Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From panix!zip.eecs.umich.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!caen!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!mantis!mantis!not-for-mail Thu Sep 29 07:04:14 EDT 1994
Article: 5318 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 29 Sep 1994 11:16:00 +0100
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allison@mathcs.emory.edu (Allison Mitchell) writes:
>What's wrong with just saying "I don't know?" My feelings on the
>matter are that I don't see any evidence for any gods, and that, since
>I don't understand a lot of things, I should take it upon myself to
>learn what I feel I need to or want to know.
I can understand that response with respect to questions like whether
Vikings or Irish monks were the first Europeans to visit America, or
whether there is superintelligent life in other galaxies. I have a
harder time understanding it with respect to questions that go to the
fundamental nature of the world in which we live. It's as if someone
told me he really didn't care whether solipsism was true or not, because
he didn't have any evidence on the subject and its truth or falsity
didn't raise any immediate practical issues.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Sep 29 07:04:29 EDT 1994
Article: 8300 of alt.society.conservatism
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Conflict, the political, and liberalism
Date: 29 Sep 1994 04:59:36 -0400
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Calvin Bruce Ostrum writes:
>Jim's error lies in insisting that the resulting legitimate goals, the
>ones that are not discouraged, are necessarily private.
The issue seems to be the definition of "private". I had said:
to the extent they are private--that is, to the extent they can be
carried out without affecting the success of others in achieving
their goals.
>The conservative argument is that the liberal state, or even liberal
>thinking more broadly, undermines the possibility of such platoons
>existing.
To the extent their practical policy recommendations differ from those
of the libertarians, conservatives also argue that not all goods can be
realized within little platoons, that little platoons are necessary but
not sufficient.
>If liberalism overemphasises negative "individual rights", this limits
>the extent to which social arrangments are under popular democratic
>control, since an individual (or his alleged representative in an elite
>judiciary priesthood) can always trump such arrangments.
All rights, not just "negative individual rights", trump political
decisions.
>Just like most of them can't cook well, according to Jim, neither can
>they govern.
This has the value of most of Mr. Ostrum's characterizations of the
views of people with whom he disagrees.
>Historically, those identified as conservatives have attempted to keep
>the formal enfranchisement down. And even today, they try to make it
>more difficult for many groups of people to register for the vote.
>They may take politics seriously, but only as long as they are the
>major players in it.
To repeat: every society larger and more complicated than a band of
hunter-gatherers has ruling elites. To the extent a liberal society
emphasizes positive, negative, individual or group rights it will be
ruled by the very small and independent (and so irresponsible) elite
that determines what the rights are and interprets them. The richer
and more comprehensive the conception of rights, the more that will be
the case.
Not surprisingly, theoreticians of rights, who have a special
relationship with the ruling elite of a liberal society, tend to
believe in a very rich and comprehensive conception of rights. The
importance of elite rule in a liberal society conflicts with the
liberal principle of equality, and the obvious power interest of rights
theoreticians in a system that gives rights theoreticians final
authority conflicts with their self-image, so it upsets Mr. Ostrum and
other liberals very much when such things are pointed out. Apart from
rhetoric about demonization and self-ascriptions of highmindedness and
solidarity with the oppressed, though, I have heard no reason to doubt
they exist.
A society that takes politics seriously will have ruling elites as well.
It will also tend to be a society in which the ostensibly political
institutions will in fact will be in control. Therefore, the ostensibly
political institutions will not be formally egalitarian in such a
society. There are a great many possible deviations from formal
egalitarianism, of course. In a sense, anything short of direct
legislation by the people with immediate ostracism of popular leaders
and the administrators chosen by lot and kept on a short leash is a
deviation. Nonetheless, I agree that such a society will tend to have
less formal political equality than a liberal society, which idealizes
equality and does not take politics seriously.
One "takes politics seriously", by the way, to the extent one recognizes
that politics requires choices of goods with respect to which people
could differ. A practical indication that someone does not take
politics seriously is that he goes berserk when his political views are
questioned fundamentally.
The ultimate question, of course, is not whether society will be ruled
by everyone equally, since it won't, but the nature of life in the
society for its members and the kind of people who come out of it.
That in turn implicates issues of how the good is actualized in human
life, the extent to which it can be designed and produced by something
like a technological process or must rather grow up half-consciously,
in a manner somewhat similar to the evolution of a language, from the
accumulation and cultural working-up of a huge variety of undertakings,
inspirations, experiences, perceptions, and so on.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Sep 29 07:04:30 EDT 1994
Article: 8301 of alt.society.conservatism
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Conflict, the political, and liberalism
Date: 29 Sep 1994 07:02:54 -0400
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I wrote:
>Apart from rhetoric about demonization and self-ascription of
>highmindedness and solidarity with the oppressed, though, I have heard
>no reason to doubt [a liberal ruling class with its own class
interests] exist[s].
There have also been suggestions that liberal principles become self-
evident when the oppressed reject and rebel against arbitrary social
institutions. My quoted language is not quite correct if (1) there is
an implication that the articulation and practical application of such
principles would also at some point become self-evident, so that in the
course of creating the liberal society class rule and the state would
wither away, and (2) such a view is reasonable.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Sep 29 07:04:34 EDT 1994
Article: 34008 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Conflict, the political, and liberalism
Date: 28 Sep 1994 17:29:26 -0400
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pajerek%telstar.kodak.com@kodak.com (Don Pajerek) writes:
>>If X is an heroic military
>>life and Y is a life of universalistic multicultural androgynous
>>sensitivity,
>
>[sneer noted]
Two many adjectives in the second phrase and not enough in the first? I
wanted to stress incompatibility so I kept stringing words together. I
suppose I could have achieved incompatibility by saying "Nazi life" and
"life of multicultural sensitivity", but "Nazi life" doesn't seem to be
a living ideal in America today, at least among people who read and
write, while the second phrase I used describes something that I think
is. How would you edit it?
>You are going too far in suggesting that a 'liberal society'
>necessarily 'encourages' people's goals. It might be better to say that
>a liberal society is indifferent to, or tolerant of, people's goals, as
>long as they don't impinge on the goals of others.
The emphasis in liberal theoretical discussion is on treating goals
equally, I think because that is the main point of contention between
liberals and others. However, everyone seems to think that promoting
prosperity (increasing the material means of achieving goals) is a good
thing for governments to do. Liberals also often talk of empowering
people in various ways. So to me it doesn't seem wrong to speak of a
liberal society as "encouraging" people's goals.
>How exactly is 'taking political goals and activity seriously' contrary
>to the spirit of a liberal society? I complete fail to see this.
Liberalism wants to treat people's goals equally, to the extent
possible. That is possible only if people's goals relate to private
things only. Therefore, in order to function liberalism will tend to
discourage people from having goals that make little sense except in
connection with goals adopted by the society as a whole. Examples of
such goals would include national grandeur, or the development of a
common way of life that promotes virtue, human excellence, morality, or
whatever.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Sep 29 20:22:57 EDT 1994
Article: 8307 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Conflict, the political, and liberalism
Date: 29 Sep 1994 10:06:54 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:34026 alt.society.conservatism:8307
This could be an endless stream of second and third thoughts!
In article <36e6su$rdh@panix.com> jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>There have also been suggestions that liberal principles become self-
>evident when the oppressed reject and rebel against arbitrary social
>institutions.
I should add that I view such suggestions as equivalent to the
suggestions that the body that determines the interpretation and
application of liberal principles will be the people as a whole. If
that were so, then presumably unrestricted or nearly unrestricted
majoritarianism would be the institutional form of a liberal state.
The liberals I know of don't seem to favor that, though.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!cmcl2!swiss.ans.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!mantis!mantis!not-for-mail Fri Sep 30 14:11:50 EDT 1994
Article: 5323 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 30 Sep 1994 09:51:15 +0100
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vanbelle@cs.ualberta.ca (Terry Van Belle) writes:
>>We believe in God because we can't do otherwise.
>
>You might argue that I actually do believe in God, but am not aware of
>it, but in what sense could you call that belief?
The intention was mostly to provoke, of course. Putting that aside, we
do talk about people's real beliefs and feelings and distinguish them
even from what they consciously think those things are. I suppose one's
"real beliefs" are those implicit in one's actions, attitudes and other
beliefs as a whole. So to present a philosophical argument for
something is to attempt to show that thing is what everyone really
believes.
Enough of this shilly-shallying, though ...
>>We cannot deal coherently with such a situation without something that
>>closes the gap between value and fact, reason and reality, subjectivity
>>and objectivity. To accept the best theory about some aspect of the
>>world as the true theory is to make the good the criterion for the real,
>>and to apply a theory is to assume that reason governs the world.
>
>You're equivocating on the meaning of the word 'good'. When you talk
>about values, you are talking about what we find good, a subjective
>term. This is different from the scientific meaning of a 'good' or
>'best' theory. Under science, a theory is good if it explains the
>observations of anyone who makes them under the correct conditions. It
>is assumed that under the correct conditions the observations will be
>same for all people. Other criteria include predictive value and
>falsifiability. These criteria are constant over all people, and hence
>the goodness of a theory in this sense cannot be called subjective.
Theories don't explain all observations, they just explain the ones that
aren't tossed out as anomalous. Whether there are so few unexplained
observations that they just can be tossed out or whether there are
enough to create a serious problem for the theory is a matter of
subjective judgment. The definition of correct conditions and
verification that those conditions obtain can never be completely
formalized, and therefore has an essential element of subjective
judgement. (At some point someone has to say "yeah, that looks good
enough".) For any set of past observations there are infinitely many
theories that account for them, and future observations are irrelevant
to our belief in a theory because we can't know what they will be. So
it seems to me that subjective evaluation enters into our choice of
which theory to believe in many ways. We believe the theory that seems
best to us, and that "best" means subjective evaluation.
