Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From panix!jk Tue May 18 19:35:46 EDT 1993
Article: 13108 of talk.politics.theory
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!jk
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Subject: Back to the Future of Liberal Society
Message-ID:
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Date: Tue, 18 May 1993 14:34:39 GMT
Lines: 41
A somewhat different statement of the issues as I see them:
In recent years the political, economic and cultural hegemony of
particular social groups in liberal societies has grown weaker within
and has come under attack from without, and the demand for equality has
accordingly become more categorical and morally compelling. However,
the resulting weakening of social control, together with the development
of information and communications technology, has meant that free
markets have increasingly become the sole effective principle of social
organization. As a result, modifications to social organization
intended to satisfy the demand for equality have come to seem
politically out of reach or practically unworkable, and social reality
and what people feel as the requirements of morality have come to seem
hopelessly out of touch with each other.
The responses to this situation have included guilt, cynicism, carping
accusation, strained self-justification, and the rejection of political
involvement. The possible outcomes include (1) the triumph of
egalitarianism in the realm of practice, (2) the triumph of the market
in the realm of morality, (3) the indefinite continuation of the present
situation, and (4) the reestablishment of the hegemony of particular
social groups and their outlook. The first two seem unlikely because it
has become visible that radical egalitarianism means despotism and
poverty (_vide_ China), and because people aren't satisfied with the
glorification of mere self-seeking that is required for the market to
triumph in the realm of morality. The third seems unlikely because
nothing lasts forever, especially political situations that no-one
likes. So that leaves the fourth, the rise to power of some group with
a moral outlook based on neither the market nor equality that is able to
attract enough support to serve as a principle of social order. Such an
event, which amounts to the rise of a new religion or the rebirth of an
old one, is of course unforeseeable as to its timing or details.
Nonetheless, that kind of _deus ex machina_ appears to me the thing that
is most likely to resolve our current situation.
Any comments, or is this general line of thought played out?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!jk Wed May 19 20:11:39 EDT 1993
Article: 13127 of talk.politics.theory
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!jk
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Subject: Who is the elite?
Message-ID:
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Date: Thu, 20 May 1993 00:11:00 GMT
Lines: 76
Some notes on more worn-out topics (elites, culture, liberalism, Dan
Quayle, etc., etc. etc.):
Most activities to which people devote the best of their efforts, at
least activities that involve some sort of common goal or standard of
excellence, generate a small elite group that the other participants
regard as their superiors and do not themselves acknowledge any
superior. Accordingly, a country as large, populous and complex as the
United States has a variety of elites. There is an elite of doctors, an
elite of folk singers, an elite of distance runners, and so on.
In addition to these particular elites, the United States, in order to
be a single national society, must also have a national elite of those
engaged in the activities that give our country its coherence. Since
whatever coherence the United States has comes from its common system of
politics and law, from the communications network that holds it
together, and from its common culture, its national elite consists of
leading political, legal, media and cultural figures, together with
those associated with the leading institutions in those fields.
One might argue that the United States gets its coherence from its
economic system and that therefore the business elite is also part --
perhaps the dominant part -- of the national elite. I think that view
is mistaken because economic life in the United States is too diverse,
too competitive and self-seeking, and too much guided by impersonal
markets and too little by the decisions of particular leaders to
generate a true elite. When economic life was simpler it was possible
for representatives of a particular economic interest (the landed
interest, for example) to form a governing elite. In the United States
that is no longer possible, and as a result our national elite has
achieved substantial independence from control by particular economic or
other interests and so tends to be guided by its own interests and
concerns.
Those interests and concerns are fairly straightforward. Any elite
wants to increase its importance. Accordingly, the natural tendency of
a national political and legal elite, left to its own devices, is to try
to subject as many things as possible to central political and legal
control. The national media elite seconds that tendency because it
wants national issues, which are amenable to national media coverage, to
be the things that matter to people. The cultural elite falls in line
as well, if only because the bulk of culture always falls in line with
power.
The substance of the policies pursued by the national elite is
determined by its interests. Whatever traditional or local institutions
take care of is _ipso facto_ not subject to central political and legal
control. Accordingly, our national elite, in the name of the equality
and the prevention of individual hardship that can be attained only by
the application of uniform rules, has where possible undermined and
supplanted traditional and local institutions such as the family. (In
other words, Dan Quayle was right about the relationship between family
values and the cultural elite.) The ideals of multiculturalism and
equity for previously marginalized social groups have also helped make
it more difficult to deal with practical affairs by means of local,
informal, customary or traditional practices, and accordingly helped
increase the power of our national elite.
It might be argued that these tendencies are to the good, and that we
are lucky that in our country rule by pressure groups, the majority, and
the traditional status quo is balanced by the power of a national elite
that is led by its own interests to subject things to explicit uniform
rules justified on grounds of efficiency, equality and protection of the
weak. Whether that argument is a good one depends largely on what
mixture of things is needed for people to thrive and where our present
society stands with regard to the appropriate mixture. For my own part,
I reject the argument because it seems to me our society already is too
centralized and places too much emphasis on formal legal rules and too
little on things that can't be clearly defined, placed in a formal
system, and prescribed by a central authority.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!jk Thu May 20 13:48:34 EDT 1993
Article: 13128 of talk.politics.theory
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!jk
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Subject: Re: Back to the Future of Liberal Society
Message-ID:
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
References: <1993May19.160646.14177@kadsma.kodak.com>
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 20 May 1993 01:36:04 GMT
Lines: 48
pajerek@telstar.kodak.com (Don Pajerek) writes:
>I still think you need to consider the idea that [ . . . ] a new 'social
>order' will evolve in which the meaning of 'society' as we now
>understand it will become obsolete. By this, I mean the idea of society
>as something that is defined by physical realities.
>
>You are talking about a situation in which 'the population of the United
>States' and 'United States society' are more or less the same thing. I
>am suggesting the possibility that 'the population living within the
>borders of North America' will gradually organize itself into a number
>of 'societies', not all of which (maybe none) depend all that much on
>physical proximity as their organizing principle. Some of these
>societies may very well take the various directions that you have
>itemized in your first paragraph.
I suppose the idea is that the separate societies would have their own
internal rules that their members would have to respect, but would be
mostly self-sufficient so that transactions between members of different
societies could be dealt with under something like the law governing
international trade. It's an interesting idea, but not one it's easy
for me to work out in any detail. It seems to me that it would be
difficult to make physical proximity irrelevant to social organization.
The cruder sorts of crimes are mostly committed by people who happen to
be physically nearby, and the use of land is also something that one has
to work out with whoever happens to be in the area, so it seems that the
separate societies would have to agree at least on the law of real
estate (including environmental law and the like) and on part of their
criminal law. Maybe it would be illuminating to look at historical
precedents (the millet system in Turkey or the diversity of
jurisdictions under feudal law) to see how people have dealt with
similar problems in the past. The lack of unified criminal jurisdiction
was a constant problem for church-state relations in the Middle Ages,
for example, that wasn't solved until the Church threw in the towel on
the benefit of clergy and sanctuary.
One question -- why wouldn't it be just as good to have multiple
competing territorial states? People could move to the state with the
political and social system they liked if that state would have them.
It would be annoying to have to move, but it might be more convenient
than untangling one's house lot and use of the street and so on from the
social and legal system that the neighbors were all participating in.
Also, if that system would be just as good, why don't we have it now?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Thu May 20 19:56:09 EDT 1993
Article: 108 of alt.history.what-if
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.history.what-if
Subject: Re: AFRICANS WERE WHITE TOO.
Date: 20 May 1993 19:14:43 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 19
Message-ID: <1th3d3$fv7@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1sh0t9INNosv@uwm.edu> <1993May11.100936.24817@jyu.fi> <1993May19.193543.16989@midway.uchicago.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
gr2a@kimbark.uchicago.edu (david rolfe graeber) writes:
> According to Todorov's estimates: there were 80 million people
>in the Americas c1500; fifty years later, there were 10 million.
>In Mexico, there were 25 million people around 1500; by 1600,
>one million remained. To which one might add that there were
>several million indigenous people in the Caribbean when Columbus
>arrived; a hundred and fifty years later there were none. The
>population was entirely exterminated.
Does he give a source or basis for these estimates of the population of
the Americas before 1500? Also, do you have a source for your statement
about the population of the Caribbean? I find these numbers quite
unbelievable.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!netnews!cmcl2!yale.edu!newsserver.jvnc.net!howland.reston.ans.net!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!not-for-mail Fri May 21 06:09:29 EDT 1993
Article: 6678 of talk.philosophy.misc
Path: panix!netnews!cmcl2!yale.edu!newsserver.jvnc.net!howland.reston.ans.net!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!not-for-mail
From: jk@Panix.Com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: God and Free Will
Date: 20 May 1993 13:24:33 -0500
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crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>>A physicist who "cannot tell the difference between time and space"
>>has something like the block-universe in mind, picturing a four-dimensional
>>space-time continuum in which each of us has a "world-line". The
>>block-universe god might see the universe in just this way, with the
>>world-lines all laid out from beginning to end.
>
> Yet you have described a way of seeing the universe which, if
> possible, seems to rule out 'free-will'. From a functional standpoint,
> the ability to see spacetime in toto seems to imply a predetermined
> course.
If on May 20, 1993 God can see spacetime in toto and the "seeing" is
part of the sequence of events making up time, then it does seem that
all later events are predetermined. On the other hand, if on May 20,
1999999999999999999999999993 (which happens to be the last day the
universe will exist) God can see spacetime in toto then nothing follows
about whether any event in spacetime was predetermined.
The notion seems to be that if God is not part of spacetime then his
ability to see spacetime in toto implies nothing about the dependence of
later events in spacetime on earlier events in spacetime, any more than
the ability of a temporal god at the end of time to see spacetime in
toto does. I don't understand the issues well enough to say whether
that notion makes sense or not, which I suppose means I don't find it
clearly crazy.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Fri May 21 11:28:22 EDT 1993
Article: 410 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: The Market and the State
Date: 21 May 1993 11:27:26 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <1993May21.023632.19317@news.vanderbilt.edu>
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rickertj@athena.cas.vanderbilt.edu (John Rickert) writes:
>>To say that a social
>>institution is authoritative is to say that men have a right to rely on
>>it.
>
> Or, equivalently, a duty to defend it. What do you think? I'm
>not sure myself, but I think there must be some correspondence here.
>If the equivalence holds, then it would give some indication of which
>institutions are not authoritative.
Your way of putting the matter is the more natural one. I spoke the way
I did because I wanted to indicate not only what I meant by
"authoritative social institutions" but also why it is a good thing for
such things to exist. In America in 1993 people accept the notion of
rights, but when you use words like "authority" people get upset and the
discussion tends to fall apart. That's less true in a.r.c. than in
other fora, but I believe in outreach.
The equivalence you mention should hold because rights necessarily imply
duties, and duties imply rights (at least to a liberal, and I intended
the posting to say things that someone who started off as a liberal
could accept).
>[I]t does seem difficult to see how several authoritative institutions
>could operate simultaneously, unless they were complementary, and then
>the whole complex taken together could be taken as an institution [ . .
>. ] I am haunted by the thought "Quis custodiet?" If you have a
>government of men over men, or even a free market between men, the
>question arises in a myriad of ways. I firmly believe that the only
>_custos_ is the underlying morality of the people, and such would have
>to be customary (and customarily enforced :-) ) in order to be reliable:
>perhaps, then, _mos_ is the right word.
I agree that you can't view particular political institutions as the
ultimate source of law. What such institutions do can have binding
force only because of the mores of the people (which in turn have
binding force only because of natural law).
That's one thing that's troubling about the current discussions on
topics like multiculturalism that seem to assume that the American
people is constituted by the American political and legal system rather
than the reverse. If you take that view, then it seems you have to view
our political and legal system either as based immediately on natural
law (which is very hard to believe) or as a law unto itself (which is
very troubling).
> I highly recommend Bruno Leoni's "Freedom and the Law." He argues
>that part of our problem is in trying to codify all of our laws into
>legislation, and that we equate law with legislation, contrary to the
>practice of many generations. The impulse is to have precision and
>certainty in the law. But the problem is, in trying to fine tune the
>regulations that deal with ordinary daily life, we actually introduce
>_uncertainty_, because people making decisions under today's rules may
>find their plans waylayed by tomorrow's statutes; a common-law system
>in which private adjustments are made on a case-by-case basis --
>somewhat like Italy :-) :-) -- can in fact allow for a more stable
>long-range certainty; Leoni describes this better, but calls it the
>"Roman" model.
