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MODEL OF NEUTRAL-INCLUSIVITY
BOOK OF FUNDAMENTALS
THE DOCTRINE OF NEUTRAL-INCLUSIVITY

6.1 

THE DNI, THE ADHERENT AND CONFLICTING DUTIES

6.1.1 

A SYNOPSIS


The life of sentient and other living beings may be of derivative value; there is no fundamental principle of life, as we have seen. When we save and respect life, it is because it is a person who has a right to live as we have ourselves, or because we should be beneficent as others should be towards us, or because we should not disturb the balance of nature. But so far as the balance of nature is concerned, also nonlife is part of this balance. So far as beneficence is concerned, it may be better, under certain circumstances, to let a sentient being die than to keep it alive. And so far as personhood is concerned, the person in question may prefer death to life, a choice which has to be respected too, if it is a personal one which only concerns 'er own body. Traditional ideologies or ethical doctrines have often formally recognized a separate principle of life, because they did not realize what the meaning of such a principle would be, because they used life in at least two different senses, or because they did not care about the weak constitution and the internal conflicts of a ground-world doctrine which is pluralistic or more pluralistic than absolutely necessary. On our analysis there is no need to conceive of life as an ultimate value in itself, nor is it correct that it would be. Life being neither a doctrinal nor a metadoctrinal, ultimate value, the normative edifice of the Ananorm will indeed not have more than four pillars, as already stated before: neutrality, inclusivity, truth and personhood. The first three of these pillars are those of the doctrine of neutral-inclusivity.

Let us now look at a synopsis of the normative content of the DNI by means of three tables. The first table in figure F.6.1.1.1 shows the three pillars of the DNI. So far, it is not much different from figure F.4.4.1.1 which showed the four pillars of the Ananorm. But that figure was particularly meant to display the nesting of the Ananormative systems of disciplinary thought: neutralism within neutral-inclusivism, neutral-inclusivism within the DNI and the DNI within the Ananorm. The figure in this section does not only mention the three principles (in the first column) on which our doctrine is founded but also (in the second column) the interpretation which typifies it. It is each principle together with its specific interpretation which characterizes one of the DNI's subsystems. The third column in the table lists the violations of the principles mentioned in the first column. They are not so much occasional, one-time violations but more systematic ones (the anti-systems of figure F.4.4.1.1). The fourth column lists ideologies antithetical to the DNI typified by the particular principle they violate or interpret in a way incompatible with the doctrine of neutral-inclusivity. Since the DNI is a denominational doctrine, the typology of counterideologies is basically a denominational one too, altho it is partially applicable to political ideologies as well.


PRINCIPLE INTERPRETATION AND IDEOLOGY SYSTEMATIC VIOLATION TYPE OF COUNTERIDEOLOGY




neutrality (catenated) relevantistic: neutralism extremism or lesser unneutralism denominational or political, extremist or lesser unneutralist ideology
relevance (discriminational) neutralistic: inclusivism exclusivism theodemonism (if recognizing one/more principal beings)
truth (epistemic or nondoxastic) scientific or otherwise non-supernaturalistic: veridicalism supernaturalism and customary lying religion (if denominational)
Textual copy of figure F.6.1.1.1

Ideology is used in figure F.6.1.1.1 in a very broad sense, because it might be said that what is listed are rather facets of ideologies. In practise extremist, theodemonist and religious ideologies often did not or do not exist side by side; in practise extremism, theodemonism and religiousness were or are not seldom characteristics of one and the same ideology. It should also be noted (again) that the meaning of the terms used in this and the following tables must to a certain extent be stipulative. For example, if someone used religion as a synonym of denominationalism or denominational doctrine, then 'religion' would in that sense not necessarily be supernaturalistic; and not theodemonistic or extremist either. This, however, would not affect what the tables display by any manner of means. It would merely make the terminology clumsy: everywhere where we now say "religion", for instance, one would have to say "supernaturalist religion".

Figure F.6.1.1.2 summarizes the values and disvalues of the DNI. For each norm or principle there are at least three values: a performatory, an intentional and a motivational one. And there is for each of these three values a performatory, intentional and motivational disvalue. The values are shown in three columns, or in four to distinguish perfective from corrective or instrumental values. The last column indicates all perfective disvalues and a number of decision-theoretical ones. The values and disvalues listed as belonging to the supernorm of neutrality and its subnorms need no further explanation after what we have said about this supernorm in chapter 3. The supernorm of inclusivity has as many subnorms as there are facets of inclusivity. Thus it could be said that there is a '(sub)norm of ethnical inclusivity' with ethnical inclusivity as perfective value and ethnical discrimination or ethnical exclusivism as disvalue. Since the manifestations of exclusivism have been quite thoroughly classified in chapter 2, and since it would be impracticable to repeat all these manifestations and the antithetical facets of inclusivity here, no subnorms of inclusivity are listed in figure F.6.1.1.2. The corrective-instrumental and decision-theoretical values which are mentioned parenthetically (nanaicity, anafaction and anafactiveness) belong, strictly speaking, to the norm of neutrality, but they may be employed in the integral context of neutralism-inclusivism.

A notion which has not been discussed separately in the previous chapters of this book is sincerity. Some take sincere to be a synonym of true or truthful, but sincerity also requires relevance as a criterion. It is easy to say something true, or to be truthful, without being sincere; it is even easier not to say something untrue without being sincere. For example, it might be true that the members of a certain group of people do on the average not meet a certain standard. It would not be untruthful then to tell this to others. But if the non-members of that group do on the average not meet this standard either, it is insincere to exclusively look at and mention that group's shortcomings and not those of all other people as well. Sincerity does not only require truth (or the absence of falsity) but relevance (or the absence of irrelevance) too in the distinctions one makes between what one says and what one does not say.

Finally, the table of figure F.6.1.1.3 should make clear that the DNI is not an (exclusively) consequentialist doctrine, altho it will be termed by us "teleological". Even neutral-inclusivism, and even neutralism, are not exclusively consequentialistic, because of the past-, present- and future-regarding character of the DNI in which not only causal but also noncausal relations count. Insofar as the doctrine of neutral-inclusivity is future-regarding and causal (that is, concerned with causality), it is consequentialistic; insofar as it is past-regarding (with the possible exception of telling the truth about the past) it is antecedentialistic; and for the rest it may be called "deontological".

In the second column of the table of figure F.6.1.1.3 it is also listed whether the normative consideration is 'absolute' or 'relative' (in the case of catenical and relevancy-conditional descriptions), and whether it is 'unitemporal' or 'multitemporal' (in the case of normative considerations of catenical acts which are future-regarding, causal and relative). A normative consideration is termed "absolute" here when its goal is one ideal state of being at a particular moment, and "relative" when its goal can only be understood by comparing different states of being. Such different states of being may either succeed each other in time, or occur at the same moment. In the former case the normative consideration is described as "multitemporal", in the latter case as "unitemporal". An example of a unitemporal relative consideration is that everyone should have, or be given, the same good at exactly the same moment. If a similar consideration is multitemporal, then everyone should also have, or be given, the same but not (necessarily) at exactly the same moment. An act which is right from a multitemporal catenical point of view need, of course, not be right from a relevancy-conditional point of view. Even when everyone will eventually receive the same, one should not discriminate against anyone when determining who will get things first and who will get them later.


©MVVM, 41-67 ASWW
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