Cruelty

When we think about cruelty, we often think about physical

violence, especially gratuitous violence that serves no purpose.

And it's just there for the person's own edification and

enjoyment, however, already wants to give us a more expansive

conception. He wants us to understand why instances of violence

like that might count as instances of cruelty and wants

to show us that psychological mechanisms can also be instances

of cruelty.

Now, um, in the piece that I asked you to

read, Rory discusses to pieces by George Orwell Animal Farm

and 1984.

You can skip over the stuff on Animal Farm if

you wish.

I'd like you to focus on what he has to

say about 1984.

Just give you a quick preview already thinks that those

two books teach us to lessons.

He thinks that animal farm essentially unmasked Soviet propaganda, and

by showing people how propaganda worked, it made them less.

It made them less susceptible to propaganda, and it made

them capable of recognizing propaganda in their own at the

systemic environments.

Now he thinks, authorities claim about 1984 is Ah, he

thinks the real value of that is Orwell's creation.

of the character O'Brien and and what he thinks or

will has accomplished is that in O'Brien you find an

embodiment of cruelty.

The second thing that already thinks or wants to teach

us with respect to cruelty is that it's a perpetual

possibility. In 1984 we see a society that's advanced a

lot. It has a lot of technological.

Are its advanced in science and technology a great deal?

And, um, it's a It's a society much like ours

right now, Orwell's thinking.

Look, we kind of think about technological progress and scientific

development as inevitably getting us closer and closer towards the

truth. And, as we learn, get closer and closer towards

the truth and the ability to master our environment.

We expect that that's gonna come with moral development.

And so he thinks Orwell on Lord is Reading recognises

this myth that as long as we continue to progress

in science and technology, that will make cruelty less and

less possible.

Part of what Orwell does with um o Brien is

to show us to give us a reminder that cruelty

is a perpetual possibility and that the same instruments progress

in technology and science there's nothing inevitable about connecting with

moral progress.

Those same developments can equally be put to the service

off a society that is driven by cruelty.

And that's really what O'Brien is supposed to be a

warning off.

Um, now what is cruelty?

I want to give you the kind of background definition

that authorities working with so that you can see how

how old Brian is supposed to be an illustration or

un embodiment of cruelty.

Rory is basing his discussion of cruelty on Judith's skull

ours piece called Putting Cruelty.

First, he thinks Clar is basically on the right track

Slurs. Big idea is that cruelty is the worst thing

that you can do to a person and part of

what roar already want.

That's why we call it putting cruelty first.

It's the worst type of evil Now.

Part of what Rorty wants to do is give an

account of why cruelty should be put.

First, he wants to build on scars idea that cruelty

it to be a liberal means to hate cruelty.

Now liberal in this usage doesn't necessarily contrast with conservatives,

so it's not the political usage of liberal.

It refers to the A theoretical idea in political philosophy,

liberalism, liberalism is the idea that everyone should be given

as much freedom as possible up to the extent that

giving any one person more freedom would involve impeding or

intruding upon the freedoms of another person.

So it to be a liberal means to think that

you believe that everyone's freedom should be maximized.

That's an idea that's kind of baked into, Ah, US

democracy and in many respects, at least at the ideological

level. Both of our political parties subscribe to this idea,

though in practice there is, of course, deviation from their

subscription to those ideological commitments.

But just want to be careful.

Liberalism here does not mean, you know, kind of liberal,

liberal versus conservative.

So if you value freedom, why should you hate cruelty?

Why's that paid in cruelty?

Just what it means to be a liberal.

Now Rorty gives us a definition that he thinks can

make sense of both these claims.

Why cruelty is the worst thing that you can do

to a person, and why valuing humanity and maximizing others.

Freedom means hating cruelty.

Give us a nice tight definition.

Cruelty is making someone's final vocabulary impossible Now, of course,

the key technical term here is final vocabulary.

So I want to dig in to what that means.

Basically, someone's final vocabulary is the beliefs and values that

they used to interpret the world, And if they were

to question all of those beliefs and values all at

once, then they would be incapable of making sense of

the world and themselves.

In essence, to destroy someone's final vocabulary or to make

it impossible is to make it impossible to beat themselves.

All right, let's dig into this a little bit.

In discussing final vocabularies, Rory is drawing this idea from

with Vic in Stein's book called Uncertainty, Where Vic in

Stein distinguishes belief from conviction, and he thinks that some

of our beliefs play a special role.

Some of our beliefs, our convictions, they remain in the

background. We don't think about them explicitly, but we use

them in order to interpret and assign value to what

we do.

Think about explicitly.

Now, convictions essentially refer to a whole network of beliefs,

and I like to think of convictions as know how

they're the background understanding that you have of stuff that

lets you interpret the world.

Now your convictions play a role in a really simple

practical level.

When you see a door and you walk right through

it, you're interpreting that door is meaningful in a certain

way. You're seeing it as something to be walked through.

Now, One of your convictions that enables you to interpret

the door as something to be walked through is that

gravity is gonna continue to hold you to the ground.

Notice If you were to start wondering, huh?

Is gravity gonna keep working?

You're gonna start worrying.

Well, maybe in a second I'll find myself on the

ceiling. And as I try to walk through that door,

I might hit my head right.

If you're thinking Gravity's gonna stop and I'm gonna get

stuck to the ceiling, you're no longer going to see

the door Is something to be walk through?