It seems odd that citizens of a country whose legal system is based on
English common law should have to be lectured in this way by someone who
prefers the way they do things in Italy. It's an odd world, though.
One thing I'd add is that it's possible for judges to create uncertainty
by constant fine-tuning as well. Is the idea that in the Roman model
the case-by-case adjustments are truly private and do not unsettle the
law as a whole as they do in our system, in which every decision becomes
a precedent for later decisions.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Fri May 21 14:04:58 EDT 1993
Article: 411 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Our elite + the counterrevolution
Date: 21 May 1993 14:03:22 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 122
Message-ID: <1tj5ha$n96@sun.Panix.Com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
The following comprises a couple of articles I posted on
talk.politics.theory recently. They didn't arouse much interest there,
so I decided to rework them a little and repost here.
1. A discussion of the nature of our national elite:
Most activities to which people devote the best of their efforts, at
least activities that involve some sort of common goal or standard of
excellence, generate a small elite group that the other participants
regard as their superiors and do not themselves acknowledge any
superior. Accordingly, a country as large, populous and complex as the
United States has a variety of elites. There is an elite of doctors, an
elite of folk singers, an elite of distance runners, and so on.
In addition to these particular elites, the United States, in order to
be a single national society, must also have a national elite of those
engaged in the activities that give our country its coherence. Since
whatever coherence the United States has comes from its common system of
politics and law, from the communications network that holds it
together, and from its common culture, its national elite consists of
leading political, legal, media and cultural figures, together with
those associated with the leading institutions in those fields.
One might argue that the United States gets its coherence from its
economic system and that therefore the business elite is also part --
perhaps the dominant part -- of the national elite. I think that view
is mistaken because economic life in the United States is too diverse,
too competitive and self-seeking, and too much guided by impersonal
markets and too little by the decisions of particular leaders to
generate a true elite. When economic life was simpler it was possible
for representatives of a particular economic interest (such as the
landed interest) to form a governing elite. In the United States that
is no longer possible, and as a result our national elite has achieved
substantial independence from control by particular economic or other
interests and so tends to be guided by its own interests and concerns.
Those interests and concerns are fairly straightforward. Any elite
wants to increase its importance. Accordingly, the natural tendency of
a national political and legal elite, left to its own devices, is to try
to subject as many things as possible to central political and legal
control. The national media elite seconds that tendency because it
wants national issues, which are amenable to national media coverage, to
be the things that matter to people. The cultural elite falls in line
as well, if only because the bulk of culture always falls in line with
power.
The substance of the policies pursued by the national elite is
determined by its interests. Whatever traditional or local institutions
take care of is _ipso facto_ not subject to central political and legal
control. Accordingly, our national elite, in the name of the equality
and the prevention of individual hardship that can be attained only by
the application of uniform rules, has where possible undermined and
supplanted traditional and local institutions such as the family. (In
other words, Dan Quayle was right about the relationship between family
values and the cultural elite.) The ideals of multiculturalism and
equity for previously marginalized social groups have also helped make
it more difficult to deal with practical affairs by means of local,
informal, customary or traditional practices, and accordingly helped
increase the power of our national elite.
Some would argue that these tendencies are to the good, and that we are
lucky that in our country rule by pressure groups, the majority, and the
traditional status quo is balanced by the power of a national elite that
is led by its own interests to subject things to explicit uniform rules
justified on grounds of efficiency, equality and protection of the weak.
The strength of that argument can be evaluated from a number of
perspectives, some of which require more moral presuppositions than
others. One perspective that attempts to minimize the necessary
presuppositions considers what mixture of formal rationality, informal
custom and prejudice, and instinct is needed for man to thrive and where
our present society stands with regard to the appropriate mixture. From
that perspective, it seems to me that the argument should be rejected
because it seems to me our society already is too centralized and places
too much emphasis on formal legal rules and too little on things that
can't be clearly defined, placed in a formal system, and prescribed by a
central authority.
2. A description of the circumstances that increasingly are making
counterrevolution or something like it a realistic possibility:
In recent years the political, economic and cultural hegemony of the
dominant social groups in liberal societies has grown weaker within and
has come under attack from without, and the demand for equality has
accordingly become more categorical and morally compelling. However,
the resulting weakening of social control, together with the development
of information and communications technology, has meant that free
markets have increasingly become the sole effective principle of social
organization. As a result, modifications to social organization
intended to satisfy the demand for equality have come to seem
politically out of reach or practically unworkable, and social reality
and what people feel as the requirements of morality have come to seem
hopelessly out of touch with each other.
The responses to this situation have included guilt, cynicism, carping
accusation, strained self-justification, and the rejection of political
involvement. The possible outcomes include (1) the triumph of
egalitarianism in the realm of practice, (2) the triumph of the market
in the realm of morality, (3) the indefinite continuation of the present
situation, and (4) the reestablishment of the hegemony of particular
social groups and their outlook.
The first two outcomes seem unlikely because it has become obvious to
most that radical egalitarianism means despotism and poverty (_vide_
China), and because few people are satisfied with the glorification of
mere self-seeking that is required for the market to triumph in the
realm of morality. The third seems unlikely because nothing lasts
forever, especially political situations that no-one likes. So that
leaves the fourth, the rise to power of some group with a moral outlook
based on neither the market nor equality that is able to attract enough
support to serve as a principle of social order. Such an event, which
would amount to the rise of a new religion or the rebirth of an old one,
and which from the liberal standpoint would amount to a
counterrevolution, is of course unforeseeable as to its timing or
details. Nonetheless, I see no other resolution (other than anarchy or
tyranny) to our current situation.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Sat May 22 08:12:11 EDT 1993
Article: 413 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Liberalism and suffering
Date: 22 May 1993 08:11:50 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 40
Message-ID: <1tl5a6$sa6@sun.Panix.Com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
Xref: panix alt.revolution.counter:413 talk.politics.theory:13133
In response to the messages that have clogged this newsgroup demanding
that I post another article, here's a brief discussion of
Liberalism and Suffering
Modern American liberalism is based on the views that the particular
manner in which society is organized is an essential determinant of all
human experience, that cruelty, or causing pain without sufficient
reason, is the worst thing we do, and that it is possible consciously to
rearrange social institutions to avoid any undesired state of affairs
(or at least that we should assume it is possible to do so). From this
perspective, no pain should be treated as necessary since it could be
eliminated through social reorganization, or perhaps just social support
for the development of technology. Accordingly, failure to attempt to
remake society to eliminate suffering is either cruelty -- the ultimate
sin -- or at best, selfish indifference or obstinate and narrow-minded
traditionalism.
On examination, this outlook turns out to be less benevolent than people
believe. While particular instances of cruelty can be very wicked, to
treat cruelty categorically as the worst thing we do is to treat the
absence of pain as the supreme value, and therefore to view life as evil
since without life there would be no pain. However, modern American
liberalism does not take that view of all lives because as the dominant
outlook in America it is principally the outlook of well-placed and
successful people who characteristically do not view life as evil for
themselves. Accordingly, in America today liberalism relates
specifically to the way liberals think the people they view as their
inferiors should be treated. As such, it consists in the view that
humane treatment is the best such people can hope for because nothing in
their lives is worth suffering for, and that any habits, values or
loyalties they have must give way to liberal projects of social
reconstruction. Thus, while speaking the language of human dignity and
equal rights, modern American liberalism is in fact a justification for
unlimited rule by an elite with no respect whatever for those they rule.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Sat May 22 18:32:02 EDT 1993
Article: 8883 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination
Subject: Complaints about inclusiveness
Date: 22 May 1993 18:31:43 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 56
Message-ID: <1tm9kf$3d2@sun.Panix.Com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
We are told that our goal should be a nondiscriminatory society. Views
differ on what such a society would be like, but increasingly the people
who are most active in working toward the goal seem to define the
nondiscriminatory society as the inclusive society -- the society in
which all groups defined by characteristics that can't easily be changed
participate reasonably equally in all of the activities and benefits of
society.
If we ignore questions concerning whether such a goal can be attained
and at what cost, the obvious question is whether it would be good thing
if it were attained and why. It seems to me it would not, for the
following reasons:
1. An inclusive society would be one in which cultural differences
would have no practical consequences. Accordingly, no-one could take
his own culture into the workplace (for example) and expect to find a
hospitable environment since it would be forbidden for the workplace to
be less alien to his culture than to anyone else's. As a result, the
workplace would be considerably less pleasant, more contentious and less
efficient than it might be otherwise. In addition, since different
cultures develop characteristics that lead to different rates of success
in particular pursuits, equal inclusion would require quotas or the
equivalent as long as separate cultures exist. If integration were
successful enough to keep the separate cultures from maintaining their
identity, the problem of multiculturalism might disappear after a
generation or two unless it were recreated by immigration. If that
happened, then of course whatever value there had been in the particular
cultures would be lost. However, it seems more likely that the benefits
of belonging to a group that benefits from quotas would be sufficient to
limit the willingness of its members to integrate fully and become lost
in the majority, so that the separate cultures would likely continue
though perhaps in a degraded form and along with them the requirement of
quotas. (Quotas are bad because they reduce efficiency by mismatching
jobs and candidates and reducing incentives for productive work, because
they cause bad feeling between beneficiaries and others, and because
they are usually brought about by government dictation.)
2. Groups differ in average innate capacity. This point is least
controversial with respect to the disabled and (as to certain physical
capacities) with respect to women and the aged. Most scholars who have
studied the matter believe that there are also innate differences in
average intellectual capacities between the sexes and among races. (See
_The IQ Controversy_[correct title?] by Mark Snyderman and Stanley
Rothman for the results of a survey of scholars.) Accordingly, equal
inclusion would continue to require quotas or the equivalent even if
multiculturalism stops being a problem.
3. An inclusive society would be one in which there were no differences
in sex roles. Very few people would be happy in such a society. Trust
me, it's true. (Actually, I could present arguments, but this post is
probably long enough already.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Sun May 23 06:44:22 EDT 1993
Article: 135 of alt.history.what-if
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.history.what-if
Subject: Re: A Time Machine, A Scope-Sighted Rifle, and Thou
Date: 23 May 1993 06:44:06 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 51
Message-ID: <1tnkhm$7ai@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993May16.220822.15334@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> <1993May23.031524.8160@leland.Stanford.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
katje@leland.Stanford.EDU (Sean Alexander McMeekin) writes:
>I [ . . . ] would just like to emphasize Rousseau's effect on the
>writings of Karl Marx. Forced communality, the destruction of the
>individual, the destruction of private property, etc. were just some of
>many common obsessions of these two men. It was not just in France that
>these unachievable objectives motivated people to kill; a quick read of
>the histories of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Soviet Russia pound
>home the effect that Marx and Rousseau have had on thought patterns.
It's an interesting question how much personal influence either of the
two had. My own view is that each produced a classic statement of the
fantasies that were going to characterize the coming centuries, and if
they had both been strangled at birth someone else would have done it.
Even if no-one else had done it people would have read the fantasies
into the works of other writers.
To expand my theory: For a variety of reasons people in the 18th
century stopped feeling the authority of any principle that transcends
their individual desires. Therefore they wanted liberty (the right to
do whatever they felt like doing) and equality (recognition that each
desire of each person is equally worthy because it's equally a desire).
Since man is a social animal they also wanted fraternity, but if there
is nothing that transcends desire to unite people fraternity is
impossible unless everyone in fact has the same desire. Hence
Rousseau's General Will.
The General Will, though, can't be recognized as long as people have
conflicting interests. The question then becomes how conflicting
interests can be done away with without asking people to act in
accordance with anything that transcends their own interests. Calling a
convention, as in France, didn't work. The answer is Marx's historical
theory of amoral class struggle ending with a classless society.
I don't see any other response to the situation created by the rejection
of transcendent authority that offers people as much hope as the
Rousseau-Marx solution, and I don't think that solution is so obscure
that R. & M. were the only people who could have thought of it. I also
don't think the way they developed it it particularly idiosyncratic in
any important way -- if it had been, it's doubtful that the
idiosyncratic parts would have been influential.
