[hist-analytic] Reciprocity: Rousseau vs. Rawls: Re: Hobbesian

[Baynesr at comcast.net]

Sorry JL for the delay. I had one of those intrusive automatic 

downloads of FireFox and, suddenly, my registry went 

bonkers. This created problems beyond "issues." Finally, 

bounced that " sucka " off the system. Big mess. 



I'm also wrestling with a chap named Cudworth who is 

a remarkably insightful ethicist who anticipated Moore 

on a number of points in ethics. Also, I've gotta put up 

some more stuff on hist analytic. Also, Lewis is giving 

me fits, and I am still angry with Rawlsian philosophy, 

and I have to calm down. So you get the picture. 

So I'll only comment on a few things; all of what you say 

is valuable and fun to read, as many offlist have said. 



"So they are, literally, both Mary and John in love." 


Being 'in love' is tricky. On my view reciprocity is a necessary 
but not sufficient condition for being in love: I may 
not believe she knows I exist; she may not believe I 
know she exists; but we can love each other, but clearly 
we are not "in love." Also, each others' merely believing 
the other love him is insufficient for either being 
in love or (especially) there being an obligation that 
comes out of it. Belief on the view I take is not 
sufficient, no more than it is sufficient to establish 
guilt. There may be an obligation to punish, but only 
if the defendant is known (beyond a reasonable doubt) 
to be guilty. Again the obligation is created as the 
consequence of knowledge not belief. 



Once you try to make use of belief, most employ it to 
avoid realism, which I embrace, then you get into 
things like half belief; then you have a mess with 
partial obligation; being partially in love etc. This 
is wrong headed I believe. 



In matters of love, there are no relevant assumptions. 
So I can't follow some of what you are suggesting, but it 
is an interesting perspective. JL remarks: 



"How about...Each must do for himself with the least harm 
to each other." 



The problem here is that the reciprocal 'each other' is 
not bound; that is, I have no idea to what it refers. It 
has no antecedent! Like reflexives, reciprocals must be 
bound in their "governing category" meaning that they 
must be coindexed with an antecedent (within certain 
syntactical structures). So to my ear this is not grammatical. 


Regards 



STeve 


----- Original Message ----- 
From: jlsperanza @ aol .com 
To: hist-analytic@ simplelists .co. uk 
Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 2010 5:04:52 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific 
Subject: Re: Reciprocity: Rousseau vs. Rawls : Re: Hobbesian 



-----Original Message----- 
From: Baynesr @comcast.net 
To: hist-analytic <hist-analytic@ simplelists .co. uk > 
Sent: Mon, Jan 11, 2010 9:13 pm 
Subject: Reciprocity: Rousseau vs. Rawls : Re: Hobbesian 

 From self love no concept of reciprocity is derivable. Nor does 
reciprocity, 
alone, imply obligation. I would like to clarify a point in view of JL 
( Speranza ) 's 
mention of my introducing the "amorous" relation entailed by being "in 
love." 
While being in love certainly carries this implication, this is not my 
reason for 
introducing it. Let me clarify this somewhat. 

>John may love Mary 
> 
>and 
> 
>Mary may love John, 
>even though they are not "in love." 

Good point. Relying on Grice ´s informativeness, basically his "Maxims 
of Quantity", or pertaining to the Category of Quantity, as he 
humourously calls it "echoing Kant", I would think 

(1) Mary and John are in love. 

_implicates_ 

(2) Mary and John are in love with each other. 

But as you say, I may be wrong -- this would seem to depend on idiolect 
meaning, or as I prefer, idiosyncratic, as Grice says, meaning. I don´t 
use the nominal, "in love" much, since I´m a verb person. 

In particular, I´m having in mind this, "odd, but possible" context, as 
Grice would have it, that Mary is in love with Peter, and John is in 
love with Judith. So they are, literally, both Mary and John in love. 

I would prefer to use Jack and Jill for this, as it´s the example used 
by Grice . 

