Clarifications of Australian values talk
September 21st 2006 23:00
I haven't been following the values discussion at all. It hasn't particularly interested me.
So it's an understatement that this post is going to be deficient.
But anyway I want to make some distinctions and introduce some terminology that I think might be useful.
Values generally
* What's a belief?
One way to look at the matter is to say that respect is an attitude rather than a belief. Both attitudes and beliefs are about something, but a belief, on this way of thinking, is more like a saying than a doing, is more intellectual (the degrees of a triangle add up to 180) than embodied.
However, attitudes are morally evaluable. They're evaluable according to moral beliefs. You can have good attitudes, and bad.
* What's a moral belief?
Well, one aspect of them seems to be universalizability. When you say "Murder is bad", you mean "No one should murder". And when you say, "Allah is great", you mean "Everyone should worship Allah". You make the claim as if you were referring to a fact of nature, like the sky being blue.
(The word "should" has a dual function. It sometimes refers to what's best given a particular purpose and particular parameters. If you want your cake to rise properly, you should bake at this temperature. Whereas in the ethical realm, "shoulds" are often obligations from nowhere -- facts of nature -- not necessarily based on particular purposes, and apparently unbounded by parameters.)
* There's a distinction, however, between the "is" of a particular society and the "ought" of the universal.
If you want to be rational, if you want to play the game of giving reasons, then just because something is the case doesn't mean it should be the case. Just because we've been sacrificing humans for hundreds of years is no reason, by itself, why we should continue to sacrifice humans.
* Beliefs (rules, values) are sometimes divided into matters of self-interest (how to make your life go best), and matters that concern other people.
* And beliefs are sometimes divided into rules and values.
A rule is something you should do or shouldn't. "Thou shalt worship no other god but me", "Thou shalt never touch a cow", etc. A rule is black and white.
Whereas values are open-ended and admit of degrees. One might seek to maximize happiness and minimize suffering.
Both values and rules can come in hierarchies -- this is more important than that.
* Of course, this rarefied ethical concept of "values" is not that of the phrase "Australian values". "Australian values" (in my view, anyway) seems closer to "cultural differences that characterize Australia".
And when you speak of cultural differences, there is an external and an internal side.
Externally: there are differences in practices, architecture, language, food...
Internally: there are differences in personalities and propensities, in moral attitudes and beliefs, and in amoral attitudes and beliefs.
Australian values
* So "values" in "Australian values" often nebulously refers to cultural differences.
* Australian values talk often blurs the line between descriptive and prescriptive, between is and ought. (That the majority of the population believes x, is no good reason to believe x, and is no good reason to make x binding universally and eternally.)
Australian values talk often blurs the line between the moral and the amoral.
Sometimes it blurs the line between the obviously external, and the obviously internal.
And sometimes it attempts to extend "self-interestedly good for you" into "good for everyone".
What does it mean to say that "hard work" is a value? -- It might be the case (or not) that Australians are the most overworked nation on earth. But does that amoral and external fact of personal choice justify the moral claim that everyone should work 40 hour weeks, and it's undesirable and against nature to do otherwise? How do you make the logical jump from practice to universalizable belief?
* How does one determine Australian values anyway?
-- Some Australian values are like Australian height (says a friend of mine, Allan). You can average them out. This culture tends to be tall, this culture tends to be short. This culture works hard to this extent, this culture likes sweetness to this extent. (And even positions on abortion can be averaged out -- any one person in the population might have a different mix of pro and con impulses.)
-- Some Australian values are less able to be averaged out. Jesus is god, and Allah is god. The best that one can do might be a head count. This percentage of the population worships Jesus, and this percentage worships Allah. Here, it may be preferable to speak of "common" values rather than "average" ones, though both common and average are in a sense "shared" values.
-- Some Australian values are historical. That is, they have a long standing, or used to be the average or the common -- like beliefs in white superiority or patriarchy or blind patriotism. (Is and ought: just because something is "Australian" doesn't mean it's good.)