So I doubt that blowing either one away would have done any good. For
my own part, if I had a time machine and a rifle I would do the boringly
obvious thing and blow Hitler away, who *did* have idiosyncracies that
had serious consequences. (No Hitler, no Holocaust.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Sun May 23 20:02:34 EDT 1993
Article: 13140 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: COM vs. EDU
Date: 23 May 1993 20:01:50 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 28
Message-ID: <1tp39e$gt9@sun.Panix.Com>
References:
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
Xref: panix talk.politics.misc:118211 talk.politics.theory:13140
Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes:
>rjk@world.std.com (Robert J. Kolker) writes:
>
>>Have you ever noticed that people who post from internet addresses ending
>>in ".EDU" tend to favor socialist, collectivist and altruistic points of
>>view, while people who post from addresses ending in ".COM" tend toward
>>the libertarian/objectivist end of the political and economic spectrum.
>
>On the one hand, people's motivations for going into teaching/research
>are different from those for going into (hopefully high-wage)
>development/applications, and on the other the famed liberal conspiracy
>ensures that we only select our own from among job applicants. :-)
On the third hand, liberalism is (perhaps among other things) the
ideology of a particular class, those who are concerned with the
management and control of society as a whole. Educational institutions,
which are largely funded by the government and which become more
influential to the extent formal expertise becomes required for
large-scale central management, are natural bastions of liberalism.
People at commercial establishments, which serve the particular ends of
particular people, are naturally less favorable to central control and
more favorable to letting people do what they want.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Mon May 24 10:15:13 EDT 1993
Article: 13145 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: COM vs. EDU
Date: 24 May 1993 10:15:05 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 46
Message-ID: <1tql99$d62@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1tp39e$gt9@sun.Panix.Com>
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Xref: panix talk.politics.misc:118248 talk.politics.theory:13145
Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) breaks from pondering the
_Phaenomenologie des Geistes_ long enough to write:
>Educational institutions are filled with people who want to do long term
>research, who are paid to do long term research, and who *hate* being
>told what to do by other people. Trying to apply large-scale management
>to the chaos of a university leads to disaster.
I assume that the people at such institutions would rather supply inputs
to the process of large-scale centralized management than be the objects
of that process. I also assume that if they like to be paid to do long
term research then they tend to think that it would be a good thing for
there to be someone with tons and tons of money who is engaged in some
project for which the results of research regarding the world in general
would come in handy. The government is the obvious candidate for that
someone, and the management and control of the social world at large is
the obvious candidate for that project.
>People at commercial establishments are far more used to actually
>*doing* what other people want, though. Perhaps this is why they are
>more touchy about it in the political arena.
I have heard there is something called "academic politics" that is said
to be influential at educational institutions. So maybe people at such
institutions are into political maneuvering as a way of getting what
they want. (I'm sure we could go on like this forever . . . )
To put arguments about class interests and who's more independent-minded
than who aside for a moment, though, it seems to me that people who go
into business have a more concrete turn of mind than people who go into
academia or government. How a particular person can bring about
something in a particular situation for the ends he happens to have (the
question in business) is more concrete than what principles of action
govern people generally (an academic question) or what rules people
should be told to follow (a question in government). No doubt the kind
of issue one finds it easy to deal with intellectually also has an
effect on one's political views. Libertarians seem to have a taste for
clear and definite concepts that may go along with a taste for the
concrete. Liberals, on the other hand, are accused of being "fuzzy
minded" and in turn accuse their opponents of holding views that are
"narrow" and "cramped".
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Mon May 24 10:23:55 EDT 1993
Article: 13146 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: COM vs. EDU
Date: 24 May 1993 10:23:29 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 111
Message-ID: <1tqlp1$dkt@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1tp39e$gt9@sun.Panix.Com> <93May24.001345edt.41308@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
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Xref: panix talk.politics.misc:118249 talk.politics.theory:13146
Coming out of retirement, cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum)
writes:
>In article <1tp39e$gt9@sun.Panix.Com> jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>
>| On the third hand, liberalism is (perhaps among other things) the
>| ideology of a particular class, those who are concerned with the
>| management and control of society as a whole.
>
>I was not aware that there was a particular homogenous class, differing
>from the class of all those who are concerned with general issues of
>justice in society, that was concerned "with the management and control
>of society as a whole", and which shared amongst its members any uniform
>political ideology.
I wasn't aware of that either. Very few classes are homogenous. Also,
the views of the members of any class will differ and the differences
(especially from the standpoint of the members and those who identify
with them) will be important. Nonetheless, the analysis of class
interests seems helpful in understanding political ideology. Certainly
it seems relevant to why the political views of people associated with
different sorts of institutions (.COM or .EDU sites) vary
systematically.
Incidentally, who is your "class of all those who are concerned with
general issues of justice in society"? The class of those who feel a
strong concern with the management and control of society as a whole and
who think coherently about the matter, without reference to a particular
involvement in the process, is not very large. It might have been
clearer if I had said "involved in" rather than "concerned with". In
the United States, the class I had in mind would include the elites of
the bar, journalism and media, education, and politics and government.
(I posted an article on the matter within the past week in
talk.politics.theory.)
>Of course, one would hope that everyone, besides just doing "what he
>wants to", would be concerned with the management and control of society
>as a whole, at least insofar as this management and control secures a
>basic framework that allows everyone equally to pursue their own personal
>conceptions of the good.
[Rawls quote deleted.]
The conception of a state that is neutral among varying conceptions of
the good is an odd one, since man is a social animal and most of the
goods he cares about are goods that can exist only in society and are
favored more by some societies than others. So it seems clear that "a
basic framework that allows everyone equally to pursue their own
personal conceptions of the good" is an impossibility.
Also, it's hard to understand, rationally speaking, why anyone would
favor such a framework if it could exist. If one personal conception of
the good really were better and more worth pursuing than another would
have been, I suppose it would be just for the government to favor it
because it is just to treat unequal things unequally. It seems that in
the liberal view there's no reason to favor one conception over another,
though. But then why is it a good thing for everyone to be able to
pursue his own personal conception of the good if none of the
conceptions is right? How could they even be conceptions of the good if
the people who hold them believe that their own conceptions are no
better and no more worth pursuing than any other conception would have
been?
Every society has a ruling class. If taken seriously, liberalism
appears to offer us a ruling class that says "we have the right to run
things because we know that all the conceptions of the good you people
argue about and think are so important are really all equally good,
equally bad, or equally pointless, so we'll see to your care and feeding
and let each of you occupy himself with his p. c. of the g. so long as
that conception has no political or social consequences". That's the
outlook of people who view themselves as infinitely above the rest of
humanity, not of people who (as advertized) have a special concern for
human dignity.
>| People at commercial establishments, which serve the particular ends of
>| particular people, are naturally less favorable to central control and
>| more favorable to letting people do what they want.
>"Commercial establishments" are favourable to letting people do what
>they want. Yesiree, as long as what we want to do is to purchase what
>they sell, on the one hand, and show up for work day after day after day
>to follow the orders of our boss-men (until they don't need us anymore,
>at which point we will be summarily released), on the other hand.
If you want to add the phrase "with whatever resources they happen to
have" to "what they want" I have no objection. The point of what I
wrote was to explain why people at .COM sites tend more to the
libertarian end of the spectrum than people at .EDU sites, not to praise
them. If it's relevant, I'm not a libertarian. Incidentally, I don't
know of any commercial establishment (why the quotes?) that tries to
force people to buy their products or to work for them. Out of the
millions of commercial establishments there are very few whom I
patronize and none whom I work for, and the ones with whom I have no
dealings leave me alone.
>Let's not forget, either, that commercial interests spend a lot of their
>resources trying to shape our wants, so that although we *do* do what
>we want, what we want often happens to be what they *want* us to want.
Like other people (John Rawls, for example) commercial interests try to
have an effect on what people want to do. If you think some goals can
be known through reason to be objectively good, then I suppose you can
draw a distinction between doing that in a disinterested and
non-manipulative way and doing it in the contrary way. Does someone who
thinks no conception of the good is better than the others have a right
to that distinction?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Mon May 24 17:32:09 EDT 1993
Article: 13151 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: COM vs. EDU
Date: 24 May 1993 17:31:36 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 43
Message-ID: <1trero$ioh@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1tp39e$gt9@sun.Panix.Com> <1993May24.160553.27012@kadsma.kodak.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
Xref: panix talk.politics.misc:118296 talk.politics.theory:13151
apajerek@telstar.kodak.com (Don Pajerek) writes:
>That bit about commercial establishments being 'more favorable to
>letting people to what they want' is not very accurate. In reality,
>there are few non-military insitutions which are more demanding of
>conformity than the typical large U.S. corporation.
You seem to be looking at things from the standpoint of an individual
employee and asking that other people (coworkers, supervisors, managers,
and investors) give up part of what they want so that the employee can
have the benefits of being part of the organization without having to
comply with too many expectations on the part of the other people
involved. The point, though, is that both the employee and all those
other people are free to do what they want, and in order for them to
come together to form an organization they have to agree on a whole lot.
Each is free either to make the agreement and become part of the
organization (which requires toeing the line) or to do whatever else he
wants to do, and for each participant doing something else is almost
always a realistic possibility. I don't see why it's an abuse of
language to call that a situation in which people are allowed to do what
they want. Even if speaking that way is an abuse of language, that's
the way libertarians and their kin tend to speak, and the question was
why such people are more plentiful at .COM than at .EDU sites. If you
want, we could change "more favorable to letting people do what they
want" to "more favorable to a regime of free contract with few
restrictions".
>What commercial establishments favor is a style of government which
>doesn't impose regulations on their line of business. That's the extent
>of their interest in freedom.
No doubt many of them would also favor protection and subsidies for
themselves to be paid for by other people. People who post to usenet
are not commercial establishments, though, and typically they try to
present arguments that rest on generally applicable principles that
generally will not be interchangeable with the immediate interests of
their employers even though in some sense they may reflect their own
perspective and interests.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Tue May 25 13:20:34 EDT 1993
Article: 8910 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: sci.research.careers,soc.college,alt.discrimination,misc.legal,soc.rights.human,alt.activism,ny.general,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds Jeffries' Verdict Disturbing
Date: 25 May 1993 13:20:21 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <1ttkgl$bt2@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <2947343981.6.p00004@psilink.com> <1993May24.195208.16012@seas.smu.edu> <1993May25.142248.25971@lamont.ldgo.columbia.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
Xref: panix sci.research.careers:2020 soc.college:12456 alt.discrimination:8910 misc.legal:39795 soc.rights.human:10771 alt.activism:38409 ny.general:1170 soc.culture.african.american:25640
sasha@ldgo.columbia.edu (Alexander Krupitsky) writes:
>From what I heard, Levin has published a paper where he said the
blacks were intellectually inferior to the whites and his assertions
are based on some tests that he conducted (correct me if I am wrong).
These tests may or may not be poorly designed, intentionally or not.
Before anything is proven his case (IMO) is subject to a scientific
discussion and I can't denounce Levin EQUALLY with Jeffries. Nor can I
denounce him otherwise.
Actually, he's written papers reviewing research done by other people,
concluding that it strongly points to important racial difference in
average innate intelligence, and going on from there to consider
political and moral issues. I don't have any cites for his papers, but
for an indication that his views are not scientifically bizarre you
might take a look at _The IQ Controversy_[correct title?], by Mark
Snyderman and Stanley Rothman, which discusses an extensive survey of
scholars involved in some way in studying intelligence and testing, most
of whom turned out to believe there was a genetic component to the
difference between average black and average white IQ's. The authors
also summarize their conclusions in an article in the Spring, 1986 issue
of _The Public Interest_.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Tue May 25 17:24:45 EDT 1993
Article: 8914 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: sci.research.careers,soc.college,alt.discrimination,misc.legal,soc.rights.human,alt.activism,ny.general,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds Jeffries' Verdict Disturbing
Date: 25 May 1993 17:24:33 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 24
Message-ID: <1tu2qh$29l@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993May24.195208.16012@seas.smu.edu> <1993May25.142248.25971@lamont.ldgo.columbia.edu> <1993May25.161116.22533@seas.smu.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
Xref: panix sci.research.careers:2022 soc.college:12460 alt.discrimination:8914 misc.legal:39819 soc.rights.human:10773 alt.activism:38421 ny.general:1172 soc.culture.african.american:25649
pts@seas.smu.edu (Paul Thompson Schreiber) writes:
>Michael Levin has asserted that whites should FLEE from blacks because
>blacks are more prone to commit crimes. Since you feel that this is NOT
>as inflammatory as Jeffries' "Jews controlling Hollywood" remark, can
>you explain why Levin should be excused but not Jeffries?
