Isn’t this just a kind of retroactive version of the old:

Would you sacrifice x (your life or whatever), in order to prevent y?

So, for example, in the rape case, if the notion of “sorry” is conceptualised in terms of being sorry that I exist, then sure, I’m not sorry (I wouldn’t sacrifice my life to prevent a rape). But there are all kinds of other things that I would do (which one could use retroactively to conceptualise the notion of “sorry”) - e.g., chop off rapists testicles! The other stuff isn’t for nothing…

I’m having a bit of trouble seeing this as a paradox. There seems, at least in my mind, to be no problem with being sorry that the Holocaust happened, but being glad that my grandparents met. Another example: Say Tom is an alcoholic. He drives drunk and kills someone. During his imprisonment he seeks to overcome this addiction, and succeeds. It seems bizarre to say that he can’t simultaneously rejoice in one effect of his drunk driving (my eventual sobriety) while mourning another effect (that someone died because of his irresponsible actions). Personally, I often experience “mixed emotions” regarding past mistakes.

Make that “HIS eventual sobriety” in the above comment. :-)

“Sorry,” as used here, is an ambiguous term. Is anyone “sorry” about the Holocaust in the same way one would be “sorry” about having run over a child? The latter expresses personal regret about something within one’s control, the former a sense of “that’s too bad” about beyond one’s control. If a difference exists between these two uses then there is no paradox. I just don’t know if there is a difference.

“. . .that’s too bad” about –something– beyond one’s control.”

Sorry.

This or something like it shows up in discussions of energy choices too — it’s owed to Parfit, and gets called the Identity Problem and, irritatingly, the Nonidentity Problem. Having a condition which leads to one to give birth to disabled children, environmental degredation, etc can’t make various people worse off, because those people would not have existed had the suspect condition not been there in the first place.

The anti-green thought is that we can’t make green choices for the sake of future generations, because the energy choices we make will result in different sets of people coming into existence. If we trash the planet, certain people will come into existence who would never had existed had we gone all green. So those who end up suffering through an unsustainable world have no room to complain.

You can get around that fairly swiftly, I think, but it’s a good problem.

Pat, I find this sense of “sorry” a bit hard to get a grip on, because it involves regret over something outside your control. It think it means something like “I’d rather that it weren’t so and it saddens me that it is.” I’m not sure why, with that meaning, there’s no paradox.

James, If it weren’t for the Holocaust, your grandparents wouldn’t have met. If you are glad you exist, how can you say “I’m sorry about the Holocaust”? The problem doesn’t seem to be removed if you add “but I’m glad about my grandparents.” You can’t disconnect the two things. If it weren’t for the Holocaust, they wouldn’t have met and you wouldn’t exist. I have to say though that in my thinking about this, I keep trying to make exactly the same move. (It’s the same in your Tom example.)

Jeremy, That’s interesting. It doesn’t seem so bizarre to say you wouldn’t actually sacrifice your life to prevent your mother’s rape. It does seem bizarre to say you aren’t sorry that she was raped (a long time ago, by your father). That’s just an expression of regret. It’s cost free. It ought to be possible to say that…my intuitions tell me.

James (Garvey), It seems like this presupposes non-identity, but is a problem unto itself. We’re assuming that each person could only come into existence as a combination of one particular egg and one particular sperm. So in the rape case–if your father hadn’t raped your mother, you’d have no other chance to “enter” existence. That ups the pressure to be not sorry about the rape. Yet I really want to be sorry about the rape. I have the feeling there’s a sleight of hand here somewhere….but can’t seem to see where.

Jean

“It does seem bizarre to say you aren’t sorry that she was raped”

But you can certainly say something like that:

a) I’m sorry that the cost of my existence was your rape;

b) I’m sorry that you suffered, etc;

The expression of regret can be about the brute facts of the situation. I’m sorry it had to be that way. I choose existence, but if there were anyway I could alter the circumstances of my existence, then I would.

That is an expression of regret.

Isn’t it?

All very good and helpful, yet I’d hate to hear myself say “I’m not sorry you were raped,” on top of all the other things. I have the persistent sense that one is thinking about things the wrong way, if one says that. But the mistake, if there is one, is very, very subtle! (Still thinking about it….no progress yet.)

Isn’t this partly a function of moral and emotional complexity? If I beat somebody at squash, I’m not sorry that I’ve won, but certainly I’m going to feel some kind of regret if my opponent is unhappy as a result.

De facto, I will feel sorrow. It’s just it’ll be trumped by other thoughts and feelings. I don’t think an expression of sorrow commits us to will the world to be different in a particular way.

So, for example, suppose that a woman is given the choice between being raped or killed.

She chooses to be raped. It is the case that it saves her life.

Can she be sorry that she was raped? Yes, surely. She wishes the world was other than it was; that she could have lived, and not have been raped.

It’s the same thing. I wish I could have existed, and my mother not have been raped. I’m sorry she was raped. Can’t I say that?

(Sorry I’m writing this quickly: it may be incoherent!)

“to will the world to be different in a particular way.”

By which I mean - I don’t think it commits us to will the world to be different in the way it actually would have been had X not have occurred, as opposed to a way that we can imagine it might have been. (I think the sorrow can be predicated upon imagining a different world.)

Again.. I’m not terribly sure if we ever have a moral obligation to FEEL a particular way. I can have a moral obligation to apologize (that isn’t in question here though), but to feel sorry that my mom was raped, or that my sister died… I don’t get how I can have a moral obligation to feel anything.