-- Some Australian values are avowed only in practices or official discourse. With the Queen's Birthday we show respect for the queen (even if it's lip service -- even if mostly we're grateful for the day off work). With the national anthem, we say "For those who've come across the seas we've boundless plains to share", even if we hate immigrants.
-- And some Australian values are dominant (says my friend John) even if they don't reflect the average. This is partly because taking or not taking an action expresses a value, is reconstructed against a backdrop of universalizable norms. (Thus, Sartre says that when one chooses for oneself, one chooses for all of humanity.)
As a nation, we are pro war in Iraq, by virtue of our actions.
Implications of Australian values
* There are infinities of different values in the community. It may be sensical to speak of the average, the common, the historical, the official, or the dominant. But the existence of, say, an average doesn't, without more, imply anything. The existence of an average height doesn't mean you should try to grow or shrink people.
If average health or literacy is low, we might regard that as significant, because we have the value of wanting that average to be high.
So one might ask: What reason do we have for wanting to homogenize values, to squish the bell curve together?
(Alternatives to homogenization would include: leaving the bell curve in place; and altering its shape in other ways (for instance, in education there's a question whether it's better to spend resources on overachievers, to generate outstanding results, or on underachievers, to create a level playing field).)
Practical justification: it's probably true that a population with uniform values is easier to manage.
Moral justifications: crusading, or evangelism.
But in reply to the practical justification, one could point to the usefulness of diversity. And in reply to the moral justification, one could point to the values of tolerance and peace.
Is it possible to find a set of justifications (moral or practical) for homogeneity that clearly outweighs competing moral and practical justifications?
* Similarly, it is not obvious, without more, that shared values need be a criterion of membership.
Should women be excluded from the police force or from cricket because they aren't blokey enough?
The necessity of value talk
* We want, for reasons of liberty, to draw a distinction between public and private. We don't want, for instance, to make a law against lying; we think this a matter to be worked out in the social relations between people. A lot of us think that sex between consenting adults is no one else's business. And we used to think that the family should be immune from government interference.
Should values similarly be private?
* The feminist replies: the family can be the institution in which women are most oppressed, or most harmed.
* People pick up attitudes all over the place -- from family, from school, from voluntary organizations (sporting groups, leisure groups, clubs, churches, etc), and from engaging in various activities (politics, law, medicine, truck driving).
We cannot help but inculcate values by all these various means and in all these various places. We can't help expressing a value with every action we take or don't take. So mightn't we ask what values (moral and amoral) we're inculcating?
Any parent is faced with similar quandaries.
* But promoting or inculcating values is a different thing from making values compulsory.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the the Nestle website, from the Arnott's website, and from the Wikipedia articles flip-flops, Australian flag, indigenous Australians, Pauline Hansen, Fred Nile, Ku Klux Klan, Nuremburg Rally.
So it's an understatement that this post is going to be deficient.
But anyway I want to make some distinctions and introduce some terminology that I think might be useful.
***
Values generally
* What's a belief?
One way to look at the matter is to say that respect is an attitude rather than a belief. Both attitudes and beliefs are about something, but a belief, on this way of thinking, is more like a saying than a doing, is more intellectual (the degrees of a triangle add up to 180) than embodied.
However, attitudes are morally evaluable. They're evaluable according to moral beliefs. You can have good attitudes, and bad.
Well, one aspect of them seems to be universalizability. When you say "Murder is bad", you mean "No one should murder". And when you say, "Allah is great", you mean "Everyone should worship Allah". You make the claim as if you were referring to a fact of nature, like the sky being blue.
(The word "should" has a dual function. It sometimes refers to what's best given a particular purpose and particular parameters. If you want your cake to rise properly, you should bake at this temperature. Whereas in the ethical realm, "shoulds" are often obligations from nowhere -- facts of nature -- not necessarily based on particular purposes, and apparently unbounded by parameters.)
* There's a distinction, however, between the "is" of a particular society and the "ought" of the universal.
* Beliefs (rules, values) are sometimes divided into matters of self-interest (how to make your life go best), and matters that concern other people.
* And beliefs are sometimes divided into rules and values.
