A philosophical justifier of Adolin's promise/oath distinction

[Ripheus23]

Firstly, in general, the SEP entry on promises includes a section about vows and related phenomena as relatively distinctive. However, here's a quote of David Hume, where he criticizes an early "normative powers" theory of promissory duty:

Quote

I shall further observe, that, since every new promise imposes a new obligation of morality on the person who promises, and since this new obligation arises from his will; it is one of the most mysterious and incomprehensible operations that can possibly be imagined, and may even be compared to transubstantiation or holy orders, where a certain form of words, along with a certain intention, changes entirely the nature of an external object, and even of a human creature. (Treatise, 3.2.5; emphasis in the original)

But on Roshar, in the cosmere, we have no such reason, as readers, to be skeptical about things as mystical and enigmatic as are indicated by words such as "holy orders" and "transubstantiation." So a "normative powers" theory of promissory duty seems natural enough, and even "provable" enough, there.

But in deontic logic, we have many categories of morally-charged action. Some theories/models include just "basic" stuff like permissions, bans, and duties. Others have multiple flavors of permissibility, or extra levels like "beyond the call of duty"/"supererogatory."

On a normative-powers definition of promissory duty, what we really have is an instance of a general scheme, a normative power to concretize a deontic status. So as we say sometimes that we "grant permission," or "impose an obligation," then there is a multiplicity of promise-like abilities for "generating, by magic" those ethical (Spiritual) arrangements of things.

Whereas Dalinar did draw near to the Intent of Retribution, very near thereto, Adolin, despite some moments of unique anger, seems to represent something more of "grace," not just in the aesthetic sense of his swordplay, but in the template of virtue for his character. Dalinar had to renounce oaths of the moral type that Adolin had never really committed to, so their resolutions were indeed dual to each other but such as to showcase the meaning of Adolin's inner discourse on promises vs. oaths.

But so that is to suggest that what Adolin inchoately understood, in his reasoning, was that we can establish things "beyond the call of (rigid) duty," we can motivate valiant acts of grace, by an inner normative power that it would be better to use more than the power to impose duty has been used through to his day. So, there is a historical quantity of exercises of the power of duty, and another quantity for the power beyond the call of duty, and regardless of whether it is appropriate ever for the former power to be exercised in the first place, the total number of its exercises would be better if it were lower than the number of exercises, across history, of the latter power.

(Negative/corollary reasoning: a deep theoretical error that it is possible to make, in making moral judgments, is to over-conflate different categories in deontic logic. There are structural rules for converting a prohibition into an obligation, and vice versa, and other things besides; but so sometimes the intended distinctiveness of the categories is stronger, so it requires more negative mental effort to substitute one for the other in one's description of something being morally judged. Accordingly, because of how finely the distinction between obligation and supererogation must be comprehended to go through in the limit, to even really have the concept of supererogation would prerequire comprehending that limit, and reversing one's comprehension on this score would be a drastic intellectual maneuver, one using a sizable, and psychologically traumatic, amount of cognitive "fuel." The philosophical tragedy of Honor would then be that, in Tanavast's hands, the Shard was made to uphold a worldwide system of magic grounded on the wrong normative power.*)

*Observation: naively, "may" goes with "permitted" as "ought" goes with "obligated." However, it has been argued on various grounds that there is a serious natural-language distinction between "ought," "should," and "must," that they are not formally interchangeable (they are not emotionally interchangeable, that is also true, but in logic we would partly omit this fact from structural consideration). Accordingly, the ensemble of normative powers might theoretically far eclipse the use to which Tanavast put it, his purported admiration for the mathematics of Roshar notwithstanding in that end.

ADDED: guesses about back-half Adolin

I have a theory about why the Blackthorn-spren/w/e might be sent to demoralize Navani on a personal level. I could apply the same rough logic to Adolin, then. But this could be a backdoor to Adolin influencing the "Honorchild" as it is embedded into the substance of Retribution: of leading it from a dire obsession with all and only utterly rigid oaths to a more forgiving, or gracious, appreciation for the merits of mere promises. How? By fighting an army commanded by the malignant spren, an army of the Unoathed. I mean, I'm not so convinced that the Blackthorn-spren has to be a military strategist. I don't see that Taravangian/Retribution is going to jump to the conclusion that the younger Dalinar's wartime achievements are a sufficient basis for overseeing his cosmere armada. Fighting whole planets with one or more different magic systems, getting to other planets on complicated spaceships... It's easy to overestimate the scope of "military genius," I think, and inversely, or perversely, a man as megalomaniacal as Taravangian is in a good, unusual position to resist the temptation to believe in Dalinar as such a genius.