>In any case, you can't make the jump that the best theory is reality,
>or determines it. Theories are supposed to take orders from reality,
>not vice-versa.
The argument is that we think and act as if the best theory is most
likely to be the correct one and can't do otherwise, so we are committed
to the view that what is good determines what is real.
>However, without the ugly fact that killed the beautiful theory, there
>could be no scientific progress, just a series of scientific fads.
The fact can kill the theory only if it is thought to do so.
>The best evaluations are supposed to be in accordance with objective
>reality, not vice-versa. It is the evaluations that change, not
>reality.
Sure, so we have this troublesome situation in which we are committed
to the view that the good determines the real, because otherwise we
can't explain why it is that we treat the best theories as correct, but
as you say we also are convinced (since we are not postmodern
solipsistic relativistic subjectivists) that the real determines the
good. My proposed solution of more-than-Solomonic wisdom is to refuse
to split the baby, and to say that the real and the good are the same.
I then reply to people tempted by evaluative relativism, who say [no
mind]=>[no goods or values], by hypothesizing a mind that necessarily
recognizes the good that is the same as the real. If you want, I can
go on and equate necessary recognition of a good with willing that
good. So (Ta da!) we have a mind that is omniscient, omnibenevolent
and (since reality depends on the mind's recognition and willing of the
good) omnipotent.
>Sounds a bit like Berkeley.
Quite a bit.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!cmcl2!swiss.ans.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!mantis!mantis!not-for-mail Fri Sep 30 14:11:51 EDT 1994
Article: 5334 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 30 Sep 1994 09:52:01 +0100
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perry@dsinc.com (Jim Perry) writes:
>I confess, I've sometimes thought along similar lines, as an exercise
>in trying to understand religious thought. It's somewhat compelling,
>but ultimately fails in that it doesn't apply to me.
The argument was that if we want to make sense of what we think and do
and of the world around us we should believe in God. I suppose the idea
in the background is that each of us makes sense of those things in some
way, and doing so as well as possible is a good thing because our
understanding of who and what we are and of what the world is is
fundamental to the life we lead.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!cmcl2!swiss.ans.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!mantis!mantis!not-for-mail Fri Sep 30 14:11:55 EDT 1994
Article: 5342 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 30 Sep 1994 09:52:39 +0100
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arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee) writes:
>An evaluation needs some premises from which to deduce the evaluation.
>In the sense that these premises must, being subjectively chosen, come
>from someone, an evaluation needs an evaluator.
>
>In the sense that someone must be able to correctly draw conclusions
>from those premises, an evaluation _doesn't_ need an evaluator. If
>everybody goofs in reasoning from those premises, that implies that
>nobody can figure out what value the premises imply, rather than that
>the premises don't imply any value.
>
>When you say that human error disqualifies humans from being
>evaluators, it disqualifies them in the second, unnecessary, sense, not
>in the first.
The issue I intended to raise was how there can be correct evaluative
premises, not how something can be the correct conclusion from arbitrary
premises. If there are no correct evaluative premises, then, since
knowledge depends on correct evaluation of theories, there can be no
knowledge. The evaluation of theories by arbitrary premises correctly
applied won't give us knowledge. So if, as you seem to say, evaluative
premises apply to things only to the extent they are subjectively
chosen, then the existence of correct premises seems to imply a correct
chooser, who isn't you or me since neither your choices nor mine affect
what the correct premises are.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Sep 30 14:12:23 EDT 1994
Article: 2394 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Inalienable rights?
Date: 29 Sep 1994 21:00:43 -0400
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dgard@netcom.com (dgard@netcom.com (!)) writes:
>Rights are things that others are forced to respect.
People don't respect mere force. They might not respect things that
aren't backed by force, but that's a different matter.
>Rights emanate, in the final analysis, from the barrel of a gun.
Rights don't emanate from the barrel of a gun. A gun is an instrument
and an instrument can't be the source of principles.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Oct 2 15:31:37 EDT 1994
Article: 8388 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.europe,alt.society.conservatism,alt.war
Subject: Re: New Strategic Realities
Date: 2 Oct 1994 10:04:41 -0400
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Xref: panix soc.culture.europe:35449 alt.society.conservatism:8388 alt.war:8184
In <36fhbi$t5q$1@mhadf.production.compuserve.com> Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Strategy Consultant <76530.1430@CompuServe.COM> writes:
>Just as the Patroons Roosevelt rushed to regulate America to find
>suitably pompous administrative jobs for their friends and relatives
>displaced by industrialisation, former Russian serfowners turned to
>assasinate the Reaganesque Stolypin and bring on bolshevism.
Was it really a matter of the people who used to form a landowning
aristocracy becoming a bureaucratic elite? Is it even true that the
two elites have a specially close relationship? Landowners and
bureaucrats no doubt have common characteristics that make them
different from industrialists, but industrialists also have things in
common with each of the other two elites that distinguish those elites
from each other. Like landowners, industrialists believe in private
property, and like bureaucrats industrialists favor the continual
reorganization of society in accordance with means/end rationality.
>If we were willing, as an occupying force, to force changes to the
>militaristic nature of Japan's Shinto religion, we must not must not
>fear to also change (Indonesia and Malaysia are bravely trying to
>diffuse the explosiveness and anticapitalism of their muslim faith.)
>the much more explosive MusliTurkoTatarMongol belt
Shinto is a lot looser structure than Islam. Also, in Japan we had the
cooperation of the Emperor. We couldn't get any similar help in Islam.
Also: if Islam is so anti-technological why worry about it? And
besides, the Muslims so far haven't shown much of a gift for political
organization. As I recall, the early Khalifat fell apart when the Arab
tribal loyalties and prestige engendered by spectacular success wore
thin. In the 14th century Ibn Khaldun viewed something similar as a
permanent pattern. Since then it's mostly been empires with no enduring
boundaries rising and falling based on personal absolutism rather than
any ideological principle. You may call Islam a totalitarian ideology
if you want, but if so it's not one designed to maximize industrial and
military power under modern circumstances.
>Therefore, we might consider printing Arabic and Turkic manuals on the
>manufacture of alcohol distillation (adapted to crops prevalent in
>Islamic countries such as sesames or dates)
Which would tell people nothing they already know. I've attended
drinking parties among high-school teachers in rural Afghanistan.
(This was before all the unpleasantness started.) They had this
horrible cloudy stuff called "araq" distilled locally out of fermented
raisins. You had it with fried potatoes and raw onions to neutralize
it.
>As empires crumble, people migrate, and population growth rates differ,
>new nations form. But this must be defined by uniformly consistent
>international law in such a way that people's lives are minimally
>distrubed and peace is justly preserved. It is suggested that this be
>handled under expanded adjudicational powers of the UN Refugee
>Commissioner.
It's hard for me to imagine the political arrangements that would give
an international body the independence and power needed to draw up and
enforce such a body of law. To whom would such a body be answerable?
If to no-one, why trust it? I suppose there might be specific localized
situations in which such a thing would be attainable.
>Naturally, as Meissner wrote at the dawn of the New World Order, the
>primary right of all minorities is that to stay in their current
>environment without discrimination or loss of civil or economic rights.
What does this mean? For example, does "without discrimination"
require government programs intended to further equal participation by
minorities in all significant social institutions? If so, is the
primary right of all minorities therefore the right to disappear as a
separate people?
>Moreover, if you chose to settle in a country for economic reasons,
>then you have an obligation to assimilate into it culturally and
>linguistically, without creating your own enclaves.
That depends on how the country is constituted. If the country is run
on libertarian lines, so that life is carried on mostly through
institutions that are not the responsibility of the government and have
no obligation of equal treatment for all citizens, then there might be
nothing wrong with a variety of ethnic enclaves living rather
independently of each other.
>Eurytano-Kastorian Ancestry.
If it's neither grossly ignorant nor an invasion of privacy to inquire,
who are the Eurytano-Kastorians?
[from another post:]
>Likewise math-illiterate educators have been allowed to reduce math to
>mysterious rituals rather than the flexible skills necessary in our
>advanced technological society.
It's odd that in the case of mathematics educators now emphasize
abstraction (set theory, emphasis in the lower grades on algebraic
properties like the commutative and distributive properties) while in
the case of language they emphasize concreteness (learn through use,
don't discuss grammar).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Oct 2 15:31:44 EDT 1994
Article: 45798 of bit.listserv.catholic
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: Catholic Fundamentalism
Date: 1 Oct 1994 12:39:07 -0400
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In <199410011604.AA13035@yfn2.ysu.edu> Lance Simmons writes:
>> the absurdity that HIV infected pers s are not allowed
>> to use condoms when having sex with their uninfected spouse!
>If the Church is correct
>in teaching that contraception is intrinsically evil, then what
>you are proposing is to do something evil in order to attain a
>good sult.
Why is it wrong to view the HIV infected person as using the condom to
prevent the spread of disease, with contraception as a side effect not
specifically intended?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Oct 2 15:31:48 EDT 1994
Article: 45811 of bit.listserv.catholic
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: Catholic Fundamentalism
Date: 1 Oct 1994 14:18:51 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 17
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In <36k7gr$pj1@news.ysu.edu> aj161@yfn.ysu.edu (Lance Simmons) writes:
>The doctrine of double effect permits us
>to perform acts which _in themselves_ are unobjectionable, but which
>have some bad side effect which is outweighted by a proportionately
>greater good effect. Double-effect reasoning does not permit us to
>perform acts which are intrinsically disordered.
