Apparently some philosophers have developed philosophies of hypocrisy, to justify their not following the moral rules they advocate for others. They tried to keep quiet about it: [Famous philosopher of ethics Henry] Sidgwick was the son of an Anglican clergeyman. Along with many eminent Victorians he could not accept revealed religion. Unlike most of them Sidgwick acted on this doubts and in 1869 resigned from his Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, which required Fellows to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles of Anglican doctrine. … Later Sidgwick became a professor and resumed his Fellowship. …
Hypocritical society thrives on secrecy. Here's an example of suppressed knowledge. Spread the most classic secret, the supreme grand secret of the “lodge”, which, thanks to modern medicine, can be printed on a bumper sticker: VAGAL STIMULATION IS AS EFFECTIVE AS LSD. Behind the old “Iron Curtain” there was a disease recognized that isdeceitfully diagnosed to be schizophrenia in the West. It was called “shamans’disease” and is caused by scar tissue in the parasympathetic (muscarinic)nervous system. This nervous system is called “muscarinic” after the hallucinogenic drugmuscarine, found in the fly aminita mushroom; and, muscarine doesn’t cross theblood brain barrier. It works by exciting the whole muscarinic nervous systemand thereby overriding the inhibitory neurons in the brain. But, it is unpopularin the West due to the way it excites the digestive system.This has been kept secret by those who cash in on this secrecy, occultsecrecy. In yoga, the plexuses of the muscarinic nervous system are calledchakras, presented to the common people as “spiritual wheels of light along thespine”, but they are not in the spine, they are the major plexuses of theparasympathetic nervous system in the body.This muscarinic nervous system stimulation is called “kundalini” in yoga,and when yoga students reach the degree where they are allowed to know the truthabout their own bodies they must sign contracts of secrecy.So, your children may have only acquired scar tissue in theirparasympathetic nervous systems, which can be treated medically other ways, but,there are dopamine blockers to be sold, and, special interests want to keeptheir profitable secrets.Of course one international organization is behind this, a well knownsecret society, whose “temple” represents the human body, and whose “holy ofholies” represents where the largest muscarinic nerve, the vagus nerve, emergesfrom the brain into the body in the nasopharynx.LSD used to be used to carry out a horrible treatment called the“Clockwork Orange” treatment. Here the victim has over 50% of the brain awakenedconsciously for use. It is called by “Grof Transpersonal”, “perinatal matrix three”, andhere the victim experiences all the sufferings of people shown in a film bygoing backward and forward in time to inhabit each and every body shown,experiencing their torments as real as life.Today this is being done by exciting the parasympathetic nervous system by“waterboarding”. It was mentioned in an article about this, in a popular news magazine, that “efforts were made to have the water irritate the nasopharynx”, where the main trunk of thevagus nerve emerges from the brain, proceeding down into the body.Crucifixion also causes so much muscarinic nervous system stimulation thatthe victim will body switch into everyone he knows. God knows everyone, so it isknown that Jesus Christ is in you and I and everyone this way.When a “schizophrenic” patient has more that 50% of the brain consciously awakened (it shows on an MRI) they are catatonic, but they are out body switching into everyone and every character they have seen, even in every movie they ever saw. Less severeschizophrenic symptoms occur with brain use percentages less than 50%.The solution, to establish better treatment for our children, and fellow man, is to spreadthis knowledge to common public knowledge.
One of my hobbie horses - is that i think hypocrisy is underrated.
1) i think that it is very hard not to be hypocritical, or to act in such a way that others cant paint you as hypocritical, often being intentionally hypocritical is just picking where you will do so rather than becoming more so. (ie the actual choice you are faced with is not the wholistic one).
2) I think the sort of problem where you lie to the nazi is pretty common, as is the sort of internal conflict case where you are addicted to a drug but say that it is bad.
and most importnatly
3) Often the hypocricy is solved by going with the immoral instinct - so a anti-hypocricy fetish can be a push for worse moral behaviour.