In the extracts I've seen, Levin pointed to statistics relating to black
criminality rates (e.g., one out of four black men in their twenties is
either in jail, on parole, or on probation, a rate about 10 times as
high as the rate for white men of the same age). He then considered the
case of a jogger in a deserted place who sees a young black man ahead of
him. Since the jogger knows nothing whatever about the young black man
except that he is a young black man, Levin argues that it would be
rational to assume that there is a one in four chance that the man is a
criminal and to start jogging the other way instead of continuing in the
same direction.
What problems do you have with Levin's reasoning?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Tue May 25 19:49:49 EDT 1993
Article: 17 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa,alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Chronicles: New Southern Magazine
Date: 25 May 1993 18:09:34 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 48
Message-ID: <1tu5eu$64k@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1ttqv2INNjvm@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
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Keywords: War of the South
Xref: panix alt.war.civil.usa:2605 alt.society.conservatism:17
mcmathew@athena.mit.edu (Mithran C Mathew) writes:
>Has anyone else read the newest conservative magazine out by the
>Rutheford Institute, Chronicles? It's byline advertises it as a
>magazine of American culture. Most of it's writers are very close to
>the South (Chilton Williamson, Shelton Reed).
They're currently up to volume 17, so they're not that new.
I don't think the southerners are a majority even though they have more
of a southern tinge than most mags. For example, Chilton Williamson is
from New York (I think). His dad was an English (?) professor at
Columbia, and he himself was literary editor of _National Review_ for
quite a while. He's since moved to Montana and affects a beard and
cowboy hat, so I suppose he decided to drop out of the East Coast scene.
They also have a Eastern European connection. The founding editor,
Leopold Tyrmand, was a Polish Jew (anyway, I think he was a Jew), the
art director is another Pole who mostly seems to publish art by herself
and her compatriots, and a former managing editor is a Serb who is now
back in the old country.
>One of the most curios things that I noticed in this issue was it's
>repeated references to the Civil War as the "War Between the Sates."
>Apparently, the left isn't the only group using political correctness to
>it's advantage.
You're lucky they didn't refer to it as "The War of Northern Agression"!
Although they obviously like some things a whole lot more than other
things, they do publish things by people with a variety of views. Not
all conservatives. The editor (who has a Rutherford B. Hayes beard and
is a real grouch) keeps complaining how illiterate and mindless all the
conservatives and religious types are in America. So I don't think they
have PC systematized.
>Anyone else read this magazine? It certainly making an impression in
>conservative circles.
It's my fave. You can find lots to complain about in it, but the issues
they talk about are important and the writers are more likely than in
most publications to say what they think without worrying about
maintaining their respectability.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Wed May 26 07:55:17 EDT 1993
Article: 49 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Conservative society?
Date: 26 May 1993 07:49:42 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 14
Message-ID: <1tvlgm$4pk@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993May23.165306.18384@midway.uchicago.edu> <1993May24.235725.27435@news.mentorg.com> <1tu96s$ati@sun.Panix.Com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
nancykay@panix.com (NancyKay) writes:
>[Q]ueers are not, it seems to me (I'm straight) asking for anything more
>than to have the rights and privileges we straights take for granted.
Both homosexuals and others have the right to work, live and generally
have dealings with others if the others want to have such dealings with
them. Even in the Hate State that situation already exists. Why
doesn't it show the live-and-let-live spirit to leave it at that?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Wed May 26 07:55:18 EDT 1993
Article: 50 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Conserving of WHAT?
Date: 26 May 1993 07:54:34 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 35
Message-ID: <1tvlpq$51l@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993May23.234836.29773@midway.uchicago.edu> <1tp4d9INNjkj@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <24MAY199316251692@mpx1.lampf.lanl.gov> <25MAY199316301326@mpx2.lampf.lanl.gov>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
wwehner@mpx2.lampf.lanl.gov (Wehner, Justin S.) writes:
>But I am interested in just what kind of people make up the
>"conservative" subset of society.
My own view of class and political ideology in the United States is that
our national ruling class (the elites of law, government, media,
education, culture and entertainment), together with its hangers-on,
imitators and wannabes, is liberal. They want all of society to be
governed by centrally managed institutions in accordance with uniform
and bureaucratically rational rules. (Not surprisingly, that desire is
consistent with their own desire for status and power.) Therefore, they
want to increase the power and responsibility of the federal government
and eliminate that of informal, traditional or local institutions (these
include the family and social expectations of individual
responsibility).
Everyone else falls short of liberalism in one way or another, and their
rejection of liberalism is called "conservatism" to the extent it is
coherent. (Criminality and drug use of the sort seen at the very bottom
of society is also a response to and rejection of liberalism, but it's
too incoherent to qualify as "conservatism".) Since conservatism is
basically the negation of something rather than something that exists on
its own, it takes many forms. Adventurous entrepreneurial types who
don't like government regulation because it cramps their style are
called conservatives. So are people in humble economic circumstances
who support institutions (like a definite code of sexual morality)
needed for the stability and importance of family life, because such
institutions make it possible for them to lead orderly, rewarding and
dignified lives.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Wed May 26 13:41:01 EDT 1993
Article: 8925 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: IQ and Race (Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds Jeffries'...)
Date: 26 May 1993 11:28:57 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 49
Message-ID: <1u02bp$osu@sun.Panix.Com>
References:
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Xref: panix alt.discrimination:8925 soc.culture.african.american:25664
rmm@world.std.com (Mike Melnyk) writes:
>I will admit that the idea that the difference between blacks' and
>whites' mean IQs is a heritable trait is not without a few supporters.
More than a few. In the study I mentioned, Snyderman and Rothman sent
questionnaires to 1020 people chosen randomly from various professional
societies. The 661 who responded seemed to have expertise -- two-thirds
had written at least one article or chapter on issues related to testing
and over half were currently conducting research on issues relating to
intelligence or testing. They also seemed reasonably disinterested --
the majority were college or university faculty members, and only 22
worked for the testing industry. Of that group, 53% thought there was a
genetic component to the difference, 17% thought there was no such
component, and 30% thought there was insufficient evidence to support a
conclusion. Since many of those belonging to the 53% no doubt prefer to
talk about other issues when making public pronouncements or applying
for research grants, the number of supporters of the "genetic component"
theory may seem smaller than it really is.
>I have not heard of any respected geneticist who believes that IQ is
>largely inherited.
I know very little about the matter, but my impression is that
geneticists are mostly concerned with determining the particular
mechanisms of heredity and so concentrate on traits that are clearly
defined and either present or not, rather than making global inquiries
into what sorts of abstractly-defined behavioral tendencies have a
genetic component. That might help explain why the people one hears
from on this issue tend not to be geneticists. For example:
>The most rigorous examination of the data, IMO, was by David Layzer, a
>Harvard astrophysicist, in his essay "Science or Superstition? A
>Physical Scientist Look at the IQ Controversy", which appears in in an
>anthology of essays about IQ (the title escapes me).
The obvious question that comes to mind when an astrophysicist
rigorously examines data is how often his standards of rigor would
disallow conclusions that seem reasonable to most of us on matters
relating to man and society, and so leave us with nothing on which to
base action but arbitrary assumption and ideological dogma. Of course,
the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so if you happen to remember
the name of the anthology please email me.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Wed May 26 17:00:58 EDT 1993
Article: 67 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Question for Conservatives
Date: 26 May 1993 14:59:26 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 67
Distribution: usa
Message-ID: <1u0eme$djm@sun.Panix.Com>
References:
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jpsb@NeoSoft.com (Jim Shirreffs) writes:
>Where do we get the right to police mens souls? I remember a time when
>it was conservatives that insisted that government should stay out of
>peoples lives as much as possible, and that you can't legistrate
>morality.
It's true that the government is neither the source of morality nor the
great moral teacher, and in most circumstances most of morality doesn't
have much to do with politics. That's especially true if you live under
a stable government with limited powers and responsibilities, which I
think most conservatives would want. (If you're a high government
official or you live under an evil despotism most of the important moral
issues you deal with might be political in nature.)
On the other hand, I don't know of any conservatives who want government
to police men's souls (set up a religious inquisition or the like).
Government is based on morality (we are obligated to obey the government
only to the extent morality obligates us to do so) and exists to protect
and promote the well-being of the people, which includes their moral
well-being. So it seems odd to say the government shouldn't have a
position on moral issues or should never base its actions on such a
position.
>Isn't early abortion really a matter between a mother, her child, and
>God?
It seems to me that other people, like the father and the rest of the
family, also have some sort of interest in the decision. Also, the
nature of the act depends on the nature of the unborn child. There are
some things that are so valuable that the rest of us are justified in
interfering when someone wants to destroy them. Examples that most
people today would agree on are newborn babies, whooping cranes,
historical buildings and the Grand Canyon. A two-month foetus either is
something of that type or it isn't, and I don't see how the government
can avoid taking a position on the matter.
>Isn't private homesexual sex really a matter between two adults
>and thier God?
Most of the issues today seem concerned with whether homosexual and
standard heterosexual sex are equally worthy. It seems to me that if
you want to treat the family as a basic social institution (more basic
than government, for example) you can't treat sex as a purely private
matter. The family or any other social institution will thrive only if
social attitudes and standards favor it, and attitudes and standards
regarding what kind of sexual activity is good and when it's appropriate
are relevant to family life. In particular, the view that sex and
family life has an essential connection to having and rearing children,
which I think will be part of any system of thought, feeling and conduct
that treats the family as a basic social institution, seems inconsistent
with viewing homosexual and heterosexual activity as equivalents.
>What does praying at school have to do with learning how to read and
>write?
The desire of some conservatives that the Supreme Court permit prayer at
school when the community favors it and those with scruples about
participating are not forced to do so may not have anything directly to
do with learning how to read and write. On the other hand, some sort of
ritual signifying recognition of values higher than personal or social
success does seem to me to contribute to education.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Wed May 26 21:02:16 EDT 1993
Article: 8929 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: sci.research.careers,soc.college,alt.discrimination,misc.legal,soc.rights.human,alt.activism,ny.general,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds Jeffries' Verdict Disturbing
Date: 26 May 1993 21:01:58 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 54
Message-ID: <1u13u6$r5e@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993May24.195208.16012@seas.smu.edu> <1tu2qh$29l@sun.Panix.Com> <1993May26.172242.16635@lamont.ldgo.columbia.edu>
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sasha@ldgo.columbia.edu (Alexander Krupitsky) writes:
>Jim Kalb writes:
>
>>In the extracts I've seen, Levin pointed to statistics relating to black
>>criminality rates (e.g., one out of four black men in their twenties is
>>either in jail, on parole, or on probation, a rate about 10 times as
>>high as the rate for white men of the same age). He then considered the
>>case of a jogger in a deserted place who sees a young black man ahead of
>>him. Since the jogger knows nothing whatever about the young black man
>>except that he is a young black man, Levin argues that it would be
>>rational to assume that there is a one in four chance that the man is a
>>criminal and to start jogging the other way instead of continuing in the
>>same direction.
>
>This is not the same as to say "whites should FLEE from blacks because
>blacks are more prone to commit crimes", isn't it, Paul? Unless you
>meant something else you misrepresented facts and now really owe
>apology.
I should mention that I only saw extracts and don't know everything
Levin said. Also, the example I described *did* involve running away
from a black man because of black criminality rates, so I'm not sure
Paul's description misrepresented any facts.
>By the way, Jim, I _do_ have problem with Levin's reasoning. Proper
>statistics applicable to the above example should consider criminality
>rates among blacks who are into jogging, not blacks in general.
As I recall the example, the young black man was (apparently) just
hanging around, not jogging. But even if he had been jogging, what
should someone do who didn't know any statistics for black joggers but
did know criminality rates for young black men? Levin's point (as I
understood it) had to do with what constitutes rational action when you
know very little rather than with what information it would be helpful
to have before acting.