>A marital act performed with a condom _is_ a contracepted act.
Suppose a drug were discovered that made the HIV virus noncommunicable.
If later it were discovered that it caused temporary sterility, would
users be obligated to cease marital relations?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Oct 2 15:31:54 EDT 1994
Article: 34070 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,soc.culture.nordic
Subject: Re: "Institutionalized Moral Relativism" in Sweden
Date: 1 Oct 1994 12:50:57 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 12
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:34070 soc.culture.nordic:37678
In <36igpm$o96@umbc8.umbc.edu> rhall2@umbc.edu (hall robert) writes:
>Who's tradition? It looks to me as if the traditional medieval family has
>suffered a near-complete erosion, as has the traditional Roman family.
Can you speculate on the function and structure of the coming
traditional postmodern family, and on the social expectations and
conventions that will hold it in place?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
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Article: 5359 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 2 Oct 1994 21:00:53 +0100
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pepke@scri.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke) writes:
>Solipsism is unfalsifiable. I think it perfectly reasonable not to
>worry about assigning a truth value to unfalsifiable statements.
Every now and then I am at least tempted to do something or refrain from
something for the sake of the effect it would have on what other people
experience. That would make no sense if solipsism were true because if
solipsism were true other people wouldn't have experiences. So I can't
act rationally in such situations without taking a position on the truth
of solipsism. What should I do?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week:
Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness--I diet on cod.
From panix!zip.eecs.umich.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!mantis!mantis!not-for-mail Mon Oct 3 17:30:35 EDT 1994
Article: 5396 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 3 Oct 1994 15:18:17 +0100
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pepke@scri.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke) writes:
>> The argument was that if we want to make sense of what we think and do
>> and of the world around us we should believe in God.
>
>That doesn't work for me. It just assigns a three-letter word to mean that
>which we don't understand. That doesn't make it make sense.
That objection would be fair enough if one couldn't attribute any
properties to the thing named by the three-letter word and if one didn't
find the word useful in articulating an overall understanding of things.
I think everyone has a theory of the world that includes terms that he
can't define without circularity and that refer to things that he
doesn't understand except in part ("time", "space" and "good" are
examples).
Of course, you say that your view of things does just fine without
"God". The intention of the original argument was to point out an
aspect of things that we can understand better on the assumption that
God exists.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
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Article: 5397 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 3 Oct 1994 15:18:20 +0100
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arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee) writes:
>If A is a premise, and B is a conclusion derived from that premise,
>then we cannot claim B itself is known. But we can claim that "A
>implies B" is known. Thus, we have gained knowledge--"A implies B"--by
>correctly applying arbitrary premises.
I suppose that's so if the rules of logic are not premises but logically
true propositions are nonetheless knowledge. Granting that, it still
seems that our ability to know anything except truths of logic depends
on our ability to evaluate premises correctly, which in turn requires
that there be correct evaluative principles. So our knowledge can at
most extend to logical truths unless the way the world is somehow
corresponds to judgments of value.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
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Article: 5398 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 3 Oct 1994 15:18:24 +0100
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treeshrew@aol.com (TreeShrew) writes:
>The main idea you express seems to be that things don't exist or happen
>unless observed, and that things cannot happen perfectly unless
>perfectly observed, thus a perfect observer is needed and that is God.
The claim's a little different: evaluative principles apply to things
only to the extent they are applied by some evaluator. Maybe a tree
could fall over in a forest without anybody seeing it, but its fall
could be awe-inspiring only if someone finds it so. The succeeding
moves in the argument, of course, are that there must be correct
evaluative principles because otherwise knowledge would be impossible,
so there must be a correct evaluator.
>I don't see any way to defend this premise, as it requires an ad hoc
>theory ("God is") just to make it fit the facts, and becomes a circular
>argument [things exist because God observes them, thus if no one
>observed them they wouldn't exist, therefore there must be a God to
>observe them].
The premise is part of an attempt to articulate the way things seem to
us so that the world makes the most sense possible. There's something
odd in the notion that things could be good or bad without reference to
how they are experienced by some mind. On the other hand, we can't
accept that "good" and "bad" depend only on our own mind, because if
they did a good theory would be better than a bad theory only in our
mind, and knowledge would be impossible.
>You might try reading a little Taoism. It builds a similar argument to
>prove that God as Christians conceive of him cannot be perfect, nor
>could he be the ultimate provider of existence. The first argument is
>simply put: Thought is division, division is corruption, therefore
>perfection is the total absence of thought = a thinking God therefore
>cannot be perfect. Then Taoists argue the same exact way you do: the
>perfect harmony of the universe demands an explanation, thus the
>universe must have a perfect ordering principle [ ... ]
Aquinas discusses these issues in some detail. As I understand him, he
says that God is perfectly simple and knows himself perfectly. Since he
knows himself perfectly, he also knows his effects (and therefore the
whole created universe) perfectly, but because of the way his knowledge
comes about it is non-discursive and therefore does not suffer from the
flaws the Taoists point out. Aquinas says: "Now God sees all things in
one thing alone, which is Himself. Therefore God sees all things
together, and not successively." He goes on to say, for example, that
God knows in the same simple manner the things that for us are asserted
in propositions which have subjects and predicates and therefore involve
division.
>Any universe with invariant laws capable of bringing about a self-
>conscious brain will only bring about a brain capable of understanding
>the universe it depends on for survival. Thus, any conscious entity, no
>matter what kind of universe they are in, will see their world as
>conveniently "reasonable" when this is only an illusion created by the
>fact that if the world weren't reasonable it would not likely produce a
>mind capable of appreciating it.
I haven't the vaguest idea why invariant laws, which relate to the
succession of observable events, should be thought to explain self-
consciousness, which relates to subjective experience. It seems to me
you could leave out the invariant laws and just say that a mind will
always impose order on its experience and therefore view its world as a
reasonable one. That's fine, but so what? If the world is necessarily
reasonable for us, why can't we just say the world is reasonable? From
what standpoint could we assert that the reasonableness of the world
might be an illusion? And if reasonableness were an illusion, why would
your quoted language, which tries to be reasonable, have anything to do
with anything of interest? Why would your theory of things be better
than the Pope's?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Oct 3 17:30:58 EDT 1994
Article: 18140 of talk.philosophy.misc
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Is moral relativism unethical???
Date: 2 Oct 1994 20:52:18 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 11
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In nikolay@scws5.harvard.edu (Philip Nikolayev) writes:
>A special bonus should be awarded for a plausible yet charitable
>explanation of the election of a corruption of *Zeitgeist* by the
>original poster to serve as his or her username.
What's the problem? The "Zeitgist" is obviously the essence of the
"Zeitgeist".
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Oct 3 17:31:01 EDT 1994
Article: 18142 of talk.philosophy.misc
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Nietzsche list
Date: 2 Oct 1994 21:23:50 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 8
Message-ID: <36nmf6$non@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Those who wish to subscribe should send a message with the line
SUBSCRIBE NIETZSCH
to LISTSERV@DARTCMS1.BITNET or LISTSERV@DARTCMS1.DARTMOUTH.EDU.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Oct 3 17:31:05 EDT 1994
Article: 34094 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Tyranny and censorship: boon or bane?
Date: 3 Oct 1994 09:04:19 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Several views are possible as to the effect of unlimited freedom of
political discussion and reform in a democracy. One is that the
discussions will tend to converge on a set of consistent reforms, which
can then be enacted and when enacted will lead to further convergence of
discussion and reform proposals. This view is the one traditionally
identified in America with the idea of progress, but most people don't
seem to have much faith in it today.
A contrasting view is that politics, at least for most people, is an
essentially expressive and interest-laden activity. On this view,
people's political perspectives differ because their economic and
social interests differ, because even apart from clashes of interest
they experience the world differently and arrive at different symbolic
articulations of their experience, and because people know what they
are by contrast to what they are not and therefore emphasize and
accentuate the things that distinguish them from others. Accordingly,
unlimited freedom of discussion will lead to increasing divergence of
view, while unlimited freedom of reform will give whichever party has
predominance the power to carry its particular views into effect.
Under such circumstances, the practical program of each party will come
to include measures that undermine the cohesion and power of the other
parties and enhance that of their own. Political life will therefore
take on the character of a fight to the death between parties who feel
they have nothing in common.
One who finds the latter view more realistic than the former is faced
with the problem of restricting discussion and reform in a way that at
least preserves stability while permitting adaptation to changing
circumstances. Many current political cleavages relate to the solution
of that problem: extreme leftists would facilitate reform by
eliminating free discussion, liberals would channel the two by
constraining the vocabulary and modes of reasoning people are allowed to
use, libertarians would preserve absolute freedom of discussion by
making reform impossible, and conservatives would try to moderate both
by tieing them to past and present understandings and practices.