Someone who eschews hypocrisy can never be broadly influential, because the population believes a bunch of wrong stuff. Look at any even vaguely successful political candidate, they pander to their "base." Only in limited circumstances do they take a stand against their base. For example, Republican leaders did state clearly that Obama was born in the U.S. and is legitimately president despite the passionate denial of this by birthers.
Further, we didn't evolve brains and speech to tell the truth, we evolved them to get resources and get laid. The society of our species has been a big part of the "environment" for which we have been evolving fitness for a long long time, predating our becoming human certainly. Where honesty conflicts with fitness or sexual selection, one should expect fitness or sexual selection to win, because for a million years those in whom it did not win did not number among our ancestors.
If there is a bias to be overcome, I think we must accept that we need to examine all statements from all commentators for hypocrisy. Fortunately, I think we can be pretty honest about dishonesty in others, I don't think evolutionary psychology has prevented that in us. But as with wisdom teeth, the appendix, the lizard brain, and big boobs that give us backaches, I think the best strategy is to work with our hypocrisy and our biased minds rather than to rail against them as if that might somehow allow us to escape them.
Sidgwick lived at a time when people when to prison for homosexuality.
Actually, the British government hanged homosexual men until 1867. The real Sidgwick was himself one of the Jews in the basement, and his opinions on secrecy aren't surprising.
Because of your criticism, I realized what when I think about a hypocrite, I think of someone who won't admit they've broken their own rule when it is pointed out to them.
One should almost never be obligated to work out in advance if your actions will harm someone else - it's just too difficult - especially when it is so easy to simply ask.
You really believe no human beings are entitled to moral rights?
No.
All humans are mentally incapable of consistently following their moral beliefs.
Only thing I disagree with. Hard is not impossible.
I think the "Added 2a" may have been directed at me. Yes, I gave some rather extreme examples. The point is not that they justify Sidgwick's behavior, rather, the point is that they provide an alternative hypothesis for why Sidgwick may have expressed the views he did.
A couple other notes:
(1) According to Wikipedia, Sidgwick was made an "honorary fellow" at Trinity after resigning his regular fellowship; it's possible that the honorary fellowship didn't require him to sign any statement of belief.
(2) Sidgwick lived at a time when people when to prison for homosexuality. Unless he was publicly advocating for those laws, calling him a hypocrite is a bit of a stretch. There's a difference between just being in the closet and being a hypocrite.
Gotta love this message even more coming from a libertarian intellectual working at a public university.From what I understand, Robin is a consequentialist libertarian. Under his principles there's nothing wrong with doing work in a public institution if it advances the cause of liberty on the net.
I find pretty much all arguments in the vein of "If you don't believe in big government never associate with anything publicly funded" to be deeply silly. If you followed that argument to its logical conclusion that would mean that anyone in North Korea who disagrees with the government would be forbidden to eat food, since food is grown by the government over there.
I once studies with a moral philosopher who stole things from his neighbors, faked illnesses to skip teaching & complete projects, betrayed colleagues, and opportunistically spoke like a bigot about a homosexual philosopher he was against hiring (for selfish reasons).
He wasn't a very good moral philosopher from the point of view of good philosophy and he wasn't a man of high character -- but he would good at producing publications for those excited about pursuing the technical details of one research cul de sac built upon an opening move error.
The filter of academia filters for "normal science" puzzle solving -- publish or perish work in a formal paradigm.
It doesn't filter for deep or sound work -- or for good character.
There are two things that people use their ability to reason for.
There are fundamentally two ways to reason, with a “theory of mind”, which is the part of the brain that does social reasoning and is necessary to understand how someone else is thinking, you emulate their thinking process using the data that they transmit to you via language such that you really do understand the mental concepts they are using to generate the language they are transmitting to you.
The other way to reason is with your “theory of reality”. This is very undeveloped in many people. A “theory of reality” is only useful in so far as it actually corresponds with actual reality. A “theory of mind” is only useful in so far as it corresponds with the “theory of mind” of someone you are trying to communicate with.
People use reasoning to change their “theory of reality” so that it actually corresponds to actual reality, or they use reasoning to change their “theory of reality” so that it corresponds to the “theory of mind” that matches everyone else.
