The Epistemology of Temperance
What is the epistemology of temperance? IOW, how do we know enough is enough? Does anyone have any thoughts on this? As I see it, the three main approaches to this traditionally have been:
1) consult a religious text and do what it says blindly
2) some kind of Aristotelian naturalistic theory of human flourishing (I take it this is the line you are most interested in pursuing, Jim...?)
3) stop when it starts to feel bad (a.k.a. 'intuition')
Could there be any way of integrating 2) and 3)? It strikes me that 3) on its own is not enough - that this what "The Sixties Experiment" showed. OTOH one might argue that the way 12-step programs work at the end of the day is purely by forcing one to sit with the true consequences of one's own excessive behaviors and feel them.
1) consult a religious text and do what it says blindly
2) some kind of Aristotelian naturalistic theory of human flourishing (I take it this is the line you are most interested in pursuing, Jim...?)
3) stop when it starts to feel bad (a.k.a. 'intuition')
Could there be any way of integrating 2) and 3)? It strikes me that 3) on its own is not enough - that this what "The Sixties Experiment" showed. OTOH one might argue that the way 12-step programs work at the end of the day is purely by forcing one to sit with the true consequences of one's own excessive behaviors and feel them.
posted by Anonymous at 1:35 PM
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