Eamon Arasbard

How would they verify it? And if it turns out to be false, and you then torture the prisoner, how is that likely to lead to useful intelligence? I didn't use a slippery slope argument. Under criminal law, everyone has a right to due process. On the battlefield, anyone captured is assumed to be an enemy, so the rules are different. But, this only applies when we're at war with an enemy nation. What the designation of terrorists as a third category does is create a category which simultaneously invokes criminal law to justify apprehending terrorists anywhere on the planet, regardless of whether or not we're at war, but removes the due process protections granted under criminal law. If they decide that you or I are terrorists, then, according to this position, we can be thrown in a prison camp and tortured -- and, as I mentioned, the NDAA makes this easier. I do not see where you have explained this, aside from an assertion based on your interpretation of the Geneva Conventions. The only difference in moral status which I can see is that a terrorist is not attached to any national military force, and could therefore be considered a private criminal. But under this position, they should have a right to due process in a criminal court.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/01/sir-young-rapist-gets-light-sentence_n_5251116.html According to this, the rapist was given 45 days in jail, five years on probation, plus community service, because his victim had had previous boyfriends, and because she had gotten pregnant before. (She was 14.) The implication of this sentence is that you do not deserve the same protection under the law if the judge does not approve of your sex life. The woman who handed out this decision needs to be disbarred.

Another question for Nicky: If we the Geneva Conventions were rescinded, and were subsequently attacked by an enemy nation, would we be justified in using torture? If so, do you believe that it was morally right for us to sign the Geneva Conventions, and if not, how are terrorist groups any different?

I think it would be based on the threat of prosecution of the leaders of the nation for war crimes, which, ideally, would happen with the voluntary compliance of the nation's people. Whether or not the international community is justified in going to war over a violation of the rules of warfare is a moral issue which I would like to consider more fully before giving a complete reply. I suppose that is worth considering. Maybe the threat of torture could provide an incentive for enemy captives to cooperate. It still seems a bit barbaric, but I suppose it might be justified in a legitimate war of self-defense. On the other hand, I have talked to one guy who fought in the war in Vietnam, and he and fellow soldiers were specifically instructed NOT to use torture, because the information they obtained would be unreliable. Also, the information obtained by torturing prisoners at Guantanimo has not been reliable. It's how we got the story about WMD's in Iraq, which led to an unnecessary decade-long war which wasted military resources, destroyed an entire country, and installed a radical Islamist government with ties to Iran. I also do not believe, based on the sources I have heard, that information obtained through torture served any useful purpose in finding Bin Laden. The problem is that this creates a separate legal category which allows individuals to be classed alongside military combatants for what were previously criminal acts, and removes any protections based on due process. And this is the real threat that torture poses, because if one person's rights can be taken away, and it's legal to torture them, then the government could make a law allowing any one of us to be arrested and tortured at the whim of the authorities. (And we're currently moving closer to this sort of system with laws like the NDAA.) If that type of wording had been used, then it would have interfered with a nation's own legal system for civilian crimes. Plus I think the Geneva Conventions do say that civilians captured during wartime have the same right to due process as accused criminals in the nation holding them captive.

Listening to Within Temptation again. This is an awesome song: I think I've fallen in love with this band.

Here's something I was thinking about this morning regarding the Geneva Conventions, in particular the part which forbids torturing prisoners of war, and whether or not the U.S. government is morally required to follow these laws. I concluded that they are, for the following reasons. First, while it may be immoral to show mercy to someone who has committed an offense (I personally find the idea of forgiving any violation of rights at the expense of the victim completely abhorrent) it is also immoral to show unnecessary cruelty to an enemy, since this violates the principle of benevolence. Therefore, torture would only be morally justified if it served a purpose in terms of destroying an enemy (Specifically by producing useful information to bring them to justice) and I do not believe that torture does produce any useful information. I think that victims are much more likely to lie in order to end the torture (Especially if they're being brutalized in order to extract information which does not exist) and the result of this is an act of extreme cruelty which yields no useful result. It is also, in general, morally justifiable for the international community to establish rules to restrain the warmaking powers of states, and prevent unnecessary atrocities during the course of a war. (For instance, even if you believe that we would be morally justified in bombing a city in Iran if we were fighting a war in self-defense, it would still be immoral to do so if it served no strategic purpose.) And, if torture falls into this category, then it should be outlawed. In addition, the U.S. government has voluntarily signed the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture, and the Constitution requires the government to follow our treaties. So by torturing prisoners of war, the government is violating proper restraints placed upon it, and threatening the liberty of all its citizens. (Especially since the basis the government uses to justify torture blurs the line between prisoners of war and civilians accused of a crime.)