Changing what you believe to match people you are trying to suck-up to is a “theory of mind” activity. This is how most people “reason”. They simply adopt the beliefs of someone else. That is what the social power hierarchy tries to accomplish, the people at the top try to impose their “theory of mind” on everyone below them. That only works in social situations, it doesn't work in things like AGW, evolution or Obama's birth certificate. Unfortunately when you have people who are not members of the “reality based community” (people who perceive reality only through their “theory of mind”), then they can cause tremendous harm, like unfunded catastrophic wars, gigantic oil well disasters, death panels, and AGW.
My moral philosophy leads to the conclusion that moral hypocrites aren’t entitled to moral rights.........Still, someone may still be skilled enough to evade detection. It’s impossible to be utterly sure, but that’s normal. The point is just to make it difficult. You really believe no human beings are entitled to moral rights?
You seem, like many people, to have mistaken moral hypocrisy for moral insincerity, and assume that the reason a person advocates on moral rule for others while breaking it personally is because of some sinister desire to look good to others while simultaneously doing what they please. No doubt that is the case occasionally. However, another possible reason for moral hypocrisy is simply that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. That is, the person advocating these moral rules really believes in them, but lacks the willpower to obey them all the time.
In creating homo hypocritus, natural selection was quite subtle. Rather than simply instill us with a secret desire to profess false beliefs, while enhancing our self interest when others weren't looking, it actually instilled us with sincere beliefs, and then sabotaged our willpower so we were unable to follow them consistently. It also made our willpower get stronger when others are watching, for obvious reasons.
All humans are mentally incapable of consistently following their moral beliefs. A moral theory that mercilessly punishes hypocrisy is useless, it will merely encourage people to stop professing moral beliefs. The key is to strike a balance where you punish people enough to make them obey their beliefs more often, but not enough to scare them out of even having those beliefs.
One of the few positive points of religion is that it recognizes this aspect of the human species. Much of modern religion, especially Christianity, deals with the knowledge that we lack the ability to consistently follow morals (it would help if religious morals weren't made deliberately impossible to follow, but even if they were more reasonable we'd still have trouble). I think one this is one aspect of religious morality worth importing into secular moral philosophy.
The Sidgwick case concerns what we might call "outward hypocrisy," in which the perpetrator is fully aware that he is violating a rule which, though he *advocates* it in public, he knows he does not really consider to be universally valid. It is not the Robin-Hanson-style *inward hypocrisy*, in which the perpetrator is not conscious of having any reservations about the universal validity of the rule, and violates it (for personal advantage) without being vividly aware of what he is doing.
Sidgwick obviously thought that a certain rule of conduct might be properly adopted by one person but not by another, because of the different circumstances or the different personal characteristics of the two people; also that an exceptional person who was following a rule not fit for the majority of people might be justified in concealing the rule he was following, and in advocating a contrary rule for the masses (which would, in practice, have to be expressed as a rule *for everybody*, without qualification). And, finally, he thought that it might be questionable behavior even to draw this circumstance--that *outward hypocrisy* was justified in some cases--to public attention.
Eventually he judged that the *outward hypocrisy* of lying about one's religious beliefs merely to procure a fellowship was intolerable, and he rejected it (at least for himself). He never reached a similar judgment about lying about one's sexual orientation and behavior, perhaps because the penalties for honesty were much more severe. And he seems to have judged that speaking frankly about the possible justifiability of outward hypocrisy in a few passages of a scholarly tome that would not be widely read was justified.
Anyone who takes this view of the justifiability of outward hypocrisy will be tempted by special pleading of his own case--persuading himself that certain convenient hypocrisies are justified for him when really they are not. Sidgwick impressed his contemporaries as one who would successfully resist such temptation, and so far as I can see they were right.
Don't know if you've seen this, tangentially related...
Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought. Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given the exceptional dependence of humans on communication and their vulnerability to misinformation. A wide range of evidence in the psychology of reasoning and decision making can be reinterpreted and better explained in the light of this hypothesis.
