Sanity, consistency, and ideals

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Something that comes to mind from the ethics of personal entertainment thread is a simple question: Is it possible to be sane/normal/whatever other word and be consistent?

The idea comes up because the issue with helping the poor is that valuations of human lives that are reasonably high also actually involve a lot of personal responsibility, however, holding to a lower standard ends up seeming relatively sociopathic. Perhaps there are potential ways to work around this issue, but it seems that most of those would suffer the charge of ad hocness and thus not be valid solutions to maintain a notion of saneness/normalcy even if they maintained consistency.

For this reason, I would like to bring this kind of question forward and even ask about it in relation to a large number of other things, such as authority relations, confidence in beliefs, metaphysical systems, etc.

What are your thoughts?

I don't see why not, although I imagine it's fairly unusual for somebody's beliefs to be entirely consistent.

A topic like ethics is probably especially problematic, because it usually involves trying to apply simple, abstract values to a frequently complex situation that did not emerge with any consideration of such values. Morality is not mind-independent; evolution doesn't operate according to morality; the socio-economic systems that are currently in place were put there by people who either 1) had moral values most of us would now disagree with (like racism, for example), 2) didn't have enough information to make a correct judgment about their consequences of their actions, or 3) were not even aware that their actions would have a significant impact.

I don't think there is any easy answer to ethical questions. I'm pretty much a preference utilitarian, but I wonder if I stand by that principle as much as I think I do. Certainly, I'd be surprised if all my beliefs, especially if we're quantifying over those outside of ethics, were consistent with each other, because I generally accept that with most of the claims I make, I'm guessing there's about a 10-20% that I'm correct (and I think that's probably the same for most people, whether they accept it or not). Due to this, I don't focus on consistency across all areas. Aiming for consistency within sets of beliefs makes sense, but trying to do across all the beliefs one holds is probably counter-productive to one's intellectual progress. Since I know that any particular belief or set of beliefs that I hold is probably incorrect, I'm not going to actively try to contaminate every other consideration with them.

Also, having appartently inconsistent beliefs can sometimes lead to unique ways of reasoning, when one tries to find a way of making the beliefs compatible. A good example is one I've mentioned before here - Paul Churchland's support of scientific realism, despite the massive influence from philosophers like Feyerabend and Hanson. Although these would be considered inconsistent by most, they are made fairly explicit in much of his work, and it's made him a rather unusual kind of realist.

Sanity is doing what others think you should do. If you don't, you are considered a wacko. If we go much deeper than that, things start getting confusing, contradicting, and most of all, annoying.

Someone who truly has not examined philosophical views at all, and holds no particular opinions on such topics, can be sane and at the same time avoid inconsistency. Simply making no assertions guarantees consistency.

Your example is nonsensical. Every human being has to examine their reality by some set of principles, and these principles are going to be subject to consistency. Lacking the principles for consistency is likely a form of insanity/abnormality/etc.

Not at all. I might simply indicate a lack of care or thoroughness.

ruveyn

One does not have to be thorough, but rather one has to have that natural desire to avoid ad hocness. A person who is a bunch of disconnected notions seems impossible given the interrelation between ideas and the role of reality testing in every day life and discourse. Most people will refer to some vaguery, such as the golden rule, or something else. I am not sure that what Orwell is positing is normal in any meaningful sense though, as he is supposing a being that has opinions/notions/ideas/drives/etc so detached from each other that they have no connection at all, even hypothetical ones.

There is no such natural desire. It is an acquired discipline to avoid ad hoc assumptions. Little kids are ad hocers by nature. According to Hume we are all a bundle of disconnected notions anyway.

ruveyn

Sure there is, where does ethics come from? Besides, you are conflating two different things: actually avoiding ad hocness, and desiring to not be ad hoc. For the former, we do have an acquired skill, however, for the latter there is no such issue.

I didn't say that little kids *weren't* ad hoccers at all by nature. Even if avoiding ad hocness is learned, the learning process is natural enough given that people don't take made-up justifications seriously if pressed and if pressed people want to say that they are coherent.

I don't think you are giving a full exposition of Hume's thoughts, but I don't care really, because I doubt he was writing on the exact same issue.

EDIT: Let's make things clearer. People use theoretical abstractions to make sense of reality all of the time, this is part of our experience, everybody's experience, whether they recognize it or not. The use of a theoretical abstraction, whether implicitly or explicitly amounts to being something that could be subjected to questions of consistency, and given that these theoretical abstractions are likely in implicit conflict with other theoretical abstractions, we have an issue.

I mean, the response given is this:
A being can exist that is consistent and sane/normal, because this being abstracts so little that each opinion is isolated from every other opinion. The problem is that abstractions are required across a response to reality. Another problem is that ad hoc differences are not tolerated from other beings, so while children may be ad hoc, adults could never tolerate such things consistently and if they tolerate it in an ad hoc manner they suffer problems of inconsistency. Finally, a being that was so explicitly ad hoc would not likely be considered sane/normal, but rather would likely be showing signs of a very nihilistic/solipsistic mindset, (perhaps I hold my fellow man to overly high standards) and this would thus violate the initial set of conditions.

As it stands, our complete "bundle of ideas" man sounds less like a human being and more like something in a postmodern fiction. (and I am not saying that postmodern fiction has no connection to reality, only that it can often have a strained relationship and often aims to show how things are deeply "insane")

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 18 Apr 2010, 4:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.

@Ahhsumleeglohreeuss: You seem to want to define the closest approximation of a perfect human mind. You're brave. And also wasting your time.

I don't understand your issue at all. "Perfect human mind"?

A mind which is able to remain entirely consistent. Part of having the flawed brainmatter we all have is that we are, at least sometimes, hypocrites.

Nope. Most people don't examine their reality beyond the score of the latest football game. They do not have any grand theories of the world, and they do not, for the most part, bother with any of the philosophical matters which preoccupy your time.

Orwell, I think you are underestimating how much implicit theories are involved with how the world works. They don't have to have "grand theories" or "deep examinations" to have a set of beliefs that is broad enough to be prone to inconsistencies. Even simple assessments have enough of an abstractness to easily pull out principles from. I mean, in your notion you have to have people who do not moralize, who tolerate any truth claim made by anyone(but aren't relativists), who do not have enough attachment to reality to take actions ever, and who basically exist on a level lower than many animals. If you hypothesized about a being who made choices, you would have plenty of fertile ground for contradictions simply because people love to justify their behaviors.

EDIT: Let's put it this way, to know about the score of the latest football game, that requires that people accept the existence of a game, the existence of ways to find out the score of the game, and that these games are real. All of which have assumptions underlying them. The issue is that multiple situations rely upon similar assumptions and a large variety of them, so with any human being, there is likely a large ground for inconsistencies in the application of assumptions. Because of that, the notion of a person who is not inconsistent is problematic, unless we assume competence.

Not if sane = perfectly rational.


If part of rationality is believing what is true, and if truth must be consistent, then consistency is necessary for rationality.

You may define "sane" as not significantly different from the average. The definition of delusion asks whether a belief is held against overwhelming evidence and also whether the belief is normal for the culture or subculture. But the definition of rationality doesn't refer to what is normal.

Except sane is generally not considered to be a synonym of perfectly rational.


I know, the definition of rationality doesn't refer to what is normal, and this is why the contrast is something I can point to, and why I think rationality and sanity could actually be opposed to each other in some ways.