[The following are articles posted by Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) to usenet
newsgroups in 1992, and also a few email messages related to usenet
threads.]
muffy@mica.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) writes:
>>Whatever the circumstances, most people get by after a fashion and some
>>people get by quite well. If the goal is to determine the
>>circumstances in which people generally live best, though, it's worth
>>mentioning that of the men I've known the married men have usually
>>lived in less sordid surroundings than the bachelors.
>Interesting how you say you want "people" to live best and then give an
>example of how "men" live better when traditional roles are enforced.
It's even more interesting how you deleted the language I was responding
to, which used the same example.
>Suppose that changing the roles to something new causes women to live
>50% better, but men to live 10% worse. Would you want to change?
Why not? There are lots of social expectations ("a man should support
his family") that burden men and benefit women. As long as they're part
of an overall system that by and large serves the common good, I don't
see the problem.
>Indeed, why do we need separate stereotypes for men and women? How
>about a stereotype for "single people" (cook and clean for themselves),
>"parents" (take care of children), etc? Why do the functions have to be
>hardwired to either men or women?
I don't know if you defenders of traditional roles have noticed it, but
we're not living in the society those roles were formed for anymore. I
don't know of many couples, especially with children, who can afford for
only one parent to work. They seem to manage for a few years while the
children are young, then both go to work. So, how long are you going to
hang on to roles that were formed for a different society? How is it
going to make people "live better" when they can't afford to support
themselves and their children? And what happens to the "traditional"
family whose husband/father is killed, or just decides to leave one day?
If you honestly want "PEOPLE to live better," try to look at it from the
point of view that EVERYONE is "people," not just men.
Muffy
--
Muffy Barkocy muffy@mica.berkeley.edu
~Little round planet/in a big universe/sometimes it looks blessed/
sometimes it looks cursed/Depends on what you look at, obviously/
But even more it depends on the way that you see~ - Bruce Cockburn
--
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jean@noao.edu (Jean Nowakowski) writes:
[sexual harassment example]
>And if your boss's boss is part of the system as well, which condones
>this treatment. What would you do then? And if your society is one that
>condones this behavior? And, then of course, your co-workers hear
>about it, because you've made everything publc: maybe some resent the
>fact that you're fighting what they had to give in to, or you're
>making public an office- wide situation that they would prefer to keep
>quiet [ . . . ] Why do you think harrassment laws were made in the
>first place? [ . . . ] How much of the gender role has been chosen by
>BOTH male and female, and how much have those roles been dictated by
>the dominant, patriarchal society? We are all a product of society and
>its dictates upon us.
Where do the harassment laws come from and who makes them if the world
is as you say?
There is something troubling to me in this conception of law and
society. The idea seems to be that all of us are in the grip of
destructive social roles -- sexual or otherwise -- that determine what
we do to an extent that makes autonomy an illusion and change
impossible. It follows that if people are left to themselves to work
things out the results will be bad because they will reflect the bad
way in which people are programmed. The solution to this problem is
thought to be social reform through the force of law.
The problem with the solution, though, is that for it to work in such a
world, the law -- that is to say, the people in the government -- would
have to be apart from and beyond the control of society. Such an
understanding of government is not unknown among supporters of social
justice, but since it has led to some of the greatest political
catastrophes of the past 75 years I think it should be avoided.
(Obviously, the above does not deal with every argument that could be
made in favor of laws regarding sexual harassment.)
tittle@ics.uci.edu posted a summary of a report that included the
following:
>* A researcher, Barbara McClintock (Keller, 1083) concluded that we need to
> make science more than just "comfortable" for women, we need a "diversity
> of approaches". She stated,
>
> "My vision of a gender-free science is not a juxtaposition or
> complementary of male and female perspectives, nor is it a substitution
> of one form of parochiality for another...A healthy science is one that
> allows for the productive survival of diverse conceptions of mind" and
> nature, and of correspondingly diverse strategies (1985, p178)."
What's being suggested here? It appears from my reading of the summary
of the report that the person who prepared it had observed that there
are many more men than women in technical fields, and that men tend to
feel better about working long hours to develop technical skills.
There was also a suggestion that men and women tend to notice different
things about the world and that the result of these differences is that
men tend to pick up faster on mechanical things and women tend to pick
up faster on personal things. Can anyone explain why these
observations should lead one to believe that technical pursuits need to
be somehow reformed?
>But the point is that violence of men against women *is* a different
>sort of thing than violence of men against men. I admit this is a
>sexist attitude, but in this case I think sexism is appropriate. Social
>stability requires a special relationship between men and women.
>Violence against women is more than just violence, it is also a
>disruption of this special relationship. That is why it cannot be
>tolerated.
I agree with you completely on this, but also agree with various posters
who say it's an antifeminist point of view. Do you believe it's possible
for a "special relationship" between men and woman to be generally
recognized without differences in sex roles? I don't. Since it seems to
me that a special relationship between the sexes is necessary not only for
social stability but even for a remotely tolerable way of life, my
conclusion is that feminism should be rejected. (By "feminism" I
understand opposition to separate roles for men and women.)
Somehow I suspect your conclusions may be different, though.
boyiny@ncar.UCAR.EDU (Siren) writes:
>The female candidates have already been subjected to unfairness before
>they reached the stage of placement. After overcoming the socialization
>that will have them believe that they should be secretaries instead of
>bosses, nurses instead of doctors, good at language instead of math.
>and sciences, they have to deal with many other obstacles in their way
>before they can get as far as that point.
>Ergo, the thing is clear logically now. If there is to be equal
>opportunity for the sexes, the woman MUST be given preference, even if
>on paper she may appear to be less successful than the male
>competitors. This is NOT unfair, since it mere restore the original
>opportunity available to everyone to the same level.
It appears from the reference to socialization and occupational
preferences that the point (at least in part) is that if girls grow up
with different interests and inclinations than boys, they should be
treated in the way that would have been appropriate if they had become
the women they would have become if their interests and inclinations had
been the same as their brothers'. That makes no sense to me. I can't
believe fairness requires us to guess what characteristics people would
have had if they had grown up in some hypothetical pure environment and
to act as if those were the characteristics they actually had. I also
don't see what's so bad about girls and women as they actually exist,
and why their differences from boys and men should be treated as
deficiencies to be compensated for. Nurses who like to read can make a
contribution to the world, and can find happiness, just as much as
bosses who spend their spare time playing with computers.
A personal note -- I have a son and two daughters. They are all very
different from each other, but my daughters are different from my son in
ways that reflect what people think the differences between boys and
girls are. I would expect these differences to be among the things that
lead my children into whatever they end up doing. What's so bad about
that? What we do *should* follow in large part from what we are, and
what we are has its source in heredity and upbringing as well as in our
explicit choices.
>I got up early for several days recently because of work necessities
>and as a lark looked at the children's ads. I was horrified to find
>that girls are still the ones playing with dolls and toy ponys and boys
>with killing machines of various kinds. With NO exceptions.
This leads to the "nature versus nurture" dispute over why children play
with the toys they do, which (like all disputes regarding what people
are like) can go on interminably. I should say, though, that I know a
number of people who abandoned the "nurture only" theory for the
"largely nature" theory after having children themselves, but none who
have done the opposite.
falcao@felix.Metaphor.COM (Ronnie Falcao) writes:
>You [i.e., another writer] say we should all believe that women are, on
>average, shorter than men? But what good does it do? How can
>stereotypes be useful to anyone? How can gender-based stereotypes be
>anything other than prejudicial sexism, which you appear to reject?
In an individual case in which height matters we can look and see how
tall someone is and act accordingly, so the correlation between sex and
height is (as you suggest) not useful. If someone were to claim that
the monopolization of professional basketball by men is due to social
bias, though, the observation that men tend to be taller than women
would become relevant to the discussion. Also, when it is more
convenient to specify sex than height it would be reasonable to rely on
sex-based generalizations. For example, if a high-school librarian
needed help shelving a lot of books on high shelves she probably would
do better asking the 12th grade boys' gym class to help her than the
girls' class (I'm assuming it's customary in the school for "gym" to
include doing odd jobs that require physical exertion).
schuck@client2.DRETOR (Mary Margaret Schuck) writes:
>Particularly in (for example) scientific fields, we see the Ideal
>Scientist as someone who is calm, competent, scholarly, and
>authoritative. Those last two characteristics also tend to be
>associated with men in our culture so the bias shifts towards men . . .
>And of course a third choice is to say "Women are different but
>apparently just as good, so we should revise our selection criteria
>until they reflect the number of women applying as well as possible" .
>. . And having established that these biases exist, the purpose of
>affirmative action is to say, "We don't seem capable of making these
>judgements fairly based purely on what we think are objective criteria.
>Therefore, unless there are reasons of competence *not* to put women
>into these positions, then making sure that a certain percentage of
>women get the positions will help reverse the inequities."
If men and women are different, how can it be known a priori that they
don't differ in average aptitude for one pursuit or another? People who
are scholarly and authoritative might well make better scientists, and
if those characteristics are more common among men than women (whether
because of nature or nurture), then to that extent there might well be
more good male than female scientists.
>It works another way too. If women are seen as being successful in
>their higher-status positions, then gradually the perception of "what a
>manager is" will change to include the women and the biases will start
>working their way out of the system. This will also encourage more
>women to try to succeed in these areas since they will be better able
>to identify the field with themselves since they will have role models
>to encourage them.
Why wouldn't the best way to handle this situation be to let each
organization do what it chooses? Then if it's true that there is no
difference between men and women in average aptitude for one position or
another, the organizations that overvalue men will do worse than those
that evaluate men and women without bias. In fact, the more equitable
organizations would hire mostly women because the more benighted
organizations would deplete the pool of qualified men. As a result, the
most successful organizations (the equitable ones) would be those that
are mostly run by women.
Of course, my proposal wouldn't work in every situation. For example,
it wouldn't work very well in the case of a subsidized organization with
no competitors (like most symphony orchestras) and it wouldn't work very
well if it were generally agreed that the position is one that women
shouldn't fill at all. And it probably wouldn't ever work perfectly,
but then neither does anything else.
With respect to the imperfections in your approach, I would suggest a
thought experiment. Suppose there really are large differences in the
proportions of men and woment with the particular intellectual gifts
required to be (say) a good pure mathematician, but the government
requires all departments of mathematics to ignore perceptions of who the
best mathematicians are and to promote every woman mathematician to the
limits of her competence in order to make the ratio of men to women less
unequal. What do you think the consequences would be for the esteem in
which woman mathematicians are held by their colleagues, by their
students, and by themselves?
bf455@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Bonita Kale) writes:
>In a previous article, jk@panix.COM (Jim Kalb) says:
>
>>If someone were to claim
>>that the monopolization of professional basketball by men is due to
>>social bias,
>
>It is. The fact that the results would be the same if it were
>determined by height is irrelevant.
>>though, the observation that men tend to be taller than
>>women would become relevant to the discussion.
I don't understand your point. The claim that a state of affairs is
"due to" a condition is usually a claim that in the absence of the
condition things would have been different. Certainly, asserting that
things would have been the same in the absence of the condition is at
least relevant to the discussion. And my point had been only that the
greater average height of men sometimes matters.
>>Why wouldn't the best way to handle this situation be to let each
>>organization do what it chooses? Then if it's true that there is no
>>difference between men and women in average aptitude for one position
>>or another, the organizations that overvalue men will do worse than
>>those that evaluate men and women without bias.
>There may, in fact, be no such organizations. We're not talking about
>deliberate, conscious bias only, you know.
We are talking about a situation in which sexual egalitarians have
enough political power -- in a society that mostly measures political
power by the voting power of the majority -- to bring about the adoption
of affirmative action programs to counteract sex discimination. We are
also talking about about bias against a class -- women -- that
constitutes more than half the population, that has enormous economic
power through its own wealth as well as through its responsibility for
most day-to-day household expenditures, and that has many members who
believe they have been systematically wronged as women. Under the
circumstances, it's hard to see why no enterprizing woman, sexual
egalitarian, or even cold-blooded profit seeker would take advantage of
the situation (if it is really true that women are having a harder time
than men finding jobs that measured up to what they could do for an
organization) by preferentially hiring women.
>Suppose there really are large differences in the proportions of men
>and women with the physical and intellectual gifts required to be (say)
>a good brain surgeon or astronaut. It becomes clear that besides their
>obvious physical advantages for those two jobs (smaller bodies, less
>oxygen required, smaller fingers, greater dexterity, more acute senses
>of smell, hearing, touch, and color vision), they also, on the average,
>have intellectual advantages in being calmer, more even-tempered, less
>competitive, and less concerned with their own egos.
I know very little about surgeons and even less about astronauts,
although it's my impression that being an astronaut is not in fact a
position that need be very demanding (school teachers have been thought
to qualify). I believe that the first astronauts were men who started
off as fighter pilots -- I have no idea how they are recruited these
days. My impression is that the physical qualities you mention other
than dexterity don't have much to do with being a good surgeon, but that
good surgeons do tend to be competitive and concerned with their egos.
(By the way, are women really calmer and more even-tempered than men?)
Incidentally, you seem to agree (is it only for the sake of the
argument?) that there are average differences in intellectual and
emotional character between men and women. If that's so, how reliable
is the presumption that a difference in the representation of the sexes
in some occupational category is a sign of bias?
>What happens--what *does* happen, not what might happen--is that the
>people in charge of admitting men and women to medical specialties or
>astronaut training *do not see* these advantages.
Occupational fields differ in the degree to which there are "people in
charge of admitting" applicants to the field. If the claim that women
aren't given a chance by the men in charge is a good one, we should see
that women tend to be most successful in the most freeform occupational
settings. For example, we should see lots of wealthy and successful
female entrepreneurs, female inventors, female real estate developers,
female stock market operators and corporate raiders, and so on. But we
don't.
>Or, if by some chance they should see women's advantages and regard
>them as important, they know (from their own experience, and from
>having long seen men do these jobs) that men are capable of overcoming
>the handicaps associated with their sex. Quite properly, they're
>willing to give the men a chance, in spite of the obvious problems.
If they had no fixed ideas as to the capabilities of the members of one
sex or the other and no particular social or political axes to grind, I
suppose they would give people chances based on their best guess as to
how it would turn out in the individual case for the person and for the
organization as a whole. Certainly, they wouldn't hire a man based on
some principle of preferentially hiring men when their best judgement
was that another applicant (a woman) was better.
tittle@alexandre-dumas.ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle Moore) writes:
>In jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>>Incidentally, you seem to agree (is it only for the sake of the
>>argument?) that there are average differences in intellectual and
>>emotional character between men and women. If that's so, how reliable
>>is the presumption that a difference in the representation of the
>>sexes in some occupational category is a sign of bias?
>You must be careful not to fall into the error of thinking that
>"intelligence" is somehow quantifiable, measureable, reproducible, and
>categorizeable.
It seems to me that it makes sense to talk about "average differences in
intellectual and emotional character", and that such differences can be
discussed and characterized. It's also my impression (I'm not a social
or behavioral scientist) that tests can be helpful in assessing the
nature and magnitude of such differences. I understand, for example,
that scores on intelligence tests are comparatively good predictors of
things that I believe have something to do with intelligence, like
academic and job success. I certainly do not view intelligence as a
single thing that can be measured unambiguously by intelligence tests.
Intelligence is made up of a number of different capacities, and tests
never measure anything perfectly. What errors do you believe I am
making?
>I have a high "IQ" -- but my sister, who's is "lower", is much better
>at social interaction than I am. Her social intelligence is higher
>than mine -- but it isn't measured nor acknowledged. What if society
>placed a much higher premium on social interaction ability and tested
>for that? Then her "IQ" as measured would be higher than mine!
It sounds like you believe that there is a difference in intellectual
and emotional character between you and your sister that makes her much
more able than you in some respects. You also believe that existing IQ
tests don't measure her particular strengths, but if circumstances were
different the tests might be different in this regard. Nothing in
either belief is inconsistent with anything I said.
It does surprise me somewhat that you say her social intelligence isn't
acknowledged. In what settings isn't it acknowledged? In a mathematics
class people might not care about it, but in a lot of business and
professional settings (not to mention among family and friends) social
intelligence is extremely important and people notice it at least as
much as they notice other kinds of intelligence. The word "clod", for
example, means "stupid person", but it's usually applied to people with
a gross lack of social intelligence.
>It is my opinion that this whole line of reasoning that you espouse
>falls apart because "intelligence" cannot be objectively measured, and
>indeed changes depending on who is doing the observing.
Do you believe the differences in the kind of intelligence you have and
your sister has are objective and have real consequences for what you
and she are able to do, or do you believe they are something you have
invented and projected onto the situation?
Also, do you mean to say that relative intellectual capacities are
simply unknowable? I am reluctant to attribute such a belief (which
seems very implausible to me) to you unless you expressly state that you
hold it. But if relative intellectual capacities are knowable, then I
don't see that you've raised any problems with my line of reasoning. If
intellectual capacities are knowable, then it ought to be possible to
make reasonable judgements as to the relative average intellectual
capacity in one respect or another of groups of people.
johnhall@microsoft.com (John Hall) writes:
>In fact, it would be amazing if two different groups wound up
>being precisely equal . The point I would like to
>make is that such information may be interesting but is irrelevent.
I agree that such information is not particularly relevant in determining
the capabilities of Tom, Dick or Harry.
It is relevant politically, though, because efforts to give practical
effect to "equal opportunity" laws tend to depend on the assumption that
discrimination is the most reasonable explanation if members of different
groups are not represented in the workforce (or whatever) in numbers that
are roughly proportional to their presence in the pool from which the
workforce is drawn. If it turned out that women (for example) are much
less likely than men to have the native endowment needed to become
first-rate physicists, then the fact that few women become top physicists
wouldn't show a need to open up opportunities for women in physics.
On the issue of scientific evidence and expert opinion regarding
intelligence and race, it's worth noting that a couple of academics
(Snyderman and Rothman) did a survey of psychologists involved in IQ
testing and found that most thought there was a substantial hereditary
element in intelligence. (The persons polled were mostly academics
without direct ties to the testing industry or a financial stake in the
matter.) Anyone who's interested can look at their book.
eijkhout@sp2.csrd.uiuc.edu (Victor Eijkhout) writes:
>All of this [discussion of differences between races] is of
>course an open invitation to racial hatred. If you allow the
>statement that blacks are on average better in sport (which may
>have sociological or physical reasons if it were indeed the
>case), do you allow the statement that jews are on average better
>in handling money? (<- I didn't make up this example. Someone
>said this on tv, but I forget who it was.)
Flat rules against saying certain types of things make life
simpler, but they also make it harder to deal with the world in a
rational way. If the government takes on responsibility for
rectifying the relative social and economic position of the
various groups that make up our society -- and it has -- then it's
hard to see how theories about the differing average
characteristics of those groups can be kept out of political
discussion.
Such theories don't necessarily lead to hatred, of course. I
don't hate people who are more athletic than I am or better at
handling money, and I assume other people have the same live and
let live attitude. One problem with abandoning the idea of
limited government, though, is that if everything is the
responsibility of the government then everything can be discussed
and argued about. Sometimes the discussions are responsible and
sometimes they aren't, and responsible or not sometimes they lead
to bad feelings.
>Even the brain-dead, Mr Guillory . . . No, Mr Guillory, It is you who
>has no concept of what race is . . . Based on your previous arguements,
>I find it difficult to believe you can understand broad scientific terms
>(such as race) let alone specific areas of endeavor such as cardiology .
>. . I have neither the time nor the desire to educate you in biology,
>cardiology and software engineering over the network! Lucky for you,
>people like me are willing to study and investigate ECGs (even if that
>means paying attention to differences between the races) in the interst
>of science and, ultimately, the preservation of life. You, Mr.
>Guillory, may continue to bury your head in the sand. Further
>coversation with you is pointless!
I agree with all your substantive point about topics other than Mr.
Guillory. I wish everyone else did, too. So I don't understand the
point of personal attacks that make agreement much less likely. If the
idea is to get people to be rational about racial issues and it's an
uphill battle, why provoke them unnecessarily?
Also (since you have no objection to criticism) you misspelled
"arguements", "interst" and "coversation" in the passages quoted above,
and many other words elsewhere. Rightly or wrongly, people aren't
inclined to take seriously arguments written by people who either can't
spell correctly or don't want to bother doing so.
My reason for caring about any of this is that I agree with your
substantive points and would prefer that people didn't reject them on
account of how they are presented.
daj@bale.cis.ufl.edu (David A. Johns) writes:
>[S]ickle cell exists outside African and African-derived populations . .
>. so anyone who has symptoms associated with sickle cell will simply
>have to be tested for it.
>Therefore, the statistical correlation between people we call "black"
>and people with sickle cell anemia has no theoretical, medical, or
>public health value.
I'm puzzled by your view that partial correlations are useless. I was
under the impression that in medicine (unlike astronomy, for example)
most correlations are partial and relative probabilities are what one
has to work with.
I would have thought, for example, that health education efforts
regarding sickle cell anemia should be targeted more to Harlem than to
rural Minnesota, and that doctors in the former community should be
quicker to suspect sickle cell when symptoms are ambiguous than in the
latter.
I know next to nothing about medicine, though. Am I just wrong? If so,
why?
daj@reef.cis.ufl.edu (David A. Johns) writes:
>A substantial improvement in the procedure might be realized if
>patients could answer yes to more than one such question, and if the
>questions were phrased "Do you have any ancestors from _______" rather
>than "Are you __________".
How many American blacks know where in Africa their ancestors came from?
I believe that the importation of slaves into the United States was made
illegal in 1808. (History buffs -- is that correct?)
hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>If you mean that there will be substantial differences for people with
>equal intelligence in various groups, the answer is still likely to be
>yes, but hopefully much smaller. Essentially nothing is known about
>this, because we have to know what equal intelligence means.
I've seen references to studies showing that intelligence tests are not
significantly biased, in the sense that by and large they predict things
like academic and vocational success almost equally well for people from
various groups. That is, they perform the function for which they were
designed -- predicting success in things other than taking intelligence
tests -- imperfectly, but without much bias.
Naturally, even if these studies (and my recollections) are correct it's
possible that success on intelligence tests, at school and on the job
all reflect some sort of pervasive social bias.
bowling@sabal.stat.ufl.edu (Dan Bowling) writes:
>The way I see it there are essentially three reasons for believing in
God:
>1) The indivdiual was raised that way . . .
>2) The individual has some experience, not necessarily a "religious"
>experience at the time, that convinces him/her that God does exist . .
>3) The individual has a logical argument as their reason for belief . .
Do these differ from the reasons people have for believing in anything?
People start off with a stock of beliefs that they mostly get from the
people around them, and those beliefs change as a result of experience
and the desire to make one's beliefs cohere logically. Very few of our
beliefs are demonstrably true -- the best we can do is believe those
things that make it possible for us to understand and deal effectively
with the world as we find it.
As to belief in God -- I don't see why it is rationally less respectable
than belief in minds other than one's own, or in physical objects
existing independently of perception. Like the latter beliefs, it
explains how it can be that the world is as it is. For example, belief
in a necessary being or self-caused cause makes it more comprehensible
that the world should exist at all. Again, if the objectivity of moral
judgements is accepted (and it's a lot easier to find people who say
they are moral relativists than people who really accept that outlook),
then the existence of moral facts not dependent on human desires or
beliefs becomes much more comprehensible if the world is thought of as
having a purpose. Finally, it seems more comprehensible that we should
be able to understand the world if the world is constituted in
accordance with reason.
joe@bach.cd.med.umich.edu (Joe Gillon) writes:
>Let's not forget the conscious and determined attempt to start over
>from scratch and build a coherent system of beliefs.
Has anyone ever succeeded in starting over from scratch? It seems to me
that it's difficult to think coherently about anything without taking a
great deal for granted. Descartes, for example, tried to start over
from scratch and found he needed God to pull him out of the hole he had
dug himself into.
>A Creator does explain the existence of the world, but leaves you to
>explain the existence of the Creator, which you can no more do than you
>could explain the existence of the world in the first place. Net gain:
>0.
The idea is that if there is a cause for the existence of the world the
cause would have to be something that exists necessarily and that causes
itself. Otherwise one lands in the kind of circularity you refer to.
One then asks oneself what kind of thing that could be. God fits the
bill better than anything else I can think of, if only because the
notion of a self-caused cause has an odd reflexivity that I can imagine
as a characteristic only of a mind. For example, one can imagine that
the existence of a mind might consist in its having thoughts, and one
can imagine that a mind might think of itself and only of itself. One
can then imagine a mind whose existence consists in its thought of
itself, which I suppose would be a self-caused being.
>Nor can God provide moral objectivity since it is always left to
>humanity to decide which interpretation of God is the correct one, and
>to fill in the gaps left in God's pronouncements.
The argument is that an objective moral reality implies the existence of
God, not that the existence of God implies that we have infallible
knowledge of what that objective moral reality is.
>[T]he . . . statement that the world is more comprehensible if
>constituted in accordance with reason leads me to ask in what ways,
>exactly, is the world unreasonable in the absence of God?
The idea is that we can understand only what is rational, and that we
believe we can understand the world. We therefore believe that the
world is rational. It seems more comprehensible that the world should
be rational if we assume that it has a rational cause.
>No, if one goes at it with an open mind, no preconceptions, with a
>commitment to follow whither logic and reason lead, come what may, then
>God must fall victim to Occam's Razor. More precisely, God doesn't
>fall to the razor so much as the notion of God just doesn't arise in
>the first place. And _that's_ why belief in God is rationally less
>respectable than belief in other minds or the external world.
Your idea of Occam's Razor seems to be that we should all believe in as
few entities as possible. For all I know, that may be exactly what
Occam had in mind. If that's the criterion for believing that something
exists, though, why do you believe in other minds, the external world
and the reliability of memory (if indeed you believe in those things)?
Why not just accept that you are having whatever experiences you are
having right now, and believe in nothing else whatever -- no external
world or other minds behind those experiences, no past or future,
nothing but your thoughts and sensations at the present instant?
turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>The issue of purpose always seems to arise in discussions of religious
>belief. The tacit assumption seems to be that the gods, if they exist,
>are somehow uniquely fitted to providing a purpose to man's life. It
>seems to me that this assumption is as questionable as any other
>theological claim . . .