Hypocritical society thrives on secrecy. Here's an example of suppressed knowledge. Spread the most classic secret, the supreme grand secret of the “lodge”, which, thanks to modern medicine, can be printed on a bumper sticker: VAGAL STIMULATION IS AS EFFECTIVE AS LSD. Behind the old “Iron Curtain” there was a disease recognized that isdeceitfully diagnosed to be schizophrenia in the West. It was called “shamans’disease” and is caused by scar tissue in the parasympathetic (muscarinic)nervous system. This nervous system is called “muscarinic” after the hallucinogenic drugmuscarine, found in the fly aminita mushroom; and, muscarine doesn’t cross theblood brain barrier. It works by exciting the whole muscarinic nervous systemand thereby overriding the inhibitory neurons in the brain. But, it is unpopularin the West due to the way it excites the digestive system.This has been kept secret by those who cash in on this secrecy, occultsecrecy. In yoga, the plexuses of the muscarinic nervous system are calledchakras, presented to the common people as “spiritual wheels of light along thespine”, but they are not in the spine, they are the major plexuses of theparasympathetic nervous system in the body.This muscarinic nervous system stimulation is called “kundalini” in yoga,and when yoga students reach the degree where they are allowed to know the truthabout their own bodies they must sign contracts of secrecy.So, your children may have only acquired scar tissue in theirparasympathetic nervous systems, which can be treated medically other ways, but,there are dopamine blockers to be sold, and, special interests want to keeptheir profitable secrets.Of course one international organization is behind this, a well knownsecret society, whose “temple” represents the human body, and whose “holy ofholies” represents where the largest muscarinic nerve, the vagus nerve, emergesfrom the brain into the body in the nasopharynx.LSD used to be used to carry out a horrible treatment called the“Clockwork Orange” treatment. Here the victim has over 50% of the brain awakenedconsciously for use. It is called by “Grof Transpersonal”, “perinatal matrix three”, andhere the victim experiences all the sufferings of people shown in a film bygoing backward and forward in time to inhabit each and every body shown,experiencing their torments as real as life.Today this is being done by exciting the parasympathetic nervous system by“waterboarding”. It was mentioned in an article about this, in a popular news magazine, that “efforts were made to have the water irritate the nasopharynx”, where the main trunk of thevagus nerve emerges from the brain, proceeding down into the body.Crucifixion also causes so much muscarinic nervous system stimulation thatthe victim will body switch into everyone he knows. God knows everyone, so it isknown that Jesus Christ is in you and I and everyone this way.When a “schizophrenic” patient has more that 50% of the brain consciously awakened (it shows on an MRI) they are catatonic, but they are out body switching into everyone and every character they have seen, even in every movie they ever saw. Less severeschizophrenic symptoms occur with brain use percentages less than 50%.The solution, to establish better treatment for our children, and fellow man, is to spreadthis knowledge to common public knowledge.
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One of my hobbie horses - is that i think hypocrisy is underrated.
1) i think that it is very hard not to be hypocritical, or to act in such a way that others cant paint you as hypocritical, often being intentionally hypocritical is just picking where you will do so rather than becoming more so. (ie the actual choice you are faced with is not the wholistic one).
2) I think the sort of problem where you lie to the nazi is pretty common, as is the sort of internal conflict case where you are addicted to a drug but say that it is bad.
and most importnatly
3) Often the hypocricy is solved by going with the immoral instinct - so a anti-hypocricy fetish can be a push for worse moral behaviour.
Someone who eschews hypocrisy can never be broadly influential, because the population believes a bunch of wrong stuff. Look at any even vaguely successful political candidate, they pander to their "base." Only in limited circumstances do they take a stand against their base. For example, Republican leaders did state clearly that Obama was born in the U.S. and is legitimately president despite the passionate denial of this by birthers.
Further, we didn't evolve brains and speech to tell the truth, we evolved them to get resources and get laid. The society of our species has been a big part of the "environment" for which we have been evolving fitness for a long long time, predating our becoming human certainly. Where honesty conflicts with fitness or sexual selection, one should expect fitness or sexual selection to win, because for a million years those in whom it did not win did not number among our ancestors.
