baa nails it. Also, if you're in a position of authority over others, don't forget that your likes are just your likes, not The Good, and don't pressure your underlings to engage in loathed activities and then get upset when they're not very good.
baa nails it. Also, if you're in a position of authority over others, don't forget that your likes are just your likes, not The Good, and don't pressure your underlings to engage in loathed activities and then get upset when they're not very good.
I tried to like basketball, I really did. I performed countless drills trying to develop the 'soft touch.' I couldn't do it. I threw bricks. Loud hard bricks that clanged off the rim if I was lucky enough to hit it.
Then, as an adult in a stupid game that meant nothing I jumped up for a rebound that I had no hope of getting and flailed my arm over my head. My arm missed the ball and popped out of its socket.
Dislocated shoulder.
The Doctor told me never to play basketball again or it would simply dislocate again. And again.
I have happily complied.
If asked I tell people I used to play a lot of basketball until I dislocated my shoulder during rough play and was forced to stop. That is true, technically. I never tell them I sucked. I never tell them I think basketball is stupid.
What's the matter now, Tim? I see a few possibilities:
1) You think that when we're asked to engage in an activity we find distasteful, we should react more...vigorously ("Get the fuck away from me, or so help me I'll break every fucking bone in your fucking body....")
2) You think we're wussies for not wanting to dance, play basketball, etc., and that we should quit whining.
3) Our manliness makes you ashamed of your merely putative manliness.
taking dating advice from me is like taking interior design advice from a blind man, but let me strongly recommend dance lessons to the boys in the Mineshaft. You don't even have to be any good, just be able to twirl them a couple of times.
Not only does it impress the ladies to find a guy that can lead, but, you can get up there once, wow them, and then because you "obviously know what your doing," you can decline to dance for the rest of the evening, and be left in peace.
ac, i wasn't going to toot my own horn (mostly cuz it doesn't compare with the Gayatollah's), but yeah, there's that preception, as well.
Ogged, but don't you see the beauty of convincing people you know how to dance? You don't actually have to do it*, but you immediately become better in bed if people think you can.
One night a week for three months, you all of the sudden are a sex machine, and you can still sit and continue your conversation at parties.
Totally OT, but for baa from ESPN: "Even without Artest, I fully expect the Pacers to upset the No. 3 Celts and then take the Pistons to seven in Round 2. Pacers vs. Pistons has to go seven -- those are the rules."
There's also the Elijah Millgram argument: There are reasons for you to dance that you can only come to appreciate by dancing; so your current lack of motivation to dance does not mean that you lack reason to dance; so if you are brought to dance* you may, in fact, see that you had reasons to dance all along.
Millgram, I'm pretty sure, doesn't dance himself.
*In class--where the example under discussion was "watch baseball" rather than "dance"--this was illustrated by stick figure A dragging stick figure B to Miller Park in a headlock.
As for Mike D:
You don't actually have to do it*, but you immediately become better in bed if people think you can.
One night a week for three months, you all of the sudden are a sex machine, and you can still sit and continue your conversation at parties.
*beyond the one instance proving it
You've nailed (heh heh) the aspiration of all the Mineshaft denizens, I fear.
so your current lack of motivation to dance does not mean that you lack reason to dance
This is quite true. Take that Bernard Williams!
I think we would all be far more sympathetic to dance-badgerers if we believed that their own subjective experience followed this path: Once X hated dancing, but was brought to dance and now loves it; hence, he now drags friends to Arthur Murray in chains.
Mountains of empirical evidence, however, suggest that this is absolutely not the case. Dance-pushers are inevitably congential dancers, they have loved dancing all along, they are naturally graceful, and they aren't fooling anyone when they say that "all that matters is to have fun."
Fie.
Also, SCMT, was that Steven A. Smith you're quoting? A steak dinner on the Celtics.
Matt, if you're now going to expect us to actually read the comments we're responding to, you may bring the internet to a halt.
Tripp, I'm full of unwanted recommendations. (I suppose that if the internet isn't the perfect forum to start handing out unsolicited love-life advice to complete strangers, I don't know what is)
I'm confused by all this discussion of dance dragging and dance lessons. The only place I've seen social pressure to dance is at clubs where Arthur Murray isn't going to help much. I'm actually taking dance lessons with my wife right now, but we have to really go out of our way to find a place to do swing or salsa.