I've never run into anyone who thought that if Thor or even Zeus existed
they would automatically give men a purpose in life. I don't think that
Homer or the skalds thought that either.
The line of thought I'm more familiar with is that if man's life has an
objective purpose -- that is, a purpose that he must recognize as
binding without regard to the feelings or beliefs he or anyone else
might happen to have -- then there must be moral facts that are simply
features of the way the world is, like the atomic weight of hydrogen.
If that's so, though, then purpose seems to be a fundamental feature of
the way things are. Since it's hard to understand purpose without
reference to a person that has the purpose, one is led to the view that
the fundamental reality, by reference to which everthing else can in
principle be explained, is a person -- God.
turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>Actually, I still don't know what Mr Kalb means.
I've made assertions and presented definitions and arguments. By and
large, I only sketched them -- there seemed to be no point in going into
more detail until I had some idea where there might be common ground.
If Mr. Turpin makes specific comments on what I said, I will respond.
If he simply says that he doesn't know what I'm talking about, I'm
somewhat at a loss.
>Most writers who start with talk of "things [that] are objectively good
>or bad for [man] to do" end up sneaking into the meaning of this phrase
>ethics that are neither universal nor particularly admirable.
I take it that sneaking something into an argument is a special case of
the more general offense of bad faith in argumentation -- not dealing in
a straightforward way with what specifically is being said. I am glad
that Mr. Turpin and I agree at least in opposing such conduct. When
someone sneaks something into an argument, Mr. Turpin would certainly
perform a service by pointing it out. If I had cited C.S. Lewis (or for
that matter Cotton Mather or Pascal) as authorities, comments on those
writers might have been very much to the point.
[I wrote:]
>> I'm not talking about the gods, I'm talking about God. Why do you
>>affect the plural? The concepts are quite different.
[Mr. Turpin writes:]
>Until Mr Kalb demonstrates what number of gods there are, I will
>continue to use the plural, as a reminder that there may be none, one,
>or legions of them. Mr Kalb's god is (perhaps, if his concept is
>consistent) one possibility . . .
It was the possibility under discussion. Mr. Turpin's comments on what
I said might have been more useful if they had related to what I was
talking about.
turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
[I had said:]
>> If Mr. Turpin makes specific comments on what I said, I will respond.
...
>I asked what meaning Mr Kalb placed on the adjective "objective"
>when he used it to qualify "purpose". He didn't tell me this.
I had said:
"To say that a man's life has an objective purpose is simply to say that
(1) there are things which are objectively good or bad for him to do,
and (2) that there are enough such things to give him occupation . . ."
I thus said that "objective" means the same thing in front of "purpose"
as it does in front of "good" or "bad". Depending on Mr. Turpin's
concerns, this response might have been adequate (it's much more unusual
to speak of "objective purpose" than than to speak of "objective good
and bad"). I now know that it wasn't, and the discussion might have
been more productive if he had told me so sooner.
I should mention that immediately after this passage I responded to his
request that I "explain in what sense a purpose 'must' be binding
'without regard to the feelings or beliefs' anyone has" by stating that
"[t]his is simply another way of stating what it is for a purpose to be
objective." So if Mr. Turpin had read further he would have seen an
answer to his question that came closer to what he wanted. Quite likely
he would not have been satisfied with this answer either, but until I
hear his objections there is nothing for me to respond to.
[regarding the gods vs. God]
>In the first post on this thread, "Purpose & the gods", I was careful
>to phrase the question in a general fashion . . . Mr Kalb is certainly
>welcome to restrict his comments to one possibility. But his doing so
>does not make the possibility he selects "the" topic "under
>discussion"; it merely limits the scope of his comments . . .
We are all free to discuss what we choose. Mr. Turpin was commenting on
what I had said, though, rather than on religion in general, so the
broader reference seemed out of place.
turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
[I had said:]
>> I thus said that "objective" means the same thing in front of
>>"purpose" as it does in front of "good" or "bad" . . .
>I hope it is now clear that I don't know what Mr Kalb means by
>"objective" in either place, much less why he thinks it so
>important. Perhaps he would explain this.
[I had said:]
>>[I]mmediately after this passage I responded to his request that I
>>"explain in what sense a purpose 'must' be binding 'without regard to
>>the feelings or beliefs' anyone has" by stating that "[t]his is simply
>>another way of stating what it is for a purpose to be objective."
>Since I don't know what Mr Kalb means by "objective", and I don't know
>in what sense a purpose can be binding "without regard to the feelings
>or beliefs" anyone has, it does me little good when Mr Kalb defines
>these things in terms of each other.
At this stage of the discussion, the question can be reduced to whether
there is any sense in the expression "objective good". To say that
something is good objectively is to say that its goodness exists apart
from its being thought to exist by any non-omniscient and non-omnipotent
being. That definition seems clear enough to me, although quite
possibly it will seem obscure to some -- the concept of "objective
good", as a fundamental concept, probably can't be defined in a fashion
that does not appear circular to an unfriendly critic. I can't respond
to objections before they are made, though.
It may be worth while sketching (without carrying through) one class of
arguments that the concept makes sense. Such arguments may take the
form of arguing (1) that it's a concept the critic himself uses under
different names and can't get along without, or more weakly, (2) that
it's no worse than other concepts the critic accepts. (Ideally, one
would have an argument that shows that no adequate conceptual system
could do without the concept of objective good. Since I don't have such
an argument, I have to deal with the particular possibilities that
present themselves to me.)
The first and stronger type of argument is one that I alluded to in my
observation that I knew of few people who were willing to accept all of
the implications of the view that value is not recognized, but is merely
something attributed by the person doing the valuation, based on his own
likes and dislikes, or possibly on the attitudes characteristic of the
social group to which he belongs. Mr. Turpin apparently does not accept
this argument, but takes the view that words relating to value have
meaning only if they are are based on the particular purposes that the
person using the words happens in fact to hold, and nothing further.
Assuming my interpretation of Mr. Turpin's views is correct, one way to
proceed would be to discuss Mr. Turpin's own views and see whether he
has succeeded in avoiding objectivity in morality. I don't know enough
about Mr. Turpin's views to do this, although I could make abstract
comments on my interpretation of his views -- for example, that if his
views are as they appear to be they make nonsense of the idea of moral
disagreement, which his penchant for righteous anger suggests he is not
willing to give up.
>But if he can't even explain what he means, I may start to suspect that
>*some* religions provide purpose to *some* mens' lives by filling their
>heads with notions and words whose meaning even they cannot ken.
This is tiresome. In this exchange, Mr. Turpin has given the world his
views on *some* men whose heads are full of nonsense, on scientologists,
on C.S. Lewis and other Christian apologists, on Pascal and Cotton
Mather, on people who sneak things into arguments, and who knows what
else. Perhaps he should state his views on men who were raised among
narrow-minded and ignorant people -- religious bigots, for example --
and who find it easier to change their substantive views than their
manner of thought and argumentation.
ramsay@unixg.ubc.ca (ramsay keith) writes:
>Mr. Kalb's argument rests, as far as I can see, on three intuitions . .
>. One, which seems to be only implicit, and is perhaps only an
>interpolation of mine, is that justice is teleological, determining the
>ends of actions . . .
I believe that what I said is that if good and evil are objective, then
it is difficult to think of the world as lacking purpose. I am not sure
what the connection is between that claim and the claim that it is the
purpose of an action that makes the action good or evil.
>A second intuition is the one which I feel is its fatal flaw: that the
>teleological nature of justice implies that it emanates from a being
>which is its author . . . [P]eople often consider it natural, or even
>obvious, that teleology always implies the presence of an author or
>originator. I don't see why it should, however . . . Supposing that it
>happens to be the case that under a given set of circumstances, a given
>aim is unjust. . . Why should I assume that the injustice of these
>aims reduces somehow to someone's legislation?
The intuition is that "good" has a necessary connection to willing and
is far less mysterious -- that is, is more readily understood -- if it
is thought of as the object of a will. It's worth noting that I was not
claiming to demonstrate the existence of God, only that we should accept
God's existence because the world becomes more comprehensible on that
assumption. I take it that by and large we rightly believe in things --
be they neutrinos or God -- if overall the belief helps us make sense of
our experience.
"Legislation" seems an odd expression to use here. It suggests some
sort of formal institution for making choices that bind people generally
even though they might have been made otherwise. When we say an act is
"just", though, we seem to be saying that in the given circumstances it
could not have been unjust.
>The third intuition which I believe factors in Kalb's argument is the
>notion that this justice of ends is "objective" . . . Justice is not,
>by definition at least, to be identified with any person or group's
>subjective creation . . . If Mr. Kalb wants to maintain his argument,
>it is only possible, of course, by arguing for the possibility of a
>being whose point of view is by nature *objective*, and not subjective.
My point is that the best way to reconcile these intuitions is to accept
the existence of God. A being that created everything would have a
point of view that is by nature objective -- that is, necessarily valid
for all beings. An analogy -- as to the characters in _Pride and
Prejudice_, Jane Austen's point of view is objective. They live in the
world she made and accept it if they are thinking clearly.
turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
[I had written:
>> ... To say that something is good objectively is to say that
>> its goodness exists apart from its being thought to exist by
>> any non-omniscient and non-omnipotent being.
>This definition seems somewhat obtuse.
Does Mr. Turpin mean "obscure"?
>From it, it seems reasonable to infer that one sense in which Mr Kalb
>uses "objective good" lies in qualifying the purpose of any omniscient
>and omnipotent being.
I don't understand the comment. If there are no omniscient or
omnipotent beings, the definition reduces to the statement that to say
something is good objectively is to say that its goodness exists apart
from being thought to exist. If there are omniscient beings (and
omnipotent beings would presumably be omniscient), then from the
definition of "omniscience" a thing would be good if and only if such
beings knew it to be good.
>[T]o the extent that I understand one of Mr Kalb's previous
>explanations, that objective purpose "must" be binding "without regard
>to the feelings ... anyone has", this definition of "objective good"
>seems something quite different, since it explicity refers to the
>feelings of an omniscient and omnipotent being.
The definition doesn't refer to feelings at all, but to knowledge.
Also, the definition could still be applied even if no omni-X being
existed.
>A concept can be murky or clear, useful or not, inconsistent or well-
>defined. But it cannot be false, which is a property of propositions,
>not concepts . . . I have not argued against Mr Kalb's concepts. I
>have complained that he has not made them clear.
Mr. Turpin's repeated references to "nonsense" (which began with his
comments on my initial remarks, which were quite brief) led me to
believe he thought there was something fundamentally incoherent or
unusable about a notion like "objective good". If his complaint had
regarded my particular version of the concept, I would have expected him
to ask questions or to wait to see more of what I had to say before
becoming annoyed.
>> ... Ideally, one would have an argument that shows that no
>> adequate conceptual system could do without the concept of
>> objective good. ...
>I think that any conceptual system that does not allow me to talk
>about pink unicorns is inadequate in some very important regards,
>but that provides no evidence -- none, zip, nada -- that pink
>unicorns exist.
Agreed. "Objective good" strikes me as a fundamental concept, though,
and not every fundamental concept appears in every conceptual system.
"Pink unicorn" would appear in every conceptual system that has the
usual range of animal and color concepts and permits abstraction and
combination of characteristics.
>Mr Kalb seems to criticize me for something that he also does: relating
>good and bad to the purposes of various sentient beings.
My understanding is that Mr. Turpin reduces good and bad to the purposes
of fallible beings and nothing more. I do not do that.
>I cannot imagine why Mr Kalb thinks there would be a problem (or why I
>would see a problem) with someone talking about other people's
>purposes, or a purpose that the speaker hopefully shares with (large
>portions) of those he addresses, or even in terms of moral premises or
>committments that some groups adopt.
I see no problem with speaking about such things. My claim is that such
topics do not exhaust meaningful talk about morality.
>>[I]f [Mr. Turpin's] views are as they appear to be they
>>make nonsense of the idea of moral disagreement . . .
>There are all sorts of moral disagreements: disagreements about how
>morality should be understood, disagreements about what is the
>appropriate basis for morality,
I'm not sure what Mr. Turpin means by "should" and "appropriate" here.
If he is using them in a purely theoretical sense -- that is, if the
disagreements relate to questions such as whether conventional morality
can be more plausibly explained as a statement of the interests of the
dominant class or as an attempt by the weak to get by indirect means
what they are unable to take by force -- then I would say that he is
talking about disagreements with respect to morality but not about moral
disagreements. I don't know what other sense he could mean.
>disagreements about what particular people are willing to approve as
>good or condemn as bad,
These are disagreements about the attitudes of particular people, not
moral disagreements.
>disagreements about what is good or bad for a common purpose that all
>concerned accept,
These are disagreements regarding issues of prudence.
>disagreements about the consistency of various sets of moral
>committments,
These are disagreements regarding the application of logic.
>disagreements about how to resolve conflicts among such . . .
These sound like prudential disagreements.
cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
[I had written:]
| > ... To say that something is good objectively is to say that
| > its goodness exists apart from its being thought to exist by
| > any non-omniscient . . . being.
>[N]either is it a definition of objective. Within standard
>philosophical discourse, it is more a statement of *realism* about the
>property of goodness . . . As such, it does not capture the property of
>objectivity that is required by Mr Kalb's claim (below) that moral
>disagreement is not possible unless moral goodness is an objective
>property. That property is that statements about moral goodness are not
>implicitly indexical in nature: when I say "Lying is wrong", I mean
>that it is wrong simpliciter, not "wrong FOR ME".
I understand Mr. Ostrum's point as to what's required for moral
disagreement to exist. But are there any realists about the property of
goodness who hold that all statements about goodness are implicitly
indexical? The possibility hadn't occurred to me and seems somewhat
odd.
>Note that Putnam, for example, holds that moral properties *are*
>objective in this sense, despite being an anti-realist about moral
>properties.
This seems an odd viewpoint as well. When Putnam says "lying is wrong"
does he mean it's wrong for everyone, but its wrongness is due to a
belief on the part of particular people that it's wrong? Either an
explanation or a reference would be helpful.
>Let's not be so hyperbolic though, as to say this makes *nonsense* out
>of moral disagreement. Why can't we simply say that although there
>appears to be moral disagreement, there is in fact none? Not all
>language use wears its semantics on its sleeve.
Point taken.
turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>One *cannot* determine any particular definition of good from the above
>definition, only whether a given definition of good is objective (in
>the defined sense) or not.
Quite true. I believe Mr. Turpin's original question was what I meant
by the "objectivity" of good. Now that the discussion seems to have
settled down a little, there's no reason why we can't go on to talk
about "good". For reasons I've touched on previously and will go into
in somewhat more detail later in this article, the discussion will not
include a definition.
>[T]his definition of objective . . . makes one of [Mr. Kalb's] claims
>false. To wit, he claimed that objective good is impossible without a
>god, but the above definition admits many different notions of good
>that *are* objective, regardless of whether there is a god, including
>the one used as an example above ["good" = a particular mass].
Mr. Turpin gives no reason for thinking his first sentence is correct.
(It was originally two sentences -- I don't believe I've changed the
meaning.) The argument in the second clause of the second sentence only
purports to show that if the meaning of "good" is not fixed my
definition of "objective" does not support the claim he attributes to
me.
In addition, the claim he attributes to me is not a claim I made. My
claim was that the presence of objective good in the world is most
easily comprehensible on the assumption that God exists. Assertions
that non-mathematical objects exist are not usually settled by logical
demonstrations, and I don't view the question of God's existence as
exceptional in this regard. (It would be exceptional if the ontological
argument works, but I don't understand the ontological argument very
well.)
>Now that I -- hopefully -- understand how Mr Kalb is using the
>qualifier "objective", I anxiously await his explanation of its
>connection with his many claims about it.
What claim would Mr. Turpin like to discuss?
>> ... "Objective good" strikes me as a fundamental concept, though,
>>and not every fundamental concept appears in every conceptual system.
>>...
>At risk of starting the definitional problems all over again, I have to
>wonder what Mr Kalb means by "fundamental".
By "fundamental" I mean "necessary but not definable without
circularity". (By the way, if the definition of "objective" seems
adequately clear, then it's "good" that would be the fundamental
concept.) I take it that any theory has fundamental concepts. For
example, I believe that "mass", "distance" and "duration" were
fundamental concepts of Newtonian physics (I can't comment on modern
physics due to lack of knowledge), and I suppose that "pleasure" would
be a fundamental concept of hedonistic utilitarianism and "choice" or
something of the sort a fundamental concept of libertarianism.
It seems to me that a lot of discussion in philosophy relates to whether
a particular concept claimed to be fundamental is really fundamental, or
really needed, or replaceable by something else. The proponent of
replacement demands clear definitions and says the concept is
incomprehensible ("nonsense on stilts", to quote Mr. Turpin and certain
earlier writers) to the extent it goes beyond the replacement he
proposes, while his opponent points out ways in which the replacement
doesn't work. In the present discussion, Mr. Turpin has seemed inclined
to replace "good" with (or define "good" by reference to) the actual
purposes of particular people. My response has been to point out why
that replacement, definition or redefinition doesn't work -- in
particular, that it doesn't account for moral disagreement.
Of course, it's possible to talk about characteristics of a concept, to
give instances where it applies, and to argue about other instances
where it's not clear whether it applies even if the concept can't be
defined without circularity. Taste and color concepts should be a clear
example of this possibility. In the case of the concept "good", it
seems that it can't do the work we require it to do unless it's non-
indexical, and I would imagine that cases could be found in which there
is no more dispute about whether the concept applies than there is about
whether the concept "round" applies to the Earth.
turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>In article <1991Oct20.174315.21526@panix.com> jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
>writes:
>> By "fundamental" I mean "necessary but not definable without
>>circularity".
>The notion of "fundamental" concepts seems related to the notion of
>foundational knowledge, and the latter notion has been beaten to death
>in the past few decades, and there are few signs of potential
>resurrection.
I don't believe that the criticisms of foundational knowledge tend to
show that all concepts can be defined without cirularity. Mr. Turpin's
point may be that such criticisms show that every concept can be
dispensed with. I don't believe that's so either -- perhaps he could
enlarge on this comment?
>The first is that there are different ways to learn concepts.
Agreed.
>Second, there must be *some* way to convey every concept, otherwise it
>really is nonsense.
Certainly, there must be some way to convey every word. But why
couldn't there be innate concepts?
>Third, I would argue against metaphysical "realism", the notion that
>there are concepts independent of what we intend by words. There is no
>sense to the word "good" beyond what various people intend by their use
>of this word.
Mr. Turpin's first and second sentences say quite different things. I
agree there is no sense to the word "good" beyond what people intend by
their use of the word -- that sequence of letters or sounds could have
meant "figleaf" and for all I know might mean just that in Croatian.
The fact that the meaning of words is conventional in that sense,
though, doesn't show that what they refer to exists only by convention.
(I am a realist as to goodness.)
>If Mr Kalb has a concept of good that is fundamental, then I am pretty
>certain that I do not share it, because whenever I use the word "good",
>I can explain it in other ways.
How? To refer to the objects of whatever purposes Mr. Turpin -- and
possibly other particular people -- in fact have? If so, he is using it
in an unconventional way.
>I don't know what Mr Kalb means by his use of the word "good". (Since
>he won't -- indeed, says he can't -- tell me what he means, I am
>unlikely to ever know this.)
It seems to me that what I mean by the word "good" is no different than
what speakers of English normally mean by that word. (Or for that
matter, what speakers of German mean by "gut" or speakers of Persian by
"khub".) It seems to me that when people use the word "good" they are
referring to a quality with no necessary dependence on the purposes or
moral beliefs that particular people -- including the person using the
word -- actually hold, and that is not equivalent to any non-moral
quality.
>There are two things that I would ask of Mr Kalb. First, he has talked
>about "moral disagreement", and I provided several examples of what I
>often see falling under this label and of how I understand them.
>According to him, none of these were what he had in mind. Would he
>provide an example of what he calls "moral disagreement"?
A claims that capital punishment for murder is a good thing, B claims
it's a bad thing. A and B don't disagree on the relevant non-moral
facts (for example, the deterrent effect of capital punishment and the
likelihood of mistakes in imposing it).
>So my second question is: how am I to learn what Mr Kalb means by this
>word?
I don't mean anything different by it from what people generally mean.
People normally learn what "good" means through the normal moral
education that's part of the process through which infants eventually
become adults. If someone missed that process for some reason, I
suppose he could talk to people, read books and so on, observe how
people use the word, and try to grasp what sort of thing "goodness"
would have to be for the usage to make sense.
>My third question is: why should I care whether anything is good in
>this sense?
One feature of whatever it is that people refer to when they use the
word "goodness" is that it provides the best possible reason for acting,
so if something actually were good in the normal sense it's obvious that
you should care. Your point may be that you don't think anything is
"good" in the normal moral sense of the word.
pcg@panix.com (Paul Gallagher) writes:
>[P]eople believe they have ethical obligations to friends and family
>that they do not have to strangers. Is this consistent with the
>proposition that ethical judgements ought to be impartial and
>objective?
Why not? I don't see anything partial or subjective in the view that I
can have special obligations to particular people. If someone lends me
his bicycle it seems to me that I'm obligated to return the bicycle to
him rather than donate it to the government for the use of the public.
In returning the bicycle to the lender I'm not showing that I think he
is worthy of special favors compared with other people; I am simply
discharging an obligation I owe to a particular person that I owe him
even if I hate him. Similarly, I'm not showing partiality when I
discharge my obligation to look out for my children and don't make equal
efforts on behalf of other children. It seems to me that society could
not exist unless people recognized such special obligations; for that if
no other reason, the impartial and objective observer (if his views are
the touchstone) would approve them.
joe@bach.cd.med.umich.edu (Joe Gillon) writes:
>My first objection to the Cogito is that it is a logical attempt to
>prove an empirical event.
What is the empirical event that is being proved through logic? "I
think" is not a logical truth. I, for example, did no thinking at all
during Descarte's lifetime (at least, not so far as I know).
>Only logical theorems can be proven logically, and being ab-stractions,
>in other words unreal, they're nothing more than mental constructs
>based upon definition . . . nothing can be proven a priori . . .
Are these statements logical or empirical truths? If not, what kind of
truths are they?
gcf@mydog.UUCP (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>First of all, I'm not trying to "win the argument." Winning an
>argument would mean demonstrating the superiority of one's
>connection to absolute truth. There is no absolute truth,
>accessible to humans anyway, in politics; there are only ideas
>and ways of looking at things, and mine have no particular aura
>of authority.
This is puzzling. In your post you made assertions; I presume you
thought your assertions were true. You also presented arguments, which
I suppose were intended to lead others to agree that your assertions are
true by pointing out rational grounds for believing them.
You seem to see an important distinction between (i) asserting something
to be true and (ii) claiming to have a superior connection to absolute
truth, at least on the particular issue. The distinction escapes me.
If a statement is true, then I suppose it has a superior connection with
absolute truth than the contrary statement, and if I believe it to be
true and it really is true, then I suppose I have a superior connection
to truth than people with the contrary belief. What am I missing? For
that matter, what is the distinction between "truth" and "absolute
truth"?
You say that in politics there are only ideas and ways of looking at
things. Do you truly believe they are all equally good? If not, then
why don't the ones that are better have a superior relation to whatever
the truth is about political and moral matters than the ones that are
worse?
ffoire@anuurn.UUCP (Jeff Orrok) writes:
>Is the "ideal" the parent wants to pursue for the child necessarily any
>better than that of the status-quo?
Of course not. The issue is where the authority should be located.
The circumstance that whoever has the authority will be in a position to
make the wrong decisions is not an objection to any particular
assignment of authority.
>Once again, the philosophy behind vouchers is appealing, but I want to see
>this issue treated like any other software (legislation should be like
>software engineering) -- fully spec'ed, designed, tested, and integrated
>BEFORE it is released, and open to modification and maintenance after it is
>released.
Who will do the designing, maintenance and modification? Normally,
that's the job of the person who's primarily responsible for the state
of affairs to which the software relates. The point of the voucher
proposal, though, is that if there is to be a general rule -- and there
must -- parents are better suited to take the responsibility for the
upbringing of their children than the government.
From: gcf@mydog.UUCP (Gordon Fitch)
>The only "true" assertions are
>tautologies.
Is that true?
>In speaking of the real world, in attempting to
>transcribe and model it in language, we must fall short of the
>truth.
So you believe "the truth" exists, but it's perpetually out of our
reach? Because it's transcendental, perhaps. Many people would agree
with you (St. Paul, for example). But what follows? It appears that
what we can say can be more or less true, so why not try to make it as
true as possible?
>Therefore, none of our assertions are true. They are
>imperfect reflections of an infinite world. Some of them are
>amusing, and some of them seem to be better reflections than
>others. Most of them seem to be reflections of reflections.
So some assertions are not very good at all, but some are better than
others. What makes one assertion better than another? I would have
thought it was its degree of approximation to the truth. The expression
"reflection", after all, suggests a reality that can be well or poorly
reproduced, and I would have thought that the better the reproduction
the greater the degree of truth.
>As for people agreeing with me, I would find it boring. And this
>is a good thing, because in the years I've been writing articles,
>I don't think anyone has ever adopted a single one of my ideas.
Would you literally find it boring if someone told you he had learned
something from you? Would it be more interesting to post article after
article in this newsgroup in Pashto, so that no-one would even
understand you, let alone agree with you?
>I
>would feel that that was a great accomplishment, if it were not
>for the fact that I have never observed anyone adopt anyone
>else's ideas, either.
My own experience is that conviction is cumulative. What people say has
its effect on us, but not immediately. Haven't you ever been influenced
by another person's ideas? How has it come about?
>What is the good? What is truth? If you can answer these
>questions, I can try to answer whether ideas participate in them,
>or have them as attributes.
Rational conduct is impossible without beliefs as to what things are
good and what things are true. So each of us (to the extent some
rational construction can be placed on his actions) has at least an
implicit belief in what the good and the true are. Discussions of
political theory are a means of making those implicit beliefs explicit,
and then sorting through them as best we can.
rockwell@socrates.umd.edu (Raul Rockwell) writes:
>How about "To believe in social justice is to believe that when a
>person has such trouble dealing with his (or her) own life that [s]he
>starts messing up others' lives that it's probably worth the
>degradation to that person to impose your own (or "society's") views
>on that person."
