tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4318375667051435937.post6345937953168096565..comments2023-08-25T16:13:51.356+01:00Comments on Martin In The Margins: Proposing and performingMartinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15608932251584881007noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4318375667051435937.post-34098501268830059432011-09-24T20:57:12.862+01:002011-09-24T20:57:12.862+01:00Hypocrisy and pretence are essential to the well f...Hypocrisy and pretence are essential to the well functioning of society. I was once on an interview panel, interviewing 6 candidates for a position. The second person we interviewed was head and shoulders above the first, and then above each of the others following him. We knew within a few minutes of talking to candidates #3, 4, 5 and 6 that they were no match for candidate #2. What should we have done? An honest (and efficient) practice would have been to call off these later interviews, knowing that #2 was going to be our first choice. Instead, we went through the motions, asking all the candidates all the same questions we had asked #2, pretending to be sincere in listening to their replies, but not really. To have done otherwise would have been unfair to these later candidates.peterhttp://www.vukutu.com/blog/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4318375667051435937.post-91634195395635060252009-11-19T18:59:58.433+00:002009-11-19T18:59:58.433+00:00That's a very nice point about unbelief not ha...That's a very nice point about unbelief not having a practice, Martin. I suppose I was thinking of something like C.S.Lewis's remarks (I can't recall where) about how hard it is to maintain belief in a milieu where it's not shared, and how explicit an effort has to be made to do so. There must be a myriad of tiny events and performances in a broadly irreligious context which undermine belief every single day, mustn't there?<br /><br />I'm not so certain about the collapse of the external/internal distinction, though I'm sure you're right that plenty of philosophers do endorse this. But how then do we make sense of quite ordinary locutions such as 'living a lie', or 'going through the motions', both of which can be undergone by those who lose either their belief or their unbelief? And surely persistent hypocrisy depends on the distinction between the external and the internal - and who's going to deny the existence of persistent hypocrisy?Eve Garrardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4318375667051435937.post-15906809378876915302009-11-18T07:08:55.120+00:002009-11-18T07:08:55.120+00:00Hello Eve -
Thanks for the comment. You raise an...Hello Eve - <br /><br />Thanks for the comment. You raise an interesting question. I suppose if you hold that mental states are shaped by external actions (forgive inaccurate terminology - I'm aware that I'm in dialogue with a professional philosopher, and to my regret it's a subject I've never formally studied) - then what's true of faith must be true of unbelief also.<br /><br />However, it's difficult to see what the 'practice' of unbelief might entail - it's certainly not the same kind of thing as the formal practices of belief (prayer, ritual, etc) - more 'getting used to it' or 'living with it'...?<br /><br />Anyway, I'm beginning to think that the distinction in this ongoing debate between internal belief and external performance is a false one. According to Wittgenstein, belief is ITSELF a 'performance' - a willed action - and the internal/external distinction is misleading.<br /><br />As the other Martin says, maybe our insistence on the primacy of an internal state of 'belief' is a legacy of protestantism - and perhaps the philosophical dualism that went along with it?Martinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15608932251584881007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4318375667051435937.post-62122601904258568212009-11-17T22:44:11.992+00:002009-11-17T22:44:11.992+00:00Martin, (and Martin, for that matter), do you thin...Martin, (and Martin, for that matter), do you think that something similar can happen with respect to loss of belief - that *unbelief* can deepen through external practice, working from the outside in?<br /><br />Thanks for the very interesting post, especially the necessary distinction between description and justification.Eve Garrardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4318375667051435937.post-1401052726401290592009-11-16T21:43:45.807+00:002009-11-16T21:43:45.807+00:00Hi Martin
No of course I don't mind frequent ...Hi Martin<br /><br />No of course I don't mind frequent commenting - at least it feels like someone's reading the stuff!<br /><br />Thanks for the book recommendation - I'll look it up. I see he's written about Chesterton et al as well - which reminds me, I keep meaning to ask you if you'd post something more about distributism and why you think it still has relevance....along the lines of my recent challenge to my anarchist co-bloggers to explain their political credo.<br /><br />All the best<br />MartinMartinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15608932251584881007noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4318375667051435937.post-23817913297913769592009-11-16T21:08:10.482+00:002009-11-16T21:08:10.482+00:00Martin--I hope that you don't mind me commenti...Martin--I hope that you don't mind me commenting so much, but I do like your blog. Anyway, I've just seen a christmas treat for myself--Jay Corrin's 'Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy'--and it struck me as exactly up your street! It's a transnational study of catholic social action and the interaction of progressives and people who were on the right side of populism (just) in the last century. Thought I'd mention it to you.<br /><br />Hope all is well,<br /><br />MartinMartin Meenaghhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06092121503713511010noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4318375667051435937.post-63606851968758969212009-11-14T21:30:58.185+00:002009-11-14T21:30:58.185+00:00Pascal had a lovely riff on that, Martin. He said ...Pascal had a lovely riff on that, Martin. He said that mimicking those with faith eventually led to it, and compared it to copying singers or following Aristotle's pedagogic technique for the moral instruction of children. I'll find the quote for you and link to it, because it's beautifully done.<br />I think habituation as a means of progress toward faith would also suggest two other things; that psychological complicance and identification really do lead to internalisation, and that Kantian ideas about internally working out morality through reason are only a small part of faith and not all of it. So it would fit with a catholic or orthodox view; I wonder how Protestants would feel about it.<br /><br />I agree with you it's not a justification for reasoned belief, but if you believed in natural law and a progress towards faith it would be. If I were a rationalist, though, all I would do is say 'that's just a post hoc justiication--a nonsense. All you are saying is pretending you have faith leads you to a view that you have faith that suggests that you were being led to faith that is validated by itself'.<br /><br />And that's why Virgil couldn't accompany Dante out of purgatory. I'm off for another pill. Great post.Martin Meenaghhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06092121503713511010noreply@blogger.com