All these solutions reject some part of the dogmas of freedom of speech
and popular sovereignty to which people today are required to give lip
service. Accordingly, a lot of current debate consists either of
demonstrations that a party favors censorship or opposes democracy, or
of obfuscation and fancy footwork to avoid such imputations. While
rule by irresponsible elites and suppression of discussion are often
very bad things, it seems that since almost everyone agrees that the
combination of full individual freedom and rule by the people is not an
attainable ideal the discussion should concentrate more on broader
issues of the general overall effect on society of the varying
approaches to governing.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Oct 3 17:31:07 EDT 1994
Article: 34112 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,soc.culture.nordic
Subject: Re: "Institutionalized Moral Relativism" in Sweden
Date: 3 Oct 1994 17:24:23 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:34112 soc.culture.nordic:37799
In pajerek%telstar.kodak.com@kodak.com (Don Pajerek) writes:
>There's also the question of why an 'elite' would want to
>'institutionalize equality of result' as the 'main value'.
An elite acting to maximize its own power might well try to
institutionalize equality of result as the main value for society at
large because doing so would eliminate all competing elites.
>If results
>were truly equal, there wouldn't be any elite, would there?
As you point out, such an elite would have the embarrassing problem of
explaining why some people in a society of equals were more equal than
others. Since explaining the problem away would be crucial to their
position, no doubt they would come up with something to say. They
might deny their status as an elite and accuse people who use the
expression of being bad people guilty of various intellectual and
rhetorical offenses (paranoia, demonization, use of tendentious
buzzwords, whatever). They might affirm their own highmindedness and
solidarity with the oppressed, for whom they are merely acting as a
voice. They might claim that they do no more than work out and apply
the conceptual implications of equality, so that the fact that society
is ordered and reordered as they determine does not mean that they are
running society, but only that the people are finally being liberated
from illegitimate dominion. They might say that it's not a perfect
world, and that the maximum achievable equality is attained when
everybody is equal except a small carefully chosen and trained corps of
guardians whose function it is to perfect and maintain the system of
equality (and as a consequence their own position within the system).
The foregoing might have much, little, or nothing to do with actual
events. However that may be, I don't understand your use of scare
quotes. Is it your view that elites are a myth, or that some large and
complex societies don't have them, or that societies don't have
institutionalized values, or that equality is not such a value in
modern societies, or that particular elites (assuming such things
exist) don't favor particular institutionalized values for reasons that
include self-interest?
Sorry for the harangue. I even bore myself at times. I truly don't
understand, though, as an intellectual matter, the reluctance to
recognize that equality is among other things a value pushed by
particular elites for reasons that include their own self-interest, and
that its full implementation would require the transfer of great power
to a small elite with little practical accountability to anyone.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
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Article: 5405 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 4 Oct 1994 09:43:54 +0100
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In <36njpr$94m@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca> vanbelle@cs.ualberta.ca (Terry Van Belle) writes:
>>>Solipsism is unfalsifiable.
>The overriding question in this thread is a pragmatic one: What should
>you do? Do you stick to your guns and do your best to ignore something
>you know is false, or do you give in and be happy?
To recur to the ultimate issue in this thread and in this newsgroup, is
it your view that one should settle issues relating to religion by
adopting the opinion that makes you happiest rather than the one that
abstractly speaking seems most likely to be true?
>After all, you take an aspirin for a headache, even
>though you know that no-one REALLY is hitting your skull with a
>sledgehammer.
It's consistent with solipsism to believe that the subjective
experience of taking an aspirin will be followed by a subjective
lessening of the pain you feel after the subjective experience of being
bashed.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
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Article: 5422 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 5 Oct 1994 11:08:51 +0100
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In pepke@scri.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke) writes:
>I behave as if solipsism were not true,
>because I don't see any advantage in behaving as if solipsism were true.
Not generally, perhaps, but why not pick and choose? Sometimes
situations arise in which one can make things much better for oneself
by ignoring the interests of other people. Why not resolve all such
situations in one's own favor if it really is uncertain or meaningless
to claim that other people have subjective experiences like one's own?
>However, that's a different thing from assigning a truth value to
>solipsism.
I have a very shaky grasp of the distinction between believing that one
should always act as if something were false, even at the cost of
considerable pain to oneself, and believing the thing to be false.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
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Article: 5425 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 5 Oct 1994 11:09:08 +0100
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In <36q2lh$rqo@emory.mathcs.emory.edu> allison@mathcs.emory.edu (Allison Mitchell) writes:
>Of course, part of what you seem to be assuming is that things actually
>make sense. I'm not sure how we can say that with any certainty
If it's false then presumably all our ideas and beliefs are equally
worthless, so I'm not sure how we would go about considering "maybe
nothing makes sense" as a possibility. To have any beliefs at all we
have to assume that things make sense.
>most definitions of God I've seen are circular as well...
Sure, just like definitions of "time" or "good" or "sensation". How
fundamental can anything be that can be defined without circularity?
>I don't think my view of things without God explains everything -- I only
>claim that it's worked for me so far. YMMV :)
Most people, even most people who deal with numbers a lot, get through
life without having a view on the existence of the largest prime
number. That doesn't mean that the mathematical views that work for
them leave that issue open.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Oct 5 06:53:17 EDT 1994
Article: 34141 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: "Institutionalized Moral Relativism" in Sweden
Date: 4 Oct 1994 16:10:31 -0400
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In pajerek%telstar.kodak.com@kodak.com (Don Pajerek) writes:
>1. What's wrong with any group pursuing it's own self-interest? If
>some 'elite' can cynically use an issue like 'equality' to enhance
>it's own power, let them try. You can accuse them of cynicism, but
>what else is new?
Nothing's wrong with the pursuit of self-interest, although it
shouldn't be one's final goal (unless you define it in some way that
includes the interests of others, the public good, the Good, Beautiful
and True, etc., etc., etc.) As to accusations of cynicism, I've made
none. I've suggested likely mixed motives and a lack of
self-knowledge, as evidenced by extreme touchiness regarding certain
analytically important issues (for example those regarding the role of
elites in liberalism), but that's something different. I assume that
most people believe the things they favor politically would promote the
public interest. Of course, that's partly because people tend to think
that the things that benefit them and the people they know are just
plain beneficial.
>2. How have conservatives, such as Mr. Kalb, managed to turn the
>word 'elite' into a term of demonization, even though inequality, of
>both opportunity and result, is a conservative doctrine? It seems to
>me that if one approves of inequality one must accept the emergence
>of 'elites'.
When have I used "elite" as a term of demonization? People get upset
when they see the term, especially in connection with their own
favorite political projects and especially if they think equality is
very important, but that doesn't mean I'm using it as an insult. I've
explicitly said repeatedly that every society of any size and
complexity has elites and that the issue is the particular nature of
the elite and the overall consequences of the political system of which
it is part.
More generally, I think many American conservatives do sometimes use
"elite" as a term of opprobrium because they're Americans and it's a
national habit, because they don't like our most influential national
elites, and because it's hard to imagine many of the things they object
to most (for example, liberal moral views and their bureaucratic
implementation) as having much importance in a society in which small
and irresponsible elites had radically less influence than in our own.
I should add that I saw no evidence that the writer of the passage Mr.
Ostrum quoted was using the word "elites" other than descriptively, and
so I was surprised by your reference to "hated buzzwords" (I think
those were your words).
Elites exist and they're here to stay. Why get upset when people refer
to them?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
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Article: 5433 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 5 Oct 1994 17:51:02 +0100
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vanbelle@cs.ualberta.ca (Terry Van Belle) writes:
>Sorry, my reply was in response to your assertion that there can be a
>pragmatic difference between a solipsistic world and a non-solipsistic
>one; totally different thread.
My question was "what should I do" and in that sense was pragmatic.
That's not the same question as "what will make me happiest". For one
thing, if solipsism is false there is the happiness of other people to
take into account. I agree that usually I will be happiest assuming
that other people exist and have experiences much like my own. On the
other hand, if I take that assumption seriously it might sometime make
me feel obligated to give up my own happiness. Would that be going too
far? Should I strive for the happy medium between believing and
rejecting such beliefs that makes things most pleasant for me?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
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Article: 5434 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 5 Oct 1994 17:51:07 +0100
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thryomanes@aol.com (Thryomanes) writes:
>> We can't avoid recognizing as valid implications and
>> goods we did not invent,
>
>What are some examples of implications and goods we did not invent?
>I'm not sure exactly what is meant by "goods" in this case, but
>implications are obviously constructs of the mind, and so are the
>standards of goodness that we set.
Suppose R.P. Feynman tells us he thinks some physical theory correctly
describes reality because it's internally consistent and consistent with
other accepted physical theories, it accounts well for past
observations, and it has made reliable predictions. In order to tell us
that he has to rely on a lot of implications ("consistency" means that
implications are consistent; "prediction" and "accounting for
observations" mean that the implications of the theory correspond to
what's observed) and he has to make a lot of subjective evaluations (the
memories on which he bases his judgment are clear and consistent enough
so that he can be confident he's not remembering daydreams or
hallucinations, the observations the theory doesn't explain are so few
and random that they can be laughed off as experimental error, the
scientific community carries on its work well enough so he can be
confident the data weren't fabricated, etc., etc., etc.). Is it your
point that the implications and evaluations Feynman is relying on are
just something he made up? If so, why pay more attention to what he
says than to what anyone says or to what you make up yourself?
>Lots of people form beliefs without reasoning and evaluation. Of
>course, I would argue that those beliefs don't have much chance of
>being true.
What's the argument, if reasoning and evaluation are just something we
construct?
>Universal skepticism isn't very useful, but why does the world not
>permit it?
Do you know of anyone who's succeeded in attaining it?
>what is wrong with the ordinary confidence that we can at least find
>the correct letters of the keyboard to type USENET messages?
