Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

Koustubh

Regulars
  • Posts

    26
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Koustubh

  1. Of course not. For example, taking cocaine can affect others, and it can be proveable, but the government still has no legitimate role in preventing it.

    Then I am at a complete loss to understand what distinction you are trying to make between your position and David's or Grames'.

  2. Note how I am saying "unrightful" in both lines at the bottom and only claim a difference in enforceability, while David says "legally OK" in the case I call unenforceable and "legally wrong" in the case where I see enforceability.

    On the other hand, I make a distinction between something like taking cocaine, which does not break any promise or violate any other social relationship (i.e. right) on the one hand, and cheating, which does so, on the other. What started the discussion was David saying this sort of action "should be legal," which I found odd since I think the law should not approve of it as rightful (as it approves of taking cocaine), but simply not enforce it because of lack of enforceability.

    I think there is a slight difference in your idea of the role of government should be and mine (and I believe David's and the dissenters'). You seem to believe that the government can act against violations of morality when it affects others and is objectively proveable. I believe that the government should only act against initiations of force (direct physical force or violation of a contract). I have a related post on my blog here.

    The problem with your claim is that the government would be the one initiating force if it were to act as you believe it should.

  3. ...

    So now either one of the premises are false, or we don’t in fact have “real” choices (though we will still experience them as such).

    How did you form the concept "choice"? Obviously by experiencing it as you admit. You could not have formed it by observing anything external to you. So there is no other way in which you could have formed it. Then you go ahead and deny it. That is concept stealing.

  4. I'm not convinced. No dictionary definition of absolute that I'm aware denotes what Mr. Ogden wants to attribute to it: 'absolute' doesn't mean the converse of "moral relatiivsm" nor does it mean independent of consciousness.

    Here is the definition of absolute from the merriam-webster dictionary

    ...

    4: having no restriction, exception, or qualification <an absolute requirement> <absolute freedom>

    5: positive, unquestionable <absolute proof>

    ...

    7: fundamental, ultimate <absolute knowledge>

    ...

    9: being self-sufficient and free of external references or relationships <an absolute term in logic> <absolute music>

    Meanings 4, 5, 7 are what the concept "absolute" has to do with certainty.

    Meaning 9 is what it has to do with primacy of existence

    And none of the meanings (including the ones I omitted) even mention time or change.

  5. This won't do, 'absolute' doesn't mean the primacy of existence nor the law of identity.

    Look at the quotes in the Ayn Rand Lexicon on Absolutes here. My understanding is that the concept "absolute" represents the primacy of existence and its consequences, such as the possibility and method of achieving certainty. It has nothing to do with change over time.

  6. Because it forces you to deny man's nature -- survival by reason, not by force -- in order to survive. This is a fundamental contradiction which cannot be integrated. Since morality is a set of concepts applied rationally to determine a man's actions, any fundamentally contradictory situation is outside of the domain of morality.

    But survival by reason includes the use of force when necessary. If a lion attacks a man, would killing the lion be amoral? If not, what is the essential difference between an attack by a lion and an attack by a man. In both cases the only action possible is a resort to force. That the attacking lion cannot reason whereas the attacking man chooses not to reason is not essential.

  7. It is in fact "your side" of the argument that is embracing a contradiction - that a man as an individual is capable and has a right to retaliate, but when in society suddenly loses this capability and must be forced to not exercise his right.

    A right to retaliate (if granted) only has meaning in a social context. So no one is suddenly losing anything.

    If such a right were granted even outside of emergencies, everyone would remain at the mercy of any person who believes he is justified in using force (maybe he is actually retaliating, or maybe he is deluded or maybe he thinks he can manufacture evidence or whatever).

    Rights come from a recognition of man's nature. Men are not omniscient and even rational men can make mistakes. If a rational man believes that he has been the victim of force and makes a mistake, innocents will be harmed. If the man knows his retaliation will be punished, he will allow the law to take its course (assuming that he is rational).

    I think he should be left free - but held accountable. Subtle, and probably irrelevant in practice since the burden of proof is on him and is extremely difficult to meet. (italics mine)

    You propose to grant the "right" to retaliate and then hold anyone who acts on that "right" as guilty until proved innocent?? Then you accept that the "right" would be irrelevant in practice. That is what you get by proposing a right that should not be there in the first place.

  8. And you can't rationally argue that "since not everyone is rational all the time, if everyone were free to retaliate it would be chaos". While the assumption is true - certainly most people seeking retribution are not in a rational frame of mind - this argument is simple pragmatism, justifying something by the envisioned consequences.

    Thus my current intellectual bind.