I’d have to disagree with you Jean on the idea of not feeling sorry for your own existence. I think that is a feeling that lots of people experience to a certain extent, either because of some deep existential crisis, or feelings of guilt, depression etc. I think its perfectly plausible and unproblematic for someone to say or feel that they are sorry for their existence, or sorry that they exist. Again… its a feeling, and I can’t help them.

Jeremy–All that is food for thought…and I will think. :-)

Wayne, I didn’t say a person should never be sorry that they exist. I said they should be sorry or not sorry based on facts intrinsic to their own lives, not based on whether their existence had some horrible historical precondition like the Holocaust.

I think you’re putting a lot of stress on the “feeling” aspect of being sorry. Maybe it’s odd to talk about what you should feel, logically and morally. But being sorry has a cognitive aspect. If you are sorry that B occurred, then you would rather that B had not occurred. What you’d “rather” does seem to come under logical and moral rules.

‘I accept the universe’ said Margaret Fuller (New England Transcendentalist). ‘By Gad she’d better’ Carlyle remarked. The clear eyed stoic would say that it is foolish to invest emotion in what we did not do and cannot change. May we then dismiss regret as emotional incontinence even if we can discern the impingement of a remote event on the present? The wise would say ‘be here now’ or celebrate the past good in the present and rectify the past evil in the present. If we are the beneficiaries of colonial extirpation we need to do something about that now by recognising the status of the dispossessed now. Conventional handwringing regret and omelette recipes won’t do. Living well is the best homage we can pay to the suffering of our ancestors and our best contribution to the avoidance of future suffering.

My latte runneth over, have a nice day.

I agree with Wayne that feelings do not have much, if anything, to do with ethics. Feelings come and go.
I generally feel like killing anyone who uses an electric drill in a nearby apartment when I’m trying to read or to listen to music. However, so far I’ve resisted the impulse to commit homicide. That’s what ethics is about: how one chooses (insofar as one can choose) to behave, not about what feelings may pass through one’s head.

I don’t think that this paradox can be resisted by rejeceting the initial conditions which create it. Sure, morality is mostly concerned with the way people behave rather than feel, but it is implausible to say that we don’t care if people are happy about (e.g.) the torture and murder of innocent people. Normally such feelings would be considered inappropriate in a way that in itself matters morally (can you be a good person and…). Moreover, we know that sentiments such as racist hatred need to be dealt with because their existence makes wrong actions more likely. Nor is it plausible to think that our attitudes are completely beyond our control (we do not speak with our children only about their actions, but try to affect the way they feel and react emotionally).

Similarly, yes, in cases such as we have discussed we can say that we are sorry for someone, or sorry that the good (e.g. my birth) could not have occured except through something bad (e.g. my “sister’s” death). But there is also the all-considered question, whether one regrets, overall, that things happened as they did, assuming that they could not have occured differently and still retain the good feature. And it’s this all considered question that creates the paradoxicality.

For those interested, I do discuss such issues (the focus on emotions, or the distinction I propose between being “sorry for” and being “sorry that”) in the book. In general, each of the chapters/paradoxes in “10 Moral Paradoxes” is short but I try to address all the objections I could think of, with each paradox, and of course this can be done there in greater detail than we could here. So I hope people will read the book and not just follow these posts, not because I will get rich, but because they might enjoy the careful attempt to illustrate and analyze the paradoxes.

Rather than opting out of this paradox, do we have a solution?

Saul, I have very much enjoyed the way the book is so carefully and intricately argued. In fact, there probably isn’t even one of the paradoxes that can be avoided with a quick, simple move. To appreciate this, there is nothing to do but read the book. In each chapter you’ve created a maze and closed off all the paths but the one to the paradox. There’s no way I can reproduce that effect here…By all means, TP readers should just go ahead and make you rich by buying the book.

I think this paradox in particular is distressingly difficult to deal with. I agree that calling attention to the emotional aspect of being sorry doesn’t help. Being sorry is not a “simple emotion,” a sneeze sort of a thing that’s beyond logic and morality. If you are not sorry about one thing, that really can compel you (rationally) to be not sorry about others This does get us into very bizarre territory, where we seem to wind up having to be sorry or not sorry about the wrong things.

With an emphasis on seem. I’m still thinking about it. Last post on the book will be next week… Happy Thanksgiving all.

Saul and Jean- Well if its a true paradox, then there is something faulty with the premises, or something faulty with the logic. I’ll admit I don’t see anything faulty with the logic. So the premises are faulty. So I’m not sure how we can provide a solution to a paradox without side-stepping it, since solving the paradox will entail that we make sure it never gets created in the first place, no? So my solution is that there is something faulty about the whole feeling of regret and the idea that we have an obligation to feel a particular way.

I’m not sure if any other solution to the paradox will be any less “sidestepping” the paradox, just by the nature of paradoxes in general.

But ok, lets concede my solution for the moment. I’m born because of a tragic event, I’m sorry (in a rationalistic assent to the tragedy), and I’m not sorry that I exist. Arn’t we being sorry and not sorry about two different things? We’re equivocating the tragic event (my sister’s dying) with a separate, albeit causally related event (my existence). Just because the cause of my existence is rooted in a terrible event, doesn’t mean that I’m not sorry for it. Causes and effects are two different things.

Lets try this analogy: I LOVE have sex, but I don’t want a child (stipulated). But I end up getting someone pregnant, and she gives birth to a child. I really loved having the sex, so consequently, I really have to love the child? The causal direction isn’t the same in this example, so I could change it and say, I love my wife…. does it follow that I must love her biological parents? Appreciate them?