And, for what it's worth, what Dalinar did in the end was basically a repudiation of his entire violent persona. That was the outcome of this persona, even, though. It is not impossible for the dire spren to change over time, and here the guess is that Retribution would "hear about" the situation with Adolin, through the image of the Blackthorn, and this information would make its way into whatever residual "Honorchild" there is, tempering the entire Shard of Retribution thereby.

Edited January 20, 2025 by Ripheus23

[Darvys]

Sure, that seems to be the path Brandon is taking for the shard, and Adolin seems to be the frontrunner to embody the change that the Wind declared would need to come from many, following the path her champion started.

My issue with this is that up to this final book I would have sworn that Honor already understood all this, every character we followed for four books was intent on doing what they saw as right, rather than keeping oaths, the rigid interpretation of honor was limited to Dalinar's pov, a flaw shared by the Stormfather who was a cognitive shadow of Tanavast. Looking at the spren, honorspren specifically, we were lead to believe that Honor's Intent was broader that Dalinar's interpretation, but this book switched everything up. Now Tanavast was the one who cared about doing right unlike his very shadow, and the Shard of Honor from whom all spren are born only cares about oaths somehow.

I can't shake the feeling that the Shard had to be dumbed down for Brandon's narrative choice to fit, and now we have to read five more books to wait for Honor to catch up to where most characters and readers already are, to where most readers expected the shard to already be, and I just don't see the appeal in that.

Quote

I'm not so convinced that the Blackthorn-spren has to be a military strategist. I don't see that Taravangian/Retribution is going to jump to the conclusion that the younger Dalinar's wartime achievements are a sufficient basis for overseeing his cosmere armada.

He should be, Dalinar infused him with all his memories and skills, the spren then rejected the wisdom that came with said memories and drew its own conclusions. If a god claims the spren has the capacity required, I'm inclined to believe it, not to forget that Retribution can train him in visions in the same way he trained Gavinor for as long as he needs, Time means nothing to a spren.

[MagicMaggot]

8 hours ago, Ripheus23 said:

Firstly, in general, the SEP entry on promises includes a section about vows and related phenomena as relatively distinctive. However, here's a quote of David Hume, where he criticizes an early "normative powers" theory of promissory duty:

Quote

I shall further observe, that, since every new promise imposes a new obligation of morality on the person who promises, and since this new obligation arises from his will; it is one of the most mysterious and incomprehensible operations that can possibly be imagined, and may even be compared to transubstantiation or holy orders, where a certain form of words, along with a certain intention, changes entirely the nature of an external object, and even of a human creature. (Treatise, 3.2.5; emphasis in the original)

But on Roshar, in the cosmere, we have no such reason, as readers, to be skeptical about things as mystical and enigmatic as are indicated by words such as "holy orders" and "transubstantiation." So a "normative powers" theory of promissory duty seems natural enough, and even "provable" enough, there.

But in deontic logic, we have many categories of morally-charged action. Some theories/models include just "basic" stuff like permissions, bans, and duties. Others have multiple flavors of permissibility, or extra levels like "beyond the call of duty"/"supererogatory."

On a normative-powers definition of promissory duty, what we really have is an instance of a general scheme, a normative power to concretize a deontic status. So as we say sometimes that we "grant permission," or "impose an obligation," then there is a multiplicity of promise-like abilities for "generating, by magic" those ethical (Spiritual) arrangements of things.

Whereas Dalinar did draw near to the Intent of Retribution, very near thereto, Adolin, despite some moments of unique anger, seems to represent something more of "grace," not just in the aesthetic sense of his swordplay, but in the template of virtue for his character. Dalinar had to renounce oaths of the moral type that Adolin had never really committed to, so their resolutions were indeed dual to each other but such as to showcase the meaning of Adolin's inner discourse on promises vs. oaths.

But so that is to suggest that what Adolin inchoately understood, in his reasoning, was that we can establish things "beyond the call of (rigid) duty," we can motivate valiant acts of grace, by an inner normative power that it would be better to use more than the power to impose duty has been used through to his day. So, there is a historical quantity of exercises of the power of duty, and another quantity for the power beyond the call of duty, and regardless of whether it is appropriate ever for the former power to be exercised in the first place, the total number of its exercises would be better if it were lower than the number of exercises, across history, of the latter power.