    I think you agree that a society that allowed people to "take justice in their own hands" would soon devolve into chaos. Yet you think that people should be free to retalliate to force even outside of emergencies by principle. That is the contradiction. Your principle that man should always be free to retalliate to force does not account for the fact that man lives in a society, that it is crucially important (for their own security) for his neighbors to judge his use of force, that his neighbors are not omniscient and need objective evidence to judge.

    Every is implies an ought. The fact that man is in a society, that his knowledge is limited and that the use of force is destructive, imply that he ought to delegate the responsibility for the retalliatory use of force to a government.

    You say that justifying something by the envisioned consequences is pragmatism. It is not. It is final causation. It is only by envisioning consequences in the context of the nature of man and the requirements of a rational mind, that we can derive principles. Pragmatism is the rejection of these principles as being irrelevant.

  9. You don't have to be a utilitarian to think that laws are made to improve human life!

    Laws don't guarantee that our thinking is successful, but they are designed to guarantee that we all benefit from our thinking in the long-run.

    You are mixing up the guiding principle for forming laws with the consequences of proper laws.

    Let me reiterate:

    Laws are not designed to improve human life. Laws are not designed to do anything positive. Laws are designed to prevent anyone from using force to interfere with the choices of others.

    A lie does not interfere with anyone's thinking process or actions (making choices).

    Force or the threat of force always does. Let me clarify this with your mugging example

    OK, but what if the victim decides to give the mugger his wallet? Then by your characterization here, he'll still be able to think. And so as long as he makes the right choice, his thinking was never stopped. No force may ever be used on him directly! (emphasis mine)

    How does the victim decide which choice is right? By considering all alternatives. If any of these involves force or a threat of force, the choice is forced.

    On the other hand, outlawing lies is certainly an initiation of force against the liar. If the liar judges that lying is to his interest and the law punishes him for lying (obviously by force), the law has initiated force (if you grant that the lie did not initiate force which you must).

    No one can deny that lying is immoral. But if you want to make it illegal, you will have to come up with a way of doing it that does not result in the initiation of force against the liar. And that is not possible.

    As regards your liar examples, case 1 and case 3 are not initiations of force. Case 2 is. It is a violation of the victim's right to property (tampering with his coffee without his consent).

    Although I don't think it is central to the arguement, let me point out that both metaphysical and man made facts are equally important in practising rationality. There is no fundamental orientation towards "metaphysical reality". The difference is important only when one is judging them morally.

  10. First, I never said that the purpose of law was to ensure that the consequences of rational action were beneficial. You're right that this is not the correct purpose. And you're also right that force should be outlawed because it prevents a person from acting rationally.

    Ok, that is out of the way.

    Let me address the concrete examples before attempting to generalize.

    You say that the mugger presents the victim with a choice and there is no force involved as the victim is still able to think through his decision. Yes, force is not involved in the immediate moment. But threat of force is involved. The victim will not be able to think through in the future should he choose not to surrender. Only one of the choices is free of force.

    In the case of the chemist however, no force is involved at any stage. The only issue before the "victim" is of judging all facts to the best of his knowledge.

    Yes my sense of rationality is merely thinking through a decision. To put it more clearly, acting rationally involves considering all the relevant facts of reality (including the actions of others) to the best of ones knowledge, evaluating all alternatives by the standard of their utility to one's purpose and choosing the best alternative.

    You say that we are debating whether there is any difference between direct force and lies. Just what sort of difference are you looking for? Difference in the way they affect a person's thinking or difference in the way they affect the consequences of his actions. We have already agreed that consequences are not a valid criterion. And there is a big difference in the way they affect his thinking. Force prevents him from thinking. Lies do not affect his thinking at all. Evaluating propositions (which may be lies) is actually what thinking is all about.

    You said that my sense of rationality is not worth protecting.

    But acting rationally is something that can be defined only by reference to a person's best assessment of the metaphysical facts. If someone has rearranged the facts to ensure a man's destruction, no genuine rationality is possible, and if it were, it wouldn't be worth protecting.

    But that is not quite correct. Acting rationally includes an assessment of manmade facts, not just metaphysical facts. I also ask you to rethink what you mean by rearranging facts. Rearranging metaphysical facts is what human actions are all about.

    Rationality is valuable and needs protection, not because it is normally beneficial. As I said before, without a context that would not be objective. It is because it is the only course that can be beneficial since any action that is not rational is destructive.

    P.S. I am really enjoying this discussion. I had to think for quite a while before I could post.

  11. Excuse me, but this sounds crazy! It's almost certainly legally punished today, and can you imagine what kind of anarchic society we'd live in if it were legal to kill someone through carefully devised lies? Justifying a radical change like that requires quite an argument. But you've not answered my question about what the argument is. So to repeat my question again: "And if causing this kind of harm isn't something that should be outlawed, then why should any force be outlawed? The effect of lying to his friend about the chemical is exactly the same as if he had injected the poison in his friend's bloodstream. The intent is also the same. So what's the difference?"