The value of my life is an emergent quality that is independent from the causal event the created me.

Wayne - Good points. Of course it is legitimate to make sidestepping arguments, but my feeling is just that the more external arguments of this sort (such as that emotions as such are not up for moral evaluation) will not be the way to make progress here.

About the points on equivocation and about why I cannot be happy about one aspect without being committed to loving it all: why, for example, cannot I be sorry both that my sister died and that I was born? I think that one can, if one limits the first to “sorry for” (and to general regret that it was not possible both for my sister and for myself to live together). But once I understand that for me to have been born my sister needs to die, I must admit that I am not sorry that she died in the sense that I do not prefer the state of affairs where she lives and I do not make it into existence.

This might be easier to see in another example from the book: you walk along and a crazy gunman opens random fire. Two innocent pedestrians happen to block the way, so that you are not hit. They die, and you are saved. It is better from the moral point of view that one person rather than two die, although the one is yourself, but are you not happy to live, even when you understand that this entails that they die (in the only relevant possible alternative)? Do you not, in other words, like the world where you live better, even if this is at their expense (and a morally less good world)? (Of course you wish there hadn’t been a gunman, or that it were possible for the two to survive as well, but in the “real world” of the example, there is no way out, and you must choose.) The philosophical argument seems to me to be pushing us towards the wall here.

Norm has an interesting comment on this paradox here–

http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/

Socrates once suggested something along the lines that the beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms. Looking at the “thinking” re this “controversey” makes it easier for me to understand why even moderately demanding Philosophy courses nowadays find it increasingly difficult to attract many students.

Humpty Dumpty is our postmodern Philosopher King, even if we don’t know it.

I, too, would like some definition of terms; however, since some of them remain ambiguous, let me point at what I believe is a fundamental flaw in the [as-presented] paradox. Namely, a kind of “Without Exception Clause”.

We all now that, even if good in principle, clauses in a contract that grant something without any consideration of future conditions or differing past conditions would be wrong. For example, a child who might be “forced” into the custody of a once-clean-but-now-addicted-to-crack parental figure. At the time of the contract, the custody clause was legitimate; however, circumstances altered to the point of the clause no longer maintaining its intrinsic goodness. This is only an example to prove the moral instability of a “Without Exception Clause”, as I mentioned.

It seems that Smilansky has slipped “Without Exception Clauses” into some of his paradox arguments, from what I have read so far. This particular paradox rests on the assumption that a person P exists based on the existence of a prior horrible event E, “without exception”. This “without exception” is why the paradox is allowed to maintain its integrity. However, and much so, it is very difficult to prove that a P’s existence is of necessity based on such horrid events. There are certainly other plausible (if not provable) possible circumstances whereby P would exist, and therefore P is allowed to maintain both that:

(1) P is good, and
(2) E is not good

So, in oher words, I believe the burden of proof is on Smilansky when he states his first premise; namely, that P’s existence is entirely and without exception dependent upon E. To my knowledge, nothing like that can be proven without falling into the larger debates (and subsequent logical flaws) of Actualism.

I don’t really agree with Michael about “the burden of proof” exactly, by he is getting there by looking at the “no exceptions clause” issue.

Saul wrote:
“I must admit that I am not sorry that she died in the sense that I do not prefer the state of affairs where she lives and I do not make it into existence.”

The thing is, there is no paradox if we are speaking of a ‘wide’ meaning of ‘sorry‘. You can be both sorry, and not regret being alive. We all seem to agree on this. The person finds out they were conceived when their father raped their mother. The thought bothers them. They feel ‘sorry for’ (bad for) their mother; they wish they could have been conceived in an act of love; they feel very negatively towards their father; they hope he was somehow punished for what he did, or felt deep remorse. There’s all sorts of ‘sorry’ going on.

As for Saul’s very specific meaning of being sorry; his “all considered” question of whether they regret that things happened as they did “assuming that they could not have occured differently and still retain the good”. No, the person is not sorry IN THAT SENSE. But so? All that is saying is that, given *only* the two choices, mother was once raped but they exist, or mother was never raped but they are wiped from existence, they do not wish that the rape didn’t occur. But that’s a heavily limited ‘lesser of two evils’ construction. The restriction renders the intended dilemma of the paradox meaningless.

Is the person in Jean’s example in the situation of saying they condone rape, either in general or in this particular case? No, not at all.

Are they absolving the rapist of moral responsibility? Nope, not a bit.

Are they reacting coldly, callously to the revelation that their mother was the victim of rape? No. Probably quite the opposite.

I suspect what causes uneasiness about this for some is that they feel like admitting “I do not wish the rape didn’t happen” in the limited sense of only being able to choose between ‘rape happened’ and non-existence, is in some way much like wishing rape on someone. But that’s clearly not the same thing.

my first line above is meant to read: “BUT he is getting there…”

I’m sorry, but we’ve reached a sorry state of affairs when we’re making sorry excuses for ignoring the initial question of just which sorry is being addressed, before we start trying to reach agreement on the meaning of the “sorry” at the centre of the alleged paradox, or (perhaps more correctly?) the “paradox” in question.

I’m not sorry (1) for keeping on about these distinctions, even if I’m a tad sorry (2) for coming here. but what keeps me going is concern for the sorry (3) state of affairs in much of current philosophy, and the hope that one day more “academic” philosophers will be genuinely sorry (4) for the damage they’ve done by failing to insist more strongly on students coming to grips with basic logic BEFORE they attempt soar to Icarus-like heights in the pursuit of “philosophical’ understanding.

