Polar Concepts :: essays research papers

<a href="http//www.geocities.com/vaksam/">Sam Vaknins Psychology, Philosophy, Economics and Foreign Affairs Web SitesThe British philosopher Ryle attacked the sceptical point of collect regarding right and wrong (=being in error). He said that if the concept of error is made use of surely, there must be times that we be right. To him, it was impossible to conceive of the one without the other. He regarded right and wrong as polar concepts. One could not be understood without understanding the other. As it were, Ryle barked up the wrong sceptic tree. All the sceptics said was that one cannot have it off (or prove) that one is in the right or when one is in the right. They, largely, did not dispute the genuinely existence of right and erroneous decisions, acts and facts. But this disputation ignored a more basic question. Can we really not understand or know the right without as intimately understanding and knowing the wrong? To know a good object must we contrast i t with an evil one? Is the fulfill of contrasting essential to our understanding and, if it is, how? Imagine a mutant newborn baby. While in possession of a mastery of all lingual faculties the infant result have no experience whatsoever and will have received no ethical or moral guidelines from his adult environment. If such a newborn were to be offered food, a smile, a caressing hand, attention would he not have identified them as good, even if these constituted his whole human beings of experience? Moreover, if he were to witness war, death, violence and abuse would he have not recoiled and judged them to be bad? Many would hurl at me the biblical precept about the intrinsic evilness of humans. But this is beside the point. Whether this infants world of values and value judgement will conform to societys is an contrasted question to us. We ask would such an infant consistently think of certain acts and objects as good (desired, beneficial) even if he were never to come across another(prenominal) set of acts and objects which he could contrast with the first and call bad or evil. I think so. Imagine that the infant is confined to the basic functions feeding and playing. Is there any possibility that he would judge them to be bad? Never. Not even if he were never to do anything else but eat and play.