If there is a bias to be overcome, I think we must accept that we need to examine all statements from all commentators for hypocrisy. Fortunately, I think we can be pretty honest about dishonesty in others, I don't think evolutionary psychology has prevented that in us. But as with wisdom teeth, the appendix, the lizard brain, and big boobs that give us backaches, I think the best strategy is to work with our hypocrisy and our biased minds rather than to rail against them as if that might somehow allow us to escape them.
Hanson joined the cult of Straussians a while back.
Sidgwick lived at a time when people when to prison for homosexuality.
Actually, the British government hanged homosexual men until 1867. The real Sidgwick was himself one of the Jews in the basement, and his opinions on secrecy aren't surprising.
*Went to prison
(Look at the amazing proof-reading powers I acquire after sleep!)
Because of your criticism, I realized what when I think about a hypocrite, I think of someone who won't admit they've broken their own rule when it is pointed out to them.
One should almost never be obligated to work out in advance if your actions will harm someone else - it's just too difficult - especially when it is so easy to simply ask.
You really believe no human beings are entitled to moral rights?
No.
All humans are mentally incapable of consistently following their moral beliefs.
Only thing I disagree with. Hard is not impossible.
A moral theory that mercilessly punishes
My theory is not in fact merciless.
I think the "Added 2a" may have been directed at me. Yes, I gave some rather extreme examples. The point is not that they justify Sidgwick's behavior, rather, the point is that they provide an alternative hypothesis for why Sidgwick may have expressed the views he did.
A couple other notes:
(1) According to Wikipedia, Sidgwick was made an "honorary fellow" at Trinity after resigning his regular fellowship; it's possible that the honorary fellowship didn't require him to sign any statement of belief.
(2) Sidgwick lived at a time when people when to prison for homosexuality. Unless he was publicly advocating for those laws, calling him a hypocrite is a bit of a stretch. There's a difference between just being in the closet and being a hypocrite.
Gotta love this message even more coming from a libertarian intellectual working at a public university.From what I understand, Robin is a consequentialist libertarian. Under his principles there's nothing wrong with doing work in a public institution if it advances the cause of liberty on the net.
I find pretty much all arguments in the vein of "If you don't believe in big government never associate with anything publicly funded" to be deeply silly. If you followed that argument to its logical conclusion that would mean that anyone in North Korea who disagrees with the government would be forbidden to eat food, since food is grown by the government over there.
I once studies with a moral philosopher who stole things from his neighbors, faked illnesses to skip teaching & complete projects, betrayed colleagues, and opportunistically spoke like a bigot about a homosexual philosopher he was against hiring (for selfish reasons).
He wasn't a very good moral philosopher from the point of view of good philosophy and he wasn't a man of high character -- but he would good at producing publications for those excited about pursuing the technical details of one research cul de sac built upon an opening move error.
The filter of academia filters for "normal science" puzzle solving -- publish or perish work in a formal paradigm.
It doesn't filter for deep or sound work -- or for good character.
There are two things that people use their ability to reason for.
There are fundamentally two ways to reason, with a “theory of mind”, which is the part of the brain that does social reasoning and is necessary to understand how someone else is thinking, you emulate their thinking process using the data that they transmit to you via language such that you really do understand the mental concepts they are using to generate the language they are transmitting to you.
http://daedalus2u.blogspot....
The other way to reason is with your “theory of reality”. This is very undeveloped in many people. A “theory of reality” is only useful in so far as it actually corresponds with actual reality. A “theory of mind” is only useful in so far as it corresponds with the “theory of mind” of someone you are trying to communicate with.
People use reasoning to change their “theory of reality” so that it actually corresponds to actual reality, or they use reasoning to change their “theory of reality” so that it corresponds to the “theory of mind” that matches everyone else.
