crizon

Why may it only be used on "enemy combatants"? Why should they be treated any different that a "normal" criminal? IMO torture differs greatly from normal punishment because you apply retaliatory force upon a person not because of the crime he made, but because he has something that may be of value to society.. like information. That means that the punishment or course of action would be different for the same crime when there would be no reason to believe the criminal has any useful information. Having information about a possible future crime is no crime itself and I also don't see why not giving away this information is a crime. IE: If I accidentally got information about a future crime, the government could not force me to give away this information because I did not initiate force in any way. I don't see an argument why "saving lives" has to be the only benefit for society where torture may be used.. and even so: Forcefully cutting out organs of murderers would probably save more lives that any information about terrorist attacks ever could.

I don't understand why people talk about whether or not torture might work. I think it is still not clear if it is morally proper to use torture. My biggest concern with torture is the loss of any commensurability. Every decent society needs a code of law that applies worse punishment to worse crimes. You can't properly sentence someone to death or to life in prison for a minor theft. As far as I know, the death penalty is rejected by Objectivism because there can be no compensation when a mistake is made and an innocent is convicted. With torture, I feel the same principles apply. Firstly one has to say that the government obviously has no right to force someone to give away information. It would of course immoral be to withhold information about a terrorist attack, but it is no initiation of force (as long as the person with the information has no direct part in the attack) so the government can't do it. Now people argue, that things change once this person used force himself (was captured during the preparation of a terrorist attack). That means that the government virtually can do anything with a person, once he initiated force, that has some kind of benefit for society. With the same argument one could cut out a kidney of a murderer and give it to a moral person or use a rapist for medical tests. I think this argument fails to take into account that punishment has to be appropriate and that there is always the possibility of an error. Because of the possibility of error, you can't cut of a finger or damage an eye, because you can't (for now) replace it or make up for it. I think you will also have a lot of trouble to justify torture as a punishment once you think about crimes besides terrorist attacks. Why not torture a rapist and force him to answer to tell if he thinks he will rape again?

Dvorak's fits very well in this context. I don't understand though why Max Bruch is never mentioned at all. I just adore his violin concerto. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC0-lpmZ-6w Sadly, it's hard to find a decent versions of the other movements :/

Isn't that saying reality must be objective, because reality is objective? In other words I feel this is one of those things (like volition) that I would categorize as impossible to prove and/or disprove and more or less a matter of believe. IE: I see no possible way to find a clear argument against someone who holds the contrary position and claims that reality is fundamentally tied to a subject and that the there will always be parts of reality that can not be described objectively without loosing or distorting information. Further such a person will claim that QM is in fact proof of his position. As far as I know (only through secondary literature), there is no scientific accepted theory that states that QM can be measured in a way comparable to the newton mechanics... I'm not really sure on this one. Don't have much time right now. I'll post more later and hopefully I can order my thoughts properly.

So the problem is, that Copenhagen claims, that there is no objective reality? (By the way: How does Objectivism argue that reality must be objective?) Couldn't I still claim that it is simply the nature of elementary particles to act the way you described?

Does not change the fact, that there must be a certain point, where the earth can no longer support more humans. So in the long run we have 2 options, assuming world-population will eventually hit that point. a) Somehow actively change the trend by raising awareness for the problem Do nothing and "wait" until the number of humans on earth has decreased because of the problems that where caused by the overpopulation (I guess that is a scenario where the word is used correctly) I think this is one of the issues that is raised when the problem of very long term sustainability is discussed. Questions like "Can a LFC work without (industrial) growth"?