You're going to see it as faith you know, across

space or a potential, um, impediment to your efforts to

move forward.

Maybe at best, you and see it as something that

you should dive through.

Ah, when you have a moment of gravity working in

a way that's consistent.

So that's just one silly example But in essence you

have an understanding of the way that midsize physical objects

behave and that background understanding you're not thinking about it,

but you're using it Anytime you pick up a cup,

any time you walk through a door, any time you

engage with any sort of object, all of those convictions

and are in the background.

And if you were to question those convictions, you could.

Your ability to engage in basic ways with your immediate

environment and what's right around you would totally break down

the world would appear meaningless.

So that's the essence of this stuff.

Values also play a critical role, especially with respect to

a person's sense of themselves and with respect to what

appears to be rational.

Um, I can't let me give you an example I

like to use.

Here's a fact.

There's traffic on the 57.

Now. All facts must be interpreted in order to use

them to reason.

What should you conclude if there's traffic on the 57?

Maybe if you're like me, the first thing that jump

to mind is why should find alternative route that's faster

now Notice I only connect up traffic on the 57

with Take an alternative route.

If in the background I'm interpreting the traffic according to

certain values, namely, I value efficiency, I value getting there

as fast as possible and so on and so forth.

What if we change those background convictions?

What if I was looking for an excuse to not

have to show up to school that day?

Well, then maybe I want to stay in the traffic

because then I could say, Oh, Professor, I couldn't make

it. There was too much traffic, couldn't get to school,

right? Changed the values that you bring to bear in

interpreting a situation.

It's gonna change What conclusions?

Fax count as reasons for so that sororities Basic idea

is, you know, in order to think about the world

in a rational way at all in order to see

things basic things like doorways as things that we can

meaningfully engage with in terms of our actions.

We have to have some convictions, and we use those

convictions to interpret the world.

So let's lay out the features here of a final

vocabulary or a conviction first, as I already said, by

definition, convictions or beliefs that you used to interpret and

assign value to the world.

That includes enabling.

You don't rationally deliberate about what to do with some

fax number two.

Your final vocabulary must remain in the background.

That is, it's you don't think about it while you're

using it.

Rather, in order to use your final vocabulary, you must

not question it.

Remember, if you're actively questioning, will gravity continue to hold?

Then your ability to walk through the door seamlessly is

going to be completely stymie.

You're not gonna be able to do it anymore, right?

So while you're using your final vocabulary, you can question

it and final piece about final vocabularies.

Why do we call them final?

Well, basically, you're your final vocabulary is where questioning comes

to an end.

That's why victims Stein calls them a conviction.

I could ask you, why did you, um, decided to

take an alternative route and you could start unpacking some

of your values, right?

You could say why value efficiency.

Someone could continue, though.

Why do you value efficiency?

Um, and you could say, Well, I value my time.

Um and they say, Well, why do you value your

time right now?

As you can see the wise could keep going and

going and going.

Basically, ROrtiz saying.

At some point, you're gonna say, because I just do

my time is just valuable right?

That's the respect in which the value of time is

part of my final vocabulary.

Likewise, for the physics case, we could say, Why do

you trust gravity?

I could say, Well, it's been reliable so far.

Why do you trust what's reliable so far?

I just dio right.

So Rory's basic idea and pointing to final vocabulary is

questioning has to come to an end somewhere.

Your final vocabulary is where questioning comes to win it

end, and it must come to an end in order

for you to act to deliberate and do really basic

things like just walk through a door, um, removed through

a door.

Now that doesn't mean you can't revise your final vocabulary.

But in so far as our final vocabulary is what

makes questions or rise, it's what makes something appear to

make sense or to be strange in the first place.

Things make sense.

If they fit with our final vocabulary.

Things appear strange if they don't fit with the background

understanding that constitutes our final vocabulary.

Well, look, if your final vocabularies what you use to

point something out say, Hey, that's unusual, I wonder I

should question that.

Maybe I shouldn't believe it.

You can't question your whole final vocabulary all at once,

because otherwise nothing would stand out to you as meaningful

as usual or unusual.

Now we can see how this fits in with O

Brien and cruelty.

What O'Brien tries to do through psychological mechanisms is to

break Winston's final vocabulary.

It tries to.

He tries to make it impossible for Winston to be

Winston because he tries to get Winston to question the

convictions that Winston used to think through his own values,

to interpret the world around him and toe identify what

counted as a problem that needed to be solved, and

what counted as something that should be passed over without

remark on and not thought about it all.

If you break those things than reality appears as a

chaotic nothingness and your own sense of identity is lost

with it.

That's why I already thinks cruelty is the worst thing

you can do to a person.

Now we can circle back to physical violence and see

how this fits physical violence, councils cruelty because you're trying

to use physical pain in order for it to make

it possible.

Impossible for a person to be themselves.

So while the physical pain is bad, we know physical

pain isn't what makes something bad in its own right.

All of us endure a visit to the dentist because

we know it's for our greater good already saying What

makes the things we normally think of when we think

of cruelty, instances of cruelty is that they are tools.

They're mechanisms, namely the use of the infliction of suffering

on a person.

And the purpose of those is to get a person

to break down their convictions, to give up those convict

fictions, in other words, to make it impossible for them

to be themselves and to feel at home in a

world that they can make some sense.

Cruelty

Audio TranscriptAuto-generated