Your definition sounds more like a definition of criminal justice than
social justice. People who say they favor social justice usually favor
(in specific terms) either (i) giving people who aren't well off
additional rights or benefits so that they will be as well off as other
people, or (ii) making more extensive changes to society to prevent
issues of inequality from arising at all. Many such people would say
that your definition of justice implicitly blames the victim for the
problems he faces as a result of the existing social arrangements.
goykhman_a@apollo.hp.com (Alex Goykhman) writes:
> Another word, 45-50 years after the events took place
> investigators must prove again that that a person committed
> the crime he/she was originally charged with.
Why would it be appropriate for the government of Lithuania to give much
credence to the determinations of Soviet tribunals? There may (for all
I know) be major problems with the way they are handling these cases,
but what is the objection to treating people as innocent who have not
been found guilty by a court that is worthy of respect?
pd@x.co.uk (Paul Davey) writes:
>I think prison population is related more by official policies on
>sentencing, which are driven by social pressures. Perhaps
>countries with a low incarceration rate are more tolerant?
Is this believable? My understanding is that for a given crime,
sentences are longer in the U.K. than in the U.S., but there are
many more people in prison here because there are many more crimes
committed. If enough crimes are committed, the jails will be full
but sentencing will be lax because there will be no place in the
prison system to put any but the very worst criminals.
sriram@almaak.usc.edu (Sriram) writes:
>It is very easy to point fingers at the government and shout
>"waste, waste, and waste". But what about the private sector? .
>. . You talk about $8 billion of HUD. How does this compare to
>the $200 billion of the S&Ls? . . . If we are direct subsidizers
>of states - as taxpayers, we are also direct subsidizers of the
>private sector by being taxpayers and consumers . . . But this is
>real crazy stuff - this concentrated targeting of government. I
>do not mean to say that governments are efficient; they are not.
>But, what I cannot understand is the myth that the private sector
>is truly efficient.
You're right that the private sector is not ideally efficient.
The point, though, is that in a system based on free contract and
property rights there are built-in rewards for efficiency and
built-in penalties for inefficiency that are absent in a command
system. The penalties for inefficiency can also be reduced or
eliminated by government subsidies and guarantees, as in the S&L
situation.
The issue is one of comparative tendencies. If the government is
inefficient it can raise taxes or borrow against future taxes and
use the money to hire more employees and pay more to contractors,
both of whom (unless they are unusually public spirited) will
fight tooth and nail against eliminating the inefficiencies that
are their livelihood. If private enterprises are inefficient they
tend to disappear, at least if the government doesn't bail them
out, and the people who benefitted from the inefficiencies have to
find some other way of making a living.
oleg@watson.ibm.com (Oleg Vishnepolsky) writes:
>> Why would it be appropriate for the government of Lithuania to
>>give much credence to the determinations of Soviet tribunals?
>For all we know there could be major problems with any court. But
>we do not know. A proper (and honest) procedure is to go case by
>case, slowly, and try to exonerate those who were really framed.
I thought it was clear there were major problems with Soviet
courts, especially during Stalin's time (when I assume most of
these cases were tried) and especially in cases having some sort
of political connection, which these did. The procedure you
suggest is indeed proper if the earlier verdicts have some sort of
presumptive validity. But should these verdicts be so treated?
>Recent steps by Lithuanians towards Polish people living in
>Lithuania only add oil to the fire. I really begin to question
>the moral integrity of the new goverment there.
Here I am ignorant and can't comment. All I can do is hope for
the best, in Lithuania and in the rest of Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union.
doit@cbnewsd.att.com (armin.roeseler) writes:
>This argument has been tried before: workers and owners of means of
>production meet each other on equal terms; there really is no difference
>between them. And again, I cannot help but feel that their relationship
>is best characterized by the *usurer/squanderer* relationship; each
>party needs the other for its existence, but the *dependency* is one-
>sided in that the *rules of the game* and, in fact, the whole context of
>*rationality* and *reality* is primarily defined by one party.
How is the usurer/squanderer relationship one in which rationality and
reality are primarily defined by one party? It's hard to see what you
have in mind. Isn't it more straightforward to describe the situation
as one in which one party has a weakness that leads him to act
irrationally and the other party takes advantage of him? I see nothing
similar in the relationship between employers and employees.
>With respect to worker/employer relationships, for example, this
>dependency manifests itself in the fact that it is *always* the demands
>of the workers that are *unreasonable* and not in the interest of the
>society, the state, or even the national interest/security . . . It is,
>therefore, the priviledge of a certain class to invoke these notions and
>arguments; to argue there is equal leverage and bargaining power among
>employees and workers is to ignore reality.
Your fact doesn't strike me as a fact at all. If it were true, how
could labor legislation ever have been enacted? For that matter, is it
your view that if a worker leaves his job because he can make more money
elsewhere he will be called unreasonable or antisocial? If not, how are
these notions the peculiar property of his employer?
Also, if you think the idea of equal bargaining power between employers
and employees is rather odd, you should consider that if there are
several potential employers competing with each other for employees then
the ability to choose the highest bid gives employees very substantial
bargaining power.
bret@HQ.Ileaf.COM (Bret Pettichord) writes:
>Mr. Fitch suggests that it is a characteristicly American lawlessness
>that is the better explanation of the dire fact that America has more
>of its citizens behind bars than any other country. In this way, he
>wants us to look at culture, rather than politics. But, I think that
>his point falls apart when you realize that the jump in the American
>incarceration rate is a new phenomonon . . . it is no doubt the
>American Puritanism which has made it possible for most Americans to
>allow the government regulation of personal affairs.
So what's the point? That Americans are more Puritanical than they used
to be and have more government regulation of personal affairs than they
used to? That the things that people are in jail here for are not
crimes in other countries? That laws against the sale and use of
opiates and similar drugs are a novelty here and are unknown in other
countries? None of the above are true, but I'm not sure what else you
could have in mind.
turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
[Mr. Roseler wrote:]
>>One of the interesting aspects of capitalism (IMHO) is the fact that it
>>seems to provide a basis for abolishing unnecessary constraint, misery,
>>and scarcity through ever increasing productivity and production output,
>>while - at the same time - it arrests this promise through the creation
>>of artificial need and want (i.e., irrational needs) . . .
>
>I have no idea what makes a need "artificial" or "irrational" in Mr
>Roseler's eyes. Nor do I have any reason to think that it is a fact
>that capitalism creates these.
I think he's making a basic cultural objection to capitalism. The
objection is that any set of political and economic arrangements is more
consistent with some ways of life than with others, and capitalist
arrangements lead (at least under modern circumstances) to the consumer
society -- that is, to a society in which what people pay most attention
to and care most about is the production and acquisition of transferable
goods.
Someone who believes there are objective values, and that the highest
good (be it peace of mind, individual excellence, or beatitude) has no
particular connection to the goods of commerce, is likely to have doubts
about the worth of such a social order.
Like you, I have no real idea of Mr. Roseler thinks the higher goods are
that capitalist acquisitiveness interferes with. I think it is true,
though, that fundamental social institutions affect the values people
come to hold and that the relation between the two is one of the things
one should consider in theorizing about basic issues of social
organization.
My own view in this matter is that in a capitalist democracy there will
be prevailing social values just as there are in other societies, but
those values will reflect the nature of the society.
In such a society, people are in theory free to choose their own values,
but in fact the outlook of the majority is accepted as authoritative.
Although people have the unrestricted freedom to pursue their own social
and economic interests as they see them, the practical consequence of
that freedom is the aggregation of preferences into a result that by and
large reflects what most people want. That result then affects the
preferences that people come to have. People learn values (like other
things) from their fellow men, and the principle of moral equality makes
it difficult for a democrat to believe that his views are better than
those of the majority. In addition, people want to be liked and
accepted, and in a regime based on equality and free contract not many
have a social position that permits them to ignore what others think or
to live very differently from their neighbors.
Accordingly, majority sentiment will rule. The majority, though, can
only agree on what people generally understand. If general acceptance
is what makes values authoritative, then the authoritative values will
be those that everyone can understand without much effort or special
insight. In a safe and prosperous society, these will be comfort,
prosperity and social advancement, all of which can be reduced to money.
It follows that a capitalist democracy is likely to be a society that is
devoted to money, and it's not surprising that people who value other
things often prefer other forms of society.
Of course, the above does not imply that capitalist democracy is the
worst form of society, or even that a better form is available under
present circumstances.
doit@cbnewsd.att.com (armin.roeseler) writes:
>In general, the acceptance of any social order demands the adaption of
>individuals to its requirements, and rejection of alternatives to it .
>. . I submit to you that the social order in western countries is
>centered around notions of private property, free enterprise, etc . . .
>Property rights and ownership of means of prodcution provide the
>framework within which workers can move (in fact, must move).
>Incidentially, workers are at the receiving (rather than controlling)
>end of both.
I agree with everything except the last sentence. The most important
(and most costly) of the means of production is labor, and in capitalist
society workers own their own labor power.
Incidentally, your general comments about how people in capitalist
society find it difficult to think about things independently of the
conceptual apparatus underlying capitalism don't show anything special
about capitalist society. Presumably, people in feudal society used
feudal terminology in talking about society, and similarly for any
possible society.
oleg@watson.ibm.com (Oleg Vishnepolsky) writes:
>I guess I have to refer someone to the Weisenthal center for the 5th
>time on this thread. 200,000 Jews died in Lithuania during the WWII . .
>. A lot of them were executed by ethnic Lithuanians. Now, Weisenthal
>documentary shows that people who are being exonerated are murderers
>and torturers.
Except in unusual cases (public emergency or the like) governments
should not treat people as guilty of serious crimes unless they have
been found guilty by a court that is worthy of respect. That has
apparently not been done in these cases. The point I made is really
quite narrow. What I objected to was the implication in someone's
article that it was outrageous that _de novo_ proof of guilt should be
required. I do not see why reciting the horror of what was done, or
stating that some of these people are in fact guilty, should change my
view. Even people accused of monstrosities should be tried fairly.
>What Lithuanians are doing now to Poles, is very fascist-like. Who are
>you trying to defend ? Take another look, and maybe you will keep your
>opinion to yourself.
What's your point, that Lithuanians are wicked people and that people
who say anything in their favor are suspect? I don't see what the
connection is between what some Lithuanians are doing to Poles now and
what should be done about other Lithuanians who may be guilty of crimes
against Jews and others during WWII.
Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes:
>I'd guess it's the power relationships that need to be eliminated, and
>they are relatively impervious to privatization. They just get
>transferred from one place (government) to another (wealthy individuals
>and companies), much as the power of a government is originally derived
>from the power of the wealthy in the first place.
What would a society look like that does not have what you refer to as
power relationships?
doit@cbnewsd.att.com (armin.roeseler) writes:
>The notion that `workers own their own labor power' does not hold if
>>scrutinized . . [T]he worker must render his/her productive energies
>to the productive process in order to earn a living . . . [T]he worker
>*must* find employment, and whoever his/her employer may be, workers
>must function inside organizations and structures whose patterns of
>authority they had no share in bringing into being, and they made no
>(substantial) contribution to the policies and purposes of the
>organization. In this context, even the most critical reader must admit
>that the notion of `ownership of labor power' is somewhat peculiar.
I don't understand. Each of us must deal with a world he never created.
If I own a restaurant I must operate my business as part of a scheme of
things that I didn't bring into being. I must find suppliers whose
products I can rely on and afford, and employees who will reliably do
what I need done for what I will pay them, and in doing so I must take
the markets in supplies and labor as I find them. Ditto for the real
estate market. I must please customers whose tastes I didn't form and
may sometimes disagree with. I must deal with the government, which
(like everyone else I have to deal with) formed its policies and
purposes without consulting me. I might find I can't do all this stuff
successfully, lose money, and go out of business. So is the notion of
"ownership of a restaurant" also somewhat peculiar?
In addition, workers can choose among employers and their choices can be
made based on patterns of authority and policies and purposes (if those
are the things the worker cares about) as well as anything else. Like
other markets, the labor market aggregates what participants prefer
because it functions through voluntary agreements among people who have
other choices. To the extent workers prefer to take part in managing
the business, self-employment, independent contracting arrangements,
partnerships and workers cooperatives become a larger part of the
employment picture. I think it's more common, though, for workers to
prefer doing a set job for set compensation than to want to get involved
in running things. Most people have things they like to do more than
serving on management committees.
gcf@mydog.UUCP (Gordon Fitch) writes:
gcf@mydog.UUCP (Gordon Fitch)
| >The only "true" assertions are
| >tautologies.
jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
| Is that true?
>Let's say "in my opinion" . . .
If it's your opinion you believe that it's a true assertion, though.
That's what it is to have an opinion. You can't have opinions about
non-tautologies without believing that some true assertions are not
tautologies.
>If we say something like "A = A", we're in pretty good shape because
>we're not making claims that go beyond the text at hand. With such
>limited statements, we have language about language, and we have all of
>it.
The string "A=A" does not include all of language, or even all of the
habits and conventions required to make it mean A=A. So I don't see
what you mean when you say "we have language about language, and we have
all of it".
>If, on the other hand, we say "socialism means government control of
>the economy" we have a huge complex of references and it becomes
>difficult to say whether it's true, or even partly true; and much
>depends on the point of view of the judge of truth. From my point of
>view, such a statement isn't true, because I've read socialist theory;
>but for a peasant subjugee of a Stalinist regime interested more in
>surviving the day than chopping political logic, it's as true as anyone
>would want it to be, I suppose.
This looks like an issue as to what each of you is using words to mean
rather than whether truths can be stated. I take it that you are using
the word "socialism" to mean "the type of society recommended by
socialist theoreticians", while the peasant is using it to mean "the
type of society I am suffering under".
>You seem to be assuming the Platonic conviction that truth, or perhaps
>we should say Truth, has a kind of independent existence, and things,
>especially statements, can approximate it.
I am assuming that there is a world that we can talk about that exists
independently of what we say about it, and that the things we say about
the world can describe it with greater or lesser accuracy. What does
that have to do with Platonism?
>I do not believe people have access to a unique, absolute Truth, except
>maybe in ineffable mystical states, which, being ineffable, cannot be
>incorporated into political discourse.
I'm not sure what your conception of "unique, absolute Truth" is. Does
it differ from "truth", lower-case and without the adjectives? It seems
to me that some statements about the world are true and can be known to
be true. Do you really disagree?
>It may be that there is no one Truth, no one reality. The universe
>could be messy.
If so would it or would it not be true that the world is messy? (I
think you can guess how I would handle each horn of the dilemma.) The
problem with denying that there is such a thing as "truth" is that it
makes it impossible to assert or even believe anything and thus makes
nonsense of language and thought.
>This is not to say that truth is not precious -- when we understand
>that is some person's truth, not a thing appearing in the heavens and
>ordering everyone about.
By the word "understand" do you mean "recognize as true"? If not, what
do you mean by it? And is it really "some person's truth" or is it just
your private fantasy that it's some person's truth? If the latter, why
is it precious?
>In the proverb "Speak truth to power" truth and power are opposed
>because truth is personal and power is against the personal.
I disagree. They are opposed because truth is considered more weighty
than power. The difference between "speak truth to power" and "give the
finger to power" is that the former is not a purely personal reaction to
power but is based on something that everyone must recognize as valid.
This difference is what makes people think speaking truth is more noble
than giving the finger to power.
gcf@mydog.UUCP (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>Of those non-tautologies that are statements . . . I may think some
>true in that they model my experience well; but I don't think I have
>any way of knowing if they model some kind of ultimate reality we may
>call _the_ truth well.
Are you saying anything other than that any non-tautological statement
("NTS") you make might be false?
Or maybe you're saying that your NTSs are about your experience rather
than about the things your experience is experience of. I would be very
much surprised if that were true. Most people spend make most of their
statements about the world rather than about their experience of the
world. They base their beliefs about the world on their experience, of
course, but there is a difference between evidence and what the evidence
is evidence of.
Incidentally, is the statement "statement X models experience Y well" a
statement about statement X and experience Y or about your experience of
statement X and experience Y?
>If I say "The sun is rising," is it true?
It is if the sun is in fact rising (for example, if the statement was
made at about 6:30 A.M. in New York City today). I suppose your point
is that some statements presuppose a perspective (6:30 A.M. in NYC,
surface of the earth taken as fixed) although in form they are absolute.
But why does it follow that all NTSs presuppose a perspective? To the
extent an NTS presupposes a perspective it is easy enough to convert it
into a statement that does not presuppose a perspective by explicitly
stating the perspective from which it is true. ("From the perspective
of someone in NYC at 6:30 A.M. on September 22, 1991 who takes the
surface of the earth as fixed, the sun is rising.")
>In my reading, Plato is generally accused of being a major early
>ringleader in the promotion of the theory of one unique, autonomous
>truth.
I believe the ring was quite large, and included all philosophers before
Kant. (Can any historians of philosophy tell me if there were any
exceptions?)
>As to the world existing independently of what we say about it, it is
>my experience that much of the world exists independently of what we
>_can_ say about it. Which is my point, in a way.
So your point is that there is an autonomous reality, but the truth
about that reality can't be spoken (presumably because it's so
autonomous)? If so, you are in distinguished company, but I'm not sure
everything you've said can be reconciled with that point of view.
>It's precious to me -- value resides in the evaluator.
Do you really believe that? For example, is it true that so far as
you're concerned the only value the tens of millions of innocents
murdered in our century had is the value that you happen to place on
them? Do you really believe they had no value in themselves, apart from
the valuations particular people place on them? We know the value their
murderers placed on them -- is that simply a matter of individual taste
concerning which nothing much can be said?
>>The difference between "speak truth to power" and "give the finger to
>>power" is that the former is not a purely personal reaction to power
>>but is based on something that everyone must recognize as valid.
>"Everyone must recognize as valid" sounds like a decree of power to me.
"Everyone must recognize as valid" refers to the power of truth. If
there is no truth there is only physical force. Truth is what the
powerless can appeal to and their ability to do so is what can give them
dignity in confronting power. Ask someone who was a dissident in the
former Soviet Union or in China.
gcf@mydog.UUCP (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>| What would a society look like that does not have what you refer to
>| as power relationships?
>This is one of the two central questions of anarchism . . . As befits
>anarchy, no one has come up with very conclusive pictures . . . As
>Marcuse (or someone like that) said, one of the first things taken away
>from the victims of domination is the ability to imagine freedom from
>domination. But I suppose we manage, bit by bit.
The pursuit of vague political fantasies has resulted in many millions
of deaths in the past few decades, so I'm not inclined to be
sympathetic.
The Marcuse quote would make sense if there were both free states of
affairs and dominated states of affairs, and we could observe what
happens when the former turns into the latter. Since only the latter
exist, though, the quote sounds more like an excuse for Marcuse's
inability to say what he wants than a contribution to understanding.
The quote could also be used rather easily by a revolutionary elite to
justify its own seizure of absolute power.
I would be very much interested in any more specific explanation of
anarchism that anyone can supply, though. Any movement that includes a
man like Prince Kropotkin can't be all bad.
Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes:
>jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>>What would a society look like that does not have what you refer to as
>>power relationships?
>Myself, I don't see the overall structure changing very much, except
>that the feedback loops between different parts of society are
>considerably strengthened: when a servant (worker) can tell a master
>(manager) where and how their decision is mistaken, and have it
>listened to (or the reasons against can be explained), then the overall
>efficiency of the system is going to increase (in my starry-eyed
>opinion :-).
I don't see how more feedback would eliminate power relationships. In
the case you suggest, feedback might make management more intelligent
but management would still be management. I imagine that in any event
the kind and degree of feedback would be subject to whatever limitations
are needed to maintain the principle that the decisions of management
are to be respected. (Where limitations of that sort are not observed I
would expect efficiency to decline.)
Incidentally, if more feedback would increase efficiency, what stands in
the way of having more of it today?
Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes:
>It is perfectly possible to accept that an opinion can be quite likely,
>without having to accept some notion of objective truth that that
>opinion is an approximation of.
I don't understand that. It seems to me that to say that an opinion is
quite likely is to say that it is quite likely to be true. Or do you
mean something else? Exactly what do you think a "quite likely" opinion
is quite likely to be?
[I had said:]
>>The
>>problem with denying that there is such a thing as "truth" is that it
>>makes it impossible to assert or even believe anything and thus makes
>>nonsense of language and thought.
>Not at all. I'm fairly sure that what I saw yesterday wasn't a unicorn
>. . . So using my fuzzy pattern-matching skills, I decide it was a cow.
>But asserting this doesn't make me sure of it; nor does it invalidate
>the processes of thought that led to it, or the linguistic skills that
>led to the expression.
My point was not that assertions based on weak evidence are nonsensical,
only that assertions that could not be true are nonsensical. If there
is no such thing as truth then no assertion can be true and every
assertion is nonsensical.
pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis) writes:
>[G]iven the slowly burgeoning field of experimental evolution and the
>major changes in evolutionary theory that have occured this century,
>would it not be judicious to recognize competition as only one factor
>amongst many in systems that achieve diversity, efficiency and your favorite market attributes here>? . . . Does this not make an
>economic system which regards competition as the primary organizer
>rather out of touch with contemporary knowledge of the world.
It's possible that an economic theory that regards competition as the
primary organizer would be out of touch with other modern theories. It
doesn't follow, though, that an economic system based on freedom of
contract and private property rights is out of touch with anything.
The any non-religious theory of evolution holds that systems with a lot
of independent actors and no overall direction can organize themselves
in remarkably productive ways. That point lends support to free-market
economics regardless of the mechanisms by which evolution works. There
is nothing about free-market institutions that prevent cooperation, and
if it's human nature to cooperate then people will cooperate even if the
law permits them to do otherwise. So a showing that altruism has
contributed to evolution doesn't show that the welfare state is a good
idea.
In the case of both evolution and free markets, the theoretical question
is how results are attained in the absence of central control. The
answer to that question has no direct bearing on whether central control
is a good idea. If the successes of evolution are explained by
competition, then one is more inclined to explain the successes of free
markets by competition. If a mixture of competition, cooperation and
luck explains the evolution of man from primaeval ooze, maybe the
economic development of Hong Kong can be explained in the same way.
n9020351@henson.cc.wwu.edu (James Douglas Del Vecchio) writes:
>If killing the attacker is the only way to save ones own life, the
>"killing is always evil" value system holds that the victim's life is
>not worth taking the attacker's life for. When the question "which
>shall live" is asked, the pacifist morality answers "the attacker".
Not really. Like most other people, pacifists deny that "I could have
stopped X from happening" is equivalent to "I caused X." So a pacifist
would say that he caused the death neither of the attacker nor of the
victim.
mls@cbnewsm.att.com (mike.siemon) writes:
>In article <1991Sep29.160338.18104@panix.com>, jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
>writes:
>> A truly multicultural democracy is an impossibility, and measures
>>ostensibly taken to advance the establishment of such a social order
>>in fact serve other goals.
>Is this some axiom for Mr. Kalb?
It states a thesis that the remainder of the article supports. I take
it you weren't persuaded, but since you don't state any specific
objections to what I said it's hard to know how to carry on the
discussion.
>It is NOT in any sense "necessary" to democracy to that all parties
>share the same goals or values. Some "meta"-values concerning the
>legitimacy of rule by parties other than one's own *do* come into play,
>but these are necessary in ANY (legitimate) polity.
Your first sentence is true up to a point, since otherwise no democracy
could have more than one party. There have, of course, been claims that
in a true democracy the government would rule in accordance with a
general will that somehow all share, and there have been one party
states that have claimed to be the only true democracies. Such claims
go much farther than any view I hold, although I can understand why they
were made.
One issue between us may relate to your second sentence. I do not
believe that political meta-values, at least procedural meta-values like
majority rule, carry much weight with people. What people want is to
live a life of a certain sort and (since man is a social animal) to live
in a society that supports that kind of life. If voting, free speech
and the rest of the requirements for procedural democracy seem
consistent with such primary political goals, then people will support
them. Otherwise they won't.
>I think Mr. Kalb has succumbed to the notion that *if* the majority
>"rules" it is somehow obliged to force its own pattern on all
>minorities.
You think wrongly. The notion is that unless there is a generally
accepted pattern there will be nothing that can reasonably be called
"the will of the people" and therefore no government in accordance with
the will of the people -- that is, no democracy. Conformity to a
pattern is a precondition rather than a consequence of democracy.
>In a multi-cultural society, several of the component cultures may
>share a goal, and can seek it together. If this goal is opposed by
>other cultures in the mix there is a political *problem* -- but not
>necessarily one without solution. One solution is a higher-order
>agreement about areas of sufficient importance to EACH subculture that
>they consent to refrain from imposing one on the other. Other solutions
>are check-and-balance distributions of power or vetos or other means
>that prevent the dissolution of the (temporarily?) powerless culture by
>the powerful.
You're quite right that sometimes disagreements can be accomodated.
That's not always the case though, and accomodation can be impossible
when there are too many parties with views that diverge too radically.
Also, it's hard to see how the expedients you mention for accomodating
disagreement -- all of which are based on the intelligent balance of
power -- could work if it were accepted as a fundamental principle that
the outcome must respect equally the outlook of each of the multiple
parties to a dispute. I take it this last principle -- which flatly
denies the right to rule of superior cultural power, balanced or not --
is what multiculturalism is all about. It may be an admirable principle
in some ways, but it requires an enforcer viewed as standing outside
society generally and therefore is inconsistent with self-rule.
>In politics, much is possible -- and very little indeed is
>"impossible."
Politics is said to be the art of the possible. I always thought that
meant there were severe restrictions on what can be done.
>In short, Mr. Kalb, I think your opening statement is nonsense.
I admire your forthrightness. Maybe a couple of historical allusions
would help. In antiquity there were no extensive free states. The
citizens of Athens (which I believe you referred to) shared a common
culture to the extent that the Greek drama was composed for their public
festivals. The growth of Rome into a multicultural empire meant the end
of free Roman institutions. (I am using "free" to refer to any
government in which there is a reasonably stable and reasonably
extensive distribution of political power in accordance with law.) In
the United States today the growth of multiculturalism has been closely
connected with the growth in number and importance of the political
issues that people think should be decided by courts or other non-
elected government officials.
steeg@ai.toronto.edu ("Evan W. Steeg") writes:
>[S]ystems with a lot of actors and no organized direction *CAN*
>organize themselves in remarkably productive ways. They can also
>organize themselves into disastrous (depending on the semantics of your
>system) wild cyclical behavior, economic crashes, starvation of entire
>populations, etc.