Otherwise, it starts to sound like a cheap film, "Mary and Carol, and 
Ed and Pete" or something. 

---- 

Bayne continues: 

"They are in this circumstance of reciprocity under no obligation to 
one another." 

i.e. in the scenario 

(3) Jack loves Jill and Jill loves Jack. 

Bayne : 

"But it appears to me to be the case that once they are "in love"" 

i.e. 

(4) Jack and Jill are in love WITH EACH OTHER. 


"they at once 
are subject to a mutual or reciprocal obligation;" 

I see you do use "mutual" and it would be good to revise the etymology 
for this. I do suspect that binary is entailed or logically implied. 

"there is something they "owe" 
each other which they did not under those circumstances where the only 
thing 
that could be said was that John loves Mary and Mary loves John. So 
what is 
it that transforms this sort of reciprocity into a state of being in 
love." 

Good point. 

"It is this, 
that the lover know that he is loved by the beloved." 

And I was wondering if "believes" may do. I´m having in mind Ovid, Ars 
Amatoria . First, there are cases of self-deception, magisterially 
analysed by D. F. Pears in his Questions in the philosophy of mind and 
beyond (Motivated irrationality). Jack may not KNOW that he loves Jill. 
In fact, it happens with otherwise rational agents, a lot. Why, Jack 
may not even know he loves hisself , as I prefer. Some self-love! 

For, is ´love´a psychological predicate we are talking about? I hope 
so. If so, there´s issues of incorrigibility and privileged access, 
both discussed by Grice in his "Method in philosophical psychology". 
Etc. 

Bayne : 

"Once this is a fact, then there 
exists the reciprocity that characterizes being in love over and above 
the bare 
conjunctive reciprocity mentioned. My contention at this point is that 
obligation 
arises from reciprocity; and the sort of reciprocity is epistemic, viz. 
that one 
KNOW that the beloved indeed love me; so the beloved is known to love me 
and because I know I love the beloved, there is this reciprocity:" 

Very good. And to qualm those who object to long Gricean clauses in 
their analysis, Bayne properly goes symbolic: 

"x knows y loves 
x and x knows x loves y, so 'knows x loves y' and 'knows y loves x'   
entails that 
x knows they love *each other*." 

Or 

1. Jack loves Jill. 

2. Jill loves Jack 

3. Jack assumes that Jill loves Jack. I.e. Jack assumes (2) 

4. Jill assumes (1) 

"(Jack) knows (Jill) loves 
(him) and (Jill) knows (Jack) loves (Jill), so (she) 'knows (Jack) 
loves (Jill)' and (he) 'knows (she) loves (him)'  entails that (he) 
knows they love *each other*." 

Isn ´t what is entailed merely that he knows, or assumes, that he loves 
her, and he further assumes that his love is requited by Jill? 

They both seem to mutually know or assume this -- but the "each other", 
as you say, is merely about their assumptions, not about the content of 
their love. To have a mutual love, they would need, say, a pet. 

So, Jack and Jill mutually love their sheepdog, Jake. 

-- recall the odd ending, with Jack breaking his crown and all that. I 
always found this rhyme so macabre. 


"Thus the reciprocity is epistemic! But there is 
more to this epistemic relation than one might think. 
The obligation of the beloved to the beloved is reciprocal; that 
obligation arises 
from such a state as being in love." 

It _is_ odd, isn ´t it. For there is no (x) such that both Jill and Jack 
love. Perhaps it´s their mutual welfare. In the case of sexual 
survival, it may well be an antecedent for Jack wanting Jill to 
perpetuate his genes and viceversa . But then, one pale of water ... 

"This reciprocity in turn is epistemic; and so 
I claim that the obligation arises ultimately from an epistemic 
relation, not a 
moral fact." 

Good. Assumptions. But recall they seem to be assumptions about moral 
facts, or feelings. And as Grice says, sometimes are assumptions ARE 
true. (What´s the good, Grice wonders, in Meaning Revisited, WoW , of 
having all our assumptions wrong? It doesn ´t even follow; it´s 
intranscendentally unkantian , as he´d say). 