Nothing. Nor is anything wrong with trying to understand what the world
must be like for that ordinary confidence, and our belief that we can
come to know things better but never perfectly, to be justified.
> We can study it, plainly with some success, but the
>> results of our studies are always partial and of uncertain reliability.
>> We can modify it in accordance with our choice, but only to a limited
>> extent and never with complete confidence as to the results.
>
>You've just described the scientific method, more or less. If
>there is a better way, I don't know of one.
The scientific method is a splendid thing where it is applicable. It's
not applicable to everything. For example it's not applicable to
mathematics or logic, or to the evaluative sciences (ethics, aesthetics,
the scientific method itself). For that matter, it's not really
applicable to particular experiences, observations and events because
it's concerned with things that are repeatable.
> We cannot deal coherently with such a situation without something that
> closes the gap between value and fact, reason and reality, subjectivity
> and objectivity.
>
>How do you know that such a thing exists in the first place?
If it doesn't, knowledge is impossible. "Knowledge is impossible" is a
claim that contradicts itself. Therefore it exists.
>To accept the best theory is not necessarily to accept it as "THE TRUE
>theory".
It is to believe that it's most likely to be true or to come closest to
the truth. Such a belief makes no sense unless "good" is evidence for
"true".
>If you study science you'll realize that no single theory is immune to
>criticism. If you accept something as true, why criticize it?
Sure--sometimes criticism shows that some other theory is even better
than the one we've held up to now. Thereupon we give up the good theory
for the better theory, which we take to be more likely to be true.
>The criteria for determining what the best theory is have little to do
>with goodness and everything to do with testability.
If they are criteria for "the best" how can they have little to do with
"goodness"?
>But there are different meanings of "good" being confused here. What
>makes a "good" theory are not subjective impressions of aesthetic
>value, but whether or not it can be shown to be false if it happens to
>be wrong.
I thought pointless complexity was an objection to a scientific theory.
"Pointless complexity" seems an aesthetic criterion to me. Also, a good
theory is not the same as a falsifiable theory. "From now on U-235 will
become non-radioactive every year on President Clinton's birthday" is
falsifiable and consistent with past observations, but it's a bad
theory. A good scientific theory is one that is falsifiable and
accounts *well* for past observations. The "accounts well" can not be
formalized. It's necessarily a heavily subjective and aesthetic
judgment.
>The God hypothesis is not one that can be shown to be false. Since God
>can do anything, hypothetically speaking, nothing imaginable could be
>evidence of God's nonexistence. This makes theism a "bad" theory in
>the sense that it makes no testable predictions.
What would be evidence of the falsity of any of the following
hypotheses:
1. There is no smallest prime number.
2. It is bad to torture children to death before their mothers' eyes.
3. Solipsism is false.
4. We can often trust our memories.
5. At some time someone posits and tests a theory.
>> Also, objective reality, which
>> can be known only by making evaluations, can be known as it is only if
>> what it is accords with the best evaluations. Otherwise, the best
>> theories would falsify it.
>
>Theories can be falsified by objective reality, but how can a theory
>falsify objective reality?
I meant "falsify" in the sense of "misrepresent".
>Saying that "we can err" doesn't mean that we err at all times and in
>all manners. What we need is merely a mechanism that tells us when we
>are making errors, and eliminate these errors as we find them.
We also need the belief that some set of beliefs that wouldn't err is
possible, that better theories are closer to that set of beliefs than
worse theories, and that the best theories would be identical to that
set of beliefs. In other words, we need to believe that "good" implies
"true". Otherwise, why think the mechanism works?
Having gone that far, one should next consider what kind of world this
is if "good" implies "true". For one thing, it seems that "good" is
necessarily connected to intentions, and intentions can't exist without
an intender. Somehow I doubt you've gotten this far, though.
>Holoalphabetic sentence of the week:
>Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.
Not bad!
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Oct 7 06:15:15 EDT 1994
Article: 34202 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: "Institutionalized Moral Relativism" in Sweden
Date: 7 Oct 1994 06:13:21 -0400
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In pajerek%telstar.kodak.com@kodak.com (Don Pajerek) writes:
>People don't necessarily object to the term 'elite', but they usually
>do object to being demonized, as Reagan did with the term 'liberal',
>and which Dan Quayle has done with the term 'elite' (specifically the
>'liberal Hollywood media elite').
Politics involves conflict about matters of good and bad. If someone
thinks the things his opponents favor are bad, unfavorable connotations
are likely to seep into the language he uses to describe them. An
example would be the term "religious right" as used in our mainstream
press. Another would be the expression "ultra", which is far more
commonly used in connection with people on the right than those on the
left. Is all that demonization?
In some circles "liberal" has positive connotations. Someone might
claim that way of using it is as bad as using it negatively, because it
biases the discussion and demonizes the antiliberal. People prefer to
be referred to in terms that reflect admiring sympathy than terms that
reflect rejection of things for which they value themselves, but it's
hard to deliver that treatment to everyone. Is the objection to using
"liberal elite" in a negative sense an objection to denying that
treatment to people who should get it, because they're good people who
favor good things?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Oct 7 13:35:55 EDT 1994
Article: 8446 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern,alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: the true po-mo
Date: 7 Oct 1994 09:47:39 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix alt.postmodern:12117 alt.society.conservatism:8446
cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
>Daniel Chase Edmonds wrote:
>
>| The beauty of postmodernity is the delightful irony with which it makes
>| statements that it undermines even as it makes them-- I don't insert
>| :) and *this is irony*, because I assume, if you've been following my
>| posts throughout this thread, you are aware that I am aware of that
>Here is one place where a conservative might have something reasonable
>to say...
No more than anywhere else. I do sometimes wonder, though, about the
true function of discourse that attempts to deprivilege and displace
other discourse while placing itself beyond criticism through
preemptive irony. What is it that's going on that no one's supposed to
talk about?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Oct 8 17:09:37 EDT 1994
Article: 2403 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Human Rights
Date: 8 Oct 1994 09:06:55 -0400
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cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>I suspect one hallmark of being a CR is to reject the rhetoric of Human
>Rights [ ... ] Declarations of Human Rights tend to be a wish to dress
>up the Western twentieth century liberal world view as the only one
>available.
One's attitude toward rights is inseparable from one's attitude toward
moral and political systems generally. If you think such systems are
particularistic and grow up historically you'll think the same about
rights, while if you think there is one correct system you'll believe
in universal human rights that have a lot of content.
As a practical matter the effort to define and enforce a system of
universal human rights is the same as an effort to create a unitary
world political society. To say that such rights are unalterable and
must be given effect regardless of local circumstances and attitudes is
the equivalent of saying that such a world society should be ruled by a
cohesive elite answerable to nobody.
>Where are this might tie in with the religious thread is that there is
>an argument (to which I would subscribe) that while humans have no
>rights in themselves God has given them certain privileges which mean
>that they must be treated in certain ways.
"Thou shalt not kill" could be rephrased "everyone has a right not to be
killed". One issue is the distinction between duties of perfect and of
imperfect obligation. The former ("don't murder") apply categorically
and give rise to things that might be thought of as universal human
rights, like the right not to be murdered. The latter ("give to
charity") are general injunctions that don't normally require you to do
any particular thing at any particular time. Presumably they wouldn't
give rise to universal human rights, such as welfare rights, because for
something to exist at all as a right it must be definite and
enforceable.
It's worth noting that while "rights" purport to expand freedom their
practical effect is to expand and centralize government and free
government from social control. The reason is that the richer the
system of rights the more issues are subject to definite and
enforceable rules that are not a matter of choice but rather are
determined by some central agency in accordance with its own view of
what's appropriate.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 9 Oct 1994 15:24:50 +0100
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treeshrew@aol.com (TreeShrew) writes:
>>> The succeeding moves in the argument, of course, are
>that there must be correct evaluative principles because otherwise
>knowledge would be impossible, so there must be a correct evaluator." <<
>
>I don't see how the succeeding moves in the argument follow. There is
>no logical connection. Value is subjective, not objective.
Like the Taoists, you tell me that value is subjective and what is
subjective has no objective validity. If that's true then I don't see
how one moves from the statement "this is a concise and elegant theory
that accounts well for the observations" to the statement "I am
justified in accepting this theory as the one most likely to describe
the way the world is". In other posts I've indicated why I think the
expressions "concise and elegant" and "well" in the first quoted
proposition necessarily involve subjective evaluative and aesthetic
considerations.
The Taoists tell us that language and knowledge are impossible. From
their point of view that's right, and I think people who accept their
position on value should agree with them. If they're right, though,
then their point of view is as invalid as every other.
>Thus, first you use the term "a good theory" to mean a "true theory"
>(or containing a strong element of truth: Newton's Law of Gravitation,
>though inferior to Einstein's, was still a true theory, just not the
>whole truth) and then try to switch the meaning of "good theory" to a
>"theory we value as good."
No, I point out that our sole possible reason for regarding a theory as
true or containing a strong element of truth is that we evaluate it as a
good theory. I then ask what the world must be like for that procedure
to be justified.
>That "reality" happens to possess invariant rules of behavior and
>tangible things is also incidental (and it is an anthropic fallacy to
>make much of it).
What is the fallacy? The idea seems to be that we should view our
ability to speak of the world and know something about it as
attributable to incidental features of the world. Why?
>>> As I
>understand [Aquinas], he says that God is perfectly simple and knows himself
>perfectly. Since he knows himself perfectly, he also knows his effects
>(and therefore the whole created universe) perfectly, but because of the
>way his knowledge comes about it is non-discursive and therefore does not
>suffer from the flaws the Taoists point out." <<
>Passions are also division.