(Negative/corollary reasoning: a deep theoretical error that it is possible to make, in making moral judgments, is to over-conflate different categories in deontic logic. There are structural rules for converting a prohibition into an obligation, and vice versa, and other things besides; but so sometimes the intended distinctiveness of the categories is stronger, so it requires more negative mental effort to substitute one for the other in one's description of something being morally judged. Accordingly, because of how finely the distinction between obligation and supererogation must be comprehended to go through in the limit, to even really have the concept of supererogation would prerequire comprehending that limit, and reversing one's comprehension on this score would be a drastic intellectual maneuver, one using a sizable, and psychologically traumatic, amount of cognitive "fuel." The philosophical tragedy of Honor would then be that, in Tanavast's hands, the Shard was made to uphold a worldwide system of magic grounded on the wrong normative power.*)

*Observation: naively, "may" goes with "permitted" as "ought" goes with "obligated." However, it has been argued on various grounds that there is a serious natural-language distinction between "ought," "should," and "must," that they are not formally interchangeable (they are not emotionally interchangeable, that is also true, but in logic we would partly omit this fact from structural consideration). Accordingly, the ensemble of normative powers might theoretically far eclipse the use to which Tanavast put it, his purported admiration for the mathematics of Roshar notwithstanding in that end.

I've read through that a few times now, and I'm no stranger to academic philosophy, but to be honest, I don't get what you are saying about either Dalinar's, nor Adolin's conception of promissory obligations and promises here, nor do I understand your point about "the tragedy of Honor". Which is basically everything, except the philosophical concepts you based it on. 

I guess the idea is that Dalinar is too focussed on morality being build on promissory duties, while in your reading Adolin thinks that true goodness should go beyond duties? Fair enough, but what has that to do with the oath/promise distinction? The promises Adolin makes and wants to make still impose promissory duties on him, just like any oath would, don't they? What else would they be for? If he intends to go beyond duty to keep them, that's nice and all, but that's hardly something Dalinar would disagree with. And you can't go beyond a promised duty, without first creating said duty. The more I untangle your (honestly, kind of unnecessarily) complicated phrasing, the less I understand the point. 

You're saying that Adolin and Dalinar make promises/oaths with different kinds of normative power. How so?
And you are saying that Roshar's magic system is based on an understanding of oaths/promises that isn't compatible with Honor's. How so?

1 hour ago, Darvys said:

Sure, that seems to be the path Brandon is taking for the shard, and Adolin seems to be the frontrunner to embody the change that the Wind declared would need to come from many, following the path her champion started.

Not sure I see that, either. Dalinar seemed to want to give Honor to Taravangian, so that it could learn why people break promises and thus could hopefully become something that wouldn't insist on keeping any oath under any circumstances, no matter what gets crushed in the process. That's not about making it more compatible with Adolin's morality, but about making it more compatible with Dalinar's morality. 

Adolin just isn't very much of a rules-oriented person in the first place, so I see no reason why one would think a version of Honor that's a tad more sophisticated would suddenly be a good fit for him. 

[Darvys]

4 minutes ago, MagicMaggot said:

Not sure I see that, either. Dalinar seemed to want to give Honor to Taravangian, so that it could learn why people break promises and thus could hopefully become something that wouldn't insist on keeping any oath under any circumstances, no matter what gets crushed in the process. That's not about making it more compatible with Adolin's morality, but about making it more compatible with Dalinar's morality.

Adolin would only be one of many sources of inspiration for the Shard, as it apparently needs to expand its understanding of its own intent, Taravangian can make apparent its current inadequacy, and the Rosharans opposing him can be the examples it learns from.

And I agree with you in that neither Honor nor Dalinar have an issue with going beyond the call of duty, their issue is with going against their chosen duty or oath even when doing so would result in better outcomes. At least that was the case for Dalinar before his journey in the spiritual real changed him.

The OP's point seems to be that Adolin's awkward phrasing was his own way of acknowledging that distinction, though as you point out the way it is presented doesn't touch the heart of the issue.