Bayne : 

"I might go so far as to say that the "ought" is not to be derived from 
the 
"is" but from the "known to be."" 

It is in contexts like this I fear my "assume" won´t do, for you seem 
to require the factivity of "know" -- alla Gettier , A knows that p, if 
p is true" -- to get to a, however derived, moral "fact", alla 
Blackburn´s quasi-moral quasi-realism of attitudes. 

Bayne then considers St. Matthew: I´ll start the numbering from 1 again 


(1) Do onto others as you would have them do onto you. 
(2) Do what is good for you with the least possible harm to others. 

Bayne comments: 

>only (1) involves 
>a reciprocal. 

as per 

(1´) EACH do onto the other as EACH would have the other do onto 
     himself. 
(2´) EACH must do for himself with the least harm to the other 

Bayne adds a good point about the "singularity" constraint on the 
other. Warnock was appealed to this in his rendering of (Ex) as "some", 
too. "Logic and Metaphysics"). 

>Momentarily ignore the difference between (2´) and 
(2´´') EACH must do for himself with the least harm to the OTHERS. 

Bayne : 

Both in (1) and (2) 

" 'each' from a remote position joins with 'other' 
to form 'each other' at another position. 

Allowing (1) to become 

(1´) Do onto EACH OTHER as EACH would have the other do onto himself 

Eureka: 

>Here we have a ... reciprocal. 

On the other hand (2) yields 

(2¨¨) EACH must do for himself with the least harm to OTHER. 

Non-Eureka: 

"no genuine reciprocal can be found at (the) logical form of (2") 

-- How about 

(2' ' ' ') Each must do for himself with the least harm to each other 

? 

You are right there seems to be a difference. I take the other here as 
the 10 comm. thing, love thy neighbour. Where it is not specified who 
the neighbour is. And this allows some humble Samaritans to say that 
one has to love one´s neighbour not like you love yourself, but MORE 
than you love yourself, and paradoxes like that. 

In fact, there is a church I never visit in Buenos Aires : Santisimo 
Sacramento. It was built by a ladida lady who wanted to show how much 
she loved her neighbour by building such an overornamented church it 
hurts. "If I live in a palace, shouldn ´t God live in one, too?", her 
odious motto. 

But I can imagine God rephrasing the above using the "each other" 

Perhaps in the vocative: 

"Each of ye, do for thyself, with the least harm for each other" 

? 

-- Just exploring. Not offering as counterexamples or anything. 


"in the 
case of ( B''' ) but there is one in ( A'' ). Why is this? Syntactically, 
the reason 
is in the placement of 'himself' . Observe that 'himself' occurs in 
*between* 
'each' and 'other' in ( B''' ). It suggests a "barrier"; that barrier is 
related to what 
"we" used to call a "governing category." 'Himself' is a reflexive; 

--- 

And wouldn ´t it be possible to avoid the reflexive nature of the 
FORMULATION of the practice by having, clumsily, things like 

Jack loves Jack. 

Etc. 

It seems reflexiveness is an accident, of coreference , etc. 

" 'each other' a reciprocal. 
On earlier theories of 
syntax the binding principles governing the relation of reflexives and 
reciprocals were treated as much alike (Both must be bound in their 
"governing category"). In ( B''' ) 'himself' needs binding in its 
category and 
it gets it from 'Each' . So 'Each' cannot "move" to 'other' without 
violating 
transivity of identity (forget the distinction for now between 
coreference 
and coindexation etc). Because there is this "barrier" namely 'himself' 
the 
reciprocal is impossible." 

Thanks. I´ll reconsider and get back to you. I see what you mean 
splendidly and would try to be looking perhaps more closely at the 
logical form, and how the surface form of both reflexives and 
reciprocals can be thought of as derivable defined operators, ... or 
something. 

Cheers, 

J. L. Speranza 
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