The problem happens when people start aggressively supporting policies based on a "scientific majority" while knowing nothing about the actual science involved, and fighting to silence anyone who disagrees with them. I'm guessing we're all talking the same political faction, which consistently does this with one particular scientific issue?

Here's another thing I've been thinking about on a related topic, which is making a distinction between someone who is flawed, but fundamentally moral, and someone who is fundamentally immoral, and in particular how this applies to someone's personal beliefs. I think that there are a few basic moral principles that every civilized person must agree on, even if they disagree with each other on how they should be applied. These are the beliefs that human life and livelihood are important, that all human beings have the same basic rights, and that freedom should be protected, and should only be restrained based on justifiable moral principles. Of couse, not everyone applies these principles appropriately, but any decent human being must accept them, and anyone who fundamentally denies any of these principles is inherently evil. To give a few examples, someone might believe that government-run health care is necessary to protect people's right to life, and if this is the sincere basis for their belief, then they are not fundamentally evil. However, someone who believes in a government monopoly health care for no reason except to "keep private business out of health care," and disregards the fact that this is an infringement on the rights of individuals to make a decision affecting their right to live, is inherently evil. Some people support welfare programs because they sincerely believe that it is impossible for the poor to survive without them. But there are some people who actually believe that private charity is bad solely because only people who make the choice to contribute are contributing, and I've even heard someone make the argument that "the poor shouldn't have to beg" for the right to someone else's property. Anyone who believes the latter is fundamentally anti-freedom, and therefore fundamentally evil. On the topic of equality, someone might be against gay marriage because they see it as a threat to their personal moral choice to reject homosexuality. Or -- to bring up a personal pet peeve of mine -- some people think that male victims of domestic violence should be categorized differently than female victims because they believe that there are social factors which influence male-on-female violence differently from female-on-male violence. Someone who believes either of these things in good faith is not fundamentally evil. However, someone who thinks that gay marriage should be outlawed solely to impose Biblical morality on everyone, without their consent, is inherently evil. Same with feminists who openly attack people who try to address female-on-male violence for "derailing" their efforts to "stop violence against women." I do not believe that it is possible for a relationship between a rational person and someone who is fundamentally immoral to last very long.

It still seems like it would be to my benefit to give them the chance to change. Simply ending the relationship would mean throwing away something which could be positive. And even ending it temporarily could do a lot of damage, and make it harder to resume our friendship later on. Plus I dislike the idea of punishing someone unnecessarily to start with. I would say that if someone is capable of resorting to physical violence simply out of anger, then it is probably a toxic relationship and should be immediately discarded. At best, the other person has acted in a way which requires serious atonement before the relationship can be resumed. I have a personally made the choice that if a woman ever slaps me, that will be end of our relationship, unless she makes a major commitment to changing her behavior. I also think that, regardless of the positive benefits from a relationship, if someone is unwilling to change behavior which they know I find unacceptable, then the relationship should not continue. Continuing the relationship in this case means that I am giving someone else the right to treat my needs as unimportant, and any relationship constructed on that basis is toxic. (In fact, I did recently end a relationship with a female friend after she blatantly insulted me, then refused to take responsibility for it.) On the other hand, I would say that any relationship is positive if the other person conducts himself in a respectful manner. I believe that everyone has some virtues, even if most people are flawed as well, and it is worth having a relationship with them in order to experience their virtues, as long as their flaws do not affect the way they treat me. Again, I would say that if the negatives include disrespecting me, and if they are unwilling to correct their behavior, then the relationship should end. On the other hand, I think it is rational to continue the relationship, and continue to forgive them, if they are making a legitimate effort to change their behavior.

And it definitely would not be in my self-interest to refuse to forgive anyone, ever, any more than it's in my self-interest to forgive everyone who commits a transgression. I was just looking over SoftwareNerd's first reply, and I was wondering if he could elaborate on some of his points. Would this mean continuing the relationship if one believes that the other person recognizes their error and is taking steps to correct it, even if it is yet clear if the offender genuinely intends to change his or her behavior? In what cases would this be appropriate?

Currently listening to Within Temptation.

What if someone commits a moral error as a result of a failure of reasoning, but was acting in good faith? Would you say that it is possible to forgive them then?