A rule is something you should do or shouldn't. "Thou shalt worship no other god but me", "Thou shalt never touch a cow", etc. A rule is black and white.
Whereas values are open-ended and admit of degrees. One might seek to maximize happiness and minimize suffering.
Both values and rules can come in hierarchies -- this is more important than that.
* Of course, this rarefied ethical concept of "values" is not that of the phrase "Australian values". "Australian values" (in my view, anyway) seems closer to "cultural differences that characterize Australia".
And when you speak of cultural differences, there is an external and an internal side.
Externally: there are differences in practices, architecture, language, food...
Internally: there are differences in personalities and propensities, in moral attitudes and beliefs, and in amoral attitudes and beliefs.
***
Australian values
* Australian values talk often blurs the line between descriptive and prescriptive, between is and ought. (That the majority of the population believes x, is no good reason to believe x, and is no good reason to make x binding universally and eternally.)
Australian values talk often blurs the line between the moral and the amoral.
Sometimes it blurs the line between the obviously external, and the obviously internal.
And sometimes it attempts to extend "self-interestedly good for you" into "good for everyone".
* How does one determine Australian values anyway?
-- Some Australian values are less able to be averaged out. Jesus is god, and Allah is god. The best that one can do might be a head count. This percentage of the population worships Jesus, and this percentage worships Allah. Here, it may be preferable to speak of "common" values rather than "average" ones, though both common and average are in a sense "shared" values.
-- Some Australian values are avowed only in practices or official discourse. With the Queen's Birthday we show respect for the queen (even if it's lip service -- even if mostly we're grateful for the day off work). With the national anthem, we say "For those who've come across the seas we've boundless plains to share", even if we hate immigrants.
-- And some Australian values are dominant (says my friend John) even if they don't reflect the average. This is partly because taking or not taking an action expresses a value, is reconstructed against a backdrop of universalizable norms. (Thus, Sartre says that when one chooses for oneself, one chooses for all of humanity.)
As a nation, we are pro war in Iraq, by virtue of our actions.
***
Implications of Australian values
* There are infinities of different values in the community. It may be sensical to speak of the average, the common, the historical, the official, or the dominant. But the existence of, say, an average doesn't, without more, imply anything. The existence of an average height doesn't mean you should try to grow or shrink people.
If average health or literacy is low, we might regard that as significant, because we have the value of wanting that average to be high.
(Alternatives to homogenization would include: leaving the bell curve in place; and altering its shape in other ways (for instance, in education there's a question whether it's better to spend resources on overachievers, to generate outstanding results, or on underachievers, to create a level playing field).)
Practical justification: it's probably true that a population with uniform values is easier to manage.
Moral justifications: crusading, or evangelism.
Is it possible to find a set of justifications (moral or practical) for homogeneity that clearly outweighs competing moral and practical justifications?
* Similarly, it is not obvious, without more, that shared values need be a criterion of membership.
Should women be excluded from the police force or from cricket because they aren't blokey enough?
***
The necessity of value talk
* We want, for reasons of liberty, to draw a distinction between public and private. We don't want, for instance, to make a law against lying; we think this a matter to be worked out in the social relations between people. A lot of us think that sex between consenting adults is no one else's business. And we used to think that the family should be immune from government interference.
Should values similarly be private?
* The feminist replies: the family can be the institution in which women are most oppressed, or most harmed.
* People pick up attitudes all over the place -- from family, from school, from voluntary organizations (sporting groups, leisure groups, clubs, churches, etc), and from engaging in various activities (politics, law, medicine, truck driving).
We cannot help but inculcate values by all these various means and in all these various places. We can't help expressing a value with every action we take or don't take. So mightn't we ask what values (moral and amoral) we're inculcating?
Any parent is faced with similar quandaries.
* But promoting or inculcating values is a different thing from making values compulsory.
***
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the the Nestle website, from the Arnott's website, and from the Wikipedia articles flip-flops, Australian flag, indigenous Australians, Pauline Hansen, Fred Nile, Ku Klux Klan, Nuremburg Rally.
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