Sorry about going on so.

Well I’m not sorry you’re going on, Norm. It’s always amusing watching someone try to be clever, be a nanny, and make a point, or (perhaps more correctly?) “point” at the same time.

It sometimes can be trying, Stephen, when you’re only trying to encourage people to try to adopt more rigorous practices when they’re establishing the premises on which they base their beliefs, and your efforts are then tinterpreted as trying to do something else.

Still, I’m an optimist, so I try to maintain my (perhaps unwarranted?) belief that students of philosophy are capable of much more than currently is expected of them.

In response to Michael’s “without exception” point:

We can certainly imagine lots of trajectories that lead up to our existence. If I am the product of rape, and my birth was actually the result of a series of events A, there are many imaginable alternative routes to my existence–B, C, D, etc. Instead of my father raping my mother, they could have met two years earlier in Hawaii and fallen in love. Conception could have still taken place on the day it did, with the same egg and sperm uniting to form me. So why can’t we just prefer that route, and get rid of this annoying paradox?

The problem is this: what I have to come to terms with is a true counterfactual–”If my father had not raped my mother, I would not exist.” This is true, even if I can imagine the pretty Hawaii scenario. If my father had not raped my mother, then what? Some tiny thing happened differently so the rape did not take place…and I was not born. It’s part of the meaning of the counterfactual that I do not get to “jump” to the very different world in which my father met my mother two years earlier in Hawaii, etc. etc. etc.

So–you’ve got this true counterfactual–”If my father had not raped my mother, I would not have been born.” Given that as background, if you are definitely not sorry that you were born, it’s very hard to see how you can be sorry that your father raped your mother. Thus, the paradox. We seem to wind up not sorry for the morally bad…or else sorry for our own existence.

Jean:
Norm Geras’s analysis of the disjunction is persuasive and it doesn’t involve the simultaneous tussle that SS appears to think it does. It’s a sequence and you can regret one element of it and be glad of the other. One might also be a miserable person. Would it therefore stand to reason that you regretted the wonderful incident of conjugal felicity that led to your existence? Tristram Shandy became aware that such incidents occurred after the winding of the long case clock . Freud would be happy. In any case would Shandy fils come to regret the existence of long case clocks?

I think that the counterfactual element that you mention is significant. Appended to each is an infinite series of attendant counter factuals. No, I will have no infinite regress. It is perhaps just this background opacity of the might have been that dissipates serious engagement with regret.

Stephen: Thank you for understanding my argument; I was concerned that it would not have been readily interpreted. I agree with you that Smilansky is tied to making very limited assertions in order to present his paradox here, and I think those limited assertions–even if the paradox is interesting–are unnecessary.

Jean & Michael: I believe your concern about “infinite regress” is good, and I agree with that concern. However, I do not think that concern is enacted when I imagine different scenarios for P’s existence. There is some give-and-take, but it is not a statement such as, “Well, if you won’t have that scenario, why don’t we just go back to primordial ooze; take that!” My obejction simply states that because we can entertain other circumstances in which we would have been born, that the crux statement of the paradox, namely “P would not exist without this event E”, is false.

Therefore, I’m rather glad you used this “counterfactual” argument (the notion of the “true counterfactual” is a new one to me, but I’ll accept it at face-value for now). I’m glad you used it, because it made me realize a key part of my rebuttal earlier: namely, that of future conditionals.

Yes, it’s true that some “little thing” may have occurred wherby the rape did not cause your existence, but what if that rape being avoided also entailed your father’s no longer objectifying your mother, but instead becoming enamored with her? So, you must not only rule out all past possibilities for “[]~E ) ~P”, but also all future possibilities as well.

The extent of these “limitations” (or “Without Exception Clauses”), again, seems rather ridiculous just to get a paradox presented; far too much logical hoop-jumping for something that does not comport with our natural ethical sense about the intrinsic worth of individuals.

-MSH

Jean:
“Given that as background, if you are definitely not sorry that you were born, it’s very hard to see how you can be sorry that your father raped your mother.”
Surely only if by ‘not sorry’ you mean ‘I wouldn’t want the event undone’. And even then, only because of the consequence that you wouldn’t exist, not because you are approving of the event in itself.

Eureka Stephen !!!!! You’ve unearthed the key to this whole prolonged discussion’s actual problem. If only we decide in each case the use to which ’sorry’ we’re sorry about, before we start ‘philosophising’ it’s not quite as profound as it first superficially appeared.. Congrats.

I now can now understand why, when I put down a mad dog, I felt sorry for the dog; sorry it had to be done; and even (given my incredibly soft nature, and the fact that Possums was our family’s much loved pet) sorry for myself having to be the one who was required to do it; but not sorry that Possums was no longer spreading rabies among those dear (and even not so dear) to me.

Thank you.

Stephen, Exactly. I think that’s basically what sorriness means in this context. I think it’s paradoxical in the extreme to think you wouldn’t want your mother’s rape undone, because without it you wouldn’t exist. So there is something paradoxical here, as Saul says.

Norman Hanscombe, How about dropping out of the conversation if it doesn’t meet your standards for philosophical rigor? Nobody’s holding you hostage here.

Well, Norman, I made essentially the same point in my earlier, longer post. To be fair to other posters, some of them have implicitly addressed the issue of ‘what do you mean by “sorry”‘ in their argument. Jeremy’s first post, for example.

I think where Jean and possibly others may be getting caught up is that even considering that point, they are still “weirded out” in some way by the notion that they are *in any sense* not sorry for something like a rape occurring. I kinda know where they’re coming from, but I think that their concern is more a peculiar feeling than an actual issue we should be worried about from a moral, rational point of view.