I actually agree with that, FL. Williams can simply note that your motivational set {s} can acquire new members, and move on. I just really like external reasons.
Matt, if you're now going to expect us to actually read the comments we're responding to, you may bring the internet to a halt.
One man's modus tollens is another man's modus ponens.
31/34: Of course Williams can and does acknowledge that your S can acquire new members. Millgram's claim is that cases like the dancin' case indicate that S can be corrected by experience--so that when "Gotta dance!" has been added to S, S is more accurate than it was. And so there is a reason to say that you had a reason to dance all along--even before "Gotta dance!" became part of your S--and that reason was an external reason.
O'course, if experience reveals that you don't like dancing, you never had a reason to dance.
[Oh, and {s} is the singleton set containing s. Bad baa!]
I don't think that would hold on Williams' theory, unless you had an antecedent desire to try things out to see if you liked them. (This all centers around Williams' classic paper "Internal and External Reasons," to be found in Moral Luck, available in fine bookstores near those of you who live near the Seminary Co-op.)
But Williams leaves open what sorts of operations on S might produce new members, and he seems to think that reasons supported by those new members are, and have been, internal reasons. Or so I seem to recall. Then again, if Millgram argued as you say, my recollection is probably in error.
Well, that's one of the things that's in dispute between Millgram and Williams (and most of the people I've talked this over with, who seem to think Millgram is uncharitable to Williams). Millgram thinks that Williams' arguments really require instrumentalism, even though Williams denies being an instrumentalist.
Though Williams leaves open which operations can produce new members of S and thus yield reasons that were internal all along, it seems to me that he's got to restrict those operations to things that might count as deliberation one way or another. Being persuaded non-rationally by moving rhetoric is ruled out more or less explicitly (in his discussion of how Owen Wingrave's family might conceivably get him to join the army), and I think trying dancing and seeing that you like it also has to be ruled out. Millgram also tries to argue that "imagining what dancing is like" won't work either--you simply might not be able to imagine it.
Sorry, b-wo, missed the comment--the Millgram argument is supposed to apply even to those who lack that desire, so long as they would in fact like dancing if they tried it.
(I'm obliged to defend Millgram because I'm wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the cover of Varieties of Practical Reason, which he edited. Really.)
Weiner, you know I like you a lot, but if I saw you wearing a shirt like that, my honor code would require at least making a serious atttempt on your life.
Not to drag this back to the original discussion, but I just noticed Abu said this in #8: " then get upset when they're not very good." WTF? You are a mutant giant. Assuming that philosophy is like every other academic endeavor, and we can safely subtract an inch from the median height of the population for every year they've been in school, you should be not merely not "not very good," you should be dominant.
I am now picking Weiner in the inevitable Philosophers' Brawl.
If Williams is saying that you can't get hit by a brick and get more elements in S, that's clearly wrong. I didn't take him to be saying that way back when, and thus took McDowell's criticism to be off-target. Most defeders of external reasons don't think they are talking about the existence of some chemical that makes people like dancing. Maybe such a chemical exists (estrogen?), but it's not a reason.
[[And just as an aside: The love of dance generated by this chemical would (if I recall) be a member of the subjective motivational set. And if not, just what the hell is S anyway, if a love of dance provided by non-rational means doesn't qualify?]]
As to Milgram, why can't Williams grant the following. You have in S a desire for x (the joy of motion!). And it turns out that engaging in practice y (dance) will generate a new capability in you which allows y to produce x. So while desire for y isn't in S now, in some sense it should be. This all hinges, however, on x being in s. So again, an internal reason story.
Last thing for those philsophers still practing, how do people like the move by Korsgaard wherein
1. insofar as you acknowledge "reasons" at all there are some regulative reasons you *must* recognize
2. These reasons are thus external in (say it with me, friends of Kant!) the only way that is meaningful.
para. 1: Williams definitely isn't saying that. In fact he does say that you can get new members of the S, not just arationally, but through deliberation; though exactly how this works is not completely clear to me.
Para. 2: Absolutely. If a surge of that chemical causes you to have a love of dance, you have an internal reason to dance; but that doesn't mean you had a reason to dance even before the chemical surge.
