HD:
Could you rephrase the question in a more direct or explicit manner?
I don’t quite understand what you are asking when you say this:
“But what relation do the slave-drivers have towards Jim’s p0 and what’s their key difference from the producers of such things as cars?”
Sorry.
You pointed out that it’s selfish to spend 20 seconds to save someone’s life because they might go on to cure cancer or write your favorite song, which is absolutely accurate.
But if I may play the devil’s advocate a bit longer, couldn’t they just as easily go on to mug you?
To tie it back into the OP, having access to life-saving medicine is absolutely integral with Jim’s love of his own life; being mugged is contradictory to it.
Because if that’s the case then we’ve identified two diametrically opposite ways in which other people can influence Jim’s love of life, with diametrically opposite ways he should morally treat them.
And the difference between a beneficial or a detrimental person, to Jim’s love of life, is one of values. When people share each other’s values, in any specific endeavor, everyone is able to accomplish more work in less time (even if not deliberately collaborating). When people who do not share the same values are forced to interact, the precise opposite will result.
It’s actually quite an elegant sort of relation; nearly mathematical.
But now that we’ve touched on that, it leads us to another problem: Any knowledge which Jim gains, as to the values of other people, must be inferred through a prohibitively time-consuming process.
On the one hand, Jim has to interact with hundreds of other people on a daily basis in his industrialized society. On the other hand, without spending the time and effort to learn what these people value, he cannot morally let them influence his own life. It isn’t rational to ignore such alternatives outright, and it isn’t moral to act blindly (and yet he must act).
So what could be generalized about ‘all men’ such that Jim may preserve premise zero in such a context?
Hairnet, you hit the nail on the head with “strategy”; that’s the underlying frame of reference (stemming from p4) which I’d like to apply to social dynamics.
“Trust” is a definite nonessential. To trust someone whom you have no reason not to is rational and hence integral with p0 (via the motivation of evasion identified in post #7); to trust someone whom you do have reason not to contradicts it.
“Privacy” is analogous to the trader principle and is entirely proper, but not yet admissible in this context; we’re trying to identify its basis.
Let’s focus on the strategic application of p0 to social interaction.
You are missing my point.
Genuine, rational, trust is the result of privacy and the protection of rights. In the past people couldn’t trust people outside their in group, and would thus place far too much trust in their in group despite what problems they may present. If you want to only include people in your life who have merit, then you need to be sure that people of merit aren’t actually the pawns of some threat. If there was only your kin group, and everyone outside that group was seen as a potential threat who was under the threat of a dangerous prince, you can’t go looking around for merit. Even if your brother is irrational or incompetent you may just give him responsibility based on the idea that at the very least he won’t try to rape your mother or kill you in your sleep like some hired foreigner may be. Without the protection of rights there is only paranoia and the war of all against all.
A basic example is of the idea of secularism. If people promise not to hurt one another over their religion and these promises are kept, people of all religions can discard religion as an important factor when dealing with strangers and then benefit from one another. If there isn’t that principle then commerce is restrained. A catholic will be hestitant to move to a protestant city or nation because he may be scapegoated or arbitrarily punished for his affiliation. The same goes with ethnicity.
England and Ireland suffered all the way into the 20th century because of the brutal treatment of the Irish by the British. Terrorism based on religious and ethnic conflicts seems like something that should exist in the third world or eastern Europe but not in the west and even today there are still IRA splinter groups that are active.
Here is a contemporary example. I have noticed the rise of racism on the internet over the last five years. Sadly many of these people now borrow pro-commerce ideas from classical liberals. They see the state as violating rights, and because some state policies are based off of leftist race bating, those white supremacists see themselves as besieged by minorities who want to rob their wealth. Instead of seeing immigrants as potential value, they view them as democratic voters.
Some blame the violence in Yugoslavia in the past or Iraq today on the same principle. No one protected rights in their country, and oppression was really the only thing that worked for preventing violence. Democracy in both countries comprises not of people attempting to persuade one another what the best social systems are but of ethnic and religious groups fighting for dominance.
I think these people are irrational, but if the state was more consistent in its protection of rights their arguments would be far less persuasive.