Jean,

Without wanting to get too wraped up in semantics, I can see that the situation could be seen as paradoxical in a sense. But I don’t see it as a moral dilemma of any kind. (Or, at least, no more so than any “lesser of to evils” situation.)

Jean’s right. Have fun; but hopefully some might consider considering whether more effort spent on sorting out initial terms might sometimes be worth the effort, not to mention saving a lot of time?

Auvoir.

Stephen, Here’s the way Saul motivates the worry at the beginning of ch. 6. He points out that good people can’t be expected to try to prevent all the bad things that happen. It’s morally permissible to let various things take place, without making them your responsibility. But at the very least it seems like you should be sorry about morally bad things. In fact, it seems like a reasonable and very undemanding general principle that you should always be sorry about the morally bad.

It’s surprising, then, that there should be exceptions. It is morally permissible, he argues, to not be sorry about your mother’s rape. Why? Simply because a good, reasonable person (like himself) is going to reason: if it weren’t for the rape (his sister’s death, in Saul’s own case), I wouldn’t exist.. If I’m not sorry that I exist, how can I be sorry for the rape? (The rape example is mine, I should add.)

I agree with him that it’s odd if if turns out people don’t always have to be sorry about the morally bad. In addition, I do simply find it weird and discomforting to suppose I could be anything but sorry about my mother’s rape or my sister’s death.

In the case of hugely bad things, like the Holocaust, Saul thinks we really do have to be sorry, even if our existence depended upon it. But then I think logically it’s got to be his view that we must also be sorry about our own existence. (Norm Geras and I interpret Saul differently on this point…) Again, I personally find this strange and discomforting. But I also think there are some major implications to be noticed.

Many/most people can say to themselves that they wouldn’t exist, if it weren’t for some huge tragedy in the past–the Holocaust, the slave trade, the genocide of native Americans. Alterations to history that would have prevented all these large-scale horrors would also have kept many or most of us from existing. Given Saul’s reasoning about the logic and ethics of being sorry, we are all going to have to be sorry about these things. But then we’re also going to have to be sorry about our own existences.

So…the paradox leads to seriously strange things, not just to “peculiar feelings,” as you suggest.

There are (at least) two different sorts of oddity here. The first is how we can (morally) be happy about bad things that we (morally) cannot do. (Hoping and wishing are probably like being happy, in this context.) The second oddity results from the implications of the all-included perspective on not being sorry or on being happy.

On this second topic I favor your interpretation, Jean, over Geras’ s. Geras understand the whole thing, I think, more along emotional lines. And it is perfectly plausible to be ambivalent in the emotional sphere. One can be both happy and sorry, at the same time, about being a philosopher or living where one lives. This is differnt from holding contradictory views. Even if we ignore the emotional issue, it is plausible, I think, to believe (now as a judgement, not an emotion) that one aspect or part of something is good, and another aspect is bad. This is not contradictory, since we hold differnt views about differnt things (parts, aspects), not different views about the same thing. But another way of understanding “being happy that” is something like “preferring that it happen”. And we can ask this not only about parts, but also about a whole. If we have a package deal, and talk holistically, do you wish that there were no Holocaust and no you, or that there were a holocaust and there were a you? As (in this case) saying yes to one is saying yes to the other, and saying no to one is saying no to the other, both can and should be seen together.

So, if we are thinking about things in the all-considered hollistic way (as I am, in this context), you can think about the issue as questioning whether you can be happy and sad at the same time (yes), or whether you can judge a thing to be (all in all, at the end of the day, the bottom line) good and bad at the same time (no), or wish that (as a whole) it happened and did not happen at the same time (no).

And this does not only concern our existence in the light of historical events, but more mundane things in daily life. Many of the good things we have result (whether we know of this or not) from bad things that happened to others. It is not unlikely that you got your job, or your wife/husband, or your lucky break, because something bad happened to another person, i.e. a competitor that otherwise would have edged you out. Normally you will and should be sorry FOR this person, and sorry that your benefit could not occur but at the other person’s expense, but that’s easy: the hard question is whether your prefer THAT the bad would not happen to him, when you know that YOU would then pay the price (not get the love of your life or your dream job). And in such cases as well, arguably it is typically o.k. not to be sorry at the bad that happens to another, in the sense under discussion.

Aha, then I do interpret you correctly. I was starting to worry…

I find paradox #6 especially interesting as it pertains to history, since there is so much to regret in history. Even here, the present events we are glad about (at first glance) can be all sorts of things–not just our own existence (which I’ve focused on). But yes, every day life is a treasure trove of examples.

I don’t see the big paradox here either… people are more complex than a choice between sorry and not sorry. If I am to be sorry about something occuring which led to my birth, and sorry about my birth as a result of that, then should all people whose births did not result from nasty events be giving thanks that they are alive as a result of normal, pleasant events? Considering the butterfly effect or connectedness of everything, if the holocaust occured, and we were born after it, although our parents may not have been involved, should we then still be sorry to be alive because had it not happened, by the different path history took, we would not be alive? There is also no way of knowing whether we would be here or not… things could have just happened differently. It seems ridiculous to have to think of whether or not one is sorry about events that we didnt take part in. I take it that people who see the event as negative (ie, non-nazis!) can say “im sorry that happened” without it having to be read into or without having to get bogged down in existential questions about what we would be willing to sacrifice to be alive! Its not a personal responsibility to feel bad about things that have happened unless you have any reason to feel responsible.

by the way- if you think that being born as a result of the holocaust or a rape should cause you to feel bad or feel sorry that you are alive, then shouldn’t most americans be sorry to be alive? had the native americans not been killed, stripped of their lands, etc… the america of today would not exist. Also, should south americans be sorry to be alive? Had the spanish not slaughtered most of the natives and destroyed the cultures in south america, there would be no such people as brazilians, chileans, argentinians, etc….