The same analysis applies to all states involving intention. God's
knowledge is the same as his will is the same as his love is the same as
what he is. In order to talk about them we have to divide them up, but
that doesn't mean that in themselves they are divided.
>Thus "god is good" requires that god not be perfect (because a perfect
>god would be perfect harmony of good and evil).
Suppose evil is disharmony? Then a perfect god in your view would be a
perfect harmony of harmony and disharmony.
The best I can do with the problem of evil is to identify evil with the
absence of good. Then to complain that there is evil is simply to
complain that something exists that is not God.
>A perfect God would not think--he would just do.
For God to know is the same as to create. Is that good enought?
Your point, though, seems to be that nondiscursive thought is
impossible. Why believe that? It seems to me on the contrary that
discursive thought depends on thought that is nondiscursive. How can
moving from thing to thing be sentient if each of the things is
nonsentient?
>It is virtually inconceivable that anything so orderly as a self-
>conscious thinking entity could ever form or last any length of time in
>any world that was not itself invariantly orderly, thus any world a
>thinking being finds itself in *must* be orderly (elsewise it wouldn't
>be there to notice an unreasonable world, should one exist or ever have
>existed).
You seem to think you can form theories about possible worlds, and for
all I know parallel universes or regions of the universe in which
space, time and order somehow arise for a while, and justifiably infer
from what you judge to be the goodness of your theories that they have
something to do with the way the world is. I don't understand that
procedure on your principle that "good" has no objective validity. You
seem to think that you can reason not only about the world we find
ourselves in, but also about other possible worlds. How can that view
be justified if reason is a parochial feature of the place we happen to
be?
>it makes no sense to say that truth, which exists obstinately even
>against our negative valuations of it, somehow needs our evaluations to
>exist.
Just so. It doesn't depend on our evaluations, but we believe it is
most likely to correspond to our best theories. The line of thought I
am putting forward is an attempt to deal with that situation.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Oct 9 10:50:28 EDT 1994
Article: 8475 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern,alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: the true po-mo
Date: 9 Oct 1994 08:30:30 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix alt.postmodern:12189 alt.society.conservatism:8475
tfharris@vespucci.iquest.com (Thomas Harris) writes:
>Actually, I don't think postmodernism undermines itself. To say, for
>example, that there are no timeless standards apart from those of the
>interpretive community isn't self-refuting. The statement is simply a
>"timeless standard" *of* the community.
The notion seems to be that the members of a community agree that the
validity of standards for them consists solely in their acceptance by
the community. The standards so accepted are applied by members of the
community to other communities as well as their own, or so it appears
(otherwise postmoderns wouldn't treat "there are no timeless standards
apart from those of the interpretive community" as relevant to people
who aren't postmoderns).
If the foregoing is accurate, then how does postmodernism differ from
treating the will of one's own community, whatever it may be, as the
supreme universal law?
I suppose another question is how one determines what standards are
accepted by an interpretive community. It seems there would be no way
of doing that other than the method actually applied by the community.
If that's right, why wouldn't someone who had the physical power and
ruthlessness to compel conformity be able to create standards at will?
>Postmodernists simply say men must make their own standards in place of
>"natural" standards. Conservatives substitute God's standards. (Of
>course, I'd say that these are merely the standards of one claiming to
>speak for some god. Thus, the postmodernists are more honest.)
What's dishonest in the postmodern view about claiming to speak for some
god if the standards of your interpretive community classify your
activity that way?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!ddsw1!news.kei.com!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!mantis!mantis!not-for-mail Mon Oct 10 08:36:48 EDT 1994
Article: 5482 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 10 Oct 1994 10:51:34 +0100
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lwloen@rchland.ibm.com (Larry Loen) writes:
>I've never heard of "the evaluative sciences"; and I don't think the
>term applies (science are those things some form of the scientific
>method applies to).
"Science" often refers to any systematized body of knowledge. Check
your dictionary.
Your point may be that evaluative propositions can not constitute
knowledge. If so, there's a major problem with the propositions you
would accept as scientific knowledge, since we can rationally accept
those propositions as true only by affirming the evaluative propositions
they rest on.
>You can't derive (on a philosophical plane as we seem to be discussing)
>any knowledge from a raw contradictory premise. The opposite of
>"knowledge is impossible" is "knowledge is possible", which is a
>neutral claim, proving nothing.
"Knowledge is possible but I don't know whether knowledge is possible or
not" makes no sense. To assert knowledge is possible is to claim to
know that knowledge is possible, and therefore to assert that knowledge
exists.
>Fact is, I can't find two mystics that meaningfully agree on damn near
>anything. I can find hundreds of scientists that agree that E =
>m(c**2).
As I said, modern natural science is a splendid thing for telling us
about the general rules governing the behavior of phenomena. It's not
applicable to everything. In particular, it doesn't tell us how to
evaluate things (its own claims, for example) and it can't tell us much
about mathematics, logic, or particular experiences or events. It also
doesn't seem to have much to say about the nature of our subjective
experience. I wouldn't claim that if a mystic tells you E=/=m(c**2) you
should accept what he says. On the other hand, where scientific method
doesn't apply you do your best with what there is.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Oct 10 08:37:00 EDT 1994
Article: 8484 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern,alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: the true po-mo
Date: 10 Oct 1994 04:59:23 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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rathbone@crl.com (Lois Shawver) writes:
>You are a postmodern, imho, whenever you read an editorial in a
>newspaper and do not bother to notice who wrote it. You respond to
>what it says, not who said it.
I thought it was unpostmodern to suppose that an editorial says
something apart from things like the network of social relations of
which it is part.
>To read a text without concern for the author as personality is,
>paradoxically, to let the words echo in the mind as another voice
>inside one's own consciousness, not unlike, in my opinion, the echo of
>the Other in the Unconscious described by Lacan. In that sense, one is
>sharing in the community, not in the sense of a mutually endorsed,
>self-serving creed.
I know nothing about Lacan. It seems to me I could read a poem this
way. In the case of an editorial I would feel violated--the language
would be too manipulative. Conceivably a saint might be able to read an
editorial in such a way.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
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Article: 5505 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 11 Oct 1994 20:08:03 +0100
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treeshrew@aol.com (TreeShrew) writes:
>avoidance of self-hate, and the cultivation of self respect, are the
>only internal motivations for choosing the moral life that have any
>final validity.
In order for those motivations to apply you must first hate some things
and respect others. So the content of the moral life must be
determined by things other than a desire to have a good opinion of
oneself.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
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Article: 5506 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 11 Oct 1994 20:08:07 +0100
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thryomanes@aol.com (Thryomanes) writes:
>You have yet to show an example of an implication we did not invent.
[A^(A=>B)]=>B
>Physical theories are, of course, invented by physicists; they're not
>just found written on some rock somewhere.
To claim a geological theory is true is to claim that it describes
correctly the way rocks are; that is, that the theory is in effect
written in the rocks.
>Determining whether a mental construct such as an implication actually
>corresponds to reality requires observation.
In order make observations at all you have to accept implications as
trustworthy. For example, observations take time to carry out.
Therefore, someone who didn't accept that his memory of events gave him
good reason to think that the events happened wouldn't be able to make
any observations. (By "implication" I mean any connection among things that
we can rely on.)
>What's the problem with reasoning and evaluation being "just" something
>we construct? Is there something inherently wrong with the process of
>construction? If so, why ask for my argument, since it is clearly
>something that I have constructed?
If you present an argument you are presenting it not merely as something
you have constructed, but as something you have constructed correctly.
The "correctly" is what implies that I should accept the argument and
therefore can't simply be something that you have constructed.
>Seriously, the fact that no one has (yet) attained something doesn't
>mean that it's impossible. A claim that something is impossible needs
>a hypothetical mechanism to account for that impossibility.
Is contradiction good enough? Neither "nothing is known and it is known
that nothing is known" nor "nothing is known and it isn't known that
nothing is known" make sense. Therefore, universal skepticism is
impossible.
>>Nor is anything wrong with trying to understand what the world
>>must be like for that ordinary confidence, and our belief that we can
>>come to know things better but never perfectly, to be justified.
>>
>Substitute "may" for "must" unless you can confidently show that you
>have eliminated all possible alternate explanations.
No theories eliminate all possible alternative explanations.
>>The scientific method is [ ... ] concerned with things that are repeatable.
>
>Testable. Not necessarily repeatable.
What I had in mind was the distinction between finding universal laws
governing all phenomena of a certain type, and drawing conclusions
about particular events like whether O.J. did it. The natural sciences
are helpful in the latter sort of situation, but "did he do it" is not
a scientific problem. The point, of course, was that neither natural
science nor natural science plus mathematics and logic exhaust
knowledge, still less justified belief.
>I would argue that the scientific method IS applicable to mathematics,
>especially where unsolved problems are concerned.
In a sense, but so are hunches and mysticism. If you can't get the best
grounds (a fully formalized mathematical proof) for believing a
proposition and you need to take some sort of position on its truth you
go with what you can get.
>>"From now on U-235 will
>>become non-radioactive every year on President Clinton's birthday" is
>>falsifiable and consistent with past observations, but it's a bad
>>theory.
>
>Being falsifiable is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a
>theory. It also must make successful predictions, which your example
>would presumably fail to do. This is not an aesthetic judgment.