Para. 3: Millgram's example of external reasons (if I'm interpreting him correctly) involves a case in which y generates a desire for more things that are related to y, not necessarily for any x that was already in S. He gives the example of Archie, who is insensitive and speaks with contempt of sensitivity, but who if he became more sensitive would attain a lot of pleasures that just aren't available to him now, and don't even sound appealing because of his very insensitivity. So there isn't supposed to be any antecedent x in Archie's S; but Archie still has a reason to become sensitive, provided by the pleasures it would yield.
[There's another example in which there is an x: Archie complains that he isn't invited to enough parties, which is something in his x. There Millgram points out that, even though Archie's reason to be more sensitive is internal in that it depends on something in Archie's S, it doesn't sustain Williams' that reasons will motivate you if you deliberate correctly. Archie's insensitivity is a failure of deliberation; if he deliberated correctly, he wouldn't be insensitive, and he wouldn't have the reasons to act [for instance, to stay away from people that he's only going to offend] that his insensitivity yields.)
Last para: I'm not a big fan of 1. Also, I think it may be possible to sustain a different internal/external distinction than the one Korsgaard talks about--one on which rationality and morality provide internal reasons in that those reasons must motivate you if you really understand what's going on. (But real understanding is hard to get.)
I'm curious now - what is the subjective internal (agent?) experience of being a bad dancer, and being asked to dance. That is, is it actually not liking the act itself, or the potential attendant embarrassment?
All that and, in my case, putting oneself on display. In fact that might predominate. Possibly parallel case: I don't sing well, but I enjoy singing to myself. I would vigorously oppose any attempts to get me to sing in public.
It would seem that if a person did enjoy dancing in secret that another person might be more justified in encouraging them to dance in public. It seems different from basketball in this way. A person is much less likely to secretly enjoy playing basketball around his apartment.
So at this point, I fear I should simply read Millgram. That said, I guess I'm not clear why Williams won't simply defend himself against Milgram by noting that sure, getting an new x in S can generate lots of related things: x1 x2 x3, etc. The point I tought Williams was trying to make is that you can't be argued into having a new x in your S, unless the reasons for accepting it are already in S, and that makes x 'internal.' Dancing, here, seems analogous to crask: try it, you'll like it! And then you'll like all sorts of new things!
you can't be argued into having a new x in your S, unless the reasons for accepting it are already in S, and that makes x 'internal.'
Millgram's response (IIR/IC) is that this may be true, but that it may be possible that y currently gives you a reason to act even though you can't be argued into having y in your S. So there may be external reasons that you can't be argued into accepting. He's trying to sorta domesticate McDowell's criticisms of Williams, which you mentioned above. I guess the disagreement is that McD and Millgram distinguish coming to get new things in S by conversion or by experience from coming to get them by being hit on the head (which doesn't retroactively give you external reasons), and Williams (so they'd say) doesn't.
Anyway, check Millgram out--I'm not sure which side I actually come down on here. The link in 23 has a JSTOR link to the paper; it's from Nous in 1996 (v. 30 no. 2).
A difference between dancing and singing: When you're singing in public everyone is likely listening to you. When you're dancing in public probably everyone isn't watching you, even if it feels that way. But if you don't enjoy it once you break through the "I look like an ass" barrier (alcohol often helps!), then you don't enjoy it. Even Millgram would agree.
To the bw, ac thread: having watched some people dance, it seems pretty clear that knowing how to dance isn't the relevant question: it's a matter of how uncomfortable people are with looking ridiculous in public. Dancing is different from singing in that it involves a certain letting-oneself-go that's mortifying in public, but embarrassing even when alone.
If you don't even like to do it in private, that's one thing. I was imagining a case in which you do like it--some of those people might be able to overcome shyness or embarrassment and be able to do something they like to do on a more regular basis. Which might be justification for another person encouraging someone to dance. I believe that was the original question - why do people do that, when it's annoying, &c.
Let it be said, however, that I have never made anyone dance who didn't want to.
Well, truth be told, I did "dance" occasionally with ex at home, but wouldn't ever do it in public. Just the thought of it is beyond mortifying. Remember those question books we all did in junior high/high school? If I had to choose between dancing and letting five innocent Indonesian kids die, it'd be goodbye to the kids.
And thinking about what I said earlier on this thread, I do prefer dancing in same-sex contexts, whether men or women, and perhaps this is because I don't actually like the type of straight guy who can dance.
I've been wondering for a while, but the comment about real estate acronyms that someone made last night has pushed me to ask: Is the basis for the "washerdreyer" pseudonym obvious?