I've had trouble understanding the meaning of the concept of causation in Objectivism too (and still have). I hope my post is accepted in this topic, because I feel my question is not worth a topic of it's own. As far as I know causation and the law of identity say that a certain entity always acts according to it's nature. "Every entity has a nature; ... it has certain attributes and no others. Such an entity must act in accordance with its nature. The only alternatives would be for an entity to act apart from its nature or against it; both of those are impossible. ... In any given set of circumstances, therefore, there is only one action possible to an entity, the action expressive of its identity. This is the action it will take, the action that is caused and necessitated by its nature." (Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, 14.) With a volitional being, being the only exception, because it can act in multiple ways. My question now is, why (it seems) that Objectivism rejects the Coppenhagen-interpretation of quantum mechanics. The argument is, that the Coppenhagen-interpretation says that there are entities that can act in multiple ways in a certain set of circumstances, which violates the law of identity. I fail to understand why this must be the case, when consciousness (or volition) is obviously not a violation of the law of identity. Why can't I just say, that it is the nature of an electron to "act in a stochastic way"?

If you try to define existence you will have to use the word "is" (or an expression that says the same). Therefore, by trying to define existence you have to use the word existence. As DavidOdden said: It can't be reduced any further. You can't describe it with words that don't already rely on existence.

I don't see a connection between saying "The past does not exist" to "The past has no influence". If I throw a Ball in the air and wait 5 seconds, the ball in mid-air was very well influence by an event in the past. If you deny any influence of the past to the present, how can you even use the concept of causation?

I really liked the thoughts by Merrill. Finally some new approach, but I did have some problems following his argumentation. I really liked him saying that simply saying "I have volition because I can feel it" (or variations that are given here all the time) is not a good argument at all. Firstly he also referred to the argument, that the statement "The universe is deterministic" requires knowledge, which requires independent "checking" with reality. A determinist might say "If you define knowledge that way, then we simply don't have knowledge" and further "I don't see evidence that humans gain 'knowledge' independently". I still feel that the general argument that knowledge requires free will tries to smuggle in volition by defining knowledge with the intention to prove volition that way. Sort of a circle argument. Secondly he states that "a more fruitful approach argues that systems which can model some portion of the world and thus make predictions can evade the deterministic limitations of physics". I can find no argument in the text why this can be the case even though he says that this would not help much. Every prediction of the future must be based on observations of the past and I don't see why "feeding itself information about the future" changes anything. Thirdly and maybe most importantly: Why is the answer to the question "What may we expect if the subject in the isolation booth is volitional?" that the answers will never converge to a number? In a sense he say that volition is "more random than random" or a kind of randomness that can't even be described by stochastic, but he still fails to explain what volition means. How does the subject in the box make a single decision? It seems to me that volition must be that way, since volition must differ fundamentally from randomness and determinism and a sequence that doesn't converge to a certain number is the only sequence of answers that is fundamentally different from other sequences. That still is sort of an "anti-argument" and fails to show that volition exists and what it is. Since he does not really say what volition is the point he makes, that volition must be fundamentally different to randomness and determinism seems arbitrary to me. His central point seems to be the Gödel's theorem applies to physics and that therefore a volitional being can be possible, because physics may never be complete and therefore there will be systems that can never be predicted. I see a lot of problems there. Firstly: I think he fails to properly conclude that Gödel's theorem in fact applies to physics. There is for example an axiomatic system of real numbers that is complete and consistent, because natural number can not be picked as a subset with the set of axioms. So he must show that natural number actually "exist" in physics. Even assuming that Gödel's theorem applies to physics (which causes all whole set of other problems by the way), I don't see why it follows that a volitional being can exist the way he describes it. If I understood it correctly, Gödel's theorem does not say that _any_ arithmetic statement can not be proven, just that there can be _certain_ statements that can't be. Now he does not say anything about why the problem of volition must be one of those statements. It sort of seems that he claims that nothing in physics can be proven or rendered impossible if Gödel's theorem applies. Lastly he didn't prove volition. Even without all those problems with his argumentation he merely said that volition is not impossible, but you could apply his argumentation to other propositions too (god?) and conclude that they might be possible. Causation needs two points in time and therefore, without a metaphysical past, there can be not causation. Observation itself requires two points in time to be describe as a valid concept. The existence of the past can truly be proven by introspection. You are repeating your position over and over again although it has been shown several times that free will can not be proven by introspection. Again: Free will means that you can make different "choices" (choice implies free will, therefore the exclamation marks) in the same condition. You can _never_ recreate the same conditions. Also the statement "Free will is an illusion" does not get refuted by: I am in control of my mind. Why? I am volitional. Why? I could have picked a different option. How is that? I just know. Introspection has limits and proving volition is one of them. A man who hears a voice inside his head claiming to be god can not properly claim that god exists.