This is one I've been struggling with lately. In AS, during the first scene where Rearden first meets Francisco, there's a point where Rearden -- at the time believing that Francisco is the bad guy -- makes the following comment to Francisco: And Francisco's response: Now, I do agree that there are certain contexts in which forgiveness is inappropriate. If I confront someone about an offense they've committed, and they don't own up to it, then of course I shouldn't just let it go. And of course this particular excerpt is a reference a comment that's to the world AS is taking place in, where people like Rearden are being forced to sacrifice themselves for everyone else, while the rest of the world feeds off them. I do not believe that life in the world today is this way for most people. But at what point should you forgive someone? I don't think it's fair to hold a grudge against someone forever, or that it's in your own self-interest -- especially if it's someone close to you. Everyone screws up sometimes, so if you hold everything against everyone forever, then you're going to end up alienating everyone in your life. And if it's when they take responsibility for their actions after being confronted, what about before you confront them? I guess the answer would be that you should judge their actions objectively, and make an appropriate judgment of the degree to which you should hold it against them, until you've talked to them. But anyway, what does everyone else think?

It would be possible, it just wouldn't be very useful, because nothing would be. Yes, I do think a lot of the people on here are misunderstanding what Hume was saying. Hume was not making a positive claim that inductive reasoning was invalid (As people on here have said, he admitted that inductive reasoning was necessary for humans to function), only that our basis for believing it was valid was not logically sufficient to formally justify that assumption. Also, you are all right that the way I phrased my comment about "arguing" that all logic was invalid was a genuine example of a stolen concept. But, if someone was trying to poke holes in Objectivism, they could respond that the point that deductive logic is based on inductive reasoning about the real world would invalidate deductive logic, instead of validating inductive logic. Of course someone making a positive claim, using logic, that all logic was invalid, would be committing a contradiction. But I can still see how this could be used to refute the responses to Hume's argument which have been posted on here. I do, however, agree with dismissing any such claim, if phrased as a positive claim, as arbitrary.

Contradiction, or just making it impossible to know what to do. I will definitely look into it. I'll admit that right now it seems like pragmatism is the best we can hope for.

Actually, I don't see how those last two points follow. Again, Hume was not saying that inductive reasoning was invalid. He was only illustrating that the assumption that it was was based on fallacious premises. According to Hume's reasoning, inductive reasoning MIGHT work, but we have no proof that it does. A good analogy might be our theory of property rights. The modern conception of property rights was originally formulated by John Locke on the premise that God gave the Earth to Adam and Eve, and by a precise reading of scripture we can derive the fact that individuals have a right to own what they produce by their own labor. Objectivism would reject the premises of this argument, since they're derived from an irrational superstition, but agree with the conclusion. Similarly, Hume may have rejected the premise behind the belief that inductive reasoning is valid, but still believed that inductive reasoning was valid. A second point is that you can use the premises of a theory to prove that the theory is flawed. For instance, you can use the premise of altruism that you should do whatever will produce the greatest benefit to your neighbors to point out that you can do more for your neighbors by starting a business to produce valuable goods for them, making a profit, and using that profit to expand operations, produce more goods, and create jobs than by sacrificing yourself for their benefit. This does not mean that you accept the premise that you should exist for the benefit of your neighbors. You are only using this premise to prove that altruism is self-contradictory. And by the same token, Hume may not have accepted any of the premises of his reasoning -- he was only using them to show that the system of logic he was arguing against was -- in his opinion -- flawed.

Interesting. I have heard the argument that because concepts are meaningless without reference to reality, and because inductive reasoning is necessary to make sense of reality, that the concepts necessary for deductive reasoning are ultimately based on inductive reasoning. So this would make Hume's argument a stolen concept. On the other hand, one could argue that this just reduces the whole thing to a circular loop, makes both inductive and deductive reasoning invalid, and makes the problem even worse. This I completely agree with. Assuming that gravity is, in fact, universal. I agree with this as well. It is equivalent to my own way of solving the problem of induction, which is to amend the premises with "assuming our perception of the universe is correct," add the premise that "the possibility that our observations in this universe are wrong is not relevant to our actions," and add the context of relevance to action into the conclusion. For instance instead of: Our observations of the law of gravity so far show that all objects fall downward when dropped, Therefore, all objects fall when dropped. We would say: 1. Our observations of the law of gravity so far show that objects fall when dropped. 2. Assuming our perception of the universe is correct, all objects fall when dropped. 3. The possibility that our perception of the universe is not correct is not relevant to our actions, Therefore, 4. To the extent relevant to action in the real world, we may assume that all objects fall when dropped. Of course, it is easier to omit the extra premises for the sake of convenience. But they still remain as implicit premises. Maybe, but I could also see the argument that the context would be different. These two points seem to make sense. I'll think about them some more.