75: Damn you, ac! Luring me out into the open and then slapping me down. Now I have to claim that 25 (exact wording has been confirmed) really was as snarky as it sounds.
w/d: If it's something other than "washer/dryer," no.
baa, and Labs, and anyone else--if it turns out later that you want to complain to me about my reading of Millgram/Williams in public, drop me a line and I'll start a thread on my blog.
hmm... I think the answer is "Why would that surprise you?" The Unfogged comments are all about cyber-flirting with women who are already taken.
But really--you said "I don't actually like the type of straight guy who can dance." Sniff, wah. Unless you mean "like with a capital L," in which case--no, sorry, every time a woman says she wouldn't be interested in a man the Great Scorekeeper in the Sky marks that guy down just a little bit. As I intimated above, straight guys are much more about being seen to get play from the ladies than actually doing so.
Well, I do piss off my significant other all the time, in fact did so again today, so I may be available sooner than I think. Maybe I'm keeping my options open here. I'm a likelier candidate than our lizard friend, in any case.
I phrased my correction badly. I was thinking of the aggressive dancer type - the guy who thinks he's hot shit because he can dance. Total turn-off. There are enough of that type on a straight dancefloor to make it annoying. But dancing well in itself, not a bad quality. Not required, but a plus.
Height is wasted on the tall. I hope you and the Galt have dwarf kids.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04-20-05 8:59 PM
A lot of really tall guys hate it, because they're expected to play. I have the same feeling about modeling.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-20-05 9:01 PM
That's weird. I once met another hyper-thin Iranian guy who looked just like a woman.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04-20-05 9:39 PM
You're probably thinking of Yasmin Le Bon.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-20-05 9:42 PM
No, he was actually sort of attractive.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04-20-05 9:49 PM
You tricked me.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-20-05 9:57 PM
There's a more general point here. Why are so many people incapable of understanding that the activities they enjoy do not have universal appeal?
Thus, those who try to get non-dancers to dance, under the misconception that non-dancers just need to be badgered and will then "have more fun."
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 5:41 AM
baa nails it. Also, if you're in a position of authority over others, don't forget that your likes are just your likes, not The Good, and don't pressure your underlings to engage in loathed activities and then get upset when they're not very good.
I'm just saying.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 6:09 AM
baa nails it. Also, if you're in a position of authority over others, don't forget that your likes are just your likes, not The Good, and don't pressure your underlings to engage in loathed activities and then get upset when they're not very good.
At the Mineshaft.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 6:15 AM
A, I must once again express my undying admiration.
At the Mineshaft. Just wait 'til I'm in charge.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 6:33 AM
I tried to like basketball, I really did. I performed countless drills trying to develop the 'soft touch.' I couldn't do it. I threw bricks. Loud hard bricks that clanged off the rim if I was lucky enough to hit it.
Then, as an adult in a stupid game that meant nothing I jumped up for a rebound that I had no hope of getting and flailed my arm over my head. My arm missed the ball and popped out of its socket.
Dislocated shoulder.
The Doctor told me never to play basketball again or it would simply dislocate again. And again.
I have happily complied.
If asked I tell people I used to play a lot of basketball until I dislocated my shoulder during rough play and was forced to stop. That is true, technically. I never tell them I sucked. I never tell them I think basketball is stupid.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 7:13 AM
those who try to get non-dancers to dance, under the misconception that non-dancers just need to be badgered and will then "have more fun."
The Unfogged party is going to be a blast. I've been called names and had groups of people grab my limbs and try to bodily put me on the dance floor.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 7:56 AM
You people make me ashamed to be a putative man.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 7:59 AM
What's the matter now, Tim? I see a few possibilities:
1) You think that when we're asked to engage in an activity we find distasteful, we should react more...vigorously ("Get the fuck away from me, or so help me I'll break every fucking bone in your fucking body....")
2) You think we're wussies for not wanting to dance, play basketball, etc., and that we should quit whining.
3) Our manliness makes you ashamed of your merely putative manliness.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 8:06 AM
taking dating advice from me is like taking interior design advice from a blind man, but let me strongly recommend dance lessons to the boys in the Mineshaft. You don't even have to be any good, just be able to twirl them a couple of times.
Not only does it impress the ladies to find a guy that can lead, but, you can get up there once, wow them, and then because you "obviously know what your doing," you can decline to dance for the rest of the evening, and be left in peace.