Prospectivist_Objectivist made some arguments I brought up as well in older Topics about free will / volition. I didn't get First of all: Volition and Free will is obviously _not_ self evident. Truly self-evident is existence. You can never honestly question that, but as a side note: Free will and volition is the single most discussed topic in this forum.. I wonder why that is, if it is that obvious. As Prospectivist_Objectivist said, the core of free will is that one could have made a different choice in the same conditions, which is obviously impossible to prove (and even if that was the case one would have to prove that this wasn't random). Actually _you_ claim to have prove volition and since this experiment is the only way to prove it, your argument relies on a metaphysical impossibility and _you_ have no argument. What I noticed over time is that there is actually not real explanation what volition actually is. It seems to be not deterministic, but not random either. It is referred to as "self-causation". But what is self-causation? As I said before: There is nothing between strict causation and randomness, like there is no third option between existence and nothingness. A third option is unimaginable, unreal, mystic. Now the real interesting argument is, that one can not integrate reality without volition or in a deterministic universe. I never really understood the connection there. Let's say there happens to be a simple robot in a deterministic universe. This robot has sensors that let him collect data and he has a device to store the data. Now where is the impossibility to integrate this data (reality)? IE: "wall ahead" --> "turn around". What would be a concrete example of a human action that is fundamentally impossbile in a deterministic universe? And please don't deny this example as unreal.. Rand used an example of an indestructible robot herself.

That is not the problem, I think. Free will is either impossible or very very hard to prove or disprove. Similar (but not equal) to god. I think the first step in the argumentation, to accept free will as true because it can be observed by introspection is an assumption with no basis. The core of the concept of free will is, that one could made a different action in an exact same situation. It is obvious that one can not device a test to recreate the _exact_ same conditions ever. But even if let's say, we could create a second universe and observe that a test person makes different choices when faced with the exact same situation, we don't know if that is just the result of fundamental randomness. We don't observe free will via introspection. What we observe is, that our mind is constantly faced with problems that require evaluation (thinking). During this thinking process we don't have a solution yet and often state that we have several options from which to chose from. That is correct in a sense, because at that moment we do not know what we will do yet. Once we have found a solution (right or wrong doesn't matter), we have no possibility to ever find out if we could in fact have picked a different option. The illusion of free will arises because we are such an incredible complex organism that we can't predict ourself. That is when we start to speak about several options during a thought process. The second important argument is, that one can not have truth without free will or in other words: A human can not function without free will. I really don't see the connection there. Even a computer has some sense of truth if he can determine that 1=1 is true and 100=90 is false. Sure, it is not conscious, but it still can make statements about truth according to his information... so why do I need to be able to make a different choice in the exact same situation in order to function as a human or to have knowledge / recognize something as true, when even a much simple machine can have some form of truth? I don't see anything in human behavior that requires free will.

True. I believe it is a matter that science has to answer. As far as I know it is believed that hormone levels during pregnancy play a big role there, but I would not be surprised if early childhood-experiences are a factor too. All i can clearly say from my own thinking is that an adult can not change his sexual orientation himself. Maybe a heavily traumatic experience can change things, but you defiantly can't simply make a choice about it. For me it is impossible to find men sexually attractive no matter how much I like a males character or how he looks (if he does not look like a female) and I heavily doubt there is any human out there who can consciously influence his sexual orientation. Because if that would be the case, why would anybody choose a sexual orientation like pedophilia, when he is deeply ashamed of it and will never be able to live it morally? I've read about a case where a convicted child molester asked the authorities to keep him in prison when he was about to set free again. He said he felt he still was a danger to children and felt that he would not be able to control his urges. This guy wanted to stay in prison because of his sexual orientation. If you could influence it in any way, why would he not do it? (In the end authorities set him free against his wish and he ended up raping another child.. but that's beside the point)