Actually, it seems to me you could find all sorts of issues with the
example. For example, even if there really is a 25% chance that the
black man is a criminal not every criminal assaults every person who
happens to run by him. I would think that's a rare event. Nonetheless,
it seems to me that what I think is Levin's basic point is well taken,
that in dealing with people you know next to nothing about it's
legitimate to take statistical correlations into account, and that since
statistically a young black man chosen at random is considerably more
likely to be a criminal than a white chosen at random it must sometimes
be rational to treat someone you happen to run into differently
depending on whether he is black or white. There can't be many people
who do not in fact act that way on occasion.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Thu May 27 06:21:02 EDT 1993
Article: 8935 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american,alt.discrimination
Subject: Re: IQ and Race (Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds Jeffries'...)
Date: 27 May 1993 06:05:56 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 18
Message-ID: <1u23q4$5pb@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1u02bp$osu@sun.Panix.Com> <1993May27.014431.21275@cc.ic.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
Xref: panix soc.culture.african.american:25690 alt.discrimination:8935
atae@spva.ph.ic.ac.uk (Ata Etemadi) writes:
>Lots of IQ tests have been done over the years [ . . . ] check it out
>yourselves.
Good advice.
>Lets just suppose this crap about IQs is true. So what ?
In the United States there is a large and important body of law based in
part on a presumption that differing rates of success among racial
groups are best explained by racism. This crap about IQs is relevant to
whether that presumption is well-founded.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Thu May 27 06:21:17 EDT 1993
Article: 106 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Homosexual "Civil Rights"
Date: 27 May 1993 06:09:20 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 24
Message-ID: <1u240g$5ss@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1tu96s$ati@sun.Panix.Com>
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clc5q@hemlock.cs.Virginia.EDU (Clark L. Coleman) writes:
>CRA-91 places the burden of proof on an employer to prove that no
>employment discrimination has occurred IF the plaintiff first
>establishes reasonable cause to believe that discrimination has taken
>place. One of the "reasonable causes" is merely to establish that a
>certain group is represented in lower numbers in the employer's work
>force than in the general population of the community.
It's worth noting that "discrimination" includes any business practice
that results in lesser representation of a protected group unless that
practice meets an obscurely worded "business necessity" test. The test
is that the practice has to be "job-related" and have a significant
relationship to "business necessity". So unless that incomprehensible
test is meant, equal representation (and therefore quotas) are the law.
The test was intentionally made obscure in order to leave the degree to
which quotas will be required up to the courts, who have traditionally
treated civil rights statutes as remedial legislation to be given a
broad -- often surprisingly broad -- interpretation.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Thu May 27 12:29:04 EDT 1993
Article: 8938 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: sci.research.careers,soc.college,alt.discrimination,misc.legal,soc.rights.human,alt.activism,ny.general,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds Jeffries' Verdict Disturbing
Date: 27 May 1993 12:28:51 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 55
Message-ID: <1u2q83$rn@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993May26.172242.16635@lamont.ldgo.columbia.edu> <1u13u6$r5e@sun.Panix.Com>
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isbell@ai.mit.edu (Charles L Isbell) writes:
>I wonder if [Levin] would support the reasoning that the smart
>businessperson should not hire White men since they do the vast majority
>of embezzlement?
Do you happen to know what the relative embezzlement rates are for white
and black people who are in a position to embezzle something? According
to a cite I ran across, in 1990 blacks were nearly three times as likely
as whites to be arrested for forgery, counterfeiting and embezzlement.
The cite refers to Andrew Hacker, _Two Nations_ (Charles Scribner 1992),
p. 181, but I haven't checked it.
In any case, no smart businessman would put someone in a position in
which he could embezzle something if he knew nothing whatever about the
person other than what the person looked like. That is Levin's issue,
though -- how do you deal with people like people you run into while
jogging in the park about whom you know nothing other than what they
look like?
>Or the even more defensible notion that since men perform the VAST
>majority of violent crimes, women should just avoid them altogether.
I would say that women as well as men should go to more trouble to avoid
a man they don't know in a situation that seems threatening (a park late
at night with no-one around to help) than to avoid a woman. That's
certainly what I would do, and it's hard for me to imagine that others
act differently. Luckily, most situations are not like that, so I see
no more reason for women to avoid men altogether than Levin sees for
whites to avoid blacks altogether.
>Besides which, as we all know, the vast majority of murderers kill
>people they know (and to whom they are usually related); therefore, we
>should avoid people we know (and especially people whom we marry).
If we know people we aren't forced to rely on statistical probabilities
based on what we can see at a glance. Sometimes that's all we have to
go on, though. What then?
>Oh, and most victims face criminals of their own race/ethnic group, so
>we should all do the obvious.
That seems like a result of the circumstance that people have most of
their contacts with people of their own race/ethnic group rather than an
indication that contacts with people of other groups are safer than
contacts with people of one's own. Do you have any indication to the
the contrary?
(If you wish to continue this, I will not be able to respond until early
next week.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Mon May 31 22:37:49 EDT 1993
Article: 8988 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: IQ and Race (Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds
Date: 31 May 1993 22:34:12 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 78
Message-ID: <1uef74$1i8@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1u02bp$osu@sun.Panix.Com> <1993May27.211159.24526@husc3.harvard.edu>
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Xref: panix alt.discrimination:8988 soc.culture.african.american:25810
nkubo@birkhoff.harvard.edu (Tal Kubo) writes:
>Is there such a need for immediate action on [the issue of whether the
>black-white difference in IQ scores corresponds to a difference in
>average innate intelligence], that it makes a scientific approach
>unreasonable?
In the United States there is a demand for immediate action with respect
to black-white differences regarding economic success and other matters.
That means there is a need to choose the most reasonable explanation of
the origins of such differences and the conditions that maintain them.
It seems to me unlikely that it will be possible any time soon to
formulate and support any explanation of these questions that is both
broad enough to be useful and rigorous enough to satisfy an
astrophysicist in dealing with matters in his own field. Nonetheless,
some explanations are more reasonable than others, and I would call an
orderly and rational approach to evaluating explanations that is suited
to the matters being explained a "scientific approach". Whatever their
flaws, I would expect social scientists to have a better grasp on that
kind of approach than astrophysicists, because that is what the matters
they study require.
>Lacking any evidence at the present time, what alternative assumption
>would you prefer? How would you propose to act on it?
I would assume that things like intelligence that have economic value
tend to get developed and used most efficiently in a regime of free
contract. That assumption has limitations, but under modern conditions
of worldwide cheap and easy communication, transportation and travel
none occur to me that are relevant to black-white differences and
remediable by civil rights legislation. I would act on that assumption
by repealing civil rights laws and letting the chips fall where they
may.
I would also assume that self-governing societies are good, meaning by
"self-governing society" one in which power is decentralized, so that
the overall governance of society is something in which a great many
people in a variety of institutions and capacities take part through the
way in which they exercise their unreviewable discretion. On that
assumption, an extensive scheme of government supervision of fundamental
aspects of the internal operations of private organizations is something
that needs a better justification than civil rights laws have had.
>[E]xceptional claims require exceptional proof.
The survey I cited seems to show that the claim that there are
significant differences between blacks and whites in average innate
intelligence is not an exceptional view among those who are
professionally concerned with intelligence and testing. I would say
that extraordinary government efforts require an exceptional showing of
justice or expediency, and that that showing has not been made with
respect to the civil rights laws.
>Reversing the operative presumptions about intelligence and race, on the
>other hand, would have tremendous social consequences (this is an
>understatement). Are you prepared to open such a Pandora's box without
>ironclad evidence that the accepted wisdom is incorrect?
Pandora's box is already open. The operative assumption is that the
lack of success of blacks and others demonstrates the iniquity of
existing social institutions and of white people generally. The failure
of efforts to correct such iniquities is taken to show how deep-rooted
such iniquities are and the need for more determined efforts. Since I
have no reason to believe such efforts will ever be successful it seems
to me that the results of the current operative assumptions will
primarily be an increase in the resentment and hostility between the
races, an increase in the power and degree of centralization of the
government, and a corresponding weakening of all social institutions
other than the government. All of those seem to me to be very bad
things. I would be satisfied if the operative assumption of the
government was that it didn't know much about what causes these matters
or what can be done about them, and so left them alone with perhaps
symbolic gestures in the direction people find inspirational.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Mon May 31 22:41:41 EDT 1993
Article: 8989 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: sci.research.careers,soc.college,alt.discrimination,misc.legal,soc.rights.human,alt.activism,ny.general,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds Jeffries' Verdict Disturbing
Date: 31 May 1993 22:37:42 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 40
Message-ID: <1uefdm$1rk@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993May26.172242.16635@lamont.ldgo.columbia.edu> <1u1khb$60o@bigboote.WPI.EDU> <1993May27.220153.29742@hplabsz.hpl.hp.com>
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eshghi@hplabsz.hpl.hp.com (Kave Eshghi) writes:
> The real question, asked by people who care about more than
> just themselves, is: what if everybody behaved the way I intend to behave?
> What kind of society will it be, and do I want it to be that way? [ . . . ]
> In the case of the jogger seeing a black man, if everyone
> automatically changed their direction, while this would presumably be of
> short term advantage (reducing the likelihood of being attacked), if everyone
> does this, the consequence is nothing but de-facto apartheid, for the same
> kind of logic applies to employing a black man, making friends with a black
> man, going to the same swimming pool with black men etc.
I don't know what would happen if everyone changed direction on seeing
an average-looking young black man in a lonely part of the park. Maybe
it would make young black men feel that everyone hates them and lead
them to have anti-social and self-destructive attitudes. Maybe it would
make them look at the problem of violence in their community and
organize to do something about it. The problem with changing direction
is that it seems to express unfavorable attitudes and beliefs about
young black men. I'm inclined to think, though, that when problems get
sufficiently serious talking about them honestly and openly is likely to
be to the good as anything else.
I don't think approving of changing direction in the kind of situation
described is equivalent to approving of apartheid. In the other
situations you mention one is in a position to find out things about the
person that tell you far more than the fact that he is black does, and
therefore making a decision based on his color becomes less rational.
>He makes a choice between the possibility of being attacked, and a
>society in which people are sterotyped on the basis of their color. In
>that situation, my choice would be clear.
Do you feel the same way about a female jogger who is more inclined to
avoid men than women when jogging in the park after dark?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Mon May 31 22:43:27 EDT 1993
Article: 8990 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american,alt.discrimination
Subject: Re: IQ and Race (Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds Jeffries'...)
Date: 31 May 1993 22:41:35 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <1uefkv$2bp@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993May27.014431.21275@cc.ic.ac.uk> <1u23q4$5pb@sun.Panix.Com> <1993May27.232554.299@cc.ic.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
Xref: panix soc.culture.african.american:25812 alt.discrimination:8990
atae@spva.ph.ic.ac.uk (Ata Etemadi) writes:
>In article <1u23q4$5pb@sun.Panix.Com>, jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>
>-| In the United States there is a large and important body of law based in
>-| part on a presumption differing rates of success among racial
>-| groups are best explained by racism. This crap about IQs is relevant to
>-| whether that presumption is well-founded.
>
> Are you serious ? What about all this liberty and equality for all
> business (with emphasis on equality) ? I am not a US citizen as you
> may have guessed :-)
Equality can mean a lot of different things. One of them is equal
average results for the members of every definable social group.
Under the Civil Rights Act of 1992, a showing of different rates of
success among racial groups creates a presumption that an employer is
engaging in racial discrimination. (In this regard, the 1992 Act is not
that different from preceding law.)
It is true that an employer can rebut the presumption of racism by
showing that the practices that result in the differential (reliance on
supervisor's evaluations, aptitude tests, requirement of a high-school
diploma, disqualification of persons with criminal records, or whatever)
are "job related" and have a significant relationship to "business
necessity". However, no-one knows what any of those phrases mean. In
the past the courts have tended to construe the language of civil rights
acts broadly (as they have stated, to effectuate the remedial purpose of
such statutes), so the only reliable way employers have to ensure that
they will not be held to have discriminated is to ensure equal results
by establishing quotas.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Mon May 31 22:46:01 EDT 1993
Article: 8991 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: IQ and Race (Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds Jeffries'...)
Date: 31 May 1993 22:43:22 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <1uefoa$2j6@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1u02bp$osu@sun.Panix.Com>
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Xref: panix alt.discrimination:8991 soc.culture.african.american:25813
rmm@world.std.com (Mike Melnyk) writes:
>Furthermore, if one is making such a bold claim, as the hereditarians
>are, one had better have the data and a strong enough knowledge of
>statistics to present a strong case. Western European science has been
>in the business of debunking putative beliefs about humanity for
>centuries now. The methods Layzer uses, which are accord with our
>scientific tradition, are far from unorthodox.