Ciara, I was thinking along the same lines above (Nov. 30, 11:58). Maybe there’s a plausible principle that says if everyone has to be sorry they exist, then no one has to be sorry they exist.

Ciara:
Although there are such things as mixed feelings we can deal with them as you say. We need to because otherwise the abrasion of interaction would soon wear us down. For example, competition. The idea is that you play the game and not your opponent. In that way you can say even if you lose - ‘that was a good game’. We all know this. As the man said ‘this game is played’.

The parents who met due to the Holocaust underline the fact that evil is not like a taint that pollutes everything but that against that general background much good can take place. So you can be happy for that whilst being sorry for the circumstances which threw them together.

Quote: “During the war people changed beyond recognition. Decent people who had run large companies would steal bread under cover of darkness and overnight honest merchants would turn into enemies of their own children. But there were also people mainly simpler folk, who came into their own, totally devoting themselves to others.” (from The Story of a Life by Aharon Appelfeld.

Do moral judgments arise out of the system of feelings or responses we have to situations? Are these the materials out of which systems are constructed? Must we eliminate contradictions such as the supposed ‘feeling good about the morally bad’ or are these just logical artefacts which are the result of the inability of logic to deal with the subtlety of emotional reaction. How is logic to deal with: ‘you don’t really like that couch, carpet etc. you’re just saying that’. Wrong answer: ‘I am just saying that’. Right answer: ‘I look through your eyes and what I see is beautiful’. It may even be the truth.

The important underlying issue is why might anyone equate sorry FOR someone with sorry one has DONE something – and even the latter can itself have quite different meanings. But first, pleasing to see that some at least have alluded to the irrelevance of a preoccupation with events such as your mother’s rape or the Holocaust, because this overlooks the central point that the current state of the world would be completely different, and none of us would be here, if even one of a myriad of events in the distant past — most of them trivial and of no ethical concern — had been ever so slightly different. If, for example, the next-door but one neighbour of any of Genghis Khan’s maternal great-great-grandmothers had eaten a bad batch of Mongolian Lamb the day one of Genghis’ ancestors (direct or indirect) was going to be conceived, all subsequent History could be different. The early episodes of the television programme, “Doctor Who”, deal with this issue quite frequently, although not in relation to Genghis.

A useful tool for helping us better understand our species’ tendency to NOT think logically, is the concept of cognitive dissonance. Our species is programmed to examine the logic of an argument carefully only to the extent it doesn’t fit into our current view of the world. It had survival value when (unlike other animals) we had to deal with self-awareness and our place in an outside world, and all the complications associated with that awareness. On the primaeval savanna, survival was aided by positive feelings towards the inner group, combined with no compunctions whatsoever when dealing with outer groups. As societies grew and developed, we extended the role of ‘inner’ group to ever widening numbers; but those innate predispositions remained. Not a pretty picture, perhaps, but evolution wasn’t a sanitised process, and biological evolution was never going to be able to keep up with the rapid changes brought about by technological evolution.

We yearn for absolutes — or most of us seem to anyway. Gods, Marxism, Leprechauns, et al have all helped out at one time or another. This need is seen in how comforting we find it to believe that we can demonstrate a logical basis for ethics. It’s not comforting, on the other hand, to consider too carefully the evidence that ethics is a product of our evolved psychobiological drives — drives which helped us survive in a simpler more basic world, but may not be as suitable in our modern world. Perhaps that’s why when people quote the wonderful aspirations of your Founding Fathers, concerning the rights they held dear, few notice how they handled their inability to establish logical grounds for adopting those wonderful ideals. They took the easy way out and declared them to be ‘self evident’ truths.

We tend subconsciously to adopt a similar approach with all ethical dilemmas, which may help explain why there’s so much confusion about what is/isn’t a paradox?

[...] http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=454 [...]

If because I met and married the nurse who mended me from the injury that resulted in the amputation of my leg, am I happy that my leg was cut off ? NO!!
I am happy with my wife in bed as I curse my luck hopping to the bathroom on one leg. Anything less would be unnatural. Sure everything may be OK in fits of marital bliss. There is no guesswork in the clockwork when everything is groovy. Its not groovy all the time. But none of this is moral or philosophical.

If on the otherhand you were the cause of my injury and tried to justify the accident on the fact that I was able to meet and marry the nurse then you would be
immoral and your philosophical point would be wrong.

Jean wrote:
“Stephen, Here’s the way Saul motivates the worry at the beginning of ch. 6. He points out that good people can’t be expected to try to prevent all the bad things that happen. It’s morally permissible to let various things take place, without making them your responsibility. But at the very least it seems like you should be sorry about morally bad things. In fact, it seems like a reasonable and very undemanding general principle that you should always be sorry about the morally bad.”

Yes, and you *are* sorry - in all cases discussed. There is only a specific sense in which you are not “sorry” (you agreed with me on this earlier). In all the examples discussed there is at least a sense in which we would be sorry, and that sense is sufficient for “at the very least it seems like you should be sorry about morally bad things” to apply. You don’t have to be sorry in every sense in which we can conceive of the concept of sorry.