I don't think that an adult can change or influence his sexual orientation consciously. I think attraction to another person consists of the mere sexual attraction and secondly on the attraction of his/her character and values. The second part works sort of as an amplifier for the sexual attraction, but it can't fundamentally change it. IE if you meet a girl that you find physically attractive, this first sexual attraction is nothing you can influence. This can even be measured scientifically by observing subtle changes in body heat and penis-size and produced fluids of the vagina. Now if you get to know this girl and she turn out to hold value that you consider good and you get along with her very well, this sexual attraction might become even stronger, or on the contrary weaker, when you dislike her character. The first sexual attraction though, stays the same. IE: If you meet another girl that looks like a girl, that you misliked but were attracted to physically, you will still find here attractive (sexually). Also I do believe that homosexually and asexually are just 2 particular sexual orientations within a very large pool of others. There are people who are attracted to a lot of "strange" things, like dead people, animals, older people or children. I really don't think that all of those people at any point consciously chose to be attracted to those subjects; on the contrary. I think a lot of them wished they were not the way they are, but are unable to change their sexual orientation. A while back I read a story about a big hospital in Berlin (charité), who offered psychological help for pedophile men. In the end a lot more men wanted to sign up, than they had personal to deal with it, and I don't think that germans are somehow more likely to be pedophile than other people. So those men who signed up, knew that they could not satisfy their need without hurting a child and therefore tried to get professional help to deal with their desires without hurting someone, even risking social alienation. I think it is a mistake to claim that, for example, all pedophiles are either evil or mentally sick. I think a lot of them are ashamed of their desires and try to fight it and if they could change their sexual orientation, they probably would. The same is probably true for other immoral desires like killing, raping or torturing for sexual satisfaction. We "normal" people are somewhat lucky that we have a sexual orientation that is socially accepted and can be exercised freely in a moral way. I don't think you can judge somebody because of his sexual orientation in any way. Of course that doesn't mean it is ok for a pedophile to rape a child or for someone to kill for sexual satisfaction. It does mean, that if those with these desires acknowledge that they can't fulfill their needs in a moral way and then choose not to follow their desires, then they can very well be moral people. In other words, sexual orientation alone is something that is not sufficient in any way to judge a person. It is neither false, immoral or irrational; it is a fact that must be dealt with.

This sounds like a child getting bullied "deserves" it, because it failed to fight back. This is ridiculous. I think in most situations it is very very hard for the child to get out of his misery alone, because it is not the physical bullying that is the worst but the psychological aspect: Being an outcast, having no friends etc. Most children will not have the strength to deal with such a situation alone. It is an incredible hard thing to keep self-respect when you are tortured every day. How can you ask this of a 11-year old? In such a situation, I think a parent needs to act and more than just teach the child self-defense techniques. The parent should at least have a very serious talk with the school-board or the parents of the bullies and not hesitate to send the child to another school if the situation is really bad.

Well for me retaliatory force includes self-defense, but if this is a wrong definition, then I'm sorry and I can understand why my statements seem hard to understand. I think we don't have such a big difference in opinion after all. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we just disagree about whether or not property must be (highly) valuable or life-dependent for you to use lethal force in oder to defend it. By life-dependent I mean the concrete situation, where the theft of the property will directly cause harm to your health or your death. I don't think see how you can draw a appropriate line, when you use value in property in order to decide if lethal force may be used or not. When is something valuable enough to use lethal force and when not? Is it a car, a TV or is a wallet enough? If you don't use value as a criteria at all and state that any violation of property rights permits lethal force, then you are again in a world of trouble to justify lethal force as a result of the smallest property violations. Now I don't know if you agree with the criteria of value here, but I think the only proper criteria is your health and life. I know I'm putting the card before the donkey here, but Ayn Rand said in a quote I read recently (sadly can't find it.. it was in some sort of interview) that one ought to think about the consequences, when talking about a principle, specifically the consequences for yourself. I'm not really sure if this can be applied here though.