Changing what you believe to match people you are trying to suck-up to is a “theory of mind” activity. This is how most people “reason”. They simply adopt the beliefs of someone else. That is what the social power hierarchy tries to accomplish, the people at the top try to impose their “theory of mind” on everyone below them. That only works in social situations, it doesn't work in things like AGW, evolution or Obama's birth certificate. Unfortunately when you have people who are not members of the “reality based community” (people who perceive reality only through their “theory of mind”), then they can cause tremendous harm, like unfunded catastrophic wars, gigantic oil well disasters, death panels, and AGW.
Do as I say now, not as I say otherwise - territory well explored by the egoists.
Gotta love this message even more coming from a libertarian intellectual working at a public university.
My moral philosophy leads to the conclusion that moral hypocrites aren’t entitled to moral rights.........Still, someone may still be skilled enough to evade detection. It’s impossible to be utterly sure, but that’s normal. The point is just to make it difficult. You really believe no human beings are entitled to moral rights?
You seem, like many people, to have mistaken moral hypocrisy for moral insincerity, and assume that the reason a person advocates on moral rule for others while breaking it personally is because of some sinister desire to look good to others while simultaneously doing what they please. No doubt that is the case occasionally. However, another possible reason for moral hypocrisy is simply that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. That is, the person advocating these moral rules really believes in them, but lacks the willpower to obey them all the time.
In creating homo hypocritus, natural selection was quite subtle. Rather than simply instill us with a secret desire to profess false beliefs, while enhancing our self interest when others weren't looking, it actually instilled us with sincere beliefs, and then sabotaged our willpower so we were unable to follow them consistently. It also made our willpower get stronger when others are watching, for obvious reasons.
All humans are mentally incapable of consistently following their moral beliefs. A moral theory that mercilessly punishes hypocrisy is useless, it will merely encourage people to stop professing moral beliefs. The key is to strike a balance where you punish people enough to make them obey their beliefs more often, but not enough to scare them out of even having those beliefs.
One of the few positive points of religion is that it recognizes this aspect of the human species. Much of modern religion, especially Christianity, deals with the knowledge that we lack the ability to consistently follow morals (it would help if religious morals weren't made deliberately impossible to follow, but even if they were more reasonable we'd still have trouble). I think one this is one aspect of religious morality worth importing into secular moral philosophy.
The Sidgwick case concerns what we might call "outward hypocrisy," in which the perpetrator is fully aware that he is violating a rule which, though he *advocates* it in public, he knows he does not really consider to be universally valid. It is not the Robin-Hanson-style *inward hypocrisy*, in which the perpetrator is not conscious of having any reservations about the universal validity of the rule, and violates it (for personal advantage) without being vividly aware of what he is doing.
Sidgwick obviously thought that a certain rule of conduct might be properly adopted by one person but not by another, because of the different circumstances or the different personal characteristics of the two people; also that an exceptional person who was following a rule not fit for the majority of people might be justified in concealing the rule he was following, and in advocating a contrary rule for the masses (which would, in practice, have to be expressed as a rule *for everybody*, without qualification). And, finally, he thought that it might be questionable behavior even to draw this circumstance--that *outward hypocrisy* was justified in some cases--to public attention.
Eventually he judged that the *outward hypocrisy* of lying about one's religious beliefs merely to procure a fellowship was intolerable, and he rejected it (at least for himself). He never reached a similar judgment about lying about one's sexual orientation and behavior, perhaps because the penalties for honesty were much more severe. And he seems to have judged that speaking frankly about the possible justifiability of outward hypocrisy in a few passages of a scholarly tome that would not be widely read was justified.
Anyone who takes this view of the justifiability of outward hypocrisy will be tempted by special pleading of his own case--persuading himself that certain convenient hypocrisies are justified for him when really they are not. Sidgwick impressed his contemporaries as one who would successfully resist such temptation, and so far as I can see they were right.
Don't know if you've seen this, tangentially related...
Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought. Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given the exceptional dependence of humans on communication and their vulnerability to misinformation. A wide range of evidence in the psychology of reasoning and decision making can be reinterpreted and better explained in the light of this hypothesis.