[Ripheus23]

2 hours ago, MagicMaggot said:

You're saying that Adolin and Dalinar make promises/oaths with different kinds of normative power. How so?
And you are saying that Roshar's magic system is based on an understanding of oaths/promises that isn't compatible with Honor's. How so?

I meant that Roshar's magic system should have been based on that understanding, but Honor made it so that it wasn't. Honor made a deep mistake here, automatically as the Shard it was, and voluntarily in Tanavast's confusion; Honor misread the mathematical ordering of Roshar as justifying a picture of an overly rigid moral system, like he took the mathematician's love for step-by-step, fine-honed proofs and converted it into a fanatical non-utilitarianism. (So there'd be those two levels of debate: external, of utilitarianism vs. non-utilitarianism; and internal, of different forms of non-utilitarianism in context.)

The varieties of normative power are supposed to be over the categories/functions in deontic logic. We have different sentence types:

• It may be done...
• It should be done...
• It ought to be done...
• It must be done...
• It is supererogatory to do...

And so each type has its own affiliated normative "ability," the ability to make a given type into a true statement by willing. My initial impression was that Adolin was resonating with the pre-obligation levels of such abilities, but later I thought maybe he was invoking the post-obligation levels.

EDIT: for an IRL example, there's a poorly educated but wealthy man, Peter Thiel, who wrote a book in which he fetishized the difference between the numbers 0 and 1, and on that basis formed a vision of economic/political development that he happened to oppose explicitly to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice (which Thiel said needed to be taken out of every college in America or something). Rawls is kinda like an IRL Nohadon minus actually being a king, with A Theory of Justice mapping to Nohadon's treatise.

So, by analogy, Honor and/or Tanner fetishized the 10-fold patterns in the Rosharan system, and in such a way as to overcompress the logic of the promissory magic system. Renouncing the oaths then became the "only way out" of this overcompression. Adolin never swore the wrong kind of oaths and so didn't need to renounce anything, and he morally bonded with his Shardblade by grace instead of strict "justice." But then his musings also reflect on a more "free form" possibility, a reflection of mathematical diversity. (What I mean by that is: we have infinite sequences and families of numbers, of types of numbers, of sets and sets-of-sets of numbers, of shapes and dynamics, and so on and on; mathematical information has a "tendency" to proliferate in a certain way, to where now, rather than envisioning a strict hierarchical universe of concepts, the arguably "dominant" trend is to envision a pluralistic set-theoretic multiverse.)

Edited January 20, 2025 by Ripheus23

[MagicMaggot]

46 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

Honor misread the mathematical ordering of Roshar as justifying a picture of an overly rigid moral system

You're saying that as if Honor reasoned its way through it. That doesn't really seem to fit the way the Intent had been setup as inherent to the shard's nature. Honor is all about oaths and people seeing themselves as people of oaths. The part of Adonalsiom that was all about that, without the rest of the being to give it context. That's not a decision, and could not have been one, because it wasn't self-aware before it stewed without a vessel for millenia. And Tanner did not set out to define objective morality, he followed Ishar's advice in creating a system that balanced power with responsibility through oaths, to keep radiant powers in check. And we haven't really seen anything to suggest that that was a bad idea, I think. 

 

53 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

The varieties of normative power are supposed to be over the categories/functions in deontic logic. We have different sentence types:

• It may be done...
• It should be done...
• It ought to be done...
• It must be done...
• It is supererogatory to do...

And so each type has its own affiliated normative "ability," the ability to make a given type into a true statement by willing. My initial impression was that Adolin was resonating with the pre-obligation levels of such abilities, but later I thought maybe he was invoking the post-obligation levels.

I get the logical underpinning, I don't get how it helps to justify Adolin's position, or even to explain how it diverges from Dalinar's. I guess we could go into the text and fish out anything that Adolin says about promises and oaths and try to see which definition might fit best, and then compare and contrast the two terms, but I feel that the intuitions he based that on were too vague to make that very helpful. Especially considering that Adolin's position doesn't actually have to be logically sound to be his position. 

2 hours ago, Darvys said:

their issue is with going against their chosen duty or oath even when doing so would result in better outcomes.

That is part of it, but that's not really the end of it. Yes, at first Adolin explains how keeping stupid oaths is stupid, with the chair-story, but later he mostly vibes about how a promise is "deeper than an oath", and how the promise would always be there for you, even if you failed and cry with you, and understand you... So I get @Ripheus23's impression that the promise might actually be going beyond duties here, and not just be too rigid to be reasonably kept in all situations. But I don't think we're getting anything close to a logical structure here.