    I did answer it. But let me try again.

    Force should be outlawed because it prevents a person from acting rationally. A lie doesn't. The point I am trying to make is that the basis of laws is the need to protect every individual's ability to act rationally. It is not to ensure that the consequences of rational action are beneficial.

    As to the allegation that we would live in an anarchic society if the goverment did not step in, that is certainly false. Any society that is even slightly rational would ostracize a murderer.

    It is very important to restrict the role of a government precisely. Otherwise anything goes. Consider the impossibility of framing objective laws to prevent bad consequences of rational actions. You dont have to imagine anything to imagine the consequences of such laws. We already have plenty of them.

  12. How is freedom any more obvious upon introspection then determinism upon external observation? I'm not saying we "feel" free any less than an observed neuron "looks" determined.

    My limited understanding of physics says that it would be impossible to prove determinism for any system. If we cannot make accurate measurements of all relevant factors affecting a system, we can make no absolute predictions to verify.

  13. You assert this, but please deal with my case of Mr. C, the devious chemist. The fellow who lies to his friend about what chemical to ingest, knowing that it will cause his friend to die. If this isn't a form of murder, then what is? And if causing this kind of harm isn't something that should be outlawed, then why should any force be outlawed? The effect of lying to his friend about the chemical is exactly the same as if he had injected the poison in his friend's bloodstream. The intent is also the same. So what's the difference?

    Yes this is a form of murder. But it is not a form that should be legally punished.

    Just like if Mr. C's friend does the rational thing and follows Mr. C's advice, he loses his life.

    OK. A person's rational choices led to his death. That is not sufficient reason for the government to step in.

    The point of political freedom is not to permit the exercise of metaphysical free will. That is a kind of freedom that cannot be removed, no matter what (unless you kill the person). The point is to permit the exercise of unbounded *rational* choices.

    To put it very precisely, the point of laws is not to permit anything. It is to punish actions that prevent people from acting rationally.

    The friend is *not* free to avoid the consequence, not if he is rational. If he's rational, he looks to the best authority he knows about what chemicals to use, and in this case, it's his friend (or even the conspiracy of chemists). Someone faced with the mugger's dilemma "Your money or your life" is also "free" to choose his money or his life. But as in the case of Mr. C, his choices have been arbitrarily rearranged: if he does the rational thing and chooses his life, he loses his money. Just like if Mr. C's friend does the rational thing and follows Mr. C's advice, he loses his life.

    Free cannot mean free to avoid consequences. Free can only mean free from physical force. In the case of the mugger, the victim is not free from physical force. In the case of the chemist he is.

    Both the mugger and the lying chemist reconfigure the normal consequences of rational action. They attach physical punishments to doing the right thing. That's why force is bad, and why we need freedom from it.

    If you have immoral friends, the normal consequences of rational action won't always be beneficial. "Normal consequences" presupposes a context.

    You have certainly come up with an unfortunate situation. But the purpose of laws is not to eliminate unfortunate situations and it is not to ensure that rational actions are beneficial.

  14. The 10th page of a discussion is not a good place to post, but anyway :P

    maartian and ifat,

    why do you continue to use the some of the following words in your discussions if you believe that the world is deterministic?

    possible (in the sense of possible in future, not in the sense of insufficient evidence to evaluate truth value of a proposition):

    if everything is deterministic, that is a concept that should only be used by the unenlightened

    choice:

    a choice pre-supposes alternatives and independent entities to make that choice. With a unique, determined evolution of the universe, there are no alternatives. Also no entities are independent in any meaningful sense. There is just one enormously complex system.

    purpose:

    with no independent entities and no possibility of changing the pre-determined evolution, whatever could purpose mean?

    I could go on and on with a huge number of words.

    You see, free will being axiomatic, a huge number of our concepts depend on it. I challenge you to restate your posts without such concepts.

    But of course, the only answer you can give is that you cannot help using these concepts. Their validity or otherwise is besides the point. What you do is predetermined.

    You see, it is impossible for me to argue if you deny free will. What would the point be anyway? Since I know that I have free will and do not want to engage in a discussion without a purpose, I will not make another post on this thread.

    Of course if you are predetermined to continue posting, nothing can stop you.

    P.S. Of course there is probably nothing that I have added that others have not already said on this thread before, but I could not resist posting (could it be that my actions are determined? ;) )

  15. Since a man's own mind is the only judge of his thoughts, a man should be free to act on his thoughts. Since the only thing that can prevent a man from acting on his thoughts is force, the initiation of force should be banned. This is the only purpose of laws.

    Suppose A decides that he needs to lie to further his own interests. He should be free to act on his thoughts unless that lie prevents others from acting on theirs. A lie, being non-material cannot prevent anyone from acting on his thoughts.