Is it bolder than the claim that heredity has no significant effect on
differences in achievement? Civil rights law in the United States is
apparently based on the theory that the problems black people and others
have here are attributable chiefly to white people (or white men) having
the wrong outlook on things. Do you believe *that* theory can be stated
and supported in a way that would stand up to Layzer's type of
criticism?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Mon May 31 22:47:41 EDT 1993
Article: 8992 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: sci.research.careers,soc.college,alt.discrimination,misc.legal,soc.rights.human,alt.activism,ny.general,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds Jeffries' Verdict Disturbing
Date: 31 May 1993 22:45:53 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 30
Message-ID: <1ueft1$2sa@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <2947613247.0.p00004@psilink.com>
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"Michael Smith" writes:
>When you see a person trying to come up with a justification for
>treating people differently on the basis of "race", you have to ask
>yourself what he is trying to achieve, and why.
One obvious reason (in the United States, at least) is to cast doubt on
the expediency and justice of existing or proposed civil rights
legislation. For an extended discussion of why civil rights legislation
is a bad idea, I suggest _Forbidden Grounds_ by Richard Epstein.
>Let's try a thought experiment. Jews are (statistically speaking) more
>likely than, say, Baptists, to be lawyers. Suppose you're on a co-op
>board and you don't want people in the building who have lawyers in the
>family, because it's easier for them to sue you. So you make it a
>regular practice to turn down people with Jewish-sounding surnames,
>because, statistically speaking, you're more likely to be sued by them.
My own view is that the members of a coop should have the right to
refuse to admit anyone they want to admit for whatever grounds seem
sufficient to them. I think that right is especially important in a
diverse and multicultural society in which the ways people find to live
productively and with a minimum of friction with other people, who may
have very similar or very different outlook and habits, can't be
specified _a priori_.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 1 14:38:51 EDT 1993
Article: 260 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Kirk's (reluctant) canon
Date: 1 Jun 1993 14:36:39 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 19
Message-ID: <1ug7jn$mtm@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993May30.034450.14591@afit.af.mil>
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emil@shell.portal.com (emil rojas) writes:
>The idea of a natural order that should be maintained is clearly and
>simply the idea that those in power should stay in power.
If that's true, then why isn't the idea of a just order of things that
has not yet been realized clearly and simply the idea that a particular
group (those who propound the idea) that isn't in power should attain
power?
If you start unmasking claims that some order of things is right as
masks for the will to power you are starting a game that any number can
play. The winners of the game will not necessarily be those who are
most distinguished for their humanity and public spirit.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 1 14:38:52 EDT 1993
Article: 261 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Question for Conservatives
Date: 1 Jun 1993 14:38:44 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 37
Distribution: usa
Message-ID: <1ug7nk$n51@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993May27.204923.26008@news.mentorg.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
dfc@apple.com (Don Coolidge) writes:
>Private, personal behavior hurts nobody else. Some would argue that it
>doesn't even hurt the participant(s), but going that far isn't necessary
>to make the point.
>
>Hurt is that which interferes with the rights and freedoms of another
>person.
This doesn't tell us much, though. If I counterfeit $20 bills so well
they can never be distinguished from the real thing and spend them, it's
not clear that I'm interfering with the rights and freedoms of another
person. I doubt that there would be any discernible effect on anyone
except myself, and the effect on myself would be beneficial. Also, if I
could I would do the counterfeiting all by myself (that is, privately
and personally).
Nonetheless, most of us would agree that it would be OK to toss me in
the slammer if I were somehow caught. I think the reason is that most
of us value money highly and rely on it in dealing with the practical
affairs of life, so we strongly disapprove of anyone who does something
like counterfeiting that tends to undermine the institution of money and
if universally engaged in would destroy it.
As it happens, there are institutions other than money that many people
think promote a good society, and for each such institution there is
conduct that tends to undermine it that such people tend to think no-one
should engage in. An example of such an institution is the family (dad,
mom and children), and an example of such conduct is noncompliance with
traditional sexual morality (adultery, for example). So what is the
objection in principle to imposing penalties of various sorts on such
noncompliance?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 1 14:40:49 EDT 1993
Article: 262 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Gays and Hitler (was Re: Conservative society?)
Date: 1 Jun 1993 14:40:44 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 31
Message-ID: <1ug7rc$ncc@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993May27.024204.25601@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> <1993May27.194350.24239@news.mentorg.com> <1u3bfl$htp@fitz.TC.Cornell.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
shore@dinah.tc.cornell.edu (Melinda Shore) writes:
>In article seamus@ravel.udel.edu (Jim) writes:
>>It is actually my desire for civic virtue which drives me to liberitarianism.
>>I believe that the people of a society are the best individuals to fix or ch
>>change that society.
>
>The problem is one of equity. Since we tend to want to take care of our
>own and contribute to causes close to us, communities which are
>disenfranchised and poor to start with tend not to have much to reinvest
>in themselves, which reduces social mobility and, in fact, makes it more
>difficult for those with initiative to break the poverty cycle.
>Allowing our elected representatives to distribute based on actual need
>helps even things out.
Your apparent view that distributions based on actual need will induce
people to reinvest in themselves seems odd to me. I would think it
would have the opposite effect. You're most motivated to invest in
yourself when you think you're going to have to rely on yourself.
I'm not sure what you mean by "disenfranchised". Certainly slaves would
find it difficult to organize themselves, their families and their
communities in a way that will lead to a better life. That's not an
issue in America today, though. Instead, an obvious barrier to
self-organization today is the modern welfare state, which reduces the
need and the reward for self-organization.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 2 05:57:32 EDT 1993
Article: 8998 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: IQ and Race (Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds Jeffries'...)
Date: 1 Jun 1993 20:33:42 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 45
Message-ID: <1ugsh6$lvh@sun.Panix.Com>
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Xref: panix alt.discrimination:8998 soc.culture.african.american:25835
rmm@world.std.com (Mike Melnyk) writes:
>But what I've seen indicates that the 70-80% heritability claim is by
>no means strong, and even if it were true, there's no simple way to
>assign a baseline IQ from this conclusion.
By your standards of rationality, is any estimate for the degree of
hereditability more reasonable than any other? What bothers me is that
if the standards are set high enough, all knowledge (except maybe the
_cogito_) becomes impossible. If they're set a somewhat lower,
astrophysics becomes possible. Is it your view that if they're set low
enough to permit conclusions to be drawn about the degree of
heritability they're so low that drawing conclusions is a pointless
exercise even if there is a practical need for conclusions of some sort?
Also, please educate me -- what is the significance of "assigning a
baseline IQ"?
>There is simply no strong statistical evidence to support the hypothesis
>that differences in races' mean IQ is genetic in origin.
So that I understand what sort of thing you have in mind, what are the
minimal experimental findings that you can think of, additional to what
we know today, that would constitute such strong statistical evidence?
Also, do you mean that there is no strong evidence that any part of it
is genetic or that some particular portion of it is genetic? (I am
assuming that the 70-80% figure you cite above relates to variations
among individuals rather than among races.)
>What bothers me about the IQ debate is that the methodology of the
>people like Jensen, Eysenck, et al. is so sloppy that these dudes can
>hide behind the guise of objectivity, when in reality they're probably
>mostly motivated by racist beliefs.
What leads you to your conclusion about their motives? Do you have an
argument that can be justified by the standards of rigor Layzer and you
demand with respect to other factual matters? Do you find that these
dudes use sloppier methodology than other dudes who argue for
interpretations that are sufficiently strong to support or oppose
particular social policies?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 2 10:04:04 EDT 1993
Article: 9005 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination,talk.politics.theory,alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Discrimination and the New World Order (was: IQ and Race)
Date: 2 Jun 1993 08:08:09 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 84
Message-ID: <1ui579$ohg@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <881@elli.une.edu.au>
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Xref: panix alt.discrimination:9005 talk.politics.theory:13190 alt.society.conservatism:276
pparker@elli.une.edu.au (Paul Parker) writes:
>Some points to remember:
>
> 1) the new world order has overtaken us all.
>
> 2) the new world order does not give a #@#@# about culture,
> colour, religion, nationality, etc only success.
True enough. I hope this is not the whole truth about the world, but
it's plainly true enough to analyze and take very seriously.
> 3) Success is measured in money.
In an extensive, politically egalitarian and commercial society this
will be true for most people because money is something that almost
everyone values highly that is easy to compare. However, every society
needs a ruling class, and those who aspire to belong to that class will
measure their success in power.
The ruling class in the new world order will be relatively autonomous
rather than expressing the interests of some other class, because it
will owe its power ultimately to a mass electorate that is too large and
chaotic to act on its own but can be manipulated with the help of money
(which can be raised from a variety of sources with conflicting
interests) and the media (the dominant figures in which will therefore
belong to the ruling class).
Because power is what its members value, the ruling class will
constantly strive to increase its own power. That power will increase
absolutely with increases in the activity and authority of the
government, and relatively with the weakening of all private
institutions. Accordingly, in the new world order the government will
characteristically regulate and undermine other social institutions as
much as it can.
Anti-discrimination laws are part of that effort because they forbid
people to organize themselves in the manner they find most satisfying.
If a bunch of guys who like to hang around together and work on cars,
talk about sports, engage in horseplay and tell dirty jokes want to
continue that activity in a work setting, the government tells them they
can't. If the members of a community with the common standards and
values that develop when people live together over time and that
facilitate further cooperation find that things go better when they
mostly work together, that's too bad because the government won't let
them do it. All organizations are required to be aggregates of
individuals with nothing much in common other than the specific purposes
of the organization. As a result, organizations become weaker and lose
energy in internal misunderstandings and conflicts in which some of the
factions enjoy the right to call in the government for assistance. All
of which is to the benefit of the ruling class of the new world order,
however adverse it may be to the public welfare.
> 4) the key to success is relevant knowledge.
>
> 5) to get relevant knowledge is hard work and effort.
>
> 6) were you grown up accepting that you had to do hard work to
> gain reward ?
Another way to get money (which in the new world order is the supreme
value other than power) is for the government to take it away from those
who have it and give it to you. From the standpoint of the ruling class
that's a good thing, since it reduces the power of the prosperous by
making them poorer and by showing them who's boss and creates a large
class of people who rely on the government for everything they have.
>`Intellectuals' come talking of the importance of preserving the
>family minority culture. To support why teaching english should
>be second to home language. Why all home culture is more
>important and should be maintained. Giving the illusion that the
>same degree of success in the wider society/world can be achieved
>without learning the game rules and skills.
To support minority culture weakens majority culture and therefore
increases the relative power of the government. _Divide et impera_.
Also, if people are led to want to keep their home culture as it is
rather than adapting to present circumstances they will become more
reliant on the government for support.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 2 15:50:38 EDT 1993
Article: 424 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter,alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Oops.
Date: 2 Jun 1993 15:50:12 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 19
Message-ID: <1uj09k$3mg@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1tp6jlINNm45@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <1993May24.230625.23631@news.cs.brandeis.edu>, <1993Jun1.195017.2468@news.cs.brandeis.edu>
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In <1993Jun1.195017.2468@news.cs.brandeis.edu> deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes:
>Everyone else I have talked to has called it alt.society.conservative, but
>my site still does not carry it, either as an -ive or an -ism.
If people are having trouble getting alt.society.conservatism at their
sites I could set things up on my system to send the articles in batches
by email. I developed a nearly-automatic method for doing this when
some people were having trouble getting alt.revolution.counter, so it
would be very little trouble to do the same thing for a.s.c. (Posting
can be done through the U of Texas mail-to-news gateway.) So anyone who
would like to get either newsgroup whose site administrator refuses to
carry it because he's obviously in the pay of the International Liberal
Conspiracy should send me email.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 2 19:33:31 EDT 1993
Article: 295 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Question for Conservatives
Date: 2 Jun 1993 17:14:29 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 56
Distribution: usa
Message-ID: <1uj57l$bv6@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1uio5e$3ch@fitz.TC.Cornell.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
shore@dinah.tc.cornell.edu (Melinda Shore) writes:
>The apparent purpose of including books like "Heather Has Two Mommies"
>in the curriculum is to teach acceptance of difference. It seems to me
>that if you *really* respect the rights of others, rather than expecting
>public schools to cater to your particular values you'll choose to move
>your children into an environment where they won't be exposed to things
>that you find problematic.