I don’t think that p0 has a strategic application to social interaction. p0 presents a goal, and you can’t just deduce the means of achieving a goal from the goal itself.
You can only freely associate with people to the degree that rights are protected. Without free association the only way you are going to get people to associate with you is through coercion, and if you are powerful enough to coerce others then it still in your best interests to maintain as much free association as possible, as this is the way wealth is generated.
Sorry.
You pointed out that it’s selfish to spend 20 seconds to save someone’s life because they might go on to cure cancer or write your favorite song, which is absolutely accurate.
But if I may play the devil’s advocate a bit longer, couldn’t they just as easily go on to mug you?
To tie it back into the OP, having access to life-saving medicine is absolutely integral with Jim’s love of his own life; being mugged is contradictory to it.
It would be shortsighted to destroy potential resources in a systematic process just because one particular tiny bit might be spoiled. If you find a bad apple deal with it at that point in time.
Don’t cut down your apple tree.
P0 isn’t a goal, hairnet; it’s the standard by which we evaluate all goals and desires of any sort.
That’s how I interpret Objectivist ethics. If I’m mistaken then please let me know.
Hold one moment.
SL: The irony in your last post astounds me.
You’ve just dismissed any further inquiry by the exact reasoning I was working towards.
To deal with bad apples if and when you find them; isn’t that how the criminal system works?
I’m only trying to lay out the explicit basis of the concepts it applies.
Hairnet: I would very much like to see you generalize, from all of the concretes you listed, precisely what “trust” refers to.
I don’t think you’re using it conventionally.
Well you did not state that “Life was the standard of value”. You claimed that life is worth living, which from which I assumed that we were orienting the whole discussion on how specifically rights encourage life.
This is the definition of trust I liked that I took from a social sciences article. This is the article although I can not say that I agree with everything in it. http://www.ldv.ei.tum.de/en/research/fidens/interpersonal-trust/
Interpersonal trust is an expectation about a future behavior of another person and an accompanying feeling of calmness, confidence, and security depending on the degree of trust and the extend of the associated risk. That other person shall behave as agreed, unagreed but loyal, or at least according to subjective expectations, although she/he has the freedom and choice to act differently, because it is impossible or voluntarily unwanted to control her/him. That other person may also be perceived as a representative of a certain group. (Freely translated from Kassebaum, 2004, p. 21)
Apart from the observation of Leonid, this entire blog is a mystery to me. It makes no sense at all.
P0 isn’t a goal, hairnet; it’s the standard by which we evaluate all goals and desires of any sort.
That’s how I interpret Objectivist ethics. If I’m mistaken then please let me know.
Hold one moment.
SL: The irony in your last post astounds me.
You’ve just dismissed any further inquiry by the exact reasoning I was working towards.
To deal with bad apples if and when you find them; isn’t that how the criminal system works?
I’m only trying to lay out the explicit basis of the concepts it applies.
The context of your hypothetical involved an absence of knowledge of the particular nature of the people around whom Jim could choose to swerve. i.e. He was blind and ignorant to facts of reality (this is to be expected), how do you think he should act keeping in mind his lack of knowledge?
What exactly is astounding about my post?
Because if you love your own life, why destroy the world that you live in? That’s what a person does when he violates the rights of others. He degrades the world he lives in, and makes it more difficult for himself to live, and thus damages his own life.
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Preliminary Premises:
0- Life is good ; in general the rewards outweigh the risks.
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This seems a rather sweeping moral statement of life in general. Have you proof that “in general” all lives are good simply because they exist? As I read the following, the existence of a evil life can be inferred from actions that are NOT “self-sustaining and self-generated”:
“There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or non-existence—and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.” ~ ARL, Life
Is it possibe to distinguish good lives from evil lives, or are you asserting that all lives are good because a majority of them are… or that the process of self-sustaining and self-generated action is good? Life = Good; Death = Evil?? Some clarity please?
I like the concrete. A second way to make it concrete is to imagine Jim really never had much choice about interacting with people, since they were all around him, for many hundreds of miles. Even if they did not raid his home, they did impact him. Even if he does not wish to trade with the kooky folk across the stream, he wants to reach an agreement over how they use the commons, and perhaps he even comes up with a concept of property.