    A contract is a different issue. It is a voluntary agreement about something that each party in the contract undertakes to do on pain of an agreed penalty. If a lie violates a contract and the contract is legally protected, a court must enforce the penalty.

    The fact that a lie is immoral or that it could cause a lot of harm to innocent people has nothing to do with whether it should be legally punishable. It is a fact that the immoral actions of someone can harm innocent people. That is a necessary consequence of living in a society.

  16. So the choice to have a child is like any other choice. It must be evaluated based on its possible consequences and making the choice results in responsibility for those consequences. The fact that having a child involves bringing a new (and not yet rational) human being into existence is relevant only in evaluating the choice and does not lead to any new principle.

  17. I am not clear just what a parent's moral responsibility entails. Assuming that the welfare of one's child is a value, it would be a value like several other (a successful career for instance). A rational person prioritizes his efforts by weighing his values. What does moral responsibility mean over and above this?

  18. I'm not sure I buy the left-brain right-brain theory wrt to this image. If you look closely, you can see that (if you see her spinning CW), her kicking leg and her arm appears higher wrt her body on the far side than it is on the near side.

    That is a visual cue as to the position (wrt the viewer) of her leg and arm as she spins. Looking down on a feature, it will appear higher on the far side than the near side.

    Thanks. I had missed that.

  19. EDIT - Ok, now I've figured out how this thing works, I can switch it back and forth by will, so I'm a bit unsure how reliable my testimony is now. :rolleyes:

    The interesting thing about this image is that there are no clues about the direction of rotation (no lighting, shadows, viewing angle or even perspective). So it should be purely a matter of will to switch the direction of rotation. Yet I am unable to do so.

    I took the image into an image editing software and played it backward and it still appeared to rotate clockwise! Then I played it forward and it appeared to rotate anti-clockwise. That I suppose is the logical part of my brain kicking in.

    I would be thankful if someone can tell me whether the theory that brain functions are localized in different parts of the brain has been proved and whether the localization (if any) is actually consistent across individuals.

    Koustubh

  20. I recently came across this. http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,2...281-661,00.html (an image of a girl twirling)

    It says that people who see the dancer turning clockwise use more of their right brain than their left. I certainly see the dancer turning clockwise. However I strongly disagree about what that then implies (assuming the brain function classification is correct) about my thinking. Can someone tell me what that means?

    PS: I know that this does not really belong in Epistemology but I could not find a better place to post it.

  21. "for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice"

    -"Man's Rights," The Virtue of Selfishness, 93

    If an individual judges that he is in an emergency and has to act in a manner that would violate other people's rights, he is morally right to do so. It is then for a court of law to decide by a rational standard if the situation was indeed an emergency and whether he was acting to protect his rights.

    In light of the above an emergency such as the one in this thread would be resolved thus...

    1) One or more individuals judge that the situation warrants that they act to save their own lives even if it means violating someone else's rights.

    2) The individual whose rights are violated files a case in court

    3) The government (law courts) decide the legal consequences.

    The key here is that only individuals have positive rights, the government (a collective) does not.

    Frankly I dont see why there should be so much confusion on this issue especially since the resolution I suggested is the most probable one to actually happen.

  22. This discussion seems to be going nowhere.

    Rourke is arguing that LF capitalism is not practical by raising n different concerns. Answering each concern individually is not something that can happen on a forum. Nothing short of a treatise on economics can tackle all these issues.

    And anyway the question "Is Capitalism perfect?" is incomplete if it is divorced from ethics as Rourke wants to do. Without assuming an ethical framework, one would have to ask "perfect for whom and for what purpose?".

  23. One cannot properly talk of property rights without reference to a political and legal system. Property rights are relevant only when one is living in a society. As such the question of "what should one have to do to have rights in a capitalist system?" is not related to the question of "Were Europeans morally entitled to acquire land from tribal Americans by force?"

    I submit that the first question cannot be answered by philosophy in any detail. It is to be answered by laws that would depend on the state (technological abilities) of the society concerned.

    To the secon question I can only say (as others have said before on this thread) that conflict between Europeans and the tribals was inevitable and the Europen culture was undeniably objectively superior.

  24. Are you saying shouldn't be preserved or can't be preserved? Civilization has soldiered on for thousands of years now without pure laissez-faire capitalism, with tremendous wealth creation and technological innovation, and a general improving of the human condition from one generation to the next. How could all this happen in a mixed economy? Shouldn't things have self-destructed by now?

    I am saying that institutionalized violation of rights (which is what a non-capitalist government does) is a destructive effect on civilization and establishing such institutions (regulatory authorities for instance) cannot be a solution to any perceived failures of capitalism.

×
×
  • Create New...