I'm not sure it's possible consistently to hold the view you seem to be
presenting. It's hard to imagine somebody who didn't want schools to
take any position whatever on matters of right, wrong or value, and to
the extent the schools do take a position it's hard to imagine someone
who wouldn't want the position taken to agree with his own. So it's
hard for me to imagine someone who *didn't* want (as you put it) "the
public schools to cater to [his] particular values".
Your own values seem to include something you call "acceptance of
difference". But I suspect you and others would not treat all
differences as acceptable. Otherwise, we would be seeing books like the
following for 2nd graders:
_Ivana makes *BIG* Bucks_: The exciting story of how little
Ivana grew up to make *TONS* of money as an arbitrageur trading
on illegally-obtained information and got away with it.
Nonjudgmentally told.
_Bo Lin gets High_: The story of how little Bo Lin, an
immigrant girl, fought racism, sexism and ageism to become a
successful drug runner for one of New York's biggest dealers.
Ends with her first use of crack on her 10th birthday,
illustrated by one of the foremost psychedelic artists of the
60's.
_Recycling is Stupid_: Two little boys, whose families are sick
of being fined if they don't go along with the hobby-horses of
the local environmental true believers, form a club called the
Black Commandos and gain notoriety torching newspaper recycling
centers.
The point, of course, is that the differences schools teach children to
accept are the differences that the schools think don't matter. There
are lots of people who are into drugs or making money by any means
necessary, or who think recycling is basically a religious observance
rather than a serious policy or who would rather just throw trash out
the window, but pluralism doesn't seem to mean that the schools have to
teach equal respect for *those* points of view. There are people who
believe that standards of sexual conduct that don't favor homosexuality
contribute to the good life. It shouldn't surprise you that such people
object when the schools teach acceptance of conduct that flouts those
standards.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Thu Jun 3 05:47:45 EDT 1993
Article: 9019 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: sci.research.careers,soc.college,alt.discrimination,misc.legal,soc.rights.human,alt.activism,ny.general,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds Jeffries' Verdict Disturbing
Date: 2 Jun 1993 20:24:13 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 35
Message-ID: <1ujgbd$179@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993May27.220153.29742@hplabsz.hpl.hp.com> <1uefdm$1rk@sun.Panix.Com> <1993Jun2.194510.6625@hplabsz.hpl.hp.com>
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eshghi@hplabsz.hpl.hp.com (Kave Eshghi) writes:
>If you allow skin color to be a factor in your judgement of other
>people, or, even worse, argue that it is rational (on the basis of some
>statistical corelation between color and other characteristics) to do
>so, you are effectively condoning the principle underlying apartheid,
>which is that race and color are determining factors in the place people
>have in society.
The principle underlying apartheid as you state it is different from the
principle that race and color can sometimes be rationally treated as
factors in judgements of other people. Something can be a rational
factor in some decisions without determining most decisions. Indeed,
the latter principle (that race and color can sometimes rationally be
treated as factors) would be a necessary part of any justification of an
affirmative action program that uses different standards for blacks and
whites.
>It is a fact that women don't rape women, while some men do. Using the same
>logic as above, by avoiding men in a dark park the women is effectively saying:
>men, as a group, are more aggressive, and have a higher tendency to rape
>than women. Unlike the situation with blacks, this is (unfortunately) true.
But some women commit violent crimes against women, including (I
suppose) sexual assault of some sort, while most men do nothing of the
kind. You seem to believe that the far higher rate of such crimes among
men makes maleness a risk factor. Why doesn't the far higher rate of
violent crime among blacks make blackness a risk factor, at least in
settings in which all one has to base action on is what someone looks
like?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Thu Jun 3 05:48:09 EDT 1993
Article: 308 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Question for Conservatives
Date: 2 Jun 1993 20:28:02 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 31
Distribution: usa
Message-ID: <1ujgii$1ic@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1uio5e$3ch@fitz.TC.Cornell.EDU> <1uj6g4$6a8@fitz.TC.Cornell.EDU>
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shore@dinah.tc.cornell.edu (Melinda Shore) writes:
>What *really* baffles me is people who would prefer
>to run the risk that their kids grow up to be bigots,
>unwed teenage parents, depressed and self-hating gay
>people, or carriers of sexually-transmitted diseases
>than take the chance that their value systems might
>turn out to be different from their own.
?????!! Parents who want their children to walk the sexual straight and
narrow, and so don't want other ways of life to be presented as
acceptable, don't classify their outlook as bigotry and don't want their
children to be involved in homosexuality (let alone depressed and
self-hating homosexuality) or in conduct that results in unwed
parenthood or STDs. Possibly you believe that bringing children up that
way tends to have those results, but I don't know of any reason to think
that view is correct.
Like everyone else, such parents believe that the things they think are
good really are good, and so the greatest benefit they can confer on
their children is to bring them to understand how good they are. I
imagine that if you were a mother (I know nothing about your personal
life, so excuse me if you already are a mother) you would do your best
to pass on to your children your understanding of what is valuable and
would be upset if your children rejected your most fundamental values
(if they all became Nazis, for example).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Thu Jun 3 08:52:58 EDT 1993
Article: 9033 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: IQ and Race (Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds
Date: 3 Jun 1993 07:42:23 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 109
Message-ID: <1uko2v$dvg@sun.Panix.Com>
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Xref: panix alt.discrimination:9033 soc.culture.african.american:25879
Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes:
jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>>I would assume that things like intelligence that have economic value
>>tend to get developed and used most efficiently in a regime of free
>>contract.
>Things like intelligence have significant time delays between the
>factors affecting them and the factors used in their measurement, and
>the regime of free contract does not seem to be very good at solving
>causal relationships that involve multiple causal factors and extended
>time delays.
I should have said "trained and used" rather than "developed and used",
meaning by "training" something rather short-term. Under free contract,
if someone presently has capacities that make him profitable to hire and
train it's likely that someone will hire and train him.
Free contract also provides incentives for developing intelligence of
some kinds. Because of the time delays you mention people will not
respond to those incentives by pursuing education and so on unless other
things are present, like personal and family stability and coherence.
Whatever the effect of free contract on those other things, both theory
and experience suggest that the modern welfare/civil rights state is
adverse to them.
>>That assumption has limitations, but under modern conditions
>>of worldwide cheap and easy communication, transportation and travel
>>none occur to me that are relevant to black-white differences and
>>remediable by civil rights legislation.
>
>Why should those conditions make it more likely that the "right"
>answers would emerge?
Theories based on how wonderful markets are work better if there are
lots of independent participants and few transaction costs. In rural
Alabama in 1900, where there weren't many employers and those that
existed had similar enough interests to constitute a self-conscious
class that acts together, my theory about how a smart black who'll give
it a go will bob to the top wouldn't have applied. Things are different
in New York City in 1993.
>Do you think that there is some tendency for societies to approach a
>global optimum in the absence of (e.g.) legislation?
Not as a general thing. All I'm claiming is that unregulated capitalist
markets tend to use readily available resources as effectively as
possible. That's especially true if there are lots of independent
participants and low transaction costs, and I claim that condition is
satisfied a lot better now than it has generally been in the past.
Remember that I'm dealing with a claim that laws are needed to force
employers to use an economic resource (blacks who would be productive if
hired and promoted) more effectively (hiring and promoting them based on
what they can do for the employer rather than how they look).
>An important question here is the framework within which those
>self-governing societies make their decisions; they are seldom if ever
>in a vacuum. If the framework itself is decentralized, it is easy to
>end up with situations that most of us would agree are far less than
>optimal.
And who will guard the guardians themselves? In any case, a claim that
central control is needed on some point should be dealt with based on
considerations relevant to that particular point.
>With respect to civil rights, the corruption manifested itself in overt
>discrimination, which meant that large sections of the populace were
>prevented from contributing in a way commensurate with their abilities;
>it was so blatantly not a meritocracy that it became politically
>unstable (in the wider context) [ . . . ] An operational assumption of
>ignorance does not automatically lead to a "hands-off" policy,
>especially when that policy has been demonstrated to lead to unpleasant
>consequences.
I don't see how the present condition of black people in the United
States is a result of the failure of the government to regulate.
Slavery (the enforcement by the government of property rights in slaves)
was an example of economic regulation, as were some of the Jim Crow laws
(laws prohibiting certain sorts of racial mixing made it expensive to
hire blacks as well as whites). I suppose the failure of the government
to protect the security of blacks who competed economically with whites
might also be viewed as a form of economic regulation. Other economic
regulations intended to protect the occupants of good jobs also injured
and continue to injure people at the bottom. "Scabs" are not simply bad
people who materialize out of nowhere and maliciously want to take good
men's jobs away. As suggested above, much of the condition of blacks in
the rural South seems to me to result more from undeveloped than from
unregulated labor markets.
In any case, the condition of blacks in this country was not static
before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. Measured by income
relative to whites and so on, things had been getting better for some
time and they continued to get better until the early '70s, when in the
aggregate they began to stagnate at about the same time affirmative
action was getting under way in earnest. (To discuss this aspect of the
matter properly I would need more statistics than I have at hand.) It
would be odd if things had been static, by the way. If civil rights
laws can get passed at all it seems unlikely that the picture of a
monolithic white society shutting out blacks retains much truth.
Incidentally, if you think "blatantly not a meritocracy" means political
instability, you ought to have trouble with affirmative action programs
as they exist in the United States.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Thu Jun 3 18:55:53 EDT 1993
Article: 9041 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: sci.research.careers,soc.college,alt.discrimination,misc.legal,soc.rights.human,alt.activism,ny.general,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds Jeffries' Verdict Disturbing
Date: 3 Jun 1993 18:16:14 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <2948204353.0.p00004@psilink.com>
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"Michael Smith" writes:
>>>In article <1ueft1$2sa@sun.Panix.Com>, jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes...
>>>
>>>>My own view is that the members of a coop should have the right to
>>>>refuse to admit anyone they want to admit for whatever grounds seem
>>>>sufficient to them.
>
>I presume this bizarre conclusion follows, in JK's case as well as Sue
>Nymme's, from some kind of Randroid or Friedmaniacal market cultism [ . . . ]
I have read very little of either Rand or Friedman, and overall don't
have much sympathy with what I know of either. No doubt there are many
points on which I agree with each, just as there are many points on
which I agree with Confucius, Marx, the Marquis de Sade, or almost any
other political thinker.
>Take Sue Nymme's comment, quoted above: "If someone doesn't want to
>rent...to people who are black, jewish....Most likely, it's their
>loss." In other words, the Magic of the Market can be trusted to end
>discrimination. Of course, we had legal housing discrimination for two
>hundred years and still have a good deal of illegal discrimination, and
>the Magic of the Market never put a dent in it.
No, I don't think the M. of the M. will end housing discrimination. I
just think that housing discrimination is more often than not a good
thing. Visit New York City sometime. We have a very diverse
population. You will note that people here tend to live in ethnic
neighborhoods. Most people prefer it that way. Do you think that shows
that they are stupid, bad or crazy?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Thu Jun 3 18:56:10 EDT 1993
Article: 336 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Libertarianism versus Conservatism
Date: 3 Jun 1993 18:20:22 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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hhuang@athena.mit.edu (Han-Young Huang) writes:
>Is it our *responsibility* to force others to conform to our standards
>of behavior for the purpose of making society ``better''?
To make things a bit more specific, I suppose health is a good that you
probably think is really a good. With respect to that good this
question becomes "is it our responsibility to force others to conform to
our standards of the requirements of health for the purpose of making
society 'healthier'?" The answer is "yes", sometimes.
I would agree that the government shouldn't force people to do things
unless those responsible have thought seriously about whether the rule
makes sense and really conduces to making things better for people
generally without too many bad side-effects. I would expect that you
would agree that those requirements are met in the case of at least some
public health measures, and also that at least some such measures are
legitimately matters of legal compulsion.
The issues then seem to be what situations other than public health meet
the requirements and, if a situation meets the requirements, whether
there is some other reason for not imposing legal compulsion. These
strike me as issues of means and practicalities for which no universal
solution can be given but mostly depend on how a particular measure
would fit into the overall way of life of the people. Most people today
don't object to fluoridating the water supply or quarentining people
with contagious diseases but would object to requiring every adult to
give blood or visit a dentist every 6 months. I agree with those views.