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 8:06 AM
I really like #3, but of course it is #2 (though I don't mind whining).
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 8:12 AM
Yes, being a good dancer is also indicative of other things.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 8:13 AM
Even here, we can't escape. Take a lesson! You wimp! You're probably bad in bed!
You see what we mean?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 8:15 AM
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 8:23 AM
The best dancing experience I ever had was at a lesbian wedding, where I danced with another girl.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 8:25 AM
ac, i wasn't going to toot my own horn (mostly cuz it doesn't compare with the Gayatollah's), but yeah, there's that preception, as well.
Ogged, but don't you see the beauty of convincing people you know how to dance? You don't actually have to do it*, but you immediately become better in bed if people think you can.
One night a week for three months, you all of the sudden are a sex machine, and you can still sit and continue your conversation at parties.
*beyond the one instance proving it
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 8:29 AM
Totally OT, but for baa from ESPN: "Even without Artest, I fully expect the Pacers to upset the No. 3 Celts and then take the Pistons to seven in Round 2. Pacers vs. Pistons has to go seven -- those are the rules."
Ha ha.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 8:54 AM
There's also the Elijah Millgram argument: There are reasons for you to dance that you can only come to appreciate by dancing; so your current lack of motivation to dance does not mean that you lack reason to dance; so if you are brought to dance* you may, in fact, see that you had reasons to dance all along.
Millgram, I'm pretty sure, doesn't dance himself.
*In class--where the example under discussion was "watch baseball" rather than "dance"--this was illustrated by stick figure A dragging stick figure B to Miller Park in a headlock.
As for Mike D:
You don't actually have to do it*, but you immediately become better in bed if people think you can.
One night a week for three months, you all of the sudden are a sex machine, and you can still sit and continue your conversation at parties.
*beyond the one instance proving it
You've nailed (heh heh) the aspiration of all the Mineshaft denizens, I fear.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 9:00 AM
Matt, for a small monthly fee, my newsletter & tape series can help you fulfill those aspirations (shoes and dancesteps traced on floormat are extra).
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 10:59 AM
Mike misses the humorous truncation of the antecedent.
(I have actually been described as "A surprisingly good dancer for someone who knows so much about philosophy," I think it was.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 11:33 AM
mike d,
I really appreciate your "how to appear good in bed with little effort" advice.
Do you have any other tips?
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 11:33 AM
Dance, dance, masturbate, dance.
Who says you have to stop dancing?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 11:37 AM
so your current lack of motivation to dance does not mean that you lack reason to dance
This is quite true. Take that Bernard Williams!
I think we would all be far more sympathetic to dance-badgerers if we believed that their own subjective experience followed this path: Once X hated dancing, but was brought to dance and now loves it; hence, he now drags friends to Arthur Murray in chains.
Mountains of empirical evidence, however, suggest that this is absolutely not the case. Dance-pushers are inevitably congential dancers, they have loved dancing all along, they are naturally graceful, and they aren't fooling anyone when they say that "all that matters is to have fun."
Fie.
Also, SCMT, was that Steven A. Smith you're quoting? A steak dinner on the Celtics.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 11:41 AM
Matt, if you're now going to expect us to actually read the comments we're responding to, you may bring the internet to a halt.
Tripp, I'm full of unwanted recommendations. (I suppose that if the internet isn't the perfect forum to start handing out unsolicited love-life advice to complete strangers, I don't know what is)
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 11:57 AM
I'm confused by all this discussion of dance dragging and dance lessons. The only place I've seen social pressure to dance is at clubs where Arthur Murray isn't going to help much. I'm actually taking dance lessons with my wife right now, but we have to really go out of our way to find a place to do swing or salsa.
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 12:39 PM
I think Williams can accomodate those sorts of cases, though.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 1:47 PM
Re: 31
?? Is that a philosophy joke?
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 2:22 PM
Bernie is known to cut a rug.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-21-05 2:28 PM
I actually agree with that, FL. Williams can simply note that your motivational set {s} can acquire new members, and move on. I just really like external reasons.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 7:56 AM
Matt, if you're now going to expect us to actually read the comments we're responding to, you may bring the internet to a halt.
One man's modus tollens is another man's modus ponens.