Actually I don't see why examples must necessarily be real. Does the answer to "Is it moral?" change when the situation is hypothetical? I actually think that using hypothetical scenarios is a very effective way to illustrate ones thoughts and I still fail to see why my example is un-assaiable. I simply choose a situation where your health is not in direct danger and your only option to defend your property is to use lethal force. I didn't make it up, but I admit that I did interpret it: Ok, I'll try to express my line of thought there. I do agree with the morality of property rights in any way, but I also think, like Rand, that one has to give up retaliatory force to the government to secure that the rule of law is established properly (I'm not sure exactly how she formulated it). I also think that there must be exceptions in emergency situations and if you can use lethal force to defend your property then it must qualify as an emergency. The explanation why it is ok to do that seemed to me, that a violation of your property rights is a threat to your life, because you need property to sustain your life. Then I tried to explore if this holds true for any violation of property rights and I formulated the example with the wallet-theft. I did not get a clear answer, if it is moral or immoral to shoot or not in this example, because people did not accept my example and sadly I still don't understand why (honestly) If you judge that a guy breaking into your house at night is a credible threat to your life, then it is moral for you to use lethal force and I think that judgment is reasonable. Sure I don't think that any violation of my property rights is a threat to my life. Some violations may be (like the last insulin shot), but if I'd own a food store and somebody stole an apple I would not consider it a threat to my life. The first quote wasn't accurate, I admit. I never said that you have to give up your property rights at any point. If someone tried to take my right to property (IE a government passing a law that would "legally" socialize my property) then I would consider it a threat to my life. A robber does not take your right to property. It is not legally his just because he took it and the retaliatory force of the government will enforce your right to this property. As I said, my disagreement is about when it is moral to use retaliatory force (specifically lethal force) yourself and I don't think theft itself qualifies for that.

I don't know how a Lion has anything to do with it. A lion surely does not "choose" to die in pursuit of a zebra, so you won't get that argument from me. Assuming you mean life in the common sense as "not-dead", then a male black widow chooses not to further his life because his offspring has a better chance of survival when he does so. The chances for him finding a second mate without dying in process are probably very slim so chooses to give the nutrition in his body to the female. The traits and patterns animals have developed all have the goal to procreate and staying alive is simply a condition that is often needed to do so, but it is also evident that if staying alive lowers the chance to procreate, it is abandoned in order to procreate. I'm sure you are aware of these examples (as you said), but I just don't see how this formulation can be accurate: "Plants and animals always act one way when faced with an alternative, toward the furtherance of their lives."

This is false when you are speaking about individual plants/animals, which you do. There are plenty of examples where animals of certain species chose death in order to reproduce, male Black Widow being the most popular.

A principle must also work in extreme situations, doesn't it? Can you please tell me where my examples use false premises?

Makes no sense to me. Why are human motivations finite and human potential infinite? Do you mean by "human potential" all possible things you can imagine he could do? That would be a big difference between that and what he actually could be doing, something you can't prove, because you can not predict the future. So if you observe somebody doing something and then state "His motivations are finite (in other words, he had a specific mindset at that moment), he choose to do something, but he could have picked an infinite number of other options", you'd have to prove that he could in fact have done something different and if you achieve that you have to prove that this choice was not a result of randomness, but of free will. For example, one could make the claim that "human potential" is in fact "1". In other words, there is always only 1 possible thing a human "can do", his actions are determined. On the other hand one could claim, that "human potential" is in fact infinite, but the reason for that is an existing true randomness in the universe (coppenhagen interpretation) and the infinite potential is simply a result or this randomness. Objectivism states (correct me if I'm wrong) that free will can be perceived directly. You do know that you have free will. It is a result or strictly tied to the concept of volition, which is neither determinism (only 1 option) nor randomness, but self-causation. In other words, you don't need to prove free will, like you don't need to prove existence. You perceive it and perception is true.