Your concrete example highlights that rights come from the value-seeking behavior: trading value for value. This alternative concrete highlights that rights can also protect against the encroachment of “dis-value”. In this role, they are not rules for trade, but rules that keep everyone out of everyone else’s business.
If Jim doesn’t want to trade with the kooky folk across the stream, isn’t his primary concern self-defense? How secure can an agreement be with “kooky folk”??
Edit: Are you asserting that tradeless rights are essentially agreements to not interfere? And if so, how reliable would this kind of agreement be with “kooky folk”*.
* I’m using your term with the understanding that “kooky folk” are by definition unreliable. Please correct me if I’ve misrepresented your meaning…
If Jim doesn’t want to trade with the kooky folk across the stream, isn’t his primary concern self-defense? How secure can an agreement be with “kooky folk”??
Thanks for asking me to clarify. I didn’t mean people who’re completely crazy. I just meant people who are not rational the way Jim is, and who may even believe things he considers kooky.
For instance, there may be a family that thinks the world is sitting on top of the back of a huge turtle; and, perhaps Jim finds no value in the things they produce. Nevertheless, the two sides can come to an agreement that they won’t raid each other’s cattle.
The point is that rights are a shield that marks out a sphere in which Jim can operate, regardless of whether or not he wants to gain value from other people. in this role, they are a protection from their dis-value. So, while rights arise in a social-context, it is not purely a trading context.
To anyone interested:
Rand explains the root of rights in detail in VoS and even further in this interview.
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reg_ar_rights
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The point is that rights are a shield that marks out a sphere in which Jim can operate, regardless of whether or not he wants to gain value from other people. in this role, they are a protection from their dis-value. So, while rights arise in a social-context, it is not purely a trading context.
I have to wonder the degree to which tacit agreements not to interfere require a social context. For example, if Jim and his neighbors live on a frontier without political oversight, wouldn’t simply avoiding coercion mark out the same kind of sphere you’re referring to? Specifically, does recognition of anothers autonomy imply a liberty right??
Specifically, does recognition of anothers autonomy imply a liberty right??
Well a right is like an autonomous zone. So, in that sense they’re just different names for the same thing. You could say that man inherently has some autonomous zones of action, and you could mean the same thing as saying that he inherently has some rights.
I’m not sure where all this is going. The point is that one important role of right (or autonomous zones) is to be a barriers against other people stopping you from doing what you will.
Well a right is like an autonomous zone. So, in that sense they’re just different names for the same thing. You could say that man inherently has some autonomous zones of action, and you could mean the same thing as saying that he inherently has some rights.
I’m not sure where all this is going. The point is that one important role of right (or autonomous zones) is to be a barriers against other people stopping you from doing what you will.
Yes, this makes sense to me, and thank you for the clarification. I’m tempted to consider unsecured social rights as virtual rights, but I think that’s unnecessary and possibly misleading. A rose by any other name, or a unnamed rose is still identifiable for what it is. Obviously I’m still working some things out in that other thread, but I don’t want to pursue that here.
In chronological order.
Hairnet: That definition of “trust” suits the topic far better than the one I had conceived of; I would generally define trust as much closer to “faith” and hence one small distinction away from antirationality [irrationality-as-a-virtue].
The definition you’ve provided actually sounds more like “certainty” than anything else.
In which case it’s the same referent I was alluding to in post # 23, with the issue of what we can generalize about ‘all men’ to further meaningful cooperation with people of unknown values.
How should Jim rationally achieve such trust in his fellow men?
SL: I apologize for that last post; one should not mix philosophical inquiries with rum.
As to how Jim should act, he should rationally act in accordance with p0, of course (which I’ll elaborate on momentarily); the precise application of this is the question.
In the hypothetical he was blind to some facts of reality, which is precisely the point- but he wasn’t blind to all.
Now, in a situation where some things are known for certain and others aren’t, wouldn’t the rational approach be to recognize that before forming any conclusions?
So if Jim were out driving when he saw some complete strangers crossing the road in front of him, he knows some things about them already [they are men] and not others [what sort of men they are]; whatever it is which we’re attempting to deduce must be available from nothing more than that.