31/34: Of course Williams can and does acknowledge that your S can acquire new members. Millgram's claim is that cases like the dancin' case indicate that S can be corrected by experience--so that when "Gotta dance!" has been added to S, S is more accurate than it was. And so there is a reason to say that you had a reason to dance all along--even before "Gotta dance!" became part of your S--and that reason was an external reason.
O'course, if experience reveals that you don't like dancing, you never had a reason to dance.
[Oh, and {s} is the singleton set containing s. Bad baa!]
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 8:18 AM
Wouldn't you have had a reason to dance so that you could find out if you liked dancing?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 8:23 AM
I don't think that would hold on Williams' theory, unless you had an antecedent desire to try things out to see if you liked them. (This all centers around Williams' classic paper "Internal and External Reasons," to be found in Moral Luck, available in fine bookstores near those of you who live near the Seminary Co-op.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 8:27 AM
I was imagining that you would have such an antecedent desire.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 8:31 AM
I mean, I'm in no rush to find out if I like dancing.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 8:32 AM
But Williams leaves open what sorts of operations on S might produce new members, and he seems to think that reasons supported by those new members are, and have been, internal reasons. Or so I seem to recall. Then again, if Millgram argued as you say, my recollection is probably in error.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 8:39 AM
Well, that's one of the things that's in dispute between Millgram and Williams (and most of the people I've talked this over with, who seem to think Millgram is uncharitable to Williams). Millgram thinks that Williams' arguments really require instrumentalism, even though Williams denies being an instrumentalist.
Though Williams leaves open which operations can produce new members of S and thus yield reasons that were internal all along, it seems to me that he's got to restrict those operations to things that might count as deliberation one way or another. Being persuaded non-rationally by moving rhetoric is ruled out more or less explicitly (in his discussion of how Owen Wingrave's family might conceivably get him to join the army), and I think trying dancing and seeing that you like it also has to be ruled out. Millgram also tries to argue that "imagining what dancing is like" won't work either--you simply might not be able to imagine it.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 8:51 AM
Sorry, b-wo, missed the comment--the Millgram argument is supposed to apply even to those who lack that desire, so long as they would in fact like dancing if they tried it.
(I'm obliged to defend Millgram because I'm wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the cover of Varieties of Practical Reason, which he edited. Really.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 8:52 AM
Varieties of Practical Reasoning, he corrects himself after glancing at his belly.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 8:53 AM
Weiner, you know I like you a lot, but if I saw you wearing a shirt like that, my honor code would require at least making a serious atttempt on your life.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 9:02 AM
That's the problem with just throwing on any old thing before you leave the house.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 9:18 AM
You should endeavor only to have things just any of which you can throw on without fear.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 9:21 AM
Ideally, they will all be the same thing.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 9:23 AM
Then it gets smelly.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 9:26 AM
Ok, ok, two of the same thing.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 9:28 AM
Plus you'll be wearing a unitard all the time, and I don't think you can throw that on without losing dignity.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 9:29 AM
Not to drag this back to the original discussion, but I just noticed Abu said this in #8: " then get upset when they're not very good." WTF? You are a mutant giant. Assuming that philosophy is like every other academic endeavor, and we can safely subtract an inch from the median height of the population for every year they've been in school, you should be not merely not "not very good," you should be dominant.
I am now picking Weiner in the inevitable Philosophers' Brawl.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 9:29 AM
You know, none of you has ever thanked me for providing set up lines.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 9:30 AM
That would be like thanking the architect for the spandrels.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 9:34 AM
If Williams is saying that you can't get hit by a brick and get more elements in S, that's clearly wrong. I didn't take him to be saying that way back when, and thus took McDowell's criticism to be off-target. Most defeders of external reasons don't think they are talking about the existence of some chemical that makes people like dancing. Maybe such a chemical exists (estrogen?), but it's not a reason.
[[And just as an aside: The love of dance generated by this chemical would (if I recall) be a member of the subjective motivational set. And if not, just what the hell is S anyway, if a love of dance provided by non-rational means doesn't qualify?]]
As to Milgram, why can't Williams grant the following. You have in S a desire for x (the joy of motion!). And it turns out that engaging in practice y (dance) will generate a new capability in you which allows y to produce x. So while desire for y isn't in S now, in some sense it should be. This all hinges, however, on x being in s. So again, an internal reason story.
