Kallenberg Writes, "Our Ability to Recognize a Family Resemblance Is

question 52

Essay

Kallenberg writes, "our ability to recognize a family resemblance is more of a tacit skill than an exercise of theoretical reasoning." What does he mean by "family resemblance" and "tacit skill?" Has your moral development come about through habitual training and the recognition of family resemblances? Or has it been more of a deliberate exercise in theoretical reasoning?
e.g. skills learned through examples of others, rather than reasoning for ourselves, we're likely to emulate their misjudgments or corrupt choices.
People don't always do what they profess to be right and they don't always get it right when they do intend to do right. Furthermore, Kallenberg says, "truth can be spoken only by someone who is already at home in it." It's my opinion that no one person can possess all of the truth, that there is often more than one truth, and that truth is a cultural construction in many cases. If I tell my children that I know all truths and therefore my instruction and example are the only ones of value, and I proceed to train them to recognize only values that bear a family resemblance to my own, I've limited their ability to recognize the value in other cultures or other systems of value. Consequently I'll have trained my children to exclude from public discourse those whose cultures and values don't conform to ours. I think that Kallenberg's theory only holds up in a hypothetical perfect world where all masters are truly wise.
I have developed the majority of my own moral policies and practices, as opposed to values and habits, independently of my upbringing. I was an obedient child; however, I've always had a strong, inherent feeling that the values and practices I was raised with were skewed. As an adult I have gone in search of other truths and a multiplicity of value systems and have chosen an alternate worldview that I see as moral and ethical, both inherently and in comparison to those I was raised with. So yes, my latent moral development has most certainly been a deliberate exercise in moral theoretical reasoning (a.k.a. critical thinking).

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Definitions:

Aponeurosis

A fibrous sheet or flattened band of tissue that acts as a tendon to attach muscles to bone or to other muscles, often found in the abdomen, scalp, lower back, and hand.

Connective Tissue

Tissue that supports, binds together, and protects organs. It consists of various cell types and extracellular matrix and includes bone, blood, and fat.

Muscles

Muscles are fibrous tissues that produce force and motion to move the body or parts of it and are crucial for all forms of bodily movement.

Myofibril

Basic rod-like unit of a muscle cell that is responsible for muscle contraction.