Jean, I don’t wish to be a wet blanket, but doesn’t your final sentence, i.e. that “You don’t have to be sorry in every sense — of the concept of sorry” give a clue to why some migt have come to the conclusion that there’s a significant paradox here?

As long as we mix up the various connotations of the word “sorry”, and treat them as having the same meaning, the confusion flourishes. Sort out which meaning of sorry is being used in each case, and much of the “mystery” evaporates.

Clarification isn’t as interesting as mystification, of course; but it should be seen (in philosophical discussions at least) as the more appropriate route to take — even if it’s sometimes also more painful.

If, however, I’ve missed some fundamental point, I’d appreciate learning what it is.

[Jean wrote:] “Ciara, I was thinking along the same lines above (Nov. 30, 11:58). Maybe there’s a plausible principle that says if everyone has to be sorry they exist, then no one has to be sorry they exist.”

That’s right: with the butterfly effect and all, I’d say petty much everyone that exists now does so partly as the result of many morally bad things that have happened in the past. For everyone there must be several examples of an event-S, a morally bad thing that happened at some point in the past, that had it not happened would mean they would not exist. Even if we could all ‘be sorry’ that these things happened and wish them all away, the people that exist in our place would all have various things to be sorry about anyway. There’s a sense in which we seem to be being asked to be sorry that the universe works the way it does.

Norman,

I wrote that sentence, not Jean. I quote her in the first paragrapg, then respond. Sorry, I don’t know how to make quotes stand out in a ‘mark up text’ kind of way.

I more or less agree with you.

[Saul wrote:]
“But another way of understanding “being happy that” is something like “preferring that it happen”.”
…….[end quote]

I don’t see that there’s anything particularly morally troubling about this given the limited sense you mean things. By ‘happy’ you just mean ‘prefer that it happened that way’ given other constraints. What’s the difference with just presenting two alternatives and insisting that someone choose one or other?

Consider: A building site collapsed one morning. It kills 20 workers who started at 8.30 am. If a certain bolt had been replaced the day before the building would have lasted much longer before collapse, killing a different shift of workers: 60 of them.

In the wider sense we’re sorry about all of this - about any deaths. We wish the building never collapsed, or collapsed before anyone turned up to work.
But if you present someone, let’s call him Fred, with only the two options - building collapse early, or late - then there is a sense in which Fred will “prefer that it happen” so that 20 people die. (In this case “it” being that the bolt is not replaced.) I don’t think there’s anything especially morally troubling about the notion that Fred is ‘happy’ that 20 people were killed, because we all know he isn’t really happy that they were killed at all - he has no ill will towards them, and wishes things could be otherwise. He’s only “happy” in that we’ve contrived it so that “happy” = “prefer that it happen“, and “it” = “20 people die *instead of* 60”. A la the Trolley Problem, we’ve given him no alternative. If we then said to Fred: “See Fred, I told you that there could be occasions where you are happy that morally bad things happen”, I don’t think Fred would be particularly impressed by our purported paradox.

Thanks for responding, Stephen (and apologies to Jean for the wrong attribution)

Stephen, with regard to your other comment, EVERYONE who exists now does so ENTIRELY “as the result of many morally bad things that have happened in the past.” For everyone then, there are INNUMERABLE examples of “an event-S, a morally bad thing that happened at some point in the past, that had it not happened would mean they would not exist.”

It’s even worse, however, than (as you put it) “There’s a sense in which we seem to be being asked to be sorry that the universe works the way it does.”

Once we give the word “sorry” a meaning which leads us to having to apply it to virtually everything which has happened in the past, the word loses whatever value it might otherwise have had.

I suspect that much of the sloppy thinking found in ethical/religious/social areas arises from the fact that by nature we have an enormously strong predisposition to want to believe in something (almost anything will do) and our minds go into neutral whenever something dear to our hearts is under threat.

Cognitive dissonance helps us stay away from seeing the contradictions present in our “sacred” beliefs, and ensures we can lead far less uncomfortable lives than would otherwise be the case. That’s why religions are so universally popular. Most have deities, but some of the most popular religions, e.g. Marxism, have none, and others, e.g. human rights can be both theistic and non-theistic.

I seem to no sooner post than another one pops up, Stephen. You’re on the right track, by the way, analysing what the same word can mean in different contexts. You’re adopting Socrates’ nowadays rarely quoted suggestion that the definition of terms is the beginning of wisdom. I avoided quotes because it’s from memory dating back over half a Century; but on this occasion at least it’s the general principle, not the precise wording, which is important.

I still don’t see a real paradox here… from a moral point of view, there are a lot of paradoxes in life. That’s because if you take good and bad to exist, in black and white, the greyscale of real life will always be paradoxical as it contains both extremes. This isn’t a philosophical paradox, merely a moral one.
The idea that one should feel sorry about bad things that happen seems old fashioned… The idea that anyone “should” feel anything sounds wrong to me. Feelings are complex and personal, and no philosophical debate can really be based on an idea that people should or should not feel something. This debate smacks of a group of confused victorians debating etiquette. To bring up all these theoretical situations where a person A has a happy life or positive experience as a result of the suffering of person B is like one of those timewasting questions I used to ask teachers when I was in school, trying to come up with situations that confuse. We are free thinking, modern human beings and our feelings are complicated. I don’t see why because something is negative, we should or would feel bad about it. Of course you tell the victims you are sorry, but that is to show your solidarity and to make them feel better. To get bogged down in definitions of words that mean different things and have different multiple uses and paradoxes in different languages and consider it an ethical issue is to ignore the huge flaws in english as a scientific language. If X is 3 is one equation and 5 in another, would scientists really waste their time debating the paradox of 3 equaling 5? Debating the use of the word “sorry” is akin to that. Words are not measuring units, they are not exact, they change with every use, with every speaker, writer, reader and listener. Words are for communication with each other, for describing the world. Words are not exact or precise and it is not a huge mystery, we have not found a hole in the tapestry just because we find an occasion where the words we have are not perfectly suited.
If I’m right, then this whole paragraph is null and void…. oooh i smell a paradox!