"Quantum mechanics is true, subject to the overriding principle that
every year after 1995 U-235 will be non-radioactive on Bill Clinton's
birthday" has so far made wonderfully accurate predictions. What's the
non-aesthetic objection to it?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Oct 11 17:15:59 EDT 1994
Article: 8505 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern,alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: the true po-mo
Date: 11 Oct 1994 08:47:23 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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rathbone@crl.com (Lois Shawver) writes:
> You are still talking about 'postmodernism' as if it were a creed,
>analogous to a religious dogma. Try thinking of it as a mood.
Postmodernism seems to have a very personal meaning for you. Do you
think it is like that for others? (I don't usually read alt.postmodern
and I've been responding to things that were crossposted.)
Some people might want to present discussion and arguments about the
nature and implications of the postmodern mood, recommendations that
people adopt or avoid it, and so on. Should there be an
alt.postmodern.d newsgroup for such things?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Oct 11 17:16:03 EDT 1994
Article: 8515 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern,alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: the true po-mo
Date: 11 Oct 1994 13:11:38 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 21
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Xref: panix alt.postmodern:12264 alt.society.conservatism:8515
In <37ea3h$5g@panix.com> gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>I'd argue that _postmodern_ referred to a period of time in
>the history of culture -- mostly art and ideas -- and that
>the term "postmodernism" was meaningless.
Are you using the past tense, or is that some sort of subjunctive of
indirect discourse?
>Politically and philsophically, I think you can find
>predecessors for postmodern skepticism, anarchism, and
>language analysis going back to Diogenes and before.
So it seems, and not only in the West. One concern relating to things
postmodern is that after the skeptics, anarchists and language analysts
of the Hundred Schools came the First Emperor, Shih Huang Ti, who
burned the books and knew how to give answers to all questions that
from a practical standpoint were extraordinarily persuasive.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Oct 12 08:40:56 EDT 1994
Article: 8522 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern,alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: the true po-mo
Date: 11 Oct 1994 21:36:25 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>And built the Wall, did he not? But in the end, it all
>failed.
Not altogether. Imperial China retained a lot of Legalist features
(emphasis on punishments, unconditional loyalty to the sovereign). I
can't help but think that things might have gone better if someone else
had won. It's hard to know, of course.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!zip.eecs.umich.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!mantis!mantis!not-for-mail Wed Oct 12 19:55:57 EDT 1994
Article: 5516 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Deistic reflections
Date: 12 Oct 1994 17:47:43 +0100
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treeshrew@aol.com (TreeShrew) writes:
>Why say anything more than "this theory accounts for the observations?"
>No value judgment need be involved--it is a statement of fact, a
>conclusion arrived at by comparing a theory's predictions to actual
>observations, and if they correspond, you have truth.
The theory "quantum mechanics is true, subject to the supervening
principle that after 1995 U-235 will be non-radioactive on Bill
Clinton's birthday" accounts for observations, and its predictions have
been repeatedly confirmed. Nonetheless, no one accepts it.
Also, actual observations can't be made or used without subjective
judgments of how good they are. Suppose you do an experiment. When you
ran the experiment did you look at the meter closely enough? Were you
careful enough when you wrote down the reading? Did you misread your
experimental notes? How many times do you have to check to make sure?
Which observations were weird enough to toss out as anomalous? When you
compared observations to predictions of the theory, were your thoughts
sufficiently in order to let you draw the correct conclusions from the
theory and compare them appropriately with the observations?
>The "elegance" we refer to is the result of a developed skill: we have
>become so accustomed to the way nature works, we can more quickly
>identify things that are "like" nature and things that aren't.
Do mathematical physicists develop a sense of elegance by contemplating
successful theories in mathematical physics that is fundamentally
different from the sense of elegance of a number theorist, who
contemplates things that don't have any particular connection to nature?
>"Conciseness" is the same thing. It is a conclusion derived from
>repeatedly observing a correspondence between conciseness and a theory
>that works (i.e. makes accurate predictions).
If you give me a concise theory that works I can turn it into a
complicated theory that makes the same predictions.
>>> "I point out that our sole possible reason for regarding a theory as
>true or containing a strong element of truth is that we evaluate it as
>a good theory. I then ask what the world must be like for that
>procedure to be justified." <<
>
>The world must simply be invariantly orderly. No other conditions are
>necessary.
The world could be invariably orderly in a way we couldn't understand
except by mythology and rule of thumb. Astrophysics had no survival
value when _homo sapiens_ evolved and mythology and rule of thumb were
what people relied on. Or the world could be mostly orderly but not
invariantly so.
Also, we have no reason to think that the world is invariantly orderly
unless we are justified in treating the status of the "invariably
orderly" theory as the best theory as evidence that it is true.
>The fallacy is assuming that knowability is too much of a coincidence
>to escape needing a specal explanation. But if it were not knowable, we
>would not be discussing it, so obviously knowability is a prerequired
>attribute of any universe in which this kind of conversation will
>occur.
What's wrong with a discussion that tries to explain the possibility of
the discussion taking place? Usenet discussions couldn't take place
unless computers existed, but a usenet discussion of why there are
computers is nonetheless a possibility.
>This is the same fallacy committed when theists argue that the tilt,
>distance, chemical composition, etc. of the Earth are so perfect for
>life that it is all "too coincidental" to be attributed to mere chance.
>But if life can only evolve on such planets, obviously we will find
>ourselves on one--there is nothing coincidental about it at all.
If there are conditions that are necessary for X to happen then it's not
surprising that the location of X turns out to be a place where those
conditions obtain. I don't see why the possibility and existence of
those conditions and the manner in which they permit X thereby become
things that don't call for an explanation.
>You know about colors only because the universe is colorful--you
>observe red things first, and then develop the idea of color, not the
>other way around.
So what's wrong with asking what color and our experience of color is,
and what the connection is between the two? Also, I'm not sure of this
line of thought--is it really true that we know of time only because the
universe is temporal, and we develop the idea of time because we observe
things taking place in time although we might have observed something
different?
>You have to show that the existence of a knowable universe is
>*impossible* and for that reason requires an additional explanation.
I don't understand the assumption that only impossible things require
explanations.
>"Reason" is nothing more than a skill, a method, that we have learned
>works in our world. So "reason" is not a "parochial feature" of
>existence--invariant order is. Reason is just the learned process of
>identifying and making predictions by playing on that order.
That makes reason doubly parochial--order is a chance characteristic of
the place we happen to be, and reason is a collection of habits we
happen to have developed as inhabitants of that place. You nonetheless
seem to think that by reason you can make statements about our universe
compared with other possible universes.
>Read how you are stating this: "we believe it [truth] is most likely to
>correspond to our best theories." That is backwards. Is should be, "we
>believe it [our best theory] is most likely to correspond to the
>truth."
The two statements are equivalent. Both say that "best" is evidence of
"true", that there is some connection between the two things.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
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Article: 5517 of alt.atheism.moderated
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Taoism and God (Was "Deistic reflections")
Date: 12 Oct 1994 17:47:50 +0100
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treeshrew@aol.com (TreeShrew) writes:
>Once you eliminate all division, you no longer have a God. It has to do
>with definition: if you define "God" as "the whole universe" then you
>can use "the universe" in place of god without changing the meaning of
>any statement containing "God".
It seems to me that God could be without division and nonetheless be
different from the created universe. The original question, I thought,
was whether a sentient perfect being was impossible because thought
implies division. Have we agreed that nondiscursive thought (thought
without divisions) is possible?
>Thus, the usual notion of God loving us and protecting us has to be
>false: no perfect being concerns itself with only a single part of
>existence that way.
Not only a single part. Presumably God does not in himself have lots of
different purposes for different parts of the world, he just wills
himself and when he wills himself he wills the world since he is the
creator. Nonetheless, from within the world it appears that God has
particular purposes because among the features of the world God made are
human experience and purpose and objective hierarchies of value. God
made objective goods and human intelligence and will; one way of
describing that situation is to say that God wants men to recognize and
pursue the goods that he gave them. Since he gave them the goods and
disposed them to pursue them he could be said from a human standpoint
to love and protect them.
>When I get up and spin around on my right big toe, there is neither
>good nor evil in that act. When I am thinking about spinning around,
>there is no good or evil thought in my mind.
Why not? The capacity to form plans and carry them out is a good thing,
the physical skill to do acrobatics is a good thing, and the realization
in action of that capacity and skill is a good thing. It's possible, of
course, that you might better be doing something else, in which case
your action would be lacking something and therefore might reasonably be
judged bad. You might also trip and break your ankle, in which case
your deficiency in skill (not to mention common sense) and in the
subsequent useability of your ankle would be bad things.
>>> [re: a perfect God would not think--he would just do.] "For God to know
>is the same as to create. Is that good enought?" <<
>
>Again, why use the word "know" when it is just a tautology of "create"?
You describe things the best you can using the words available to you.
I'm not a theological behaviorist for the same reason I'm not a
psychological behaviorist--that way of looking at things leaves out
something essential. Subjectivity is real. The word "know" attributes
subjectivity to God.
>And what about destruction? "For God to know is the same as to create
>and to destroy, therefore God is creation and destruction"?
God creates things that don't last forever. I don't think "God destroys
things" is an illuminating way to describe that situation. If you take
existence for granted it is tempting to say that God destroys things.
If you think of existence as something that needs to be explained and
understood the temptation disappears, or at least grows weaker.
>Again we are looking at a very different concept of "god" that starts
>to lose its special meaning.