Didn't Hume use deductive reasoning to establish the problem of induction, though? His argument was something like the following: 1. The argument "A, therefore A" (In other words, circular reasoning) is invalid. 2. The validity of inductive reasoning is commonly assumed based on the seemingly aburd improbability that the success of inductive reasoning up to this point is a coincidence. (For instance, we have seen the laws of gravity followed exactly so many times that it would be absurd to assume it's all coincidence, and that the next I drop a rock it won't fly up into the sky instead of falling to the ground.) 3. Probability is based on inductive reasoning. Therefore, 4. The validity of inductive reasoning is based on the assumption that inductive reasoning is valid. 5. The argument "Inductive reasoning is valid, therefore inductive reasoning is valid" has the form "A, therefore A." Therefore, this argument is fallacious, and inductive reasoning is inherently based on a logical fallacy. I don't see where Hume used inductive reasoning in this argument. But I don't think Hume was trying to prove that inductive reasoning would be invalid tomorrow. He only proved that the common argument in favor of the position that inductive reasoning is valid today is fallacious. Which isn't the same as proving that inductive reasoning is invalid.

Well, I'd say if the CEO of Mozilla was supporting the use of force to discriminate against people because of their sexuality, then he was acting immorally, and, depending on how one weighs all values involved, it may be in their rational self-interest to disassociate from someone who supports a law of this nature. For me personally, I like Mozilla's products, and I don't think that the actions of the CEO are sufficiently immoral to make it worth taking part in the boycott, especially since he has resigned. So I will personally continue using Firefox, and other Mozilla products which I currently use.

Yes, that makes sense. Thank you.

Alright. I think my questions have been answered. I was under the mistaken impression that Rand considered her metaphysical axioms alone sufficient to establish that the reality we percieve exists independent of the mind.

I agree. I would not advocate for competing legislative agencies. Otherwise you would end up with a bunch of contradictory laws, and everyone trying to enforce a different version. This would lead to chaos and mass bloodshed, as others have said on here. Instead I think we should get rid of legislative entities altogether, and rely on a single, unchangeable set of laws based on objective principles. I think that you and I would choose different systems in such a society, which would coexist peacefully. I would choose a private defense agency from the market, while you would remain a citizen of the United States. I would use the term anarchy to describe the world I would be living in, but maybe we could call the overall system a voluntaryist system? I think that would be an accurate description. And that's why I don't support giving one entity the right to write the law. But there would also be the risk that someone could form a rogue agency and force a geographical area to submit to their rule by threatening to drop a nuke. I guess legitimate defense agencies would just have to keep tabs on who was making nukes, just like governments today.

In that case, amorality might not be a bad thing in certain situations. For instance, I doubt very many people would have a moral opinion on whether you should eat chocolate or strawberry ice cream. I guess what Rand would have called an "amoralist" would be someone who treated all life decisions in this way, which would of course result in terrible harm to both themselves and their neighbors. That wouldn't be altruism though, because it doesn't require sacrificing for others. It just means helping others in pursuit of your own values.

My issue with the statement "Existence exists" (And I mean this in the most respectful way possible) is that it doesn't tell us anything about the nature of existence. For instance, how do we know that the objects we see are in fact real, and not a hallucination? Or that existence will always appear as it does now? That last point is actually related to a famous problem in metaphysics, discovered by David Hume. We assume that the laws of the universe are more than mere coincidence based on the fact that the probability of this is minicule. The problem is that probability is itself based on the assumption that the future will resemble the past, so that assumption is a tautology. But it's also a fundamental premise that you have to accept in order to act. I am also aware of the argument claims to the contrary are arbitrary -- or, to put it other terms, irrelevant to human existence in the observable universe. But then why can't we base Objectivist epistemology and ethics on this argument, and ignore metaphysics altogether as irrelevant to the purpose of Objectivism?

I think a concrete example might help regarding amorality. And example of an action we might consider amoral would be raping someone. The rapist in this case would be making a choice which they would be capable of making because they do not regard consent as being important -- but they would have to have a value which they are pursuing, which in this case would be unearned sexual pleasure. The question would then be, do they need a moral code (Albeit a horrible one) in order to have that as a value?