Perfectly true. The specific point under discussion was what lessons
economists should draw from the contributions made by non-competitive
behavior to evolutionary success, and whether those contributions
suggest a problem with reliance on free markets. My response was that
the successes of evolution support the free market, no matter what the
specific mechanisms of evolution are. Your comment that these successes
come at a price is a fair one, but broadens the scope of the discussion.
>But you can not rule out the possibility that certain limited "central
>controls" (parameter setting) can help push the system dynamics into
>more optimal (w.r.t. total wealth, or stability, or income equality, or
>whatever) state space trajectories.
I don't know of any theoretical way to rule out the possibility. My
general impression is that not much is known about what central controls
would be appropriate to establish, and that the state of government
intervention in the economy today is like the state of medical
intervention in illness X hundred years ago, and so under the best
circumstances is as likely to injure as help the patient. Also, the
"best circumstances" very rarely exist. In a government like ours,
which is more interested in accomodating the demands of interest groups
than in scientific purity, specific government interventions are more
likely to be determined by crude politics than by any disinterested
desire to set parameters that will push system dynamics into the optimal
trajectory.
So at present I am pessimistic. You should realize, though, that I live
in New York City, and so am used to a particular kind of politics.
Also, I am not as familiar as you may be with the work that's been done
on systems modeling and have no idea where that or other work may lead.
It's quite possible that as time goes on the list of things that the
government can do to help the economy will lengthen. For now, though,
it seems to me that we would be better off if fewer economic issues were
political issues.
In article gilham@csl.sri.com
(Fred Gilham) writes:
>
>John Sulak writes:
>----------------------------------------
> [Judge Bork once called these ammendments 'ink blots on the
>Constitution. In practice, our elected officials ignore them and
>appoint judges that do the same.]
>----------------------------------------
>
>Does anyone know if Bork really said this, and if so, where and in
>what context? (I've already asked the original poster).
I think Bork's point was that in order to be judicially enforceable a
constitutional provision must be something that a judge can interpret
based on something other than his own views (and the views of the people
with whom he identifies) as to what the law should be like. Otherwise
one might as well have judges make decisions based on what the shape of
an inkblot suggests to them. The larger point is that we can't rely on
judges to save us from ourselves. They are only human, and have no
source of political knowledge that is denied the rest of us.
(Rohit Parikh) writes:
>[I]f Judge Thomas had not been admitted to Yale under affirmative
>action, someone else would have been. I thought the point about him is
>that it is not proper for him to criticize a policy from which he (not
>someone else) benefited. Similarly, for those of us (and I suspect
>there are many) who were not aborted, it is perhaps not proper to
>argue in favour of abortion.
What's the argument here? It seems to be that if A benefited from X
then A is bound to argue that X is a good thing. (I assume you meant to
say "against" rather than "in favor of" at the end of the quoted
language.) Why would anyone believe that? Why wouldn't it be better
for A to be disinterested and judge how good X is based on its general
effect rather than its effect on his private interests?
mls@cbnewsm.att.com (mike.siemon) writes:
>Democracy is, to be sure, a rather vague concept (unless trivialized
>to "majority rule" . . . My general definition would be that no one
>person or small class of persons has political rights that could not be
>equally exercised by ANY citizen. Office holders may be allowed as
>temporary exceptions (with special rights granted in virtue of the
>office) -- but not if there is a monopolization of office by some
>social class.
Although the sentence in my original article that you objected to
referred to democracy, the article mostly dealt with "free
institutions", which exist (in my view) if there is a reasonably
extensive and stable distribution of political power in accordance with
law and voluntary cooperation plays a fundamental role in politics. If
democracy is understood as rule by the people, then a democratic society
would be one type of society with free institutions. It appears that in
your view, democracy is defined by reference to equality rather than
public liberty. Your dislike of the notion of the will of the people
seems related to this conception of democracy. If democracy is
understood as self-rule, then the people must be able to make decisions
and therefore must have a will.
Your definition raises a very interesting question: whether it would be
possible for society to be ruled by an ideal bureaucracy that makes all
significant political decisions in accordance with internally generated
rules and criteria, and to which we are all, including the top
bureaucrats, subject. I take it that such a society would be the
perfection of democracy by your definition, but the perfection of
unfreedom by mine.
>My point before was that class conflict is endemic, and has been dealt
>with democratically. That is all that is necessary to see the
>possibility of cultural conflict also being handled that way -- not by
>any means a claim or prediction that it *will* be so handled, but a
>contradicition to your claim that it cannot.
My discussion had to do with a "truly multicultural society", rather
than with the possibilities of dealing with cultural conflict somehow.
Class conflict has been handled democratically, but the result has not
been a classless society. Similarly, I would expect that whatever
accomodations are made to the presence of different cultures within a
society, there would continue to be a dominant culture.
Rather high demands have been made for multiculturalism. The point of
my article was that those demands won't be met, certainly not if our
society remains free, and that much of the sympathy for those demands
should be viewed as based on the desire to eliminate threats to a
particular outlook and way of life (that is, a particular culture)
characteristic of modern Western societies.
pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis) writes:
>The 9th says that rights not otherwise enumerated in the Constitution
>are reserved to the states and to the people. If Bork believes that a
>judge can determine by reading what the rest of the Constitution
>enumerates (which he apparently does, since he generally thinks it is a
>fine document overall), then judicial verdicts based on the 9th are
>easy: was it enumerated elsewhere ? No ? Then it isn't constitutional.
>Yes ? Then use those parts of the Constitution where it is enumerated.
The 9th says:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be
constrained to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
How do you think Bork should apply that language in determining whether
a right not enumerated in the Constitution is a right retained by the
people that should be protected by the Federal courts?
mls@cbnewsm.att.com (mike.siemon) writes:
>Summary: I still don't know what Mr. Kalb is talking about
>this needs to be repeated . . . I don't know what you mean . . . I beg
>your pardon . . you have still given me no cause to believe you are
>talking about anything I recognize in the world . . . Am I to take it
>that you mean . . . doesn't help me at all in figuring out . . . can
>you help me . . . I am truly puzzled what you could mean . . . Is that
>a knee jerking? . . . To repeat once again . . . ???? . . . Do you
>truly not understand . . . You are truly fantasizing, with the words of
>my post having no meanings except those you want to project on them . .
>. I have to presume this has *something* -- I know not what -- to do
>with your previous . . . Evidently I need to have you clue me in . . .
>Nor did I say it would . . . Here is where you seem to be drastically
>misreading me. NOWHERE have I said . . . I don't see any particular
>reason for your expectation . . . Again, you keep making your
>statements as if they were self-evident, and I see NO evidence for
>them, and no argument on your part but assertion. If you are simply
>posting _obiter dicta_, fine; but I hardly see the point . . . NOTHING
>I have yet read from you gives any argument . . . Huh? Can you decode
>this for me? I haven't the *foggiest* idea what you (think you) are
>talking about here.
It seems unlikely that we will understand each other well enough for
this exchange to be at all useful. I suggest that we drop it.
manning@cco.caltech.edu (Evan Marshall Manning) writes:
[I wrote:]
>>The 9th says:
>>"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be
>>constrained to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
>>How do you think Bork should apply that language in determining
>>whether a right not enumerated in the Constitution is a right retained
>>by the people that should be protected by the Federal courts?
>The ninth ammendment says that a right need not be listed in
>ammendments 1-8 in order to be valid. This implies that all rights
>listed in those ammendments would still be valid if they were not so
>enumerated . . . Basically this supports the reading of the
>constitution that teh Feds may do *only* that which the constitution
>says they may do over the (currently more popular) reading that the
>Feds may do anything not explicitly forbidden.
Your reading, then, is that the 9th amendment says implicitly what the
10th amendment says outright. A couple of comments:
1. Your reading still does not make the 9th amendment a source of
anything substantive.
2. Under your reading, the BOR is not a source of any rights that may
be enforced in the federal courts against the states, since with few
exceptions the unamended constitution does not deal with such rights.
I believe your view has some support in history. Hamilton and Madison,
for example, saw no point to the BOR because it forbade the Feds to do
things they had no power to do anyway. In fact, they were inclined to
think it pernicious because it might give the false impression that in
the absence of the BOR the federal government would be empowered to (for
example) establish a system of censorship or a state religion.
kfree@pnet12.rfengr.com (Kenneth Freeman) writes:
>There are ontological consequences as well. To paraphrase Havel
>speaking to Congress, in contradistinction to Marxist theory, being
>precedes consciousness, not the other way around!
Do you have this reversed? I was under the impression that in Marxist
theory being (a man's concrete existence as, for example, a factory
worker) precedes consciousness (his outlook on himself, other people,
and the world generally).
kimb@utgard.uucp (Kim Berry) writes:
>Historical rules governing actual Commons are irrelevant to Hardin's
>Essay. Hardin is only using an imaginary metaphor to rebut the notion
>of the "invisible hand" as applied to population control: "Picture a
>pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will
>try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons."
Out of curiosity -- what does this have to do with population control,
except the population of grazing animals when there is a common pasture with
no rules for use? In the case of the human population, the actors (parents)
don't profit from their children in the direct way herdsman profit from
their animals, and (barring an extreme welfare state) there is nothing
corresponding to the common pasture.
kenr@orleans.storage.tandem.com (Ken Rose) writes:
>[I]n applying the concept of externalities to population, one could say
>that parents enjoy having children. However each additional child
>poses a cost on society -- the child (and adult when he/she grows up)
>must be educated, housed, and fed, and eventually employed.
I would have thought that since parents have to support children when
the children are nonproductive, and society gets the benefit of the
children's labor when the children leave home, that society gets the
better of the deal. I realize the situation is not entirely one-sided,
though.
Incidentally -- my impression is that the birth rate tends to drop below
replacement levels in countries in which a social security system
assures a decent life to old people. I suppose that *not* having
children would be a decision with externalities in such countries.
cmf851@csc2.anu.edu.au (Albert Langer) writes:
>Many aspects of "Political Correctness" are intimately connected with
>the . . . (anti-Marxist) position that social relationships are
>determined by consciousness and can therefore be changed through
>changes in language, teaching of history and so forth.
So far as I can make out, the tendency seems to be to say that
consciousness is constructed by society, but in a manner that can not be
summed up in the saying "being determines consciousness". The idea
seems to be that reality itself is constructed by society, and saying
that "being determines consciousness" suggests that "being" exists in a
determinate fashion prior to the social construction of reality. On
this view, changes in language or in the accepted understanding of
history could literally change reality by affecting the mechanisms
through which society constructs reality.
By itself, this view is neither left- nor right-wing but could be used
to support either the left or the right. A leftist might appeal to it
to debunk assertions that reality is a barrier to his utopia; a rightist
might use it against claims that existing social institutions fall short
of some abstract ideal. Since today it is mostly used for the former
purpose, I agree with the general impression that "political
correctness" is left-wing.
cmf851@csc2.anu.edu.au (Albert Langer) writes:
>I think it could be shown that the necessity for a positive real rate
>of profit necessarily implies an inefficient price structure and
>therefore cannot be pareto efficient.
If profits tend to decline in the absence of technological innovations
or other changes in circumstances, would it be legitimate to conclude
that markets tend toward efficiency in given circumstances? Since no
set of institutions could achieve efficiency instantly when
circumstances change, such a conclusion might support free markets as
well as it's possible to support any economic system.
Incidentally, didn't the German writer you mention elsewhere hold that
the rate of profit tends to decline under capitalism?
pcg@panix.com (Paul Gallagher) writes:
>It would be an interesting poll question: what should the overriding
>goals of society be. I couldn't predict what answers would be given.
>Maybe most people, even people who think a lot about politics, haven't
>thought about this question.
I would guess, though, that some answer to this question is implicit in
the views of most people who think about politics. Otherwise it would
be hard to avoid incoherence.
>Something worth looking into is whether the way polical arguments are
>conducted actually reflects people's political philosophy. Political
>arguments are often about the law, but the law is different from
>philosophy. I'd guess that the great importance of the US Constitution
>in public life causes people to use its terminology and ideals in
>discussions even if it does not exactly reflects their own ideas.
I think you have a point here -- people like to use the magic words.
"Right to life" and "right to die" don't seem to me the natural ways to
phrase opposition to abortion or support for euthenasia for people in
comas since the word "right" suggests (at least to me) a rightful claim
that someone might make, and the purported holders of these rights could
not know the rights exist. I also recall reading a California "wrongful
life" case, the point of which seemed to be that the failure of a doctor
to advise a baby's parents of a likely birth defect violated the baby's
right to be aborted. I think discussions of all these issues in America
would be rather different if the concept of rights did not play the role
it does here.
>But your main point is the overriding importance of liberty and/or
>equality in people's thinking. One reason might have to do with the
>phrase you use, "disinterested perspective." It seems to be a basic
>part of most people's thinking that moral judgements should be
>objective, disinterested.
One could be disinterested and still think that some other good is more
important than liberty or equality -- happiness or virtue, maybe. Or
for that matter, economic prosperity or national power and prestige.
Measures that promote liberty or equality might well undercut any of the
other goals, to the horror of a disinterested observer who thinks one of
them more important.
ra989906@longs.LANCE.ColoState.Edu (robert aukerman) writes:
>"Should P.C. be mandated in order to solve or significantly reduce the
>problem of people being offended by others' language ?"
What's included in mandating P.C.?
I suppose that forbidding the use of racial epithets would be on a par
with forbidding other expressions that people often find offensive (the
traditional four-letter words, for example). That was done in the past
without much injury to people's ability to say what they wanted to say
about the subjects they wanted to talk about, and I suppose the same
would be the case in this instance.
Somehow I get the impression that more might be involved, though. Would
you expand on what particular measures you have in mind?
steeg@ai.toronto.edu ("Evan W. Steeg") writes:
>Similarly, the people who govern the university may feel that it is not
>conducive to the **central educational mission** of the university to
>allow students to chant "Niggers must die!" at black professors, etc.,
>etc.
Is that kind of conduct a problem anywhere? Is it the kind of conduct
that the various speech codes are intended to deal with? I don't think
so.
Maybe it would help the discussion if people would post examples of
actual restrictions on speech.
jhardy@milton.u.washington.edu (J. Hardy) writes:
>Wittgenstenin's point is that in some cases (like the diary keeper)
>certain expressions have no appropriate use . . . So whether your use
>of the term "S experience" is right or wrong - per your realist
>intuitions - it cannot be meaningful, it cannot make sense, it cannot
>be used to communicate with the rest of us.
But language is sometimes used for purposes other than communicating
with other people. For example, people sometimes keep diaries that they
don't want anyone else ever to read. In such a case, why couldn't the
term "S experience" be appropriately used by the diarist to help him
recollect in the future how things were with him today?
ag@sics.se (Anders G|ransson) writes:
>However this connection between "S" and such a sensation is supposed to
>be set up, however you managed to get the sign "S" to refer to the
>sensation, the next time you use it (in your case, when you read the
>diary) you have only your memory telling you what the sign stood for
>when you wrote it in your diary. The point here (as I take it) is not
>that your memory is fallible but that this is a peculiar situation
>because anything your memory tells you is the sensation *is the
>sensation*. Even if your memory is perfect this is true, and what is
>curious, you can never know whether you remember correctly or not. So
>Wittgenstein suggests that 'correctly` is not applicable here.
Would it help at all if I had a whole world of private sensations
regarding which I developed a whole private vocabulary and science? If
that were so, I would be able to reason about whether I had identified a
sensation correctly or not. For example, if I had been somewhat
distracted when I had the sensation I had identified as S I might say to
myself "I thought I just had S but it must have been the rather similar
sensation S', because S is always followed by P and Q and S' is always
followed by X and Y, and just now I am having X and Y."
ag@sics.se (Anders G|ransson) writes:
[I had written:]
jk> Would it help at all if I had a whole world of private sensations
jk> regarding which I developed a whole private vocabulary and science? If
jk> that were so, I would be able to reason about whether I had identified a
jk> sensation correctly or not. For example, if I had been somewhat
jk> distracted when I had the sensation I had identified as S I might say to
jk> myself "I thought I just had S but it must have been the rather similar
jk> sensation S', because S is always followed by P and Q and S' is always
jk> followed by X and Y, and just now I am having X and Y."
[AG responded:]
>An objection would be that if e.g. X above is supposed to be referring
>to a sensation of the same kind as S, then to be certain that it really
>is X we would have to see if it is followed by some X1, X2 which in
>turn would crave X11, X12 and X21, X22 and so on. If e.g. X is not
>supposed to refer to sensations of the same kind as S then the argument
>must be more specific as to what kind of sensations X stands for.
Since the suggestion is that I could have a whole world of private
sensations, I suppose that there would also be some way to verify by
reference to further sensations whether that sensation I identify as X
is really X.
Maybe the comment I am making is that Wittgenstein has shown that things
can be named only if they are part of a coherent scheme of things that
is independent of the wishes of the person doing the naming, but he has
not shown that such a scheme of things must be public in all its parts.
I don't see offhand why I could not participate both in the public world
in which I learned language and a strictly private world that is
sufficiently coherent so that there could be things in it that I could
name.
>Another question is whether the sequence X,Y is supposed to be always
>preceded by S.
The hypothesis was that S is the only S-like sensation that precedes
that sequence.
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: govt by referendum?
Summary:
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References: <1992Mar6.044823.38378@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
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2frjgaelic@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
[description of government by referendum]
> Actually the mechanics of all this can be worked out later; I was
>merely interested in showing that this was a viable system. My real question
>was not how would you set up such a system, but would you? Do you think that
>it's a good idea? Would it reflect the will of the majority more/less
>accurately than what we have now? Would that be better or worse for the people?
>If better, how do we go about setting this up?
> Please post or mail responses
It seems to me that government by referendum could be manipulated more
easily than representative government. There would have to be someone
to phrase the question put up for decision and the result could often
be controlled by the phrasing of the question. Also, since it would be
difficult for a supervisory body consisting of 100,000,000 voters
effectively to supervise the execution of policy the executive would
have greater discretion than under the current system. My impression
is that governments that have relied on plebiscites have tended to be
governments in which effective power has been in the hands of a single
leader.
Russell Turpin writes:
>. . . when significant percentages of the population are alienated, and these,
>otherwise good citizens, many people ask what is wrong, try to blame the
>alienated for their condition ("it's your own fault that you don't vote"), and
>appeal to some kind of representation as a counter to this alienation . . .
>It is not enough to say to these disenfranchised Americans that they are
>represented in some sense or another. What is needed is to explain to them
>that they are represented in some sense about which they should care.
Is the problem that people feel there is no-one in the legislature who agrees
with them or is it that they don't like the way things are going in general and
feel they lack the power to do anything about it? People can feel alienated even
though they are free to try to persuade others adopt their views if they feel
the effort is wasted because their views will never affect policy. Why should
they feel any less alienated if there is a congressman or two who agrees with
them if the congressman is himself powerless because his views are ignored by
other congressmen?
I would expect a legislature composed of members whose views are a cross-section
of society's to deal with minority views in the same way society as a whole
does. So far as I can tell, in any reasonably stable society there is normally
a dominant view of things accepted by those in power. Minority views tend to be
ignored, although compromise is possible if the minority is large or determined
and their views can be accommodated without too much violence to the dominant
view. But not much is conceded to minority views -- like libertarianism -- that
are seriously at cross purposes with the dominant view, especially if they can
be played off against the views of other minorities (the Greens and the
Christian fundamentalists, for example). So I would expect libertarians in the
legislature to suffer the same fate as libertarians in the body politic -- not
to be taken seriously. I would also expect the internal habits and procedures
of a legislature chosen by a system of proportional representation to develop in
a manner that would facilitate that result.
So if libertarians or others are unhappy because they don't like the way things
are going and nothing they do or say seems to make much difference, it seems
unlikely to me that procedural changes will make them happier. As a result of
such changes they would lose at a different point in the process, but they would
still lose and very likely they would feel just as bad about it.
2frjgaelic@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
[description of government by referendum]
> Actually the mechanics of all this can be worked out later; I was
>merely interested in showing that this was a viable system. My real question
>was not how would you set up such a system, but would you? Do you think that
>it's a good idea? Would it reflect the will of the majority more/less
>accurately than what we have now? Would that be better or worse for the people?
>If better, how do we go about setting this up?
> Please post or mail responses
It seems to me that government by referendum could be manipulated more
easily than representative government. There would have to be someone
to phrase the question put up for decision and the result could often
be controlled by the phrasing of the question. Also, since it would be
difficult for a supervisory body consisting of 100,000,000 voters
effectively to supervise the execution of policy the executive would
have greater discretion than under the current system. My impression
is that governments that have relied on plebiscites have tended to be
governments in which effective power has been in the hands of a single
leader.
bf455@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Bonita Kale) writes:
>It almost sounds as if you are arguing that there is no discrimination
>against women in the workplace. But it seems unlikely you could mean
>that!
The intended argument is as follows:
In individual cases it's often difficult to distinguish what is from
what isn't sex discrimination. A common response to that situation is
to point to differences in average occupational success of men and women
and to claim that such differences should be presumed to result from
discrimination. But that presumption is poorly founded if on average
there are substantial differences between men and women in relevant
talents and motivations. For example, if men generally value money and
power more highly than women do, then it should not be presumed that sex
discrimination is the cause of men's greater success in getting money
and power. The presumption is still poorly founded if it is known that
there is discrimination against women on the basis of sex unless there
is some way of judging the relative contribution of discrimination and
differences in relevant characteristics to the result. (I would
attribute a difference in result to discrimination only to the extent
the outcome would have been different absent discrimination.)
>I find studies of differences between different racial, national, and
>sexual groups simply fascinating . . . But we're only at the very early
>data-gathering stage. We know very little, and have not, as far as I
>can see, even done more than begin to try to formulate studies not
>warped by our own preconceptions. We simply don't know.
If we know nothing should we assume that there are no differences in
talent or motivation and that differences in result are injustices to be
combated? I would think it would be more appropriate as a matter of
public policy to assume nothing and let the chips fall where they may.
To the extent lassez faire is not good enough but (as you suggest)
scientific knowledge is not available, I would think that drawing
guidance from the unscientific beliefs that people actually have would
be the most rational way to proceed.
[I had written, among other things:]
>>it's hard to see why no enterprizing woman, sexual egalitarian, or
>>even cold-blooded profit seeker would respond to
>>the situation (if it is really true that women have a harder time
>>than men finding jobs that measure up to what they can do for an
>>organization) by preferentially hiring women.
>People are not creatures of reason to anything like the extent you
>profess to imagine. There are many things a person may prefer to
>greater profit and success--stability and reinforcement of prejudice,
>for example . . . I have a position to fill. I don't know who I want
>to fill it, but I have a vague, idealized picture in the back of my
>mind--someone who will do the job the way I want it done and fit in
>comfortably with the rest of the workers . . .
I agree that people have multiple motives and are often irrational, and
that they tend to choose things based on whether they correspond to some
mental picture of what they're looking for. I only claim that that in
America in 1991 both opposition to traditional sex roles and rational
profit-seeking are powerful motives for many people, and that mental
pictures evolve based on experience. So in response to implicit
suggestions that the unused capacities of women are a resource that is
wasted because men don't give them a chance, I pointed out that in
America in 1991 there are lots of powerful people with no desire to
support sexist prejudice (supporters of affirmative action and rich
women who are feminists, for example). Such people are free to organize
to tap that resource, and if they do so and are notably successful then
I claim that the mental pictures people generally have will evolve. If,
on the other hand, few successful organizations appear that favor women
in employment and other decisions then one is led to conclude that the
untapped resource isn't there.
hmj@surya.caltech.EDU (Helen Johnston) writes:
>What if there are NO large intrinsic differences between the
>proportions of men and women with the particular intellectual gifts
>required to be (say) a good astronomer, but that women are consistently
>passed over for opportunities to speak at colloquia (because they're
>not authoritative enough), chair meetings (because they're not well-
>known enough because they haven't given enough colloquia), given tenure
>(because they don't have enough exposure, as measured by colloquia they
>have given, meetings they have chaired)...
>What do YOU think the consequences would be for the esteem in which
>woman astronomers are held by their colleagues, by their students, and
>by themselves?
Not good, I would think. So at least part of the issue regarding the
benefits of affirmative action is whether there are in fact differences
in the numbers of men and women with the motivation and talents needed
for success in a particular occupation.
>The problem with such obviously biased thought experiments is that you
>can make any point you want with them.
Their purpose is to identify what the important issues are. Your
thought experiment and mine show that whether there are differences
between the sexes that are functionally relevant to occupational success
is a very important issue in assessing affirmative action programs.
>If you have proof that women on average don't have what it takes, show
>us. There can be many reasons for women not being present in fields
>like mathematics, and for the low self-esteem of women who have made
>it, only one of which is an intrinsic difference in ability between men
>and women.
On average, neither women nor men nor Harvard graduates have what it
takes to make it in a field like mathematics. As to evidence regarding
relative numbers, I don't have anything easily available to me right
now. I believe that women have slightly lower mean scores on tests of
mathematical aptitude, and their scores show less dispersion than men's
do. If that's right, and if you accept tests as indicators of
mathematical ability, then one would expect to find many fewer women
than men at the upper extremes where all professional mathematicians are
found. That conclusion is supported by the apparent extreme rarity of
female math prodigies (people don't become math prodigies because
someone wants them to or they're given special training). You're
certainly right that intrinsic differences between the sexes are only
one possible reason for disproportionate representation. For example, I
would expect the effect of such differences to be enhanced because they
would lead people to expect more of boys in mathematics.
>The suggestion that a free market approach will, left to itself, ensure
>that the good women make it in the end seems to me completely
>ridiculous, in an area where personal recommendations and such are so
>important.
I agree. A free market approach doesn't ensure justice of the kind
people seem to want in this area. My argument is only that it may have
better results in that and other respects than the affirmative action
programs that many people favor.
turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>Of course, regardless of group differences, there is unfair
>discrimination if each individual is not treated according to their own
>behavior and abilities.
