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Show Chapter IX. "Ought" 362 All of this may seem to imply that failing to keep our promises should drive us crazy, or at least ruin our lives, which it ordinarily does not. If there were no sources of epistemic and conative motivation to undermine our personal investment in the ideal descriptive moral theory that asserts this practice as a universal law, then, I submit, disconfirmation of it would have these effects with much greater frequency.5 But there is much counterevidence that undermines the authority of fact, consensus, and reward; and thereby undermines our personal investment in the ideal descriptive moral theory they support. We regularly and inescapably witness disconfirmations of this theory, not only in our own behavior, but also, more importantly, in the behavior of those whose function it is to transmit the theory to us and reinforce our sense of its importance. By violating the laws of the theory in their own behavior, these authority figures undermine the authority of fact, consensus, and reward, and thereby our personal investment in the truth of the theory. 4. The Loss of Innocence Consider first the effect on our beliefs and motivation of witnessing deviations from this ideal theory on the part of a parent or other esteemed authority figure. Suppose, for example, that, having promised to come hear you play your tuba, your parents do not show up for the school recital; and that, despite your pleading and reproaches, they never make it to any of the school recitals to hear you play your tuba. In accordance with the Hempelian covering law schema discussed in Chapter V.5.2, there are a number of ways in which you may interpret this fact, each of which requires modification of the theory. First, you may question the suppressed premise that your parents are rational beings. Since young children do not ordinarily have rationality criteria independent of their parents' and teachers' behavior, this is not a psychologically realistic possibility. Second, you may conclude, after some rethinking of your higher-level conception of rational motivation, that rational beings do not always keep their promises or help the needy: Since keeping their promises and helping the needy would have been the dependable and benevolent thing to do, it seems that rational beings are not necessarily dependable or benevolent. They may be capricious or self-absorbed as well. This adjustment, which decouples morality from the more comprehensive concept of rationality of which it is at best an instance, is then a first step toward personal disinvestment in Theory K. For disconfirmation of its lower- For discussions of particular cases, see Robin Horton, "African Traditional Thought and Western Science," in Bryan Wilson, Ed., Rationality (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 131-171; and Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), especially Chapters 2, 6, and 8. 5 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