Last thing for those philsophers still practing, how do people like the move by Korsgaard wherein
1. insofar as you acknowledge "reasons" at all there are some regulative reasons you *must* recognize
2. These reasons are thus external in (say it with me, friends of Kant!) the only way that is meaningful.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 9:45 AM
I guess it's better if you believe that, b-dub.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 9:54 AM
how do people like the move by Korsgaard
Not a good dancer at all.
(Kidding, I have no knowledge of Korsgaard's dancing.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 10:02 AM
OK, 54 for real:
para. 1: Williams definitely isn't saying that. In fact he does say that you can get new members of the S, not just arationally, but through deliberation; though exactly how this works is not completely clear to me.
Para. 2: Absolutely. If a surge of that chemical causes you to have a love of dance, you have an internal reason to dance; but that doesn't mean you had a reason to dance even before the chemical surge.
Para. 3: Millgram's example of external reasons (if I'm interpreting him correctly) involves a case in which y generates a desire for more things that are related to y, not necessarily for any x that was already in S. He gives the example of Archie, who is insensitive and speaks with contempt of sensitivity, but who if he became more sensitive would attain a lot of pleasures that just aren't available to him now, and don't even sound appealing because of his very insensitivity. So there isn't supposed to be any antecedent x in Archie's S; but Archie still has a reason to become sensitive, provided by the pleasures it would yield.
[There's another example in which there is an x: Archie complains that he isn't invited to enough parties, which is something in his x. There Millgram points out that, even though Archie's reason to be more sensitive is internal in that it depends on something in Archie's S, it doesn't sustain Williams' that reasons will motivate you if you deliberate correctly. Archie's insensitivity is a failure of deliberation; if he deliberated correctly, he wouldn't be insensitive, and he wouldn't have the reasons to act [for instance, to stay away from people that he's only going to offend] that his insensitivity yields.)
Last para: I'm not a big fan of 1. Also, I think it may be possible to sustain a different internal/external distinction than the one Korsgaard talks about--one on which rationality and morality provide internal reasons in that those reasons must motivate you if you really understand what's going on. (But real understanding is hard to get.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 10:16 AM
I'm curious now - what is the subjective internal (agent?) experience of being a bad dancer, and being asked to dance. That is, is it actually not liking the act itself, or the potential attendant embarrassment?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 11:48 AM
All that and, in my case, putting oneself on display. In fact that might predominate. Possibly parallel case: I don't sing well, but I enjoy singing to myself. I would vigorously oppose any attempts to get me to sing in public.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 11:53 AM
Does it work the other way, do you secretly like to dance, by yourself?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 11:58 AM
I wouldn't know where to begin.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 12:02 PM
You mean you don't turn on the radio and dance around in your underwear as you clean your apartment?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 12:08 PM
It would seem that if a person did enjoy dancing in secret that another person might be more justified in encouraging them to dance in public. It seems different from basketball in this way. A person is much less likely to secretly enjoy playing basketball around his apartment.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 12:11 PM
So at this point, I fear I should simply read Millgram. That said, I guess I'm not clear why Williams won't simply defend himself against Milgram by noting that sure, getting an new x in S can generate lots of related things: x1 x2 x3, etc. The point I tought Williams was trying to make is that you can't be argued into having a new x in your S, unless the reasons for accepting it are already in S, and that makes x 'internal.' Dancing, here, seems analogous to crask: try it, you'll like it! And then you'll like all sorts of new things!
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 12:31 PM
you can't be argued into having a new x in your S, unless the reasons for accepting it are already in S, and that makes x 'internal.'
Millgram's response (IIR/IC) is that this may be true, but that it may be possible that y currently gives you a reason to act even though you can't be argued into having y in your S. So there may be external reasons that you can't be argued into accepting. He's trying to sorta domesticate McDowell's criticisms of Williams, which you mentioned above. I guess the disagreement is that McD and Millgram distinguish coming to get new things in S by conversion or by experience from coming to get them by being hit on the head (which doesn't retroactively give you external reasons), and Williams (so they'd say) doesn't.
Anyway, check Millgram out--I'm not sure which side I actually come down on here. The link in 23 has a JSTOR link to the paper; it's from Nous in 1996 (v. 30 no. 2).