What does this mean? Each of us is treated not simply in accordance
with the evidence others have of our behavior and abilities, but in
accordance with what they take that evidence to mean. The inference
from evidence to conclusion is based on general beliefs as to what is
likely to be true about beings like us, and such general beliefs are
unlikely to have anything to do with our particular behavior and
abilities. If there really are group differences, why shouldn't the
appropriate inferences be different for members of different groups?
For example, if you are an insurer it would be rational to infer greater
risk from use of a car in the case of an 18-year-old boy than an 18-
year-old girl. Would acting on that inference be unfair?
tittle@alexandre-dumas.ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle Moore) writes:
>I have not seen any study (and am not sure that it is even possible,
>except perhaps by martians) that could objectively quantify differences
>between the sexes. They may exist; they may not -- as long as so much
>rides on whether or not they do, it cannot possibly be measured.
You seem to be saying that important issues cannot be discussed
rationally. Is that really what you believe, or am I misinterpreting?
breene@cs.tamu.edu (L. A. Breene) writes:
>What is right or wrong with the following approach? We attempt to
>measure the _change_, and/or _rate of change_ of gender specific
>characteristics in societies over time. If a particular
>characteristic is nature defined, the rate of change would have to be
>zero, or would it?
I don't think that follows. The tendency to eat is an innate
characteristic of nearly all human beings, and a tendency to prefer
certain foods also seems to be innate. Nonetheless, eating behavior --
the particular foods people eat, how much of them they eat and the
circumstances and manner in which they eat them -- all change over
time. Similarly, I would expect the degree and manner in which
sex-specific tendencies manifest themselves in behavior to change over
time.
uunet!idacrd!desj@ncar.UCAR.EDU (David desJardins) writes:
>Of course requiring people to act in ways they aren't inclined to act
>DOES enhance freedom . . . [W]hat about creating property rights and
>protecting them by law? Doesn't preventing others from stealing your
>property enhance your freedom? Another example more related to the
>present discussion: requiring businesses to serve blacks and whites
>equally, EVEN IF it is their opinion that blacks are more likely to run
>out the door without paying . . .
As you say, sometimes compulsion enhances freedom -- the presumption is
against it, though. I'll discuss your examples:
1. Compulsion may enhance freedom when it supports social institutions
-- such as property -- that enable people to act effectively, and that
the great majority accept as natural.
More specifically -- our freedom to do things that require material
means is enhanced by the institution of property because that
institution makes it possible for us to count on being able to make use
of those means once we have acquired them. You wouldn't be free to
participate in an extended discussion on soc.feminism, for example,
unless the computer that you use continues to be available to you, and
it is the institution of property that gives you confidence that it
will be.
In addition, people typically do not find protection of the institution
of property oppressive because in its main features it is consistent
with how they understand the world. Most people don't feel seriously
tempted to steal much of the time, and so don't find that laws against
theft interfere very much with the way they feel like living. Another
way of stating this point is to say that property law is generally in
line with social stereotypes -- a good thing if the goal is to advance
freedom, since a social stereotype is simply a summary of the view of
things that most people rely on in deciding what to do.
Similar considerations don't apply to laws forbidding people to act on
the basis of stereotypes relating to sex differences, so the example of
laws against theft doesn't support the claim that laws against sex
discrimination laws enhance freedom.
2. Laws against racial discrimination raises different issues. You
(and many others) say that laws that forbid people to discriminate in
who they deal with in business advance freedom. Some argument is
needed to show that this is so -- after all, most people wouldn't say
that a (formally similar) law that forbids people to discriminate in
who they go to bed with would advance freedom. I suppose the argument
is that in the former case the freedom to discriminate is not worth
protecting, because discrimination is generally destructive and rarely
serves any function that adds much to anyone's life, whereas in the
latter case for some reason the contrary is true.
Assuming that is the argument, it seems to me poorly founded in the
case of sex (whatever its merits in connection with race). Differing
socially-recognized roles for the sexes -- sex discrimination -- is
basic to stable family life (I've been going into some of the arguments
on that point in another thread). Among its other benefits stable
family life is a lot better setting for children to grow up in than any
other that seems available on a mass scale. So rather than being
something that is invariably destructive, sex discrimination is
something that can promote the general good. So a claim that in
forbidding it we are restricting no freedom worthy of protection is not
believable.
>>And requiring us to ignore the more obvious characteristics that
>>people have isn't likely to promote treatment that suits the
>>individual case, even if such characteristics can be misleading.
>
>So now the question is: Do antidiscrimination laws have the desired
>effect, not just of reducing the undesired behavior, but of changing
>people's thinking about that behavior?
I intended to raise a different question, whether antidiscrimination
laws lead to treatment that corresponds more or less to the
characteristics that particular people actually have. My claim was
that antidiscrimination laws lead to treatment that discounts the
characteristics people actually have in favor of insisting that they be
treated as if they were the same. Race-norming of employment tests is
a glaring example. Another is changing size and strength requirements
for jobs to make it easier for women to qualify. Examples could be
multiplied from programs that go under the name of affirmative action.
colsmith@iwlcs.att.com (Marcia J Colsmith) writes:
>Nobody is average, and some of us are damn tired of being told that what
>we do is more typical of the other gender!
Why is it more tiresome than to be told that what we do is odd on some
other ground? There are going to be social expectations, and the only
point at issue is whether there is something wrong about having
differing expectations regarding the two sexes.
>Why can't you just let us all be treated the same and make our own
>choices?
I don't see why it promotes choice to be treated the same as other
people. Liberty and similarity of treatment are not at all the same
thing.
>What I hear from many men and women is that we want the choices most
>offered to the other. Men want more of a role in raising their kids,
>women want a better shot at jobs, men wish women would ask them out more
>often, women wish the double standard for sex would go away.
If you're right, then social expectations will change. They depend
entirely on how actual people feel about things.
>What possible reason could you have for wanting to cruelly enforce
>stereotypes on our lives? How does that benefit society?
For the words "cruelly enforce" substitute "accept and approve of the
influence of". A few thoughts on why stereotypes benefit society:
1. In order to deal with each other productively, people need
reasonably settled ideas as to what they can and have a right to expect
from each other. These reasonably settled ideas are what people seem to
mean by social role stereotypes.
2. Someone might claim that there should be a single stereotype for
all human beings. But people differ from each other, because of innate
differences, personal history or social background, choices they've
made, or the particular social function they perform. So it's
impossible to have a single set of expectations for all human beings.
For example, our stereotypes differ somewhat for children and adults,
for people who are intelligent and educated and people who are the
opposite, for lawyers and for coal miners, and so on.
3. It is right for our stereotypes to differ in this way. To demand
that children come up to the same standards as adults would be cruel.
Not to expect more (in some respects) of educated people than of
uneducated people would be to fail to give appropriate weight to the
value of education. To address an audience of truck drivers in the
same way as you would address an audience of accountants is likely to
lead to misunderstanding and annoyance. Moreover, it is appropriate to
treat different classes of people differently even though the actual
characteristics of the members of the classes overlap. For example, we
recognize a fixed age of majority, even though some children are more
capable of taking on responsibility than some adults, because no other
procedure would be manageable. We recognize formal educational
attainments as qualifications for certain jobs where such attainments
are good evidence of capacity, even though they don't necessarily
correspond to capacity to do the job.
4. If it is granted that it is appropriate to rely on stereotypes even
though they don't correspond perfectly to individual characteristics,
the question becomes whether there is something peculiarly bad about
stereotypes based on sex. If there is, I don't see it -- they seem no
less valid than any other stereotypes. So far as I can tell, sex
stereotyping is an important feature of all societies. In our own
society, I've never known anyone who really avoided engaging in sex
stereotyping. Moreover, the content of sex stereotyping doesn't seem
all that different in very different societies. The care of small
children, for example, always seems to be associated with women, and
war and politics with men. (There are a few queens here and there, and
stories of Amazons, but on the other hand there are also stories of
children being cared for by wolves.) In ancient Greece, Aristotle
observed that women were more compassionate and more easily moved to
tears than men, and also more prone to depression. 2500 years later
and thousands of miles away, most Americans would agree. So sex
stereotyping seems not only universal but also presumptively valid.
4. In other postings I've touched on particular benefits derived from
sex role stereotyping. I won't repeat the arguments here.
>If we were all raised the same, people's stereotypes would be that men
>and women are interested in and capable of the same things anyway.
Is there any reason other than faith for believing this to be so?
>I find that changing a male/female example to white/black often shows
>how wrong something is.
I think the two situations have very little in common. If blacks were
more than half the population and half the voters, if their
circumstances were such that they lived considerably longer than
whites, if they were mainly responsible for the early care and
education of white children and so could bend the twig however they
chose, if they had similar educational attainments to those of whites,
if they were in charge of most consumer spending, and if they ended up
(because of their longer lives) as the proprietors of most white
fortunes, the analogy would be a lot closer.
Dan.Farmer@Corp.Sun.COM (d) writes:
>The only difference [in an apparently desired future society] is that
>there are not two pre-defined collections of roles that people are
>expected to assume. Instead, there are many roles, which can be
>combined in any way and carried out by whichever person chooses or
>agrees to do so.
And what would the mechanism be for coordinating things, so that all
the things that have to be done (like child-rearing) get done? In the
absence of traditional arrangements (like "mothers look after children
and fathers bring home the bacon") that are generally accepted as
authoritative, the two mechanisms that come to mind are the market and
the state. The market doesn't seem to be adequate because it only
takes care of people who have something to offer it, and children don't
have anything to offer the market. So in the free-form society you are
describing, looking after children would be the responsibility of the
state. The state doesn't seem to be an ideal mom and dad, though.
When I look at the public schools and the welfare system I see no
reason to believe that social evolution in the direction of a still
greater state in child-rearing would be a good thing.
>I think the point is that the current "social expectations" are dead
>wrong. They propagate the old stereotypes and engender (if I may use
>that term) bad feelings between the two sexes.
The surveys and other indications I've seen suggest that there are more
bad feelings between the sexes now than there were before the current
wave of attacks on old stereotypes. That's what I would expect. By
and large, men and women have to live together and rely on each other
in order to be happy. It's a lot easier for people, especially people
(like men and women) who are rather different and really don't
understand each other very well, to rely on each other if there are
clear rules that have the support of society generally. Among their
other virtues, the old stereotypes provided clear rules of that kind.
ae1c@dlrvms.go.dlr.de (Cate) writes:
>Why cannot the social expectation dealing with family be simply revised
>to "when a woman and a man marry, they *both* agree to *equally*
>support their children and their family financially, morally,
>emotionally and physically" . . . E.g., I can work and my husband stay
>home with the kids -- thus I provide the financial support and he the
>emotional etc . . . I don't think that the average human is so stupid
>that they cannot deal with a more general social "rule" regarding care
>of their family than what you present.
The first two sentences I quote aren't consistent. I take it that a
better statement of your proposed rule would be: "When a woman and a
man marry, they agree that between them they will support their
children financially, morally, emotionally and physically, but how they
divide up the responsibility is entirely up to them and nobody else has
a right to any views on the matter".
One problem with a social expectation that's so abstract is that it's
quite unclear when someone is living up to it. Each spouse can blame
the other, and it's no-one's business but theirs anyway who does what,
so the function of social pressure in keeping people in line is lost.
Also, where there's more for the spouses to decide it's less likely
that they'll be able to come to an agreement and (having agreed) stick
to the agreement and interpret it in the same way.
I suppose it depends on what you think determines what people do. You
seem to believe that people do what they consciously choose to do, and
that if someone makes an explicit commitment to act in some way for the
rest of his life he can usually be relied on to carry it out. I don't
believe that many people are like that. It seems to me that people's
actions are determined far more by their expectations and habits, by
impulse, by what seems likely to avoid trouble, and by the attitudes of
the people around them. So it seems to me -- to continue with the
example of childcare -- that children will reliably be well cared for
if at least one of their parents has habits and expectations conducive
to being a good provider of childcare, and is expected by people
generally to provide childcare. Traditional sex-role stereotypes
promote that desirable result. In their absence the situation becomes
rather hit-or-miss. In some cases -- you and your husband may well be
one -- childcare will be very good. Usually, though, it will suffer.
>>I do believe that it would be better for people in general . . . if
>>social expectations for men and women continue to be somewhat
>>different.
>I completely and violently disagree with your premises . . . I think
>that the "social expectations" for both sexes needs to be broadened.
Sex-role stereotypes could continue to exist but be modified or
broadened in response to changing circumstances. From what you say in
general, it appears that your demand is that they be extirpated rather
than broadened. That view seems rather extreme to me.
>Many people already raise their children in a stable environment that
>does not include mom staying home; the parents are happy, the kids are
>happy. And they all lived happily ever after.
Rising divorce and illegitimacy rates and the declining well-being of
American children over the last 25 years lead me to think that in
general it's been a different story.
tittle@alexandre-dumas.ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle Moore) writes:
[I had written:]
>>And what would the mechanism be for coordinating things, so that all
>>the things that have to be done (like child-rearing) get done? In the
>>absence of traditional arrangements . . . the two mechanisms that come
>>to mind are the market and the state.
>I find the whole idea of ENSURING *anything* pretty much meaningless,
>unless you're into social welfare.
You're right that strictly speaking (I wasn't speaking strictly) not
much can be ensured. As I see it, the issue is what features society
might have that would lead people to do reliably and well the things
that must be done if they are to lead good lives. One of those
things, of course, is caring for children.
Like most people, I'm into social welfare in the sense of wanting to
live in a society in which people generally live good lives. I also
think it's worthwhile to think about what social arrangements are likely
to aid that goal.
>And why do you think only of the state or marketplace as
>"alternatives"? Don't you think the parents themselves would be
>interested in the care of their children?
Parents -- especially mothers -- have a natural inclination to look
after their children. But what people do isn't a simple response to
natural inclinations. People are heavily influenced by circumstances
that have to do with the social setting in which they act -- what they
have been brought up to expect, what they see people around them doing,
what other people expect of them, what is easiest or most advantageous
for them. It was those circumstances with which I was concerned.
It would be good if social circumstances led people to take care of
children well. The obvious ways in which social circumstances can
combine to bring about that or any other result are through (1) a
system of informal standards that develops over time and by which
people feel bound (tradition), (2) people pursuing their own goals in a
system that permits them to make whatever agreements with each other
they like (the market) or (3) rules adopted and enforced by the
government. So if tradition goes, that leaves the marketplace or the
state as the factor that establishes the social setting in which people
are acting (and which will strongly influence what people do).
>What about the fact that *right* now in the US, the "traditional
>family" DOES NOT EXIST? There are more alternative families, from
>single-parent to step families, even same-sex parents, than there are
>"nuclear families," let alone nuclear families with mom at home and
>dad at work.
You seem to be saying that the number of households in which children
are living with both natural parents is smaller than the number in
which children are not living with both natural parents. I don't
think that's true. On a related point, I recall seeing figures
showing that most mothers of preschool children do not work full-time,
and that most of the mothers who do say they would prefer not to. If
I'm right, the traditional family is not as dead as you say.
>You seem to be saying, "Oh well, couples don't really know each other
>-- just use these stereotyped roles to stay happy." I'd really rather
>learn more about the person I'm living with.
I don't object to two hearts beating as one, but I would prefer a
system that works even when two hearts don't beat as one. What seems
to be needed in order to raise children well is for mothers and
fathers to have stable relationships in which they can work together
in a reasonably pleasant way. Clear responsibilities within the
relationship makes it more likely that will come about.
Also, I don't see how clearly-defined responsibilities make it more
difficult for the parties to a relationship to get to know each other.
On the contrary -- if nothing is fixed and everything is subject to
negotiation people tend to trust each other less than when it's clear
how everything stands. That's the way things are in other situations,
so why not in marriage?
>Do you really think that in the absence of a "stereotyped family" that
>people would be completely unable to come up with satisfactory
>alternatives?
Some would, many wouldn't. Whatever the goal and whatever the
circumstances, many people get by very well and most get by after a
fashion. My point is that in the absence of something like the
traditional family the circumstances would be much less favorable to
raising children well. Some people would, of course, triumph over
circumstances.
>Do you think that the increased tension understandably accompanying
>this is due to some inherent trouble with moving away from a "good"
>paradigm, or the natural confusion over having two co-existing
>paradigms?
Mainly the former. It seems to me that the old paradigm systematically
leads people to act in ways that on the whole promote good childrearing
and the new paradigm doesn't.
>Why couldn't a set of expectations that a couple would decide for
>themselves what worked best for them, which would not necessarily be
>the best for another couple, be just as useful a set of "stereotypes"?
>If everyone went into a relationship with that expectation, why would
>there be any trouble?
The more abstract expectations are the less content they have, and
therefore the less effect they can have on what people do. How could
the expectation that people will do what seems good to them guide
people in any way? (Apart from making it advisable for them to be
cautious in dealing with each other.)
>It is further my contention that some paradigms are more fair than
>others, and indeed subsume others. In the second set of expectations I
>described, it would be perfectly possible to have a family organized
>along the same lines as results from the "traditional" expectations.
I agree that some paradigms lead to unfairness. If the paradigm for
relations between the sexes is that whatever the parties agree to is OK
I would expect a great deal of unfairness to result. Some people are
much better at bargaining than others, some people are gifted
manipulators, some people talk impressively when things are going their
way but don't come through when things get tough. In a free-for-all I
would expect such people to do much better (quite unfairly) than they
would if there were definite rules for how men and women should treat
each other.
As you say, it would be possible for a traditional family to coexist
with your second set of expectations. The odds would be against it,
though. For a traditional family to work, each spouse has to be able
to assume that the other will carry out his side of the bargain. For
example, the wife has to be able to assume that her husband will
continue to support her and the children even if (for example) she's
not as pretty as she used to be and he meets someone new. That might
not be a smart assumption if the idea is that whatever people agree to
goes and if (as I think would be the case) the agreements men and women
make with each other wouldn't be easily enforceable if one party got
tired of the arrangement.
jpl3@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) writes:
>[C]hange doesn't come without pain, disruption, confusion, and the slow
>formation of new modes for conceptualizing and enacting social roles.
What's the reason to believe that the gain will be worth the pain?
It sounds like your ideal for relations between a man and a woman is a
sort of cooperative friendship that the two parties develop for
themselves, based on their own particular purposes and inclinations and
without reference to other people's ideas about things. Apparently, a
similar relationship could just as well exist between two men or two
women (as you say, "genitilia and minds are separate organs"), or it
could be extended to include several people.
To me, this ideal sounds like the equivalent in the personal sphere of
an anarchist utopia and would be about as practical. The bond between
a man and a woman with children needs to be something durable that can
survive the wear and tear of day-to-day practicalities, hard times,
changes in the parties' interests and tastes, and so on. How many
friendships are like that? Should the well-being of children be left
to the chance that their parents will have such a friendship?
I should add that friendship is a social role that gets conceptualized
and enacted variously from time to time. In America in 1992 it seems a
lot weaker than it has been in some times and places (foreigners
sometimes complain that there is no friendship here). So a proposal
that traditional marriage be replaced by friendship seems a poor one.
>[F]rom where I sit, it sure looks to me like the end result of gender
>role stereotyping is distance, mystification, and alienation.
Gender role stereotyping does make it possible for people who are
rather distant and even alien to each other to have a stable and
productive relationship. That's one of its great virtues. I don't see
why it should be thought to cause distance and alienation, though. The
rules of tennis or the procedures of an office are rather impersonal
and formal, and that's how they enable people who may not have much in
common to do something worthwhile together. But they don't prevent the
people subject to them from becoming friends; rather, they provide a
stable setting in which friendship can grow.
I won't respond to your complaint about mystification because I take it
that such complaints depend on a prior judgement that a social
institution is unjust. (Actually, I didn't respond to a lot in your
posting, although I hope I said enough to indicate what my response
would be at least on the main points.)
rberlin@Eng.Sun.COM (Rich Berlin) writes:
[In response to a claim that sex-role stereotyping leads to better
child care:]
>[T]here is still a great deal of debate over whether the "traditional"
>division of labor is really "best" for all children; where is the room
>for individual judgment about the needs of a *particular* child vs. the
>abilities of her/his *particular* parents? In the second place, you
>are making two common but dreadfully wrong assumptions: (a) that having
>a womb inevitably makes a woman a mother; and (b) that having a female
>body automatically makes her better suited to caring for a child than
>her male-bodied spouse.
Stereotyping doesn't mean absolute compulsion, as your language ("all
children", "where is the room", "inevitably", "automatically")
suggests. It only means that some ways of acting are expected and
others seem to need an explanation. As such, it is inevitable as well
as useful -- "people have stereotypes" means the same thing as "people
expect some things and think other things need explanations". How else
could we deal with the world?
If it's accepted that we necessarily stereotype, the question becomes
whether there's something necessarily bad about varying our stereotypes
in accordance with sex. The idea of doing so bothers many people, but
don't see why -- I've never known anyone who didn't. (Some
participants in soc.feminism say they don't.)
>And finally, even if you assume that there must be an at-home parent
>for some particular portion of a child's life, it is unfair to all
>parties--mother, father and child--if the law mandates that the at-home
>parent must be female.
The mandates of the law are not at issue -- the question is whether it
affronts justice for people to expect the at-home parent to be female.
>All cultures do not have the same view of personal property that the
>European-influenced cultures do.
My guess is that a society of traditional hunters and gatherers (the
Eskimos or Hottentots in 1800, say) might have a very different view of
personal property from our own, but in a more extensive, more diverse,
more technically advanced and wealthier society in which the division
of labor and the market are important (China in 1800, say), the view of
personal property would tend to be more like ours.
>[T]he prevailing cultural view around here seems to be that there is a
>difference between regulating the behavior of an *institution* (or an
>individual representing an institution) and regulating the behavior of
>an *individual.*
I think the distinction people draw is between activities thought to be
public and those thought to be private. For example, all moneymaking
activities are thought to be public, even if engaged in by individuals
rather than institutions. (A one-man barbershop would be subject to
some antidiscrimination laws.) This distinction is somewhat circular,
since whatever activities people decide are suitable for public
regulation are made part of the public realm by the same decision. The
feminist slogan that the personal is the political reflects a sense (at
least) that the distinction may be arbitrary.
>And the fundamental reason given for laws against discrimination is to
>ensure that everyone has a fair opportunity to live decently and in
>dignity. If the social infrastructure were such that prostitution
>were a legal, safe, decent and respected profession, you might very
>well see laws regulating discrimination in this area . . .
That fundamental reason doesn't explain why laws regulating
discrimination by prostitutes in their choice of customers seem more
acceptable than laws regulating discrimination by people in their
choice of marriage partners. After all, marriage is more closely
connected than access to prostitutes to having a decent and dignified
position in society.
muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) writes:
>>And what would the mechanism be for coordinating things, so that all
>>the things that have to be done (like child-rearing) get done?
>Whatever works for people . . . For a single parent,
>that person would probably coordinate with other people, either friends
>and relatives or hired people, or just do all the work themself.
There was a front-page article in the New York Times this past week
about how the numbers of single mothers have doubled in the past decade
that detailed the problems they face (their average income is about
$12,000 a year, for example). So it seems that the individual
self-help approach you suggest is often unworkable. The current divorce
rate is another indication that left entirely to their own devices
people often fail to work things out in a satisfactory way.
>[T]he societal assumption is still that single men cannot cook and
>clean for themselves. By your logic, since they aren't "forced" by
>society to do this, they won't - but they do.
Whatever the circumstances, most people get by after a fashion and some
people get by quite well. If the goal is to determine the
circumstances in which people generally live best, though, it's worth
mentioning that of the men I've known the married men have usually
lived in less sordid surroundings than the bachelors.
uunet!cmcl2!panix.com!pw@ncar.UCAR.EDU (Paul Wallich) writes:
>If sexual harassment isn't illegal, then there's nothing _legally_
>wrong with your boss asking you for sex and firing you if you
>refuse. No discrimination, unless you can prove that it's only
>being done to people of one sex throughout the company :-|. You
>are employed "at will" and the boss can fire you whenever they
>want. There's no possible reason for _their_ boss not to back them
>up -- you're just an uppity subordinate.
The first three sentences are variations on the theme of "it's not
illegal." The last asserts "it can't possibly be against company
policy". What's the connection?
>So now you've either been fired _for cause_ or have quit. You are
>therefore not eligible for unemployment insurance.
Why "for cause"? You have given an example of a bad thing that is
legal in a system of employment at will -- poor Dan getting fired for a
reason that almost everyone would agree is a bad reason. How does that
become termination for cause?
>Furthermore, no one whom you approach for a job is going to be fool
>enough to hire a known troublemaker when there are more pliable
>candidates around . . . If you think this is exaggerated, I commend to
>you the cases of [whistleblowers] Robert (?) Boisjoly and Margot O'Toole
>. .
To the extent that's a problem, why does giving someone a right to
bring a lawsuit help matters? Most employers would think twice before
hiring someone who sued his previous employer over a matter like sexual
harassment in which it's extraordinarily difficult to figure out what
really happened (as the Hill-Thomas affair showed). And the more
difficult it becomes to fire people without having to explain it in
court (because of the multiplication of legal protections for
employees), the more cautious employers are likely to be about hiring
anyone whose pliability is in any way suspect.
>The reason that Congress passed specific laws against sexual harassment
>was that any number of people who had been sexually harassed and been
>unable to find redress organized and brought the matter to
>Congressional attention. Unless it was a serious problem that voters
>cared about, do you think somebody like Teddy Kennedy would of his own
>volition get up and pass such legislation?
Are there specific laws on the subject? I was under the impression
that feminists had proposed the theory that a hostile environment
created by sexual harassment was sex discrimination under existing law,
that the EEOC had promulgated regulations adopting the view, and that
the Supreme Court had bought off on it. (I may be wrong -- I haven't
specifically looked into the matter.) As for Congress and Teddy
Kennedy, the fact that bad things happen and a number of people are
upset about them a law gets passed doesn't do much to show that the law
is a good idea.
Your reference to whistleblowing suggests the breadth of the issue
here. Employers sometimes abuse their employees in any number of ways.