What I'm getting is more along the lines of "I think a promise is a personal thing that shouldn't be judged by those outside of it".

[Darvys]

51 minutes ago, MagicMaggot said:

That is part of it, but that's not really the end of it. Yes, at first Adolin explains how keeping stupid oaths is stupid, with the chair-story, but later he mostly vibes about how a promise is "deeper than an oath", and how the promise would always be there for you, even if you failed and cry with you, and understand you... So I get Ripheus23's impression that the promise might actually be going beyond duties here, and not just be too rigid to be reasonably kept in all situations. But I don't think we're getting anything close to a logical structure here.

What I'm getting is more along the lines of "I think a promise is a personal thing that shouldn't be judged by those outside of it".

I think it may come down to a simple matter of perspective, Adolin views oaths as a burden and a restriction on his actions, whereas promises are goals he strives towards and hopes for the future, something that encourages and uplifts rather than castigates and judges. It is as you say pure vibes, If not that, then I accept that it goes over my head because all I read in it is poetic nonsense.

2 hours ago, Ripheus23 said:

So, by analogy, Honor and/or Tanner fetishized the 10-fold patterns in the Rosharan system, and in such a way as to overcompress the logic of the promissory magic system. Renouncing the oaths then became the "only way out" of this overcompression. Adolin never swore the wrong kind of oaths and so didn't need to renounce anything, and he morally bonded with his Shardblade by grace instead of strict "justice." But then his musings also reflect on a more "free form" possibility, a reflection of mathematical diversity.

But Honor doesn't require people to swear oaths, it requires them to keep them. The overcompression as you call it was a necessary check on the immense power of surgebinding. What Adolin proposes doesn't account in any way for the problems that were solved by those restrictions, it's just incredibly convenient that his Unoathed can't access any surges and as such can't cause too much havoc if a number of them go rogue.

Adolin's views don't offer a valid alternative to the current system, they merely declare that righteousness can exist outside of it, which is an important lesson for Honor to learn, but on its own, a woefully insufficient one in my view.

[Ripheus23]

37 minutes ago, Darvys said:

Adolin's views don't offer a valid alternative to the current system, they merely declare that righteousness can exist outside of it, which is an important lesson for Honor to learn, but on its own, a woefully insufficient one in my view.

This is where I could see Valor and/or Reason making plausible contributions to the plot. I'm not in favor of them Physically showing up, I thought Sanderson had strongly indicated that as of a certain point in the timeline of WoBs and text about Shards, there were no more Shards in play in the Rosharan system than the ones he'd at that point identified. But Cognitively and Spiritually? That might be a way around the meta-restriction (if it's still in place) on more Shards showing up in the Rosharan context.

[MagicMaggot]

22 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

This is where I could see Valor and/or Reason making plausible contributions to the plot.

So, to be a bit tongue-in-cheek... The solution to the problem of all the shards being incomplete parts of a whole, robbed of their necessary context, is... having them sitting together in self-help sessions, and teach each other what they are missing? Adonalsium is dead, but I'm his therapist and will see what I can do. I can just imagine.

No, but seriously, something like that is possible, of course... but I feel it wouldn't be very impactful for the reader, if we hadn't gotten to know those shards as characters before. And you certainly can have too many gods in one story. 

[Ripheus23]

51 minutes ago, MagicMaggot said:

So, to be a bit tongue-in-cheek... The solution to the problem of all the shards being incomplete parts of a whole, robbed of their necessary context, is... having them sitting together in self-help sessions, and teach each other what they are missing? Adonalsium is dead, but I'm his therapist and will see what I can do. I can just imagine.

No, but seriously, something like that is possible, of course... but I feel it wouldn't be very impactful for the reader, if we hadn't gotten to know those shards as characters before. And you certainly can have too many gods in one story. 

I'm moderately committed to a prediction that Jasnah will recoup her debate with Taravangian, at the climax of book 10. The atheist arguing with her anti-God. But maybe Harmony, et al. will contribute, giving her pointers or something. Maybe Valor/Reason could sneak in some bits about a broader picture of virtue, touch on the residue of Honor/the "child" that way.

Oh gosh, imagine that it's like the trial scene in Lasting Integrity, except its an ensemble of Shards and Retribution is awaiting judgment...