A difference between dancing and singing: When you're singing in public everyone is likely listening to you. When you're dancing in public probably everyone isn't watching you, even if it feels that way. But if you don't enjoy it once you break through the "I look like an ass" barrier (alcohol often helps!), then you don't enjoy it. Even Millgram would agree.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 12:57 PM
Well, there's singing as part of a group, in which not everyone will be able to make out your own contribution.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 1:13 PM
Auld Lang Syne, for example.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 1:14 PM
To the bw, ac thread: having watched some people dance, it seems pretty clear that knowing how to dance isn't the relevant question: it's a matter of how uncomfortable people are with looking ridiculous in public. Dancing is different from singing in that it involves a certain letting-oneself-go that's mortifying in public, but embarrassing even when alone.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 1:17 PM
For you and me, anyway.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 1:22 PM
Which is what I was trying to explain.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 1:23 PM
Sorry—it's this fine mind of mine.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 1:34 PM
So, so fine.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 1:36 PM
If you don't even like to do it in private, that's one thing. I was imagining a case in which you do like it--some of those people might be able to overcome shyness or embarrassment and be able to do something they like to do on a more regular basis. Which might be justification for another person encouraging someone to dance. I believe that was the original question - why do people do that, when it's annoying, &c.
Let it be said, however, that I have never made anyone dance who didn't want to.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 1:39 PM
Well, truth be told, I did "dance" occasionally with ex at home, but wouldn't ever do it in public. Just the thought of it is beyond mortifying. Remember those question books we all did in junior high/high school? If I had to choose between dancing and letting five innocent Indonesian kids die, it'd be goodbye to the kids.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 1:44 PM
And thinking about what I said earlier on this thread, I do prefer dancing in same-sex contexts, whether men or women, and perhaps this is because I don't actually like the type of straight guy who can dance.
So disregard 17.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 1:47 PM
Well, truth be told, I did "dance" occasionally with ex at home, but wouldn't ever do it in public.
That's good, 'cause you can get written up for that.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 1:49 PM
Are you making a "do it" joke? I mean, really?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 1:52 PM
If by that you mean a joke that turns on the phrase "do it", no.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 1:53 PM
I thought the joke was supposed to turn on scare-quoted dance being a euphemism, but maybe you have it right.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 1:53 PM
Sound like you were right, w/d.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 1:55 PM
I've been wondering for a while, but the comment about real estate acronyms that someone made last night has pushed me to ask: Is the basis for the "washerdreyer" pseudonym obvious?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 2:00 PM
Interesting that both w/d and I used the phrase "turn on" in our comments.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 2:01 PM
Not to me.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 2:01 PM
Not obvious to me, not not interesting to me.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 2:03 PM
You can't mean to leave open the possibility that it is interesting to you.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 2:05 PM
Certainly not, no no, of course. Completely not interesting, now that you mention it.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 2:06 PM
Good to know.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04-22-05 2:08 PM
75: Damn you, ac! Luring me out into the open and then slapping me down. Now I have to claim that 25 (exact wording has been confirmed) really was as snarky as it sounds.
w/d: If it's something other than "washer/dryer," no.
baa, and Labs, and anyone else--if it turns out later that you want to complain to me about my reading of Millgram/Williams in public, drop me a line and I'll start a thread on my blog.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-23-05 9:04 AM
Wait - why am I being damned? Were you trying to impress me with your alleged dancing skills?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04-23-05 4:25 PM
hmm... I think the answer is "Why would that surprise you?" The Unfogged comments are all about cyber-flirting with women who are already taken.
But really--you said "I don't actually like the type of straight guy who can dance." Sniff, wah. Unless you mean "like with a capital L," in which case--no, sorry, every time a woman says she wouldn't be interested in a man the Great Scorekeeper in the Sky marks that guy down just a little bit. As I intimated above, straight guys are much more about being seen to get play from the ladies than actually doing so.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-05 5:38 PM
Well, I do piss off my significant other all the time, in fact did so again today, so I may be available sooner than I think. Maybe I'm keeping my options open here. I'm a likelier candidate than our lizard friend, in any case.
I phrased my correction badly. I was thinking of the aggressive dancer type - the guy who thinks he's hot shit because he can dance. Total turn-off. There are enough of that type on a straight dancefloor to make it annoying. But dancing well in itself, not a bad quality. Not required, but a plus.
Better now?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04-24-05 6:15 PM
Aw, thank you. I will roll on my back and put my paws in the air now. Whining does work!
Hope you don't wind up being single sooner than you want to.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-05 6:21 PM