Would you support a law forbidding abuse of their employees by
employers across the board? If not, what specific acts of abuse do you
think should be permitted? If you would support such a law, what
effect do you think it would have on the functioning of businesses if
any employer could be hauled before a tribunal at any time by any
employee on the charge that an asserted act of the employer or any of
his agents (that is, the other employees) was abusive in some manner?
In the economic sphere, it seems to me that a general system of
no-fault divorce -- that is, employment at will -- is likely to work
out better for most people most of the time. In the normal case, it's
quite difficult to figure out why people who have been on close terms
fall out with each other or how much justice there is in what they
accuse each other of. It may be possible to do something about murder,
rape or theft in such relationships, but for an outside party to try to
enforce fairness strikes me as hopeless.
David desJardins writes (in response to the following comment):
>>I get the impression that both radical and cultural feminists want to
>>revolutionize society. Radical feminists believe that the construct
>>of gender is at the root of womens' oppression, and so they want to
>>"neuter" society.
>It seems to me, to the contrary, that this kind of revolution is
>exactly what Muffy is asking for. If you don't think that for men and
>women to be treated first as people rather than as men or as women is
>revolutionary, then you perceive the world very differently than I do.
>What exactly, do you think "neutering" society means, if not this?
The idea of "treating men and women first as people rather than as men
or as women" is one that needs to be examined. If the idea is to treat
people "as individuals" rather than in accordance with the categories
they fall into, it's an idea that makes sense only up to a point
because we never treat anything without reference to our beliefs about
things of the same kind.
Each of us bases his dealings with everything and everybody on some
combination of general beliefs about what the world is like (including
beliefs about what things or persons of the type he is dealing with are
like) and specific beliefs about the particular case. If you fail to
adapt your general beliefs to you see in front of you -- for example,
if you are convinced that no woman could be a good chess player when in
fact there are female grand masters -- you lack good sense. But if you
refuse to be guided by general beliefs you won't act sensibly either.
If you know very little about your nephew in Nome and your niece in Key
West you'll be much safer sending the Tonka truck to Nome and the My
Little Pony to Key West than the reverse (unless, of course, you know
something specific to the contrary).
So the proposal that society be neutered isn't really a proposal that
people be treated as individuals in the sense of being treated without
preconceptions as to what can and should be expected of them. Rather,
it's a proposal that the preconceptions be the same for men and for
women. I have no idea why requiring identical preconceptions in
dealing with both sexes would advance either individual freedom or
treatment that reflects individual differences. I would expect it to
have the reverse effect. Requiring people for ideological reasons to
act in ways they aren't inclined to act doesn't enhance freedom. And
requiring us to ignore the more obvious characteristics that people have
isn't likely to promote treatment that suits the individual case.
!cmcl2!panix.com!pw@ncar.ucar.EDU (Paul Wallich) writes:
[I had quoted the following:]
>>* A researcher, Barbara McClintock (Keller, 1083) concluded that we need to
>> make science more than just "comfortable" for women, we need a "diversity
>> of approaches". She stated,
>Fer example, an acquaintance at JPL made the observation that women
>seemed to make better systems engineers than men because they were used
>to thinking about things as being interrelated rather than as puzzles
>to be solved in isolation . . . Since so many of the major technical
>goofups of all time are traceable to systems issues and unforeseen
>interactions, yes, it might seem that it would be a good idea to change
>the way that engineering is done so as to get _everybody_ to think in
>more systems-like ways.
You seem to be saying that experience shows that women tend to do some
things better than men, so their contributions should be valued and men
should learn from them on those points. That seems entirely fair and
reasonable to me. But the summary (for example, the "more than just
comfortable" language quoted above) seemed to hint at a stronger point,
that the disproportionate number of men in technical fields shows that
such fields are unjustifiably inhospitable to women's characteristic
ways of doing things. It is this stronger point that puzzles me, since
if it is granted that men and women tend to go about things differently
there seems no reason _a priori_ to expect that they will be equally
effective in all pursuits. Am I mistaken in believing that stronger
point to be present?
breene@cs.tamu.edu writes:
>Alan Turing adapted an au courant sexist parlor game to give an
>operational definition of ``thinking,'' ``intelligence,'' and/or
>``consciousness.'' In the game, an interrogator determines, from
>written replies only, which of two people in another room is a woman.
>The woman is to reply truthfully, the man with deceit.
What is the meaning of the word "sexist" here? The point of the game
is to see whether a man can successfully pretend to be a woman. How is
that objectionable? Would a game in which women were tested
for their ability to pretend to be men be preferable?
It's true the game has certain presuppositions -- for example, that men
and women are different and that it takes unusual perceptiveness for a
man to fake being a women. It also seems to assume that women are
psychologically more interesting than men. But there are feminists who
believe all these things.
It's worth noting that the game puts a premium on getting beyond crude
and inaccurate stereotypes about the differences between the sexes.
Rather, its effect is to draw the participants' attention to
differences that are real and non-obvious. Since the pretender's
answers are being compared with those of a real woman, he will tend to
lose if his answers aren't true to life. On the other hand, if the
person asking the questions is in the grip of simple-minded
stereotypes, he will tend to lose because he will be easy to fool.
>Turing substituted a computer for the woman.
He substituted a computer for the man. Instead of having a man try to
pass himself off as a woman, he had a machine try to pass itself off as
a human being.
>If a computer could not be distinguished from the human being, then it
>could be said to display intelligence (or consciousness or thought).
>Turing argued that although gender did not depend on facts reducible to
>sets of symbols, thinking, or intelligence, did ([12] pp. 417-18).
>Whether this argument is in itself sexist is debatable.
Is it the claim as to gender or the claim as to thinking that is
debatably sexist? If the former, what is argument for the contrary
claim that the differences between men and women depend on facts
reducible to sets of symbols?
>These operational definitions have become the foundation for the
>establishment of the computer as the metaphor for the self. Pryor, for
>example, argues in [27] that this metaphor systematically excludes the
>body, the unconscious, and the ``feminine,'' thus assuring that
>control remains in the hands of the mind, the conscious, and the
>``masculine,'' as is the tradition in Western society.
The discussion here seems to connect the feminine with the body and the
unconscious. Is this connection a social construct, or is it natural?
If the former, then it appears that the "sexism" is in the connection
rather than in any identification by AI proponents or others of "the
self" with "what a computer could do". If the latter, then it appears
that a lot of feminism -- in particular, practical feminist measures
like anti-discrimination legislation -- is misconceived.
muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) writes:
>The idea of "choice" is that every woman would get to choose what sort
>of life she wanted to lead. If she wanted to choose a "traditional
>role," she could. The only difference would be that she would have
>chosen it freely, instead of being told that that was how she *had* to
>live.
Easier said than done. The assumption seems to be that the sort of
life one leads can be an unconditioned personal choice, and that (for
example) there could be a society in which women who wanted to choose a
traditional role could but they would be equally free to choose
nontraditional roles. The problem with that assumption, though, is
that social roles are not personal inventions -- they exist only
through recognition and enforcement by other people.
For example, the role "wife, mother and homemaker" can exist only if
the role "husband, father and breadwinner" exists and has takers who
can be relied on to carry out its duties throughout their lives. Each
role carries obligations that do not depend on the personal feelings of
the person holding the role. A woman can't be a w, m & h unless she
can hold the h, f & b she is relying on to the duties of his role. To
hold someone to a duty, though, requires the ability to refer to a
standard that doesn't depend on either party but is somehow objective.
Practically speaking, that means the standard must be one accepted by
the society of which the people involved are members.
>Meanwhile, the rest of use would *not* be told how we had to live,
>which would be a great improvement.
All of us are told how to live. It used to be men were told they had
to have jobs and support their families and women were told they had to
keep house and look after the children. Now we are told we all have to
have jobs, and we discharge our obligations to other people through the
payment of taxes. If the new method of organizing people's
responsibilities to each other means that most people will live better
lives, that's fine. If it means the contrary, then it's not fine. The
issue is not whether people will be subject to social expectations that
interfere with their freedom to live however they wish. We know that
they will be. Rather, the issue is what social expectations will lead
to the best way of life for people generally.
jbotz@mhc.mtholyoke.EDU (Jurgen Botz) writes:
>In article <1992Mar7.044107.20664@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> al885@cleveland.freenet.edu (Gerard Pinzone) writes:
>>The problem here is whether an ideology, such as feminism, should have any
>>scientific bearing.
>
>It's not a question of ideology, but of worldview . . . Feminists have
>a different worldview (not as radically different as maybe an
>aboriginal shaman or a dolphin poet) and will therefore come to
>different conclusions from the same set of premises (or data points, or
>whatever) than a scientist whose worldview is primarily shaped by the
>patriarchy. The problem is that both conclusions may be ``provably''
>correct within the framework of the worldview within which they arrose.
> You can't prove to someone with a different worldview that you're
>right and they are wrong -- you've got to change their worldview first.
Can you give any examples of conclusions reached by feminist scientists
that are inconsistent with conclusions reached by patriarchal
scientists in a way that is undecidable by any forseeable evidence? (I
assume that if evidence were sufficient to resolve the conflict a
change in worldview would not be needed.)
breene@cs.tamu.edu (L. A. Breene) writes:
>i think another poster made the same point a while back. certain
>situations are problematic. but the fact that they are so cannot be
>the reason to allow such behavior to continue unchallenged. it is
>difficult to determine whether children are being abused, it is
>difficult to determine whether (and which :) a spouse is being
>physically battered, it is difficult to determine whether a person is
>being discriminated against because of age, sex, race, or
>whistleblowing (or is just doing a rotten job and deserves firing), it
>is difficult to determine whether a person has been raped for that
>matter, but can this be a reason to condone such behavior by not
>reponding to it?
Crimes of physical violence (abusing a child, battering a spouse, rape)
are comparatively uncommon and it is normally reasonably clear whether
particular actions constitute the crime. Forbidding them makes very
little difference in the way most people go about their lives. That's
not true of an offense like sexual harassment which (as defined in one
of Muffy's recent posts) is by its nature extraordinarily vague, and
which we are told is pervasive in the American workplace.
One problem with forbidding vaguely-defined and pervasive conduct is
that it's very difficult to make the prohibition stick without a great
deal of regimentation -- formal codes of conduct strictly enforced
designed to make sure nothing like sexual harassment ever takes place.
Another is that it's very difficult to enforce the proscription fairly,
since where there has to be a great deal of subjective judgement as to
how acts should be classified similar acts won't be treated in similar
ways.
Another poster mentioned laws against riot or garden-variety harassment
(following someone around, opening his letters and the like) as vague
laws that no-one sees a problem with. Such laws deal with quite
unusual conduct, though, and don't raise the same issues as laws that
are professedly intended to forbid conduct that is a daily occurence in
most workplaces. In addition, such laws are more often used to back up
more serious charges that may be difficult to prove than by themselves
(if 10 men grab a passer-by and beat him up, they're likely all to be
charged with riot as well as assault because riot is easier to prove).
It's worth saying that we don't necessarily condone what we fail to
forbid. I don't condone betrayal of friends, or gross rudeness to
strangers, or habitual gluttony. I don't think there should be laws
against such things, either.
chap@art-sy.detroit.mi.US (j chapman flack) writes:
>I agree with Jim Kalb's point in that a
>society completely free of expectations is unlikely, but the following
>sound bite...
>
>>the person holding the role. A woman can't be a w, m & h unless she
>>can hold the h, f & b she is relying on to the duties of his role. To
>>hold someone to a duty, though, requires the ability to refer to a
>>standard that doesn't depend on either party but is somehow objective.
>>Practically speaking, that means the standard must be one accepted by
>>the society of which the people involved are members.
>
>...bugs me. He seems to be saying "I can't hold you to a promise you
>make unless it was a promise Society wanted you to make. So, we can't
>have stable relationships without these fixed social expectations." It
>seems to me we only need ONE social expectation to address this
>concern: the expectation that we *keep our promises.* If you're not
>sure you can depend on me to play out my end of our chosen role-pair
>(or role-triad or ...) then we can draw up a formal agreement, which
>society will back up through the courts . . . An advantage of a
>contract over social tradition is that all the expectations can be
>clearly understood going in.
This proposal seems rather unrealistic to me. What would one of your
marriage contracts look like? Husbands and wives do thousands of
things that affect each other, most of which a bride and groom aren't
likely to be able to forsee and agree on in advance, and very few of
which could be enforced effectively by the courts. Courts can't even
get ex-husbands to pay alimony or child support. If they can't get
people to do something as easily defined as paying money how could they
possibly enforce other marital obligations? For example, a lot of what
marriage is is an agreement to agree about how to deal with whatever
happens to come up. How could courts enforce that?
It seems to me that while people enter into marriage by contract, what
marriage is is not defined by contract. It's a social institution that
exists to the extent society generally recognizes it as a particular
sort of thing carrying with it particular rights and obligations. To
the extent the institution loses its authority, people will stop
relying on it. For example, if social standards regarding a husband's
obligations become vague, women will (rightly) feel that it's not smart
to rely on a man to support them regardless of what he may say today,
and the role of wife, mother and homemaker will disappear. Which was
my point in the earlier posting.
muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) had written:
>>>The idea of "choice" is that every woman would get to choose what sort
>>>of life she wanted to lead. If she wanted to choose a "traditional
>>>role," she could.
And wrote:
>Yes, there are always prices associated with choices. I can't simply
>have whatever I want. However, *I* want to be the one to make those
>choices and balance off the prices for *myself*...I don't want someone
>else to limit my choices and tell me what *they* think is best for me.
It strikes me as an illusion to believe that there could be a social
order in which other people didn't limit our choices, tell each of us
what they think is best for us and pressure us in various ways to
conform. The reason is that people depend on each other in tangible
and intangible ways. For example, people have to be fed, clothed and
housed, and children and the sick and aged have to be looked after.
These functions have to be carried out with nearly complete
reliability. It follows that participation in whatever the system is
whereby those functions are carried out is not likely to be optional.
If is accepted that such functions are fundamentally the responsibility
of the family, then men and women will be expected -- and pressured --
to conform to their accepted roles in the family. On the other hand,
if it is accepted that in the end such functions are the obligations of
the government both men and women will be expected -- and pressured --
to take jobs and pay taxes. For example, in the latter case the
education of both boys and girls will be intended to prepare them for
paying jobs, equal career achievement by men and by women will be
presented as a desirable social and moral goal, government provision of
services formerly provided by the family and higher taxes to fund those
services will make it both convenient and financially necessary for
married women to take paid jobs, and so on.
(A lot of people on the net might say that all these functions should
be the responsibility neither of the family nor of the government, but
of the individual. I don't think that's a view that very many
feminists take. It seems to me it doesn't deal very easily with the
problem of taking care of children, among its other problems).
[I had written:}
>>For example, the role "wife, mother and homemaker" can exist only if
>>the role "husband, father and breadwinner" exists and has takers who
>>can be relied on to carry out its duties throughout their lives.
[She responded:]
>Those roles (although not necessarily under those names) will probably
>always exist, though. Houses will need to be cleaned up, people need to
>eat food, so someone has to prepare it, children need to be taken care
>of, so someone has to take care of them, all of this costs money, so
>someone must earn money.
The functions must be carried out. It doesn't at all follow that the
roles must exist. For example, there could be a society in which most
women are single mothers with jobs who leave their children in
government-provided day care while they are at work, and who have
connections with a series of men who take very little responsibility
for children or anything else and who support themselves either by
having their own jobs or by sponging off a series of women. In such a
society, houses would get cleaned up, people would eat and children
would be taken care of (all after a fashion), but the roles "w, m & h"
and "h, f & b" would not exist.
>If I make an arrangement with my SO that I will work and make money
>while he stays home and takes care of the children, or vice-versa, why
>do we need anyone else to tell us that that is what we "ought" to do?
>This is like the thread on marriage, where the claim was that people
>wouldn't hold to their agreements unless they were forced to. I can't
>imagine living a life where I only did what I had agreed to do because
>I felt forced to.
The consequences of such an arrangement would depend on what you and
your SO are like and what the circumstances are. In general, I would
expect such free-form arrangements, that depend only on the will of the
people involved and are no-one else's business, to be much less stable
than arrangements supported by settled social expectations. People
have a lot of trouble keeping New Year's resolutions because whether
they keep them or not is entirely up to them -- there's no social
pressure to keep them, so they don't feel forced to do so and they
don't. They find it a lot easier to perform reliably the duties of
their jobs because those duties are part of a general scheme of social
expectations that people accept as legitimate and therefore feel
compelled to comply with. Since stability is important in connection
with raising children, a tendency toward instability strikes me as a
serious matter.
>>All of us are told how to live.
>I would be happier, in any case, if we were all told the same thing,
>rather than women being told one thing and men another.
Why is that? If on average men and women are somewhat different, then
expectations would tend to correspond more closely to what most people
find comfortable if they differ between the sexes.
>Do you honestly think that it is better for "people in general" if
>women's lives are much more controlled and circumscribed than men's?
I never said that and I don't believe it. I do believe that it would
be better for people in general if women's lives continue to be
controlled and circumscribed in a somewhat different manner than men's
lives -- in other words, if social expectations for men and women
continue to be somewhat different. (I haven't said much in support of
that belief in this exchange, but have mostly criticized a particular
conception of freedom.)
muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) writes:
>Okay, let's assume for a minute that, in fact, there isn't anything
>wrong with sex-role stereotypes. I'll echo Lenore's challenge here, and
>ask you to define exactly what sex-role stereotypes you, personally,
>would like to see our society use, at this point in time. As you define
>them, please note why it is that you think they are beneficial.
It's not the sort of issue that lends itself to exhaustive and exact
definitions. "How can we best live together" is not a question with
scientific answers. Some points seem clearer than others, though, so
here are four sex-role stereotypes that I would like everyone to believe
in:
1. It is a specially good thing for the mother to be the primary
caregiver for small children. There are few things a mother of small
children can do that are more valuable than performing that function.
2. If a man takes up with a woman and she becomes pregnant and has a
child, he has a special and very serious responsibility to support the
woman and her child, materially and otherwise.
3. It is particularly bad for a man to act brutally toward a woman.
4. Being a soldier is man's work.
I think 1. is a good stereotype because I think it is good for small
children to be looked after by someone who has the emotional makeup
needed to nurture children and who cares for them as much as she cares
for her own life. The mother is not certain to fit the bill, but she's
more likely to do so than any other candidate. So things are likely to
work out best if social conditions promote mothers looking after
children. The relevant social conditions include things like the
expectations girls grow up with, a general belief that motherhood is a
worthy and admirable occupation, and acceptance of other appropriate
stereotypes.
Stereotype 2. is a good stereotype because it's needed to support
stereotype 1., and because it's good for children to have two adults who
feel unconditionally responsible for their well-being. A father's
feeling of attachment to his children is more artificial than a mother's
(for one thing, he hasn't been carrying the kid around in his body for 9
months). So it helps to have social stereotypes to support it.
Stereotype 3. is a good stereotype because men tend to be more
combatative (as well a physically bigger and stronger) than women.
Women's lesser combatativeness is, I think, partly innate and partly
cultural. The cultural component is a good thing because it is an
aspect of stereotype 1., which is a good thing.
Stereotype 4. is a good thing for reasons stated in my earlier post
(all-male combat units are better) and also because it supports
stereotypes 1., 2., and 3.
It seems to me that all four stereotypes have a lot of support from
women as well as men. People in America in 1992 are rather shy about
publicly affirming stereotype 1., but it matches what most women
actually do. Most married mothers of small children in America do not
have full-time jobs, and I seem to recall that such women on average
only contribute about 20% of their family's cash income. The public
outrage about "deadbeat dads" and the existence of the sorts of things
people complain about in alt.abortion.inequity suggest that stereotype
2. has a lot of support. There seem to be feminists, some of whom may
even post to this newsgroup, who support stereotype 3. And stereotype
4. seems to be held by most military officers as well as (with respect
to combat duty) by a lot of military women.
So I suppose one way of making my point is to say that if most people
actually hold these stereotypes, and if it's hard to find examples of
societies that have rejected 1. and 4, and if even most feminists don't
want to get rid of 2. and 3., and if on the face of it the four
stereotypes collectively promote important benefits with respect to the
way children are raised that can't be achieved any other way, then why
not accept them unless there's some *very* strong reason to reject
them?
>This "dogma" is relatively new. Although the idea has probably come up
>many times, it is only recently that it has gained any wide acceptance.
>So, I think we can look around at our society and see at least one
>result of not believing this (clearly, other sorts of stereotypes
>*could* have evolved, but the ones we have now *did* evolve without the
>idea that they were inherently bad).
We can see results of stereotypes and we can see results of the battle
against stereotypes. Presumably, accepting stereotypes doesn't create
universal bliss and struggling against them doesn't create universal
misery. But if you compare what things were like for a child growing
up in 1962 and what things are like for a child growing up in 1992, I
come out in favor of stereotypes.
>>At any time, I would expect sex-role stereotypes, like
>>other social standards, to tend to evolve toward a state that enables
>>most people to live together in a reasonably productive and satisfactory
>>way under the circumstances that then exist.
>
>And yet, this has not happened, despite hundreds of years of most people
>simply accepting these stereotypes. Can you explain why this is?
I'm not sure what you have in mind here. Nothing is ever perfect, but
things are always better than they might be. The question had been
what stereotypes should exist and the quoted language was part of a
general discussion of how social institutions (including stereotypes)
evolve.
>Isn't it the function of stereotypes, though, to use for criticizing
>people's choices when they are not what the stereotype says they should
>be?
The functions of stereotypes is primarily to support people in doing
what the stereotype says they should do. If what the stereotype says
that people of a particular class should do is something that the
people of that class tend to be better at than other people and if it's
very important that that thing be done reliably and well, then the
stereotype is probably a good one.
>This would seem to work against "people doing what comes naturally."
Man is by nature a rational and social animal. Part of man's rational
nature is forming general beliefs and expectations; part of his social
nature is responding to the expectations of others. In other words,
"people doing what comes naturally" means (among other things) people
forming stereotypes and conforming their behavior to them.
>As a simple example, I find it very natural to be a computer programmer.
>The stereotype of women says that women are not good computer
>programmers. Therefore, I find it harder to convince people that I am a
>good progammer, since they sometimes don't even bother to look at my
>work, they just *know* "woman=bad programmer" from the stereotype.
The only way anyone could be convinced of anything whatever about me in
a finite amount of time is with the help of thousands of preconceived
notions about how "things like Jim Kalb" tend to act. So your objection
can't be that people treat you based on preconceived notions that are
sometimes erroneous; it's that their preconceived notions are somewhat
different for men and women. But if men and women tend to be different
in particular ways, as a rational matter it's right that the
preconceived notions should be different. And if social stereotypes are
in fact beneficial, it's right in other ways as well.
>How would you feel about, for example, Lenore getting together with me
>and making up a set of stereotypes, sex roles, and standard occupation
>lists for everyone? I say this because I imagine that just two of us
>could probably negotiate any differences we might have. If you propose
>that *everyone* gets to contribute, then how are differences resolved?
The same way the meanings of words get determined. The ones that
people generally, or at least the people you want to deal with, accept
are the ones it will be easiest for you to go along with. Even in the
absence of formal procedures words come to have accepted meanings that
are quite exact.
>If I feel that it makes sense for me to be a programmer, but I cannot
>find any manager who feels the same way, that would make it rather
>difficult, again, for me to "do what comes naturally."
There are thousands of managers, each with his own view of things, and
no law against feminists setting up their own businesses and becoming
managers themselves. So if none of them feel the same way you do
there's probably something odd about your feeling. You might be right
and the rest of the world wrong, of course. But I don't see how society
can be organized to guarantee that the individual who is in the right
can prevail when the rest of the world is wrong.
muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) writes:
In article <1992Nov25.103205.27383@panix.com> jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>>The issue for you seems to be force.
>
>Not really. The issue is a certain kind of force, where roles are
>enforced by soceital pressures to the detriment of a large number of the
>members of that society.
You seem to identify the expectations that people have about how men
and women will and should act, and actions based on those expectations,
as "force". It seems to me that using the word in such an unusual way
hinders rather than helps understanding.
>>Under the circumstances, why wouldn't it be best to take to take the
>>most obvious form of force -- legal compulsion -- out of the picture
>>and let the social mores of the future arise out of the interactions
>>people have when they are guided by their own feelings as to what is
>>appropriate? Specifically, if force is the concern why wouldn't we be
>>better off if the laws against sex discrimination were repealed?
>
>For the same reason we would not be better off if laws against murder
>were repealed, and we just depended on everyone's good nature to keep us
>from being killed.
Murder is a clear example of force, which (for example) preferring to
hire men rather than women to work in your auto repair shop is not.
Also, almost everyone rejects the idea of being killed, while not
everyone rejects the idea of living at least to some extent in
accordance with socially-defined sex roles. Murder does not pervade
all aspects of our way of life, while socially-defined sex roles do.
So it seems to me that laws against murder are a poor analogy to laws
against sex discrimination.
>If our society determines that some behavior is societially
>undesirable, it makes laws not to change people's basic willingness to
>do such things, but to discourage them from doing it because the
>penalties outweigh the advantages.
Here you seem to say that if something is bad it's OK to use force to
discourage it. Fair enough. The obvious issues are whether the thing
is really bad, whether if it's sometimes bad it's also sometimes good,
whether forbidding it has costs that outweigh the benefits, and so on.
In article <1992Dec1.224228.15868@leland.Stanford.EDU> farthing@leland.Stanford.EDU (ljf) writes:
>
>I think this brings up an interesting point that obviously some people
>consider newsgroups less of a sharing of experiences than competition
>to undo their "opponents." Other people look to a newsgroup as a
>sharing and perhaps getting away from the endless competition in real
>life.
Aren't there other possibilities, though? Some people might consider a
newsgroup a forum for examining, testing and developing ideas. Since a
good idea makes sense of experience and also stands up to objections,
such people would find value in both sharing of experience and
competitive debate.
It's true that competitive debate degenerates when it's motivated by
the desire to win and nothing more. It's also true that a combatative
atmosphere makes people feel less free to express their real feelings
on a subject. You have to make the best of what you can get, though,
and if a poster makes a legitimate point the most productive thing (if
you can stomach it) may be to deal with the point and ignore the manner
of expression. Otherwise, the best thing to do is to put him in your
KILL file -- it's impossible to enforce standards of good manners in a
forum as open as a USENET alt.* group.
