches.
I think that there is a fact of the matter too, and that fact is that the ability to face hard facts without suffering is good even when taken to unreasonable extremes, and is in fact much better than non-Buddhists appreciate. The inclination to cause others to hold accurate beliefs is also overwhelmingly good, though not to such a shockingly extreme degree. The quote however is “that which can...” not “that which must...”. The impulse to use truth to destroy whatever can be destroyed with truth is a malevolent one, and this is obvious to anyone who doesn’t anticipate higher status in a world where the ability to face truth has its value increased.
I think I see your point… though the “What can be destroyed by the truth, should be” quote, I always took to be limited to the world of ideas; i.e., any idea that can be… should be.
But as has been remarked before, the more you load an aphorism down with caveats, the worse an aphorism it becomes. Or as Shakespeare famously said: “Brevity—in speech and conduct, but not in any other senses of the word—is the soul, understood metaphorically & non-dualistically of course, of wit.”
So while I see your concern in principle, I’m not too worried. I really doubt that LWers actually take this quote to mean you have a moral duty to, for example, visit old widowers and widows and berate them for the stupidity of talking to their dead lovers. Or find out and reveal the USA’s nuclear launch codes. Or forcibly “out” every young LGBT person they know.
Actually, those do seem like the sort of things that LWers would be much more inclined to do than would the general population. The odds would still be low in such spectacularly obvious cases, but much less low than they should be.
If I may summarize: you’re saying that we tend to assume certain traits, like attachment to seeking the truth even at high cost, are self-evidently morally praiseworthy—an assumption not shared by the rest of society, which values other things more highly. Moreover, this assumption of ours comes ultimately from an impulse to status-seeking. Does that do it justice?
Assuming I do understand you, first, I would say that explaining a belief of this community as purely a result of status-seeking considerations is a Fully General Counterargument against any & all beliefs of any groups… you will be able to find status motives for almost all human actions, but this does not mean status is the primary cause or even is a cause at all, rather than an effect. One is reminded of how psychological egoists define altruism out of existence by finding some supposedly selfish positive motive in the altruist, like satisfaction at having helped.
I think there is a moral fact of the matter in whether the ability to face hard facts & force others to do so (within reason) is good or bad. You can prove to me that my endorsement of the ability is motivated by status, but I’ll still want to know how to actually act.
Well, first off it’s an impulse grounded in the desire to feel high status (feeling this is reinforcing), not an adaptive impulse to seek status. Second The impulse that outsiders would find not to be a virtue is less the courage of facing the truth than the callousness of inflicting it on others who lack that courage against their preferences and potentially against their interests as well.
When groups differ in values in a predictable manner, each choosing values that confer greater status upon itself, this is not a fully general counterargument. Nietzsche and others who display intellectual virtue in arguing for the primacy of physical and emotional virtues, for instance, can’t sensibly be accused of this. He may be seeking status with the quality of his rhetoric but not through any self-aggrandizing conclusions he reaches.
I think that there is a fact of the matter too, and that fact is that the ability to face hard facts without suffering is good even when taken to unreasonable extremes, and is in fact much better than non-Buddhists appreciate. The inclination to cause others to hold accurate beliefs is also overwhelmingly good, though not to such a shockingly extreme degree. The quote however is “that which can...” not “that which must...”. The impulse to use truth to destroy whatever can be destroyed with truth is a malevolent one, and this is obvious to anyone who doesn’t anticipate higher status in a world where the ability to face truth has its value increased.
I think I see your point… though the “What can be destroyed by the truth, should be” quote, I always took to be limited to the world of ideas; i.e., any idea that can be… should be.
But as has been remarked before, the more you load an aphorism down with caveats, the worse an aphorism it becomes. Or as Shakespeare famously said: “Brevity—in speech and conduct, but not in any other senses of the word—is the soul, understood metaphorically & non-dualistically of course, of wit.”
So while I see your concern in principle, I’m not too worried. I really doubt that LWers actually take this quote to mean you have a moral duty to, for example, visit old widowers and widows and berate them for the stupidity of talking to their dead lovers. Or find out and reveal the USA’s nuclear launch codes. Or forcibly “out” every young LGBT person they know.
Actually, those do seem like the sort of things that LWers would be much more inclined to do than would the general population. The odds would still be low in such spectacularly obvious cases, but much less low than they should be.