Great talk. Thanks for the link. Yes your are right. My formulation was wrong. Better is: Every working society needs the agreement of that principle (at least of the majority). True, different people value things differently, but life still must be the fundamental value, because without life everything else has no value. Every value is derived from life and that is more or less reflected in history and the nature of men. In every set of laws, every religion and ethics the destruction of life is at least among the worst possible violations and the loss of life is the worst possible punishment. I never said that one could not loose the right to life. A murderer and most certainly Hitler did by his actions, just like everybody who threatens you're life and health does. I don't see why and how the poor man's life is not worth more than property. Of course that doesn't follow the destruction of property rights. On the contrary, only when you value life you can value property. I never said that I'd allow violation of property rights. Stealing is still immoral in any sense. My argument was about when and how you can use retaliatory force yourself. Just because you choose not to shoot the robber, it does not mean you lost your right of that property. It only means that you choose to let the government handle the retaliatory force. I'm sure you acknowledge the need of the monopole of retaliatory force for the government with the single exception of emergencies, which I consider only to be a direct threat to your life and health. How can it be an emergency of someone steals a blank peace of paper and runs away unarmed? If you consider that an emergency, then why is it not an emergency, when you are not around to stop the criminal? In most cases you still could go look for the criminal and shoot him and take back your property yourself. After all, according to your approach, every violation of property rights is a violation of your right to life and an emergency (?). I gave the example of the insulin shot to illustrate that stealing can be a direct threat to your health and therefore can be a true emergency (without the need to threaten you with arms or physical force). IE if the unique healing-formula for a terminal illness that you suffer from, is written on the stolen paper, then it would be moral for you to shoot the robber. If it was blank, then it would be highly immoral to shoot. Think about following situations and think about whether or not it is OK to shoot the initiator of force in each case, assuming that it always is your only option to stop him from initiating (further) force. a) You argue with your girlfriend and she is about to slap you in her anger. You judge it is no threat to your life. You happen to have only one hand free, holding a gun. A person that is unable to reason properly (mental illness, child) is about to do minor damage to your car (like a visible scratch) c) A person is about to make an honest error resulting in damage to your property (IE somebody is about to execute a virus that will format your computer, that contains valuable information) If you judge that any of these situations do not allow the shooting of the initiator, then the principle "Any initiation of force results in the loss of all your rights" does not hold true, but I don't think that is the real point of disagreement here. I think it is about what situations are in fact emergencies, where I denied that every theft is an emergency that allows you to use lethal retaliatory force.

I think sex as the celebration of each-others values simply does not describe reality. Having sex is an urge that is mostly important for your happiness and I can perceive through introspective that values in terms of moral standards or ideas do only play a very very minor role. Wanting to have sex in humans results foremost from physical attraction. In other words restraining yourself would be acting against your nature and therefore immoral. Values do of course play a bigger role, when it comes to a partnership like a marriage, but sex isn't even necessary for that.

Well you are retaliating to achieve something, and in the case of a theft it is to get your property back or to protect it, right? Retaliation for the sake of retaliation is meaningless and punishment ought to be the job of the government. I don't see how my example misses the point and you (softwareNerd) as well as Jake_Ellison both said, that in my example shooting the girl would be immoral (or thoughtless). In other words we already have an exception for "Every initiation of force results in the loss of all rights". This also holds true if the theft (in the example) was not a child but an adult. Our society (and maybe every working society) is based on the agreement that some value are worth more than others. Human life being the most valuable, or the only real value. The statement that every violation of property rights is a violation of the right to live, because property enable you to life is not true. If you steal a dollar from a billionaire, you have not threaten his live in any way. Things changes obviously in the other extreme, when you steal the last insulin injection from a person with diabetes. This would be a direct thread to this persons life and it would be moral to use lethal force there.