For example -- the substantive point Mr. Sheaffer made in his famous
"hothouse flower" posting was that if we accept that men and women tend
to do some things differently and that a particular style of doing
things is not equally good for all purposes (and people who complain
about the manner in which men carry on discussions presumably accept
both points), then we ought to admit that men and women have different
characteristic strengths and weaknesses. If that's true, though, it
seems likely that men would tend to be better at some things than women
and that not all differences in the relative success of men and women
would be attributable to discrimination.
Any comments on the substantive point?
lynch@ils.nwu.edu (Richard Lynch) writes:
>I don't think there are *no* inherent differences. I *know* there are
>inherent differences. By equality I don't mean no sex-role
>stereotypes, because with inherent differences there will always be
>stereotypes. Nor am I trying to claim no difference in expectations.
>
>I guess I just mean a world where a man or woman could generally count
>on just treatment wrt gender.
But if there are inherent differences that lead to justifiable sex-role
stereotypes and differing expectations, it appears that just treatment
would not necessarily be equal treatment. If the sexes really are
different, it might be just to assign them differing rights and
obligations, so long as on the whole one sex was not unfairly burdened
or advantaged compared to the other.
Does that make any sense to you?
In article levine@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Lenore Levine) writes:
>So I ask him, and other anti-feminists:
>
>Tell us, in as specific detail as possible, what kind of society
>you would like to see. Would it be something like 1950's
>America? 1992 Japan? Biblical Judaea? The France of Louis XV?
I would like to see a society in which the dogma that there is
something wrong in principle with sex-role stereotypes has been
abandoned.
It's impossible to predict exactly how our existing stereotypes would
evolve in the future if that dogma were given up. Social standards of
any kind arise out of thousands of things, some of which (e.g., the
level of technology) are very different at different times, and some of
which (e.g., the average innate inclinations and capacities of men and
women) stay pretty much the same. At any time, I would expect sex-role
stereotypes, like other social standards, to tend to evolve toward a
state that enables most people to live together in a reasonably
productive and reasonably satisfactory way under the circumstances that
then exist.
Presumably the sex-role stereotypes of the future would reflect things
like longer life, lower infant mortality, domestic labor-saving
devices, and all the rest of it. Presumably they would also associate
men more with public roles and women more with domestic roles and
childcare -- in every society that has ever existed the sex-role
stereotypes have done that, so I would expect the same to happen in our
society in the future if people ignore dogma and do what comes
naturally.
>What occupational roles do you think women should mainly play?
Whatever people generally feel makes sense. As a first step toward
letting the various concerns relating to this issue find their own
equilibrium, I would propose repealing all legislation concerning sex
discrimination in employment.
>Do you think women should continue to be as concerned with
>their appearance as they are now?
I wish they wouldn't, but it's up to them. One issue here is that to
the extent women take part in the public sphere they will compete with
each other, and that will lead to women comparing their appearance to
that of other women. They may find the game worth the candle, however.
>To what extent should women be integrated into the armed forces?
>The House and Senate?
>In what way, and for what reasons, should women *not* be allowed
>to do what makes decent common sense with their lives? Is it
>ever important, to the general welfare of the culture, to thus
>restrict them?
>
>How does the changing ecology and economy affect these answers?
joltman@doctor-pepper.ai.mit.edu (T. Andy Frakes) writes:
>What is the GOVERNMENT going to do about family values?!? Was Bush
>going to come into everyone's house and teach parents how to raise
>their kids? I can see why he 86'ed that idea, although I don't know
>what took him so long. Can ANYONE tell me what Bush's plan was to
>create better family values in the US?
What's the problem supposed to be? The government can't promote family
values very directly, but on the other hand the government can't
promote prosperity very directly either, and everyone seems to think
the government should have an economic policy.
Apart from the government role in education (in which the public
schools inevitably teach the values that the people in charge think
will be to the advantage of society), the most government can do is to
avoid undermining family values. After all, the point of family values
is that it is better for people to rely as much as possible on small
traditional or informal institutions that they are immediately part of
than on big bureaucracies that it's hard to feel much attachment to.
I don't know what specific plan Bush had if any -- he was never big on
the vision thing. Here are a few things that come to mind, though:
1. As I understand the welfare rules, a teenage girl who wants to
establish herself in the world can get enough government support to
live on in her own apartment if she has an illegitimate child. The
effect of such rules is to undermine family values. That effect would
be change if the rules changed.
2. The radical feminist view that sex role differences as such are
unjust and should be eliminated is opposed to family values, but has
been influential in setting government policy and in the law. If that
view were abandoned, government policy and law would have to change.
To pick a couple of random examples, statistical sex disparities would
no longer persuade courts that something wrong was going on and the
stories of princesses and knights that you run into in schoolbooks
would no longer feature exclusively can-do princesses and bumbling
knights.
3. The gay liberationist view that the male-female bond for mutual
support, establishment of a household and rearing of children should
have no special status is opposed to family values. Accordingly, a
government that wanted to promote family values would not institute
measures intended to promote equal respect for other sorts of
arrangements (for example, antidisrimination laws or "education for
diversity" in the public schools).
4. Under the law in many places it is much easier to get rid of a wife
you're tired of than a tenant or an employee you don't like. If family
values ruled, those laws would change.
Maybe I should clarify what I mean by family values. By "family
values" I mean the attitudes and institutions that promote the
existence and success of families. By "family" I mean primarily a
socially-recognized union of a man, a woman and their children of the
sort I alluded to in 3. above. I myself favor family values because I
don't think the family as so defined is replaceable as an institution
for raising children and for connecting individuals to society.
solan@math.uio.no (Svein Olav Nyberg) writes:
> As far as I can see, your so-called "good news" (the english
>translate of "evangelium"!) means putting equal value on every human
>being, which again implies some sort of collectivism. I don't think that's
>in _anyone's_ interest.
But if collectivism (by which I understand extensive government
regulation of society) is in no-one's interest, why wouldn't it be
rejected by someone who values every human being?
More generally, it does not immediately follow from valuing something
that the promotion of that thing should be a responsibility of the
government.
starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
>FIJA advocates . . . want juries to pay more attention to the law. They
>want the jurors judgement to extend to include the law and its
>application. Since this is not common practice today, if it were that
>would be more attention to the law, not ignorance . . . Furthermore, no
>one is arguing that jurors NOT judge the facts of a case, merely that
>the law be judged as well.
Would this apply to civil suits as well, for example to complicated
commercial litigations? If so, the likely result would be that a
contract (or the Uniform Commercial Code) would not be enforced
according to its terms, but rather in accordance with the judgement of a
group of laymen about how it would be fair under the circumstances for
company A to treat company B, or for companies A and B to treat
consumers. The consequence would be to make the workings of the legal
system much less predictable -- definitely bad for business.
Of course, saying something is bad for business does not end the
discussion. The point seemed worth bringing out in a generally pro-
capitalist newsgroup, though.
craig@b11.ingr.com (Craig Presson) writes:
>I believe that a jury's verdict, although it may take many factors into
>consideration, must be squarely within the four corners of the suit. So
>a jury, called upon to decide if party A is in violation of its contract
>with party B, can not come back with a verdict of "yes, but the contract
>should have been written like *this* ..."
Is your view consistent with the view that the jury should determine the
law as well as the facts? I would have thought that under jury
nullification the jury could decide that formal legal authorities
requiring compliance with contracts lead to unfair results and decline
to enforce contracts as written.
Also -- under jury nullification could juries decline to follow the rule
requiring proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt? Could prosecutors
try to persuade juries to do so? Or if it seems odd to have prosecutors
urge the nullification of the law, why not let the victim or his family
(or their lawyer) address the jury and advise them of their power to
ignore any deficiencies of proof if they find that such exist?
isbell@ai.mit.edu (Charles L Isbell) writes:
>I'll wait for the ripples of indignation over legacies, sports
>preferences, and geographical preferences.
People don't mind legacies, sports preferences and geographical
preferences because they are policies adopted by particular institutions
that the people in charge of things on the spot think will help the
institution. People would get a lot more annoyed if the government
required such preferences. Similarly, there would be a lot less
resentment about AA if participation in AA were the voluntary choice of
the institutions involved.
Also -- sports preferences lead to jokes about "dumb jocks", and people
aren't inclined to take very seriously the rich boy who got in because
his dad paid for the new gymnasium. There are grounds other than
ignorance or malice for that kind of prejudice, even though some
athletes and some rich people are very, very smart, because such
preferences mean that a jock or a rich boy chosen at random will likely
be dumber than average, and the very dumbest people at the school will
be made up quite disproportionately of jocks and legacies. Do the
people who would benefit by AA want there to be the same grounds for the
same prejudices as to them?
From: cash@convex.com (Peter Cash)
>Do you mean that evil (if it is such a "polar opposite") is _logically_
>necessary--that it doesn't make sense to postulate a world without
>evil, a world that's purely good? I've heard people say this, but I
>don't see why it should be so . . . Could it be that people who think
>evil is logically necessary think that every bit of good has to be
>balanced by an equal measure of evil? I can see no reason to think so,
>other than a devotion to some abstract idea of cosmic balance . . . Of
>course, it might be that people who think evil logically necessary
>believe that nothing can be _entirely_ good because an entirely good
>thing would be perfect, and perfection is impossible.
I always understood the point to be that an evaluative concept like
"good" doesn't have much of a function unless some things are better
than others. But you could just as well describe a situation in which
some things are better than others as one in which some things are worse
than others, or in which some things are good and others bad.
>Pain isn't necessarily evil. There are people who are incapable of
>feeling pain--they can't tell when they are touching a hot frying pan,
>and tend to slice their fingers into the salad.
I would have thought that "good" pain (the kind that keeps us from
slicing our fingers into the salad) is a necessary evil -- one that
prevents worse evil.
biesel@thrall.sim.es.com (Heiner Biesel) writes:
>True evil would require a certain kind of self-lessness, a desire to
>sacrifice self-interest to the greater cause of evil, a willingness to
>suffer in the service of destruction and pain. Very few non-deranged
>individuals could engage in this kind of dedicated effort.
Is destructiveness for the sake of destructiveness so rare? It seems
quite common to me, although it rarely has the heroic qualities
suggested by the terms "willingness to suffer" and "dedicated effort".
At any rate, it's common enough to inspire proverbial expressions ("dog-
in-the-manger attitude" or "cutting off your nose to spite your face").
Vandalism and the idle cruelty of children are examples of
destructiveness that's not motivated by self-seeking in any very
concrete sense. It's true that the vandals or children may take
pleasure in their misbehaviour, but it seems to me that the pleasure is
a consequence of the love of destructiveness rather than the reverse.
Also, why couldn't it be truly evil to sacrifice others for the sake of
one's own interests? It seems to me that a contract killer, for
example, makes his living in a truly evil way.
>Rather, it seems to me that pain and evil are inseparable, whether that
>pain is the sharp stab of agony, the empty feeling of despair, or the
>philosophical pain of weltschmerz. Almost by definition, an evil act
>must be painful, if only to the actor.
It seems to me that the man who poisons his wife for the insurance money
does something evil even if the action doesn't pain either him or his
wife (he hates her, he really wants the money, and he uses a poison that
acts painlessly).
cash@convex.com (Peter Cash) writes:
>In article biesel@thrall.sim.es.com (Heiner
>Biesel) writes:
>>I want to distinguish between acts
>>that result in some evil consequence - acts anyone can commit, for any
>>reason - and inherentl, conscious evil; otherwise I cannot distinguish
>>between intent and result, and between the merely bad or painful, and
>>the truly evil.
>You seem to be saying that . . . evil must be done for its own sake,
>and not for pleasure or gain. You are envisioning a sort of sainthood
>of the evil: people who do evil for entirely selfless reasons out of an
>idealistic dedication to some dark principle. If we accept this
>definition, then _of course_ no one ever does evil; in fact, there's no
>further point to the discussion.
Is it really impossible for someone to do something wrong just because
it's wrong? My impression is that it's not all that uncommon, although
it rarely attains the degree of heroism suggested by the word
"sainthood". Augustine spends a few pages of his Confessions worrying
about an escapade he engaged in when he was 16 in which he and some
other boys stole some pears that they had no use or desire for, simply
for the sake of stealing them. From the saying "stolen fruit is sweet"
I infer that he was not the only person ever to find that it can be part
of the appeal of an action that it violates justified rules.
>As for children, I don't see why they can't do evil. In fact, I
>remember doing something evil when I was about four or five. I was
>playing with a group of children, and I persecuted another little boy
>so that the others would accept me as part of the "in" crowd.
Other children have swung cats around by the tail without any ulterior
motive, but simply because they enjoyed making the animal suffer. So if
someone wants to define "evil conduct" as "conduct proceeding from the
desire to do something cruel, or destructive, or otherwise wrong, rather
than the intention of attaining some good", then it seems to me that the
definition applies to something real. I would say, though, that other
acts (like murder for hire) can be evil as well, so the definition is
too narrow.
>>Consider the following: an act cannot be truly good if it is motivated
>>by self-interest. If I contibute to a charity because I believe that I
>>may require its services at some future time, of because I expect tax
>>deductions, etc. I do not perform a truly "good" act. Only when I
>>perform such an act because I am moved by the moral imperative of the
>>"ought" behind the act do I perform a truly "good" act. If you accept
>>this, then the corollary follows for an evil act: it, too, must come
>>not from any self-interest, but rather from a clear perception of the
>>"ought" that prohibits the act, and a conscious choice to transgress
>>the "ought".
I believe Kant himself observes someplace that one could doubt that
anyone had ever performed an act that was good by Kant's definition.
Similarly, one could doubt that anyone had ever performed an evil act on
Heiner Biesel's account of what such an act would be. My own view is
that motives are very difficult to untangle, but (1) understanding an
act as morally good is often one of the efficient motives for performing
the act, and (2) understanding an act as morally bad can also be one of
the efficient motives for performing the act.
I would be inclined to say that to do evil is freely and knowingly to
choose what is grossly wrong. That definition would cover both contract
killers and hypothetical saints of evil while letting small children and
petty vandals off the hook, at least to some degree.
cash@convex.com (Peter Cash) writes:
[I had written:]
>JK Augustine spends a few pages of his Confessions worrying about an
>JK escapade he engaged in when he was 16 in which he and some other
>JK boys stole some pears that they had no use or desire for, simply
>JK for the sake of stealing them.
>The example is fine by me, but I think Heiner will object. He wouldn't
>admit that it is an example of "pure" evil. St. Augustine drew delight
>from the stealing of the pears, you see, and this makes the evil
>"impure". A pure act of evil would have been one in which St. Augustine
>stole the pears, even though the act evoked nothing but loathing in
>him.
Is that really the view Heiner presented? (He will speak for himself,
of course.) I know Kant sometimes talks in an analogous way with
respect to doing good, but that always seemed unnecessary to me. It
should be enough to satisfy Kantian ethics that understanding an act as
required by rational moral principle is a sufficient motive for doing
it; the circumstance that the actor has good moral character and usually
takes pleasure in doing good things may make it harder to determine the
moral value of his actions, but should not detract from that value if he
would have done the same thing even if (for example) he had a toothache
and wasn't taking pleasure in anything.
From this perspective, the question becomes whether people sometimes do
things simply because they don't fit into any possible rational scheme
of things in which other people act the same way. I think the answer is
"yes". It's common to think of oneself as special in some way that
can't be articulated, and of ordinary moral obligations as things that
are mostly for other people. For many people there's a temptation to
give that understanding of oneself concrete substance by gratuitously
violating moral rules. It seems to me that the Christian view of pride
as the supreme sin is related to this understanding of evil. The
closest Augustine comes to explaining why he stole the pears is to
suggest that he might have done it to "mimic a maimed liberty by doing
with impunity things unpermitted me, a darkened likeness of Thy
Omnipotency". (I don't like the translation either, but at the moment
it's all I have available.)
As an aside, I don't think it explains much to attribute Augustine's
theft to the delight he took in theft. (Not that you're clearly doing
that.) As he observes, theft is not by nature delightful in the way a
pear might be. So an explanation of his motives should include an
explanation of why he found delight in stealing.
>JK My own view is that motives are very difficult to untangle, but (1)
>JK understanding an act as morally good is often one of the efficient
>JK motives for performing the act, and (2) understanding an act as
>JK morally bad can also be one of the efficient motives for performing
>JK the act.
>Here's where some more examples would come in handy.
Keeping a promise which you don't much feel like keeping and could break
with impunity is an example of (1); Augustine and the pears is an
example of (2).
>JK I would be inclined to say that to do evil is freely and knowingly
>JK to choose what is grossly wrong.
>Can't evil be done unintentionally? Can't the slide into doing wrong be
>gradual and almost imperceptible? Suppose a television evangelist
>starts out honest and full of good intentions. Gradually, he starts to
>. . . [sad story deleted] . . . after a while, the evangelist becomes
>yet another greedy rich TV preacher . . .
It seems to me that the greater the clarity of the choice the greater
the evil. Even though the preacher never said "I hereby choose freely
and knowingly to become corrupt" I would imagine that he freely and
knowingly did a great many things that together meant corruption.
People aren't on automatic pilot 100% of the time. Also, we are
inclined to give "should have known" a moral weight similar to "knew",
possibly because we believe that "should have known" probably means
either "did in fact know" or "intentionally ignored".
>My point is that there is a fine line between petty foibles, self-
>deception, incompetence and evil. You don't have to be a comic-book
>nazi to do evil--nice people like you and me do evil too.
"Evil" seems to suggest something worse than ordinary bad conduct.
Heiner's suggestion was to apply it to cases in which the action is
motivated by evil as such. Mine was to limit it to cases in which
conduct is particularly bad and culpability particularly clear. I'm not
sure what you would do. I agree that human motives are tangled and
difficult to assess. One response to that situation is to reserve the
word "evil" for comic-book nazis and other gross and indubitable cases
that almost everyone agrees on. Such cases are rare. Another
possibility is to view evil as something that can enter into the conduct
of nice people. But then it's hard to know when it's present, except
sometimes through reflection on our own conduct. It's also difficult to
distinguish it from bad conduct in general.
logic@arkham.wimsey.bc.ca (Ken Tupper) writes:
>jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>> I would be inclined to say that to do evil is freely and knowingly to
>> choose what is grossly wrong.
>I cannot help but wonder how one is supposed to "know" what is
>*grossly* wrong.
The suggested definition says nothing about the justification for a
judgement that something is wrong or evil. The definition is pointless,
of course, if the words "wrong" and "evil" are meaningless. Is that
your view?
>However, one cannot deny that one hopes to become "morally enlightened"
>in the future . . . I prefer to believe that there are no such things
>as right and wrong, that things just *are*.
Is what you cannot deny consistent with what you prefer to believe?
A few thoughts on the general subject of multiculturalism:
A truly multicultural democracy is an impossibility, and measures
ostensibly taken to advance the establishment of such a social order in
fact serve other goals.
A free state is one in which the people freely cooperate for public
goals. Such a state can exist only if among the citizens there is a
feeling of reciprocal obligation and substantial agreement on the
appropriate means and ends of government. Freedom requires more
cultural cohesion than tyranny, because the citizens must share a way of
life with respect to fundamental matters affected by public affairs.
In the past, ethnicity or religion typically provided the common way of
life necessary for political freedom. In the modern liberal state,
however, ethnicity and religion are thought to be politically
irrelevant, and the political and social order is thought to be one in
which people are free to choose how they will live.
However, there is in fact a common way of life that makes it possible
for the liberal state to exist and have free institutions. That way of
life is that of the consumer society, and is based on work and
consumption -- the production and distribution of transferable goods and
the satisfaction of desires through such goods. In this way of life the
value of life is taken to lie in the alternation of work and
consumption, the moral ideal is to secure satisfying work and
consumption for everyone, and things such as religion that can neither
be transferred nor produced in any very straightforward way are treated
as private, subjective and dispensable.
The threats to the way of life of the consumer society are the threats
to the liberal state. These include remnants of traditional society,
based on such things as family, ethnicity and religion, that involve
values that are not transferable and are concerned with something other
than the satisfaction of the desires individuals happen to have. More
generally, any value thought to transcend hedonism and equality in
importance is a threat to liberalism. What is called openness and
multiculturalism serves to ward off these threats. Its function is to
undercut acceptance of any ethnic and religious tradition and any
recognition of distinctions in value that might point the way to a
manner of living not based on egalitarian hedonism.
Accordingly, openness and multiculturalism are not unrestricted. One
who is loyal to modern liberalism can not be open to the possibility
that loyalty to a particular social group is really a virtue or that
some tastes are really better than others. Since liberalism (like any
governing social philosophy) claims to be authoritative for everyone
while being the outlook of a particular social group that views its own
way of life as better than others, such relativism leads to obvious
difficulties.
Like other governing parties, liberals have avoided such difficulties by
dogmatism or other forms of the refusal to think. Accordingly, liberals
refuse to think not only about the transcendent, but even about the most
obvious features of life, such as human inequality and human evil.
Since failure to think about important facts prevents important problems
from being dealt with, it appears that liberalism (like other governing
philosophies) will eventually dig its own grave. In the mean time, it
will continue to be officially multicultural while using its authorit to
undercut and trivialize all ways of life except its own.
J5J@psuvm.psu.edu (John A. Johnson) writes:
>Is it necessary for a Platonist to accept the presuppposition,
>"Platonic Rationalism is a valid route to knowledge" in order to "do
>philosophy," or is the Platonist "just hoping" that this approach will
>lead to knowledge?
Presumably, he would have to accept some sort of test for whether what
Platonic Rationalism has led him to is knowledge. The test he accepts
might well be a Platonic Rationalist test, in which case he would be
accepting something like the presupposition you mention, but it might be
something else (e.g. a pragmatic test).
Newsgroups: alt.sex,soc.singles,soc.women
In article <1991Nov5.220150.1@cc.helsinki.fi>, juski@cc.helsinki.fi
writes:
>I might also add that Finnish is among the FEW languages in the world
>where you do not have to worry so much about being "politically
>correct" you see, unlike Indo-European languages we do not have a
>different word for SHE and HE.
There are some Indo-European languages with the same feature. Persian
uses the same words for "he", "she" and "it" (the word varies depending
on whether the person, place or thing referred to is near or far).
Also, Persian speakers use words meaning "person" or "someone" in
situations in which most English speakers would say "man". So on this
point the Shah and the Ayatollah were as PC as anyone could want.
>Having had an excellent education in a completely public school system, I used
>to doubt that the choice idea had any merits. You post is the first coherent
>argumentation in favor of choice of schools that I find plausible.
Thanks for your note -- the responses I get to the things I post on the
net are usually less pleasant.
It seems to me that the choice idea is usually supported by economic
arguments because such arguments provide the clearest way of explaining
how a system without central control can yield good results. The
problem is that they abstract from the cultural setting, which is a
mistake in dealing with issues like education.
By the way -- I recently saw an article in a magazine here that
suggested that French education is becoming more like American
education. If so, and if the process continues, the discussion may
become more relevant to the situation in Europe.
Once again, it was good to hear from you.
>In a society where no laws protect workers from arbitrary orders and
>dismissal, the power relations between employee and employer are
>significantly different from what they are in the U.S. and most
>industrialized countries today. It _may_ be the case that it's
>more economically efficient to run a fair workplace, but the case
>is by no means proven. It's only the tangled web of legal strictures
>that makes certain authoritarian options (cf most of the 19th
>century) so visibly costly that employers take what is probably
>the best course for them as well.
I would think that if finding and retaining competent and motivated
employees is not all that easy, and if the ones you find are free to
leave and find other jobs, and if there are lots of other employers who
are also looking for competent and motivated employees, then if you are
an employer you are going to try to avoid annoying your employees
unnecessarily. Sexual harassment, by the way, is not an "authoritarian
option" for getting work out of employees -- it's a purely personal
undertaking by an individual supervisor that's plainly contrary to the
interests of almost any organization.
>I'm using "cause" here purely in its unemployment-compensation sense.
>If you're laid off for reasons not having to do with your job performance,
>you're eligible; if you're specifically singled and and fired because
>your boss didn't like something you did, you're not . . .
In the example, Dan was laid off for reasons not having to do with his
job performance.
>[T]he notion of "intelligence" is too vague to mean anything
>interesting unless we define it narrowly to mean "whatever it is the
>I.Q. tests measure" . . .
People say this, but does it make sense? So far as I can tell, we all
believe that some people are more intelligent than others and that we
can often tell who the more intelligent ones are. We also all seem to
believe that intelligence makes a big difference in a lot of settings,
and that we can tell what those settings are (USENET discussions are an
example). So it's not clear to me why saying "do X because it will
make people more intelligent" makes no sense. Why is it less
comprehensible than saying "do X because it will promote public
health"?
pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis) writes:
>As a participant in the UK educational system, and a watcher of the
>French one, I can't say that any of these [free market] "solutions"
>correspond to the methods used in those countries to enable their
>schools to outperform US ones.
>In the UK, I was taught calculus at 13. I studied material in high
>school that is considered college sophomore level here. Our buildings
>were drab and run down and our teacher/student ratios were bad.
>However, an atmosphere that made education a worthy goal instead of
>either (i) just another commodity or (ii) something to keep potential
>truants off the streets went a lot further than hashed versions of a
>Friedman-esque voucer/choice system.
In England and France people seem to be more comfortable with the idea
of an intellectual and cultural elite (and of authority generally) than
we are here. As a result, their state educational systems are able to
emphasize things like intellectual achievement at which some students
excel and others do very poorly, rather than accomodating every pressure
group that has its own idea of what education should be about. In
America we don't like authority and we have no special admiration for
intellectual distinction, so our schools drift and a lot of money and
hand-wringing result in very little in the way of results.
Our schools are not going to be like English or French schools because
we are not like the English or French. The question is what can be done
to improve our schools given our national character. To the extent our
schools are bad because people want a lot of different things from them
that conflict with each other and we are incapable of saying that some
of these things (intellectual achievement?) are better than others
(sports? reassurance that we're all above average?), then maybe the
answer is to let people chose schools based on what they find important
themselves. It seems to me that the alternative to recognition of
authority as an organizing principle is freedom of choice. At present,
both are absent from American schools.
zursch@whizkid.corp.sgi.com (Jeff Zurschmeide) writes:
>Well, yes, although I wouldn't call working in a Lowell, MA, textile
>mill to be comparable with a job as a contract programmer in Cupertino.