I'm mostly parroting Aquinas, to the extent I understand him. His
conception of God is not outside the Christian mainstream. It's true
that theologians think about God differently from naive believers. On
the other hand, molecular biologists think about the human body
differently from you and me. That doesn't mean we're thinking about
different things or that we don't both have reliable knowledge.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Oct 14 07:26:11 EDT 1994
Article: 6928 of comp.sys.tandy
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.tandy
Subject: DWP 230 Codes
Date: 13 Oct 1994 10:30:22 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 12
Message-ID: <37jg9u$io8@panix.com>
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I have a Tandy DWP230 printer, connected to a Tandy 2000 computer if
that matters. Unfortunately, I don't have the manual. I can't get
underlining to work correctly with the word processing software I'm
using (vde, not a Tandy product). Does anyone know what the printer
codes are that I should have my software send to the printer to turn
underlining on and off?
Thanks.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Oct 15 09:04:31 EDT 1994
Article: 2420 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Noted in the press
Date: 15 Oct 1994 08:59:13 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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There was some discussion a couple of months back about Sam Francis'
physical appearance. According to Murray Rothbard, in the current issue
of the _Rothbard-Rockwell Report_, David Frum (no friend!) has described
him as a "huge man with a bright red face, who puffs cigarettes below
anachronistic black hornrims".
Also, the _New York Times Book Review_ for tomorrow has a front page
review of Herrnstein & Murray's _The Bell Curve_, Rushton's _Race,
Evolution and Behavior_, and Itzkoff's _The Decline of Intelligence in
America_. They assigned the job to the _Times_ science reporter and he
played it straight, saying in the first paragraph that "the government
or society that persists in sweeping [the books'] subject matter under
the rug will do so at its peril" and in the second referring to "the
scholars who wrote these books". I read through the review and there
was no abuse, no snide insinuations about the authors' moral characters,
no nothing--just a straightforward presentation of what the books say
and assurances that they are serious scholarship. Attitudes toward
these matters do seem to be changing.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Oct 15 09:04:35 EDT 1994
Article: 8551 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern,alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: the true po-mo
Date: 14 Oct 1994 08:29:41 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <37d30f$7bn@crl3.crl.com> <37e1gr$c6j@panix.com> <37l89n$bjt@crl.crl.com>
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Xref: panix alt.postmodern:12316 alt.society.conservatism:8551
rathbone@crl.com (Lois Shawver) writes:
>How does one recommend adopting a mood? Or adopting it, as far as that
>goes, on recommendation?
You seemed at one point to speak as if the postmodern mood were
connected in some way with your intentions.
We can't choose to have a mood, but we can choose things that may evoke
or make us receptive to a mood. People say "chill out" or "cheer up",
and sometimes we can actually take their advice.
>In a postmodern mood, one notices that certain text is like the voice
>of one's Other. Only that text is noticed.
For me, to understand a text is to find the aspects of myself for which
the text is the voice. The postmodern mood sounds more contemplative.
I suppose I respond to poetry and fiction differently. A poem may seem
more like an absolute object that is somehow subjective than the voice
of any person. A fictional character can have his own integrity as a
person quite independent of me. Would the independence of a fictional
character disqualify him from being my Other?
>It is a way of relating to text that I find fascinating. It is,
>however, not the most fascinating way to relate to text.
Can I ask what is?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Oct 15 09:04:36 EDT 1994
Article: 8552 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,talk.politics.theory
Subject: More on the coming apocalypse
Date: 14 Oct 1994 08:37:40 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix alt.society.conservatism:8552 talk.politics.theory:34373
I thought I'd write up what seems to be the basic right-wing apocalyptic
theory of history to see if anyone has comments:
Liberalism began as an attempt to organize society without a notion of
the common good on which men might disagree fundamentally.
Disagreements about the common good often become bitter and turn bloody.
Accordingly, there arose a conception of political society as a common
framework within each man could pursue his own good as he saw it. The
"common good" then became simply maintenance of the framework.
The framework consisted first and foremost of laws regarding property
and contract; such laws permitted almost all actions in a classical
liberal society to be treated as private actions that could
legitimately be carried on solely for the private purposes of the
actor. In time, many began to object to the law of property and
contract on the grounds that it served the private good of some more
than others. Accordingly, the conception of political society changed
to that of a system for ensuring to the extent possible that the goals
of each person would be treated equally. The class struggle thus gave
rise to the modern welfare/civil rights state.
Unfortunately for the stability of the new form of society, equal
treatment of the goals of each person can't even be approximated.
People have inconsistent purposes, so any conceivable form of society
will satisfy some hopes and blight others. If life is risky, some will
get hurt; if it is safe, some will be bored. Many would feel pinched
by poverty; others cloyed by wealth. The problem is made far worse by
the circumstance that the goals people care most about have to do with
what the social world and their place in it are like. If
socially-sanctioned sex roles are abolished, career women and
homosexuals will be pleased, while those who prefer to act as if men
and women are different, including women who would be happiest if they
were respected and protected in a domestic role, will be out of luck.
The problem goes very deep, since one of the things people care most
about is the moral character of the world in which they live. Some are
profoundly offended by casual racial slurs, others by open lack of
reverence toward God. There is no possible way to accommodate all such
concerns, but liberal society lacks an adequate theory for
subordinating one to another.
In addition, no human society has ever been egalitarian and there is no
reason to believe that an egalitarian society would be workable. Since
social order has always depended on inequality, it seems far more
likely that after a point equality and social disorder will go hand in
hand and a liberal government will find itself unable to meet the basic
responsibility of all government, the maintenance of public order.
Yet another problem is that the requirements of equality can be
articulated and enforced only if there are people with the power to do
so, and those people and the rest of society can't be equal. The
stronger the insistence on equality, the more power those people must
have, the more cohesive they must be so that they can act effectively
and consistently, and the more distinct they must be from the rest of
society. The liberal promise of equality, when taken seriously, thus
gives rise to extreme inequality.
Accordingly, liberal society can be expected to reach a crisis on
account of irreconcilable conflicts regarding fundamental values,
growing social dysfunction, and an increasing division between liberal
elites and those they rule. The beginnings of such a crisis may be
what we are seeing now. Since liberalism has been in essence a trend
toward equality, and since it is the demand for a thoroughgoing system
of equality that causes the crisis, the resolution of the crisis will
involve abandonment of the liberal project and thus have an historical
importance not less than that, for example, of the French Revolution.
What the resolution will be is unclear. Libertarians hope that the
earlier stage of liberalism that reduced society to a system of
property and contract law can be revived and stabilized. Conservatives
hope that the liberal era will prove to have been superficial in
important respects, and that historic social arrangements based on some
conception of the common good will be able to reassert themselves and
provide a basis for order. Another possibility, of course, is an era
of political fragmentation and local war, tyranny and anarchy.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Oct 15 14:33:04 EDT 1994
Article: 47804 of bit.listserv.catholic
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: Is Social Justice Part Of Ethics?
Date: 15 Oct 1994 10:22:47 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 57
Message-ID: <37oojn$g3@panix.com>
References: <9410150200.AA23872@acad.udallas.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Lance Simmons writes:
>Specific people will be understood to deserve such goods (e.g. wealth,
>fame, honors) on the basis of their publicly recognizable contributions
>to maintaining and improving the quality of that ordering, while other
>people will be understood not to deserve such goods, on the basis of
>their failures to make a publicly recognizable contribution to that
>ordering.
"Social justice" is often understood as a requirement that goods be
distributed first and foremost on egalitarian grounds. One view is
that social justice requires goods to be distributed to maximize the
well-being of the least well-off, thus leaving rewards for publicly
recognizable contributions out of the picture except as a means to
another end. Perhaps a statement that "social justice is not part of
ethics" is simply a rejection of such views.
More generally, the conception of social justice Lance presents is of a
system internal to a particular community. It seems to me that liberal
proponents of social justice are trying to devise political
arrangements for a society without communities of political importance.
Indeed, liberals believe that communities (particular conceptions of
the good) should *not* have political importance because to give a
community political importance is to permit it to oppress non-members
by forcing them to support the goals of a community not their own. As
Lance points out, a problem with the liberal approach is that it's
difficult to give the notion of rational action, and therefore the
notion of law, much content in abstraction from particular communities
with particular conceptions of the good. So maybe the statement
"social justice is not part of ethics" is really the statement "liberal
social justice, which purports to establish a comprehensive and
demanding system of justice for a society with no common conception of
the good, makes no sense".
It occurs to me that many people have accepted the notion of a _ius
gentium_ applicable to relations among men of different communities. It
seems that someone who believed in the _ius gentium_ would let the
liberals include in their law whatever could be found therein. Whether
the _ius gentium_ includes anything that could be called social justice
I don't know. Maybe someone else could comment.
The list charter calls for an introduction, and says non-Catholics can
participate as long as it's not to quarrel. So I should say that I'm a
non-Catholic sliding toward Catholicism, in part for a reason touched
on above. I've come to believe that you can only think and act
sensibly as a member of some community, and that the best you can do is
join the community that has the most light. Catholic Christianity
seems to me to have more light than anything else. I have in mind the
Gospel, the basic Christian dogmas, the mass and some of the other
rites and sacraments, and in general the tradition associated with
Catholic Christianity. Otherwise, I'm married (to an Episcopalian) and
the father of three children, I'm 47 years old and live in Brooklyn,
and I'm a lawyer by profession, although the future is somewhat up in
the air just now.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
Palindrome of the week: Dennis and Edna sinned.
Do let me know if you have comments of any kind.
Back to my archive of posts.