You are correct, Ciara, when you suggest that using words without first clarifying what they mean can render discussion meaningless — but you then go on to say, “Words are not measuring units, they are not exact, they change with every use, with every speaker, writer, reader and listener. Words are for communication with each other — .”

The first part of this sentence means you are resigned to accepting that discussion is meaningless. Then in the second half, unexpectedly you’re stating words are for communication. If their meanings are as fluid as the first half of your sentence claims, how could we communicate with each other in any meaningful way, since (in the first part of the sentence) we’ve adopted an arbitrary Humpty Dumpty approach to words, and can only communicate with ourself.

Socrates was on the ball when he emphasised the importance of first defining our terms, and although Humpty’s thesis has been taken up enthusiastically by many postmodern “thinkers”, do you really want to end up talking to no one other than yourself?

“The first part of this sentence means you are resigned to accepting that discussion is meaningless”
Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that discussion was meaningless. But if you take a subject and try to discuss it scientifically, try to define the terms during the discussion, then it is meaningless.
I don’t think we can define the term “sorry” because it has a lot of different uses. Don’t take me to extremes- I don’t mean language is so fluid as to render words meaningless. But as I said- you can’t pin a theory or an argument on one flimsy, multi-purpose word, especially in this case where the word is one of the most abstract words I can think of, being used so regularly and with varying degrees of meaning.
You brush off someone in a shop and say “sorry.”
You hit someone in a fit of rage and say “sorry”.
You show compassion with “sorry”.
You shake a widows hand and say “sorry”
You break up with a partner with “sorry”.
These are all legitimate uses of the word, and they all mean different things, or come from different feelings.

I’m relieved, Ciara, to learn you, “didn’t mean to say that discussion was meaningless.” I worry, however, when you immediately go on to say, “But if you take a subject and try to discuss it scientifically, try to define the terms during the discussion, then it is meaningless.”
No one is making that suggestion. In fact, an important key to meaningful discussion is to define your terms BEFORE you start the analysis; and then IF you do re-define terms during that analysis, you need to start from scratch again, otherwise you’re likely to end up talking (whether or not you know it) at cross-purposes.

I’m surprised to find you saying, “I don’t think we can define the term ‘sorry’ because it has a lot of different uses.” The very fact that it has so many different meanings is WHY we need to determine which meanings are involved BEFORE we start talking about any alleged paradox. It’s not a paradox where we have two statements both using ‘sorry’, but they are using the word with two quite distinct meanings.

That’s why, when looking at pseudo arguments re alleged paradoxes involving “sorry”, I’d gladly endorse your suggestion that “- you can’t pin a theory or an argument on one flimsy, multi-purpose word, especially in this case where the word is one of the most abstract words I can think of, being used so regularly and with varying degrees of meaning.” Thank you for putting my case so emphatically.

It helps sum up what a sorry mess Humpty-Dumptyism has created in modern ‘academia’

Best wishes.

Ciara wrote: “This isn’t a philosophical paradox, merely a moral one.” -

Well, to be fair, the title of the book is “10 Moral Paradoxes”.

ah ha… fair enough…
That’s my problem with the internet, it’s too easy to be flippant and lose train of thought….
I think my real argument hidden somewhere amongst the contradictions is not an argument, merely bafflement as to why someone would write a book on so called paradoxes which i consider to be just natural contradictions that on slightly closer inspection are not really contradictions, and not worth the discussion apart from as a distraction when it’s quiet at work.
Moral paradoxes… I find it just as interesting to ponder why I like buttered bread and I like tomatoes but together they make me retch.
But then I suppose the book wasn’t aimed at me or the little table in my bathroom….

Ciara, if something IS a genuine paradox, moral or any other, the process of analysing it is a philosophical one. UNfortunately, what all too often happens is that because our premisses aren’t spelt out sufficiently carefully, we become ensnared in pseudo arguments.

When this happens, debates can resemble a school of sharks circling some poor victim (say a non-paradoxical “paradox”?) without either side of the argument ever realising how confused they both are. Watch your friends closely next time they’re having an argument. Note how often when one person comes up with a thorny counter-argument, the other side simply switches to another completely different tack — and does it without blinking an eyelid or even (in most cases) even seeming to be aware of the non-logical nature of his verbal sleight of hand.

Cognitive dissonance served our species well in the primaeval savanna; but although it’s more of a mental hindrance in the modern world, we’re stuck with it. How much effort each of us puts into keeping it under control is up to the individual. Sometimes it may prove painful to examine one’s personal sacred cows too carefully, but if you’re genuinely interested in philosophy, that’s often as good a place to start as any.

Most of the issues, by the way, ARE worth discussing, provided always that the protagonists first ensure they’re talking about the same thing. Just try to never forget the Philosophical equivalent of the Real Estate Mantra:

“Analysis! Analysis! Analysis!”

[...] has been considering a few chapters of Saul Smilansky’s book 10 Moral Paradoxes.  This week, she looks at Smilansky’s idea that sometimes you should not feel sorry when bad things [...]

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