>No objective assessment can ignore the concept of Wage Slavery.
Lowell might not be the best example of Wage Slavery. Read some of the
glowing reports by Charles Dickens and other 19th century visitors
about how well off the textile workers were there.
cmf851@huxley.anu.edu.au (Albert Langer) writes:
>Employ = use = exploit . . . Unlike land, workers are sentient
>conscious beings who can be expected to become aware that they are
>being used and to object to that.
I don't understand this. If I am sick and go to a doctor and pay him
for his services I suppose I am using him as a means to the end of
regaining my health. Am I exploiting him? Would I be exploiting him
less if I didn't pay him? Even if he performed the services gratis
(voluntarily or otherwise) or was paid by the state, it seems to me I
would be using him as a means to my end.
>Likewise [buying and selling labor power] will not continue for ever .
>. . What is so permanent about buying and selling labour power? What is
>so permanent about buying and selling?
Obviously there are methods other than the market for organizing
production (slavery, for example). Do you know of another way that
would work if lots of divergent goals are available and people are to
be allowed to pursue whichever ones they choose? It seems to me that
if the goals really are divergent, and people are free to decline to
support each other's goals, then the obvious way for them to cooperate
is to pay each other for doing so.
>Likewise the relation of employer to employer [sic -- I believe
>"employee" was meant] explains the ownership of capital, not the other
>way round.
How does this explanation work in the case of an enterprise like IBM
that is (I believe) mostly owned by pension funds, and certainly is not
owned to any large extent by its managers? Also, does it create any
issues that the employer/employee relationship exists in businesses
(law firms, for example) in which the ownership of capital is not of
much importance?
>Of course once the "working stiffs" who "only work here" come to
>believe that it is their "human right" not to have bosses and to
>cooperatively operate the social means of production they created for
>their own benefit rather than as employees of any "owners", then
>capitalism would not last any longer than the company towns did.
Under present legal arrangements, the working stiffs are entirely free
to establish enterprises on a cooperative basis (as partnerships, for
example). One problem in doing so is that enterprises in many lines of
business can't be run efficiently if the only capital goods (I assume
that's the meaning of "social means of production") available to the
enterprise are those created by the workers currently associated with
it. So someone else has to provide the capital goods, and whoever
provides them will want something in return. Another problem is that
even if the workers are able to create the necessary capital goods they
will have different interests regarding present and future consumption
that will lead some to prefer to withdraw more or less of their share
of current production for current consumption. If they are permitted
to follow their preferences the likely outcome is that some of the
workers will end up as owners while others will remain working stiffs
all their lives.
Thanks for the note, Chris.
>I really don't see how you can believe that the people you're talking
>about will be enough, since in the (un-"liberal") past there were
>always children who were left un-cared for. With the demographic
>changes of the past few decades, I see no reason to believe that
>"caring" has increased; nor do I see any reason to believe that
>changes in laws would affect people's sense of responsibility
>towards others.
There were far more actual orphans in the past and far less wealth.
The problem now is social orphans (your "demographic changes"), and my
claim is that the demographic changes that have lead to that problem
haven't happened in a vacuum. They have depended among other things on
the material conditions of life. If people find they can get by from
year to year without the family then the family will wither as an
institution that people can rely on in practical matters and there will
be more social orphans. Fundamental changes in the legal order -- for
example, the adoption or rejection of the welfare state -- change the
conditions of life and therefore the responsibilities that people take
seriously.
Do you think that the demographic changes in Britain (the rapid
increase in illegitimacy, say, which has a lot to do with the number of
social orphans) have nothing to do with the legal order? I understand
that the Homeless Persons Act of 1977 provided that single mothers got
public housing immediately (rather than waiting in queue like other
people) if they couldn't live with their parents. It seems to me clear
that that, and other measures that change the conditions of life,
cumulatively make the world look very different to people and therefore
lead to very different expectations and very different conduct.
>[P]eople are more self-centred, less willing to give
>money to family members (consider the 1800's, in which people
>supported younger brothers because they were family), and more
>hardened to global starvation (remember, the poor give a higher
>proportion of their income to charity than the rich).
In the 1800's people supported younger brothers because that was the
only way they could be supported in decency. People take
responsibilities to heart if that's the only way the job will be done.
(As an aside, my impression is that the greater proportion of their
income that the poor give to charity has more to do with church
membership than feeding the starving globe. I don't know what that
proves, assuming I'm right.)
>I feel that we're talking at cross purposes. I'm not sure that
>suffering is inevitable; I am sure that accidents happen, and that
>people are not always the determiners of their own fate. [Consider
>someone who breaks a leg.] I do believe that people who feel
>themselves to be always at a disadvantage will not progress;
>I also believe that people who try hard are more likely to succeed.
>So I would never deny that individual virtue is, well, a virtue;
>but it's not enough to solve the problems that we face. Does
>that make sense?
It seems to me that while each instance of suffering may be avoidable,
the existence of suffering in general is not. Suffering can not be
managed away by perfecting the social order because people make their
own lives and they often make them badly, and because people find it
hard to learn except from their mistakes. So since suffering can't be
managed away and since people's lives are mostly what they make of
them, the best that can be done is to promote the growth of habits that
will lead people to manage their own lives well. Clear acceptance of
the principle that people have real responsibilities that will lead to
real problems if they are not met seems to me the only way to promote
such habits in a society like ours. (Things would be different in a
tribal society, in which everyone was constantly being supervised by
everyone else, but that's not what we have and that's not what anyone
wants except maybe some members of the religious right.)
You are right, of course, that individual virtue can't do everything.
My claim is only that it can do most of what can be done and without it
there is no hope. If people can't keep themselves sufficiently in
order to be able to do a tolerable job of looking after their children,
for example, the future is black no matter what social welfare programs
the government institutes.
Jim
Hi, Chris --
>I'd say the main factor that affected the status of the family is
>vastly increased mobility; e.g. my brother is in Seattle and my mother
>in Florida.
I don't think so. The reason for increased mobility is that travel and
communication are easier, so I doubt that it is more difficult than it
used to be to keep in touch with family members or to help them in time
of need. My mother (in fact) lives in Scotland, but I can call her on
the telephone any time and if need be I can be with her in 24 hours.
>If I understand your social orphans at all, they tend to correlate with
>fewer material resources, and so less mobility; maybe I just don't see
>what you're saying here.
You seem to be saying that the class of people who suffer most from
family disorganization is a class that is not very mobile. That might
be true, but it's not easily consistent with your statement first
quoted above. So I'm at a loss as to your meaning as well.
>I tend to think that changes in the legal order follow changes in
>society much more than drive them; e.g. the welfare state was a
>response to something that was already going on. With this view
>of the causality, trying to change society by changing laws is
>the tail wagging the dog. I don't deny there is *some* effect;
>but it's much smaller and less clear cut than you seem to suggest.
Obviously, the laws and other circumstances interact. If one asks what
can be done, though, it's important that the laws are easier to control
consciously than other things and you never know what you will succeed
in doing until you try.
>> Do you think that the demographic changes in Britain (the rapid
>> increase in illegitimacy, say, which has a lot to do with the number of
>> social orphans) have nothing to do with the legal order?
>
>Yes, people started feeling that the official state of marriage
>wasn't worth bothering with. [There are many two parent families
>that just haven't bothered to get married.]
In 1979, Britain's illegitimacy rate was 10.6% of all births. In 1982
it was 14.1%, in 1985 18.9%, and in 1988 25.6%. Is it your view that
these changes simply reflect an uncaused change of heart? Why do you
suppose the change of heart was greatest among people at the bottom of
the income scale? It seems to me there must be some better explanation
for a sudden large change that affects some classes more than others in
a relation of life that has always been basic from both an emotional
and a practical point of view.
The suggestion that the decline in the formal state of marriage doesn't
reflect changes in the reality of how people actually deal with each
other seems very dubious to me. That's certainly not the way things
are with the people among whom I live (by and large -- there are always
exceptions) and I've never seen any indications that things are
different elsewhere.
>> I understand
>> that the Homeless Persons Act of 1977 provided that single mothers got
>> public housing immediately . . .
>
>I know of nobody who got pregnant for that reason, though I know
>a couple people who took advantage of it. I think that the
>alternatives, which is raising babies without a home or with
>resentful parents, is a lot worse.
I wouldn't claim that people consciously get pregnant for such a
reason, only that such laws cumulatively change the way the world looks
overall, so that what once seemed a disaster to most young women
(having a child out of wedlock) starts to seem not so bad and even
better than a lot of other things. People aren't particularly
calculating about things like having children, but what they do is
strongly influenced by their understanding of what the world is like
and what they see happening to people who do one thing or another.
I don't doubt that if a young woman has had a baby out of wedlock and
has resentful parents things are likely to go better if she has a place
of her own. But having babies out of wedlock and shaky relations
between parents and children aren't things that come out of nowhere.
The issue is whether the welfare state makes those things more common,
and if so whether the damage that the welfare state does to traditional
and informal social relations outweighs the benefits it confers when
those relations fail.
>I'm all in favour of that. I don't see the existence of social
>safetynets as inconsistent with this, though, unless they're really
>badly designed.
I'm not sure what a well designed social safety net would look like.
(That's mostly a true confession of ignorance.) If the net is high
enough to guarantee people a materially decent life, it seems to me
that it's too high. For example, it seems to me clear that our AFDC,
and your Homeless Persons Act, which in effect tell girls who don't
like their home life that they can escape from it by having an
illegitimate child, are bad things. Eliminating such laws would cause
some suffering. Nonetheless, it seems to me that in the long run it's
worse to have them. Similar comments probably wouldn't apply to
everything that's viewed as part of the social safety net, but they
would apply to a lot of it.
>Most people *want* to be responsible; they just don't know how, or
>they're in a situation where they can't do anything.
People learn to be responsible by accepting that they will have to live
with the consequences of their own acts, and by imitating those around
them who have already become responsible. If people are shielded from
the consequences of their acts they will be in a situation in which
they can't do anything significant because acting and not acting have
the same result.
>In either case, the lack of a safetynet just means that people suffer.
The lack of a safety net obviously means that some people will suffer.
The word "just" is wrong, though -- it suggests that suffering is the
only consequence of the lack of a safety net. That's not so, though.
The actions of individuals and the customs of a community will be
different if there is no safety net -- people will be more careful to
look out after themselves and others.
>I don't see personal motivation as a problem, except in materially
>wealthy families and those forced to be dependent for years through no
>fault of their own.
If material wealth affects personal motivation why wouldn't the
availability of social welfare programs? Both reduce the direct
connection between effort and reward. Also, your sentence seems to
suggest that personal motivation is a problem for faultless dependent
people, but not for dependent people who (like many of us) have faults.
I'm not sure why that should be so.
I would agree that in many cases it's not exactly personal motivation
that's needed, but rather the grasp of practicalities and the habits
that are needed to take somewhat vague intentions and wishes and turn
them into coherent, consistent and effective action. But that grasp of
practicalities and those habits are developed by having real
responsibilities and not otherwise.
Maybe I should say something about the background of my views. I live
in a very mixed neighborhood in Brooklyn (part of New York City). I've
lived next door and across the street and down the block from a great
many people who live sordid and brutal lives, not so much because they
lack money as because their personal lives and their relations with
those around them are hopelessly chaotic. That way of life simply
could not exist in the absence of the welfare system, and contemplating
it has made me doubt whether in the long run the welfare system is
really a benefit.
The welfare states in Europe have a reputation for being much better
run, but it seems to me that how a system works has a lot to do with
the people in it, and you Europeans have a long history of being much
more disciplined than we are here. Of course, since welfare undermines
social discipline (or such is my claim) I expect that sooner or later
you will catch up to us in brutality and social and personal chaos. It
may be sooner rather than later -- British crime rates, for example,
have been increasing very quickly and your rates of property crime are
already at least as high as ours.
I would agree that welfare is not the source of all the evil in the
world, or even of most of it. It seems to me on balance to be the
source of some of it, though. That is why the absence of social
welfare programs does not seem to me to be an objection against the
libertarian state (which I think is where this discussion all began).
I should say that I'm not really a libertarian, and I tend to think
that some portion of the government activities lumped together under
the heading of "welfare" would be consistent with the long-run welfare
of the people. I just don't have a clear idea of which portion, and
suspect the portion may be considerably smaller than most people are
inclined to think.
Jim
pcollac@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Paul Collacchi) writes:
>The effect [of limited liability] was that a corporation is a legal
>entity which is capable of doing damage beyond its value.
A few comments:
1. Every legal entity (including you, me and the United States Federal
government) is capable of doing damage beyond its net worth. The bigger
the entity, the less likely it is for that to happen -- I'm more likely
to be bankrupted by a lawsuit than IBM is. So if your concern is to
have large pools of capital backing business enterprises, so that there
will be enough enough cash around to pay claims, you ought to be pleased
by legal arrangements (like limited liability) that make it possible to
raise large pools of capital.
2. You seem to be mostly concerned with criminal and tort claims. Even
today, it's not common for such claims to bankrupt a company. When
limited liability companies first came into use and for a long time
thereafter that kind of event would have been so rare as to be hardly
worth taking into account.
>Given the existence of partnerships, why the innovation? Obviously to
>provide some form of (financial) protection beyond that afforded by
>partnerships. Why? Protection from what? Obviously the big
>consequences of big actions. The corporate form then allowed for
>"shielded bigness" which meant (potentially) big damage without
>(full)liability for the consequences.
Not protection "from what", but protection for whom. Limited liability
makes it safe for someone who won't know much about or have much control
over what goes on from day to day to invest in a business without having
to worry that buying $1000 of stock in Pan Am is going to lead to the
company's creditors taking away his house when the company goes bust.
Limited liability also means, for example, that pension funds and
insurance companies can invest in equities as well as debt without
putting all of their assets at risk.
>Secondly, damages are usually assessed against a corporation as an
>entity, but not as a 'personal' claim against individual persons
>(owners, officers, directors, employees).
Claimants go for the deep pocket. Suppose IBM were reestablished as a
general partnership of its equitable owners instead of a corporation.
Claimants would have no greater claim against the employees of the
partnership than they do now against the employees of the corporation.
So why would the change make them more likely to go against employees?
>But, the easiest way to imagine the consequences of incorporation is to
>create a thought-experiment where it doesn't exist. Let the model come
>to steady state. What do you think you'd find?
If nothing else changed in the legal system, there would be many fewer
large business enterprises, and those that did exist would be owned by a
few very large individual investors rather than by a large number of
shareholders. Also, businesses would be much more highly leveraged than
they are today because of the difficulty of raising equity capital.
Of course, if limited liability were abolished for corporations (and, I
suppose, for limited partnerships) I would expect there to be
compensating legal changes. For example, tort liability rules would
likely be tightened up since people would no longer feel that it would
be big impersonal corporations that would pay the price for looser
rules.
tmhoff@oogoody.Corp.Sun.COM (Todd Hoff) writes:
>What make sense depends on your value system [ . . . ] You take it as
>true that police, courts, defense, etc. are all necessary. Many
>anarchists will sincerely disagree with you. Many socialists will also
>sincerly disagree with your limits. Many many people are inbetween. So
>now what?
You had posed the issue as a lib saying "I want the government to do the
stuff on list L but not the stuff on list H" and you saying "I want the
government to do the stuff on list H but not the stuff on list L". My
objection was that since list L includes only the things that the
government would have to do in order to be a government at all (that is,
an institution with a near-monopoly on the legitimate use of force),
list H makes no sense unless it includes everything on list L.
You now present a dispute between an anarchist who wants list A (a list
with nothing on it), a lib who wants list L (a list that can't easily be
shortened if the government is to be a government at all) and a
socialist who wants list S (which presumably includes everything on list
L and lots more), and ask how the dispute can be resolved. I assume by
mutual persuasion, and where persuasion fails, by the mixture of
compromise and coercion that characterizes politics. For example, the
anarchist and the socialist might split the difference between them and
accept list L, which is longer than the anarchist wants but shorter than
the socialist wants. Or the anarchist might align himself with the lib
for fear of the socialist, and list L might get adopted over the
socialist's opposition even though two of the three don't like it.
Obviously, arguments of principle would be part of the process of
persuasion. For example, the lib might argue with the anarchist that
the elimination of all government coercion doesn't promote the value
that the lib and the anarchist both prize (freedom) because it leads to
unlimited coercion by private or foreign oppressors. The lib might
argue with the socialist that socialism doesn't work in the long run, or
that when values differ government should use coercion only in support
of values that are generally agreed on (a line of thought that would
lead to a rather short list of government functions).
What's wrong with such a process? Why couldn't it lead to a libertarian
society? Is there something wrong with making arguments of principle as
part of the discussion? Might not some such arguments actually be valid?
>Again, after much protestation, in the end should the government as the last
>resort help the starving family of five? A simple yes or no will do.
No. In the end the Salvation Army as the last resort should help them.
That's why I give the Salvation Army lots of money every year. Do *you*
think the Salvation Army should just let them starve?
You may object, "But by hypothesis they've exhausted all avenues of
help, which would include the Salvation Army." If that objection is
valid, "all avenues of help" would include the government as well, so
your solution of having the government help them is no better than mine.
It seems to me that the real question you're raising is what I should do
if I know about a starving family of five. It escapes me why it's a
necessary truth that what I should do is try to get the government to
help them. Why is the government a more appropriate agent for me to try
to bring into action than the Salvation Army, the United Nations, you
personally, IBM, the family's relatives and neighbors, or the Emir of
Kuwait? If someone wants to say "In the end, X should in the last
resort help starving families", why does the statement make more sense
if X is the government than if X is one of the other possibilities? It
seems to me you don't recognize that these are questions that require
discussion.
>Is not "ethnic purity" the most immutable and self-righteous principle
>you can think of?
I don't see why it's either immutable, self-righteous or a principle.
There are degrees of ethnic purity, so it's not immutable. The slogan
doesn't seem to appeal to any conception of righteousness, so it's not
self-righteous. And nothing in the news makes me think it's a phrase
that's part of some systematic understanding of the world, so it's
doubtful that it's a principle. Apart from that, you may have a point.
>In article <403@thunder.LakeheadU.Ca> skataria@thunder.LakeheadU.Ca
>(skataria) writes:
>>
>> WHAT IS LOVE?
>> Can somebody give me a convincing answer?
>
>Here is a first attepmt at a reading list--
Why not add Stendhal's _Love_?
zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
>In article
>dliebman@terapin.com (David Liebman) writes:
>
>>In article <1992Aug21.114541.14978@husc3.harvard.edu>,
>>zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
>
>MZ:
>>>Perhaps not, but was [an assassin's] action right or wrong, regardless of its
>>>consequences? [ . . . ]
>
>DL:
>>irrespective of consequences? surely you must mean _some_ consequences?
>>[ . . . ] the boundary you propose here seems to lie along an
>>axis of certainty [ . . . ]
MZ:
>Killing is part of any act of assasination simply because it
>is one of the faktors which make the act what it is. There's no need to
>appeal to any distinction based on certainty. I take this to be the
>distinguishing trait of the deontological approach, as opposed to
>teleological systems of morality, most notably utilitarianism.
To me, the force of David's objection is that if a prospective assassin
is trying to decide (say) whether to kill Hitler and thereby save
innocent lives the definition of "assassination" doesn't help him much
-- he can't be sure that what he will actually achieve will satisfy that
definition any more than he can be sure it will satisfy the definition
of "saving innocent lives". He has to decide what he will do when all
that is in his control are things like picking up an attache case that
contains what he thinks is an explosive device and carrying it to a
meeting (assuming he doesn't meet with an accident and no-one stops him)
and leaving it there. So it seems difficult to consider the morality of
the prospective assassin's actions closely without explicit reference to
probable consequences.
If our prospective assassin were using the deontological approach, what
questions would he ask himself? Would he simply assume away
uncertainties of causation and ask himself whether an assassination that
saved many innocent lives would be justified? That might be a
worthwhile question, but it doesn't seem to be part of an approach that
considers an act "regardless of its consequences". Or would his
question be whether acts intended to kill a high public official are
justifiable when the acts are also intended to save innocent lives
through the death of the official? That question takes actual
consequences out of the picture, but it appears that it can't be
answered sensibly without appeal to David's "axis of certainty".
andrew@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt) writes:
>There is _no_ distinction among premeditated murders for the good of
>some group other than if it is self defense or not [ . . . ] I do not
>think anyone should go and knock off Idi Amin or Augusto Pinochet
>despite no hope of getting "justice" any other way. Should it be done,
>I would find it very hard to regret their deaths. But because I can't
>make an effective distinction between that and Tienanmen, I cannot
>condone either assassination
You seem to say assassination in self defense is different -- why not
assassination in defense of others? As a justification for killing,
defense of self or others requires an immediate threat to life that was
not presented by the Tienanmen demonstrators but is by many tyrants.
Maybe the question is what counts as premeditated murder. We've
touched on defense of self and others. If capital punishment or
killing in war don't count as murder, then assassination would
sometimes have similar justificatory features that would distinguish it
from the Tienanmen killings. For example, some political figures
routinely use their office to commit murder and others could reasonably
be thought to have a relation to their societies or to sections of
their societies that is more like war than governance (to avoid the
example of Hitler, consider Stalin and the peasants about 1930).
As your comments suggest, a troubling thing about justifications of
assassination, like other justifications based on the plea that in
extreme cases we can violate rules that are normally fundamental
obligations, is that such justifications can be readily stretched to
cover bad things. That's life. Necessity is said to be the tyrant's
plea, but when it applies it does seem to me to be a plea that can
justify almost anything.
zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
>Assuming that assasination is justifiable, our deontologically minded hero
>will want to kill Hitler, not in order to save some innocent lives thereby,
>but because such killing would be right, because Hitler's continued
>survival poses an intentional threat to innocent lives. The distinction
>makes a difference, on which more anon.
[anon:]
>Say I'm standing in front of an attacker who has just poured a gallon of
>gasoline on me, and is about to light it with a torch. It seems to me that
>it would be morally justified of me to shoot him, even though in falling
>down he is certain to set off the fire.
I don't follow. You aren't killing the attacker because his *continued
survival* poses a threat to your life -- his death poses an equal
threat. Perhaps your point is that if you plugged him the threat he
posed would no longer be intentional. But suppose he really hated you,
and said while he we was standing there, "OK, Zeleny, I know you have a
gun and you'll probably shoot me before this is over but I don't care
because even if you kill me you'll still die." (I'm assuming you're
not killing him because he might kill again.) Would that deprive you of
your justification for killing him?
steveh@thor.isc-br.com (Steve Hendricks) writes:
>On the one hand, libertarians typically make a fetish of high-sounding
>assertions of tolerance toward those who live or think differently
>from the majority in a society. I assume that a libertarian utopia
>would be one in which many different views would exist and cultural
>diversity would be celebrated. [ . . . ]
>
>If that is so, however, I fail to see how typical libertarian
>positions on education, housing, employment, and public accomodations
>support such goals. Worse than that, they seem designed positively
>to undermine them. Rather than promoting tolerance and cultural
>diversity, they appear designed to support group isolation, intolerance,
>and ultimately to promote "group think" rather than individualism.
Presumably, in a society featuring the minimal state that most
libertarians seem to favor there would be more freedom and diversity in
some respects and less in others. For example, the absence of welfare
would mean that people would have to rely more on family members to get
through hard times than they do now. Because people would find family
ties and obligations more important than they do now, I would expect
generally-accepted social standards to evolve in a way that would make
those ties and obligations clearer and more easily enforceable through
informal social pressures. For example, I would expect sex-role
stereotyping (mommies should do X and daddies should do Y) to become
more prominent.
On the other hand, the current form of "celebrating diversity" seems
intended to reduce diversity or at least to make it something that
doesn't matter. If the government pressures all institutions that
matter to be internally diverse, so that ideally there are no WASP
colleges or Catholic law firms, then there will be less diversity among
institutions. And since the things people are talking about when they
talk about "diversity" are mostly things relating to group membership
rather than to purely individual characteristics, the end effect of such
"celebration of diversity" is to eliminate diversity by eliminating the
possibility of the public expression of something that has essential
public elements.
For example, WASPs and Irish Catholics (to pick a couple of groups at
random) traditionally had somewhat different ways of life, and the
coexistence of those ways of life made society more diverse. Ways of
life are not collections of individual tastes and habits, though -- they
are something that a groups of people share who carry on their lives
together. If every significant social institution is pressured to have
proportions of WASPs and Irish Catholics that correspond to the
proportions of those groups in the society at large, then the WASP way
of life and the Irish Catholic way of life become vestiges that can be
carried on in strictly private corners of life, but will be irrelevant
to major concerns. For example, there can be no significant "WASP
tradition of public service" or "Irish Catholic love of political life"
if neither group is allowed to feel that public service or political
life is something to which it has a special tie.
Furthermore, the achievement of harmony within an organization that
stresses internal cultural diversity requires a great deal of social
control. People have to be taught to think -- or at least to act like
they think -- that cultural differences don't matter, or at least that
all ways of life are equally worthy of respect. That's not what people
tend to think if left to themselves. Some of the methods universities
have found appropriate in this connection (extended orientation sessions
for new students, special academic requirements and speech codes) have
been in the news lately, and other institutions have set up their own
programs. So government-sponsored "diversity" of the type we've grown
used to not only reduces diversity within society at large, it also
requires a great deal of uniformity of thought on subjects that people
don't generally agree on.
Another issue raised by government-required diversity within social
institutions is what way of life is promoted by reducing the
significance of the diversities that actually exist in society at large.
It seems to me that the way of life of a people is determined in large
part by what the people collectively value. To the extent particular
ethnic and religious traditions are no longer the setting for people's
way of life because those traditions are deprived of their public role,
I think that what people will be found to have in common is merely the
desire to get what they want, whatever that may happen to be.
So in practical terms, I would expect a society that rejects such
particular traditions to be a society in which money and power are what
people value most.
Back to my archive of posts.