If circumstances were different, it might be right for those views to
change and they might indeed change, but the changes would be a matter
of judgement rather than the application of abstract principles known _a
priori_.
>Is it or is it not our responsibility to coerce other people at gunpoint
>into changing their ``disorderly'' behavior?
A legal order that relies heavily on the direct threat or use of force
to achieve compliance is a failure. Force is always the _ultima ratio_
for complying with the law, but in a good society it's rather in the
background because people generally support the laws. So if your
question is "should the government routinely force people to do things
literally at gunpoint" the answer is no. That's no way to run a
government, and in fact I've never seen anyone forced to do anything at
gunpoint. On the other hand, if your question is "should the government
be ready to use force against noncompliance with laws that it thinks in
good faith and on reflection really do promote the public good and that
most people comply with voluntarily or at least accept as legitimate",
then the answer is yes. I don't see why such laws can't include laws
against disorderly behavior if curbing the disorderly behavior would
promote the public good.
>Time after time again, conservatives miss the whole point -- that
>libertarians do *not* wish to coerce our private morality upon others.
The issue may be what part of morality is private. Like many
left-wingers, but unlike libertarians, the conservatives of whom you
speak believe that man is in his essence a social animal. Society is
part of what makes him what he is. Most of the things he wants and his
modes of pursuing and holding those things are social, so standards of
conduct will generally not be purely private because they relate to
things that other people are involved in. A purchase of drugs, for
example, has consequences not only for the purchaser but also for people
who rely on him (members of the families of drug users often have a hard
time of it, especially the children) or are otherwise affected by what
he does. That "otherwise affected" sweeps in a lot, by the way -- very
few of us are so strong-minded as not to be affected by what other
people do simply because they are doing it.
>How is [Mr. Bralick's] ``social order'' or ``ordered liberty'' or the
>idea that government should encourage virtue and discourage vice as a
>*principle* any different from the principles that underly liberal
>statism?
Libertarian theory as I understand it depends on the proposition that a
person can judge his own interests better than others can, and he can
make and carry out rational decisions on matters affecting those
interests. That proposition is not wholly true, although in some
connections it may be useful to treat it as true. A sensible person who
favors liberty will do what he can to make it as true as possible. Drug
use is an example of something that reduces whatever degree of truth the
proposition has and therefore chips away at the factual basis that must
be present for a free social order to make sense.
If government is to be limited the people must have certain virtues
(self-reliance, self-control, public spirit). So by encouraging those
virtues the government is making it practical for its own
responsibilities to be limited. That's not statism.
More generally, the liberal view, like the libertarian view, is that the
world consists of isolated individuals with whatever desires and
impulses they happen to have who are connected by an abstract scheme of
things through which those desires and impulses can be satisfied. For
liberals that abstract scheme of things is determined by the state.
(For libertarians it is determined by the market.) Liberal statism is
thus the view that the state is the ultimate social institution, beyond
which there is no higher authority, and upon which we depend for all
good things.
The conservative view, as I understand it, is that the moral
institutions of his society are part of what makes a man what he is, and
that those institutions, since they derive their authority from a source
that transcends all human institutions, are superior to both the
government and the market. Since the state and the market are not
primary for them, conservatives take at least equally seriously other
institutions, such as the family, without which many goods can not be
obtained. So the conservative view of the state is quite different from
the liberal view.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Fri Jun 4 12:43:02 EDT 1993
Article: 9051 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: IQ and Race (Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds Jeffries'...)
Date: 4 Jun 1993 09:12:54 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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rmm@world.std.com (Mike Melnyk) writes:
>Suppose that IQ is 80% genetic. Also suppose that two children are born
>with "genetic" IQs of 100 (baseline IQs of 100 [ . . . ] Chances are
>their IQ's are going to be different: the [environmentally disfavored]
>child's lower than 100, the [environmentally favored] child's higher.
>But how can one quantify what fraction of the measured IQ, i.e., exactly
>how many IQ points, is due to the 20% environmental contribution?
I'm lost. If it's known that in a standard enviroment the IQ of each
would be 100 (which I suppose is what is meant by saying the baseline IQ
is 100) then it seems that the contribution of the specific environment
would in each case be whatever the measured difference from 100 is. I'm
not sure why knowing that 80% of the variation in IQ for some group of
children in some range of environments is genetic would be relevant.
I can understand that summing heredity and environment might turn out to
be too simple-minded. Life is hard, though, and you do the best you
can.
I got a copy of Layzer's article. I haven't yet had time to go through
it, but it bothers me that on the second page he says "the 'hypothesis'
of genetic differences in intelligence between ethnic groups is shown to
be untestable by existing or foreseeable methods. Hence, it should not
be regarded as a scientific hypothesis but as a metaphysical
speculation." My inclination is to say that if that is what his
methodological standards tell him then there is something wrong with
those standards. We investigate factual matters to deal with the world,
and rationality requires only that we be as rigorous as we can and not
that we give up and act based on flipping coins because we would
otherwise have to make simplifying assumptions.
Compare:
>Until we have a more believable mathematical equation for how nature and
>nurture interact to determine IQ, we can only make reasonable statements
>about a posteriori IQ, not the relative strengths about of nature vs.
>nurture.
with
>I don't have the same standards about drawing the conclusion about
>Jensen, et al. [that they are probably mostly motivated by racist
>beliefs] that I do about IQ for a good reason. First of all, what I was
>offering was an educated guess.
If it's possible to make educated guesses about the motivations of
people you don't know much about, why isn't it possible to make educated
guesses about other questions of fact, like the relative strengths of
nature and nurture?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Sat Jun 5 07:52:23 EDT 1993
Article: 9070 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: sci.research.careers,soc.college,alt.discrimination,misc.legal,soc.rights.human,alt.activism,ny.general,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds Jeffries' Verdict Disturbing
Date: 5 Jun 1993 05:36:12 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 101
Message-ID: <1uppec$bks@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <2948204353.0.p00004@psilink.com> <1ult7e$l9d@sun.Panix.Com>
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gbyshenk@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (byshenk gregory m) writes:
>It is one thing for a group of people to say "let's all live in the same
>neighborhood"; it's something else to say "you people _can't_ live
>here". The latter is housing discrimination; the former is not (except
>in a few special cases, such as Oak Park, Illinois, in which the
>populace has decided that they want to live in an integrated community).
I would expect that the people who say "let's all live in the same
neighborhood" would show in various ways that people who are part of
"us" are more welcome in the neighborhood than people who aren't part of
"us", and generally make it easier for "us" to move in than others.
What can the "let's all ... " language be apart from an
innocuous-sounding way of characterizing just that kind of activity?
They wouldn't have to be nasty about it for their conduct to constitute
housing discrimination, and if they did get nasty (burned crosses on
lawns, for example) their conduct would likely be illegal under laws
having nothing to do with discrimination. I would expect, for example,
that landlords who are members of the "us" would be readier to rent to
fellow members than to people they view as outsiders, and real estate
firms that are sensitive to community feelings would steer customers to
the communities where they think they (and the neighbors) would be
happier. All that would be illegal housing discrimination.
>This white boy liked living in _Loisaida_, and would have been upset if
>someone told him he wasn't allowed to.
Even without laws against housing discrimination I'm not sure how
someone could tell you you weren't allowed to live in a particular
neighborhood without breaking other laws (against harassment or
whatever). You would just have to find a landlord who wants to rent to
you or someone who's willing to sell to you.
"Housing discrimination" covers a much broader range of things than
telling people they're not allowed to live somewhere. Suppose you had
to tell the real estate agent specifically that you knew what it was
like in Loisada (which I assume is a predominantly nonwhite area) and
insist that you really did want to live there before he was willing to
take the time to show you something there. Or suppose you had to talk
to more than one agent. Both those would be examples of housing
discrimination.
>[Which points toward another question: Why is it that housing discrimination
>is always practiced by more powerful groups against disadvantaged groups,
>and not vice versa?]
Why think this is true? If what I am told is correct, blacks-only
college dorms in America in 1993 are an example to the contrary.
Certainly it's easier to engage in housing discrimination if you're the
landlord, but even disadvantaged groups include a lot of landlords. If
a single personal anecdote matters (you said "always") I once rented an
apartment from a black man in a black neighborhood who expressed some
reluctance to rent to me, a white with a Puerto Rican roommate. He came
through, but I imagine that another person who felt more strongly about
the issue might not have.
"Michael Smith" writes:
>I suppose you could characterize the Warsaw Ghetto on the one hand, and
>Johannesburg (in the good old days) on the other, as "ethnic
>neighborhoods", but this would be... disingenuous, shall we say.
Why on earth would anyone characterize them that way? As I understand
the matter, Jews were legally required to stay in the Warsaw Ghetto and
blacks in particular parts of Johannesburg, and both were loaded with
other legal disabilities as well (to put it mildly). I don't see the
relevance to a discussion of whether housing patterns would be OK that
would arise from people following their own tastes and what they
understand as their own interests within the bounds of a legal system
that protects personal security and gives people equal rights to have
dealings with other people as long as the other people consent to the
dealings.
>Indeed, "ethnic neighborhoods" in an unstrained sense of the term are
>really rather exceptional [in NYC]
I would say that most ethnic groups are concentrated in particular
places and most neighborhoods have an ethnic composition that is quite
different from the ethnic composition of the city as a whole. Also,
some ethnic combinations are much more common than others. I don't
think that observation shows that most people here don't care about the
ethnic composition of the neighborhood in which they live. If most
people didn't care about the matter, why bother with laws against
housing discrimination in the first place?
It's worth noting that in the case of employment discrimination a
disproportion between the racial composition of the workforce and the
pool of potential employees is taken to demonstrate discrimination in
the absence of a showing that the practices giving rise to the
disproportion satisfy some standard related to business necessity that
is considerably stronger than simple rationality. (IQ tests don't meet
the standard even though they've been shown to be an effective method of
picking out people who are likely to be productive employees.) Why not
use the same standards for the presence of housing discrimination as are
used for employment discrimination?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Sat Jun 5 08:01:10 EDT 1993
Article: 389 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Libertarianism versus Conservatism
Date: 5 Jun 1993 07:59:30 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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hhuang@athena.mit.edu (Han-Young Huang) writes:
>Your post was fairly sound, and I do not need to debate most of it,
>and in fact agree with very much of it.
I felt the same way about your post. My own view is that the test of a
social order is whether the people living in that social order become
good people or bad people. What kind of government comes out best under
that test depends on circumstances. Therefore, in a sense I lack fixed
principles, which (as you suggest) is a tremendous disadvantage in a
society which is losing any goal other than gratification of whatever
desires and impulses people find they actually have. (I always tell
people to consult the account of political evolution in books viii and
ix of Plato's _Republic_ for an analysis of the current situation.) The
advantage of a libertarian social order is that in such an order people
are at least responsible for their own acts, which leads to a certain
amount of self-government. That might very well be the best thing we
can aim for at present.
I also agree that cultural issues are far more important than political
maneuvering. Where we may differ is that I think religious issues are
the key to culture. Culture is determined by what kind of world people
think they live in and what sorts of things are so important based on
their role in that world that they override other concerns. Those are
religious issues.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Sat Jun 5 08:01:11 EDT 1993
Article: 390 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Libertarianism versus Conservatism
Date: 5 Jun 1993 08:01:05 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 22
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Xref: panix alt.society.conservatism:390 alt.politics.libertarian:3659
hhuang@athena.mit.edu (Han-Young Huang) writes:
>I am an atheist, and I also do not believe in transcendent moral orders,
>because my philosophy is that of reality first. And if
>``transcendence'' is in fact true, then transcedence will simply be a
>newly discovered part of reality.
In my understanding, a "transcendent moral order" is one based on
principles that do not depend for their validity on any facts about us
or the world of our sensory or inner experience. (That is not to say
that it is not through our sensory and inner experience that we come to
know of the transcendent moral order.) In the same way, one might say
that logic does not depend for its validity on any facts about us or our
experience.
Is it that world of experience that you refer to as reality? If so, how
do you get objectively binding moral principles out of it?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Sat Jun 5 11:09:44 EDT 1993
Article: 9071 of alt.discrimination
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: IQ and Race (Re: Anti-Defamation League Finds Jeffries'...)
Date: 5 Jun 1993 07:55:30 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 40
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rmm@world.std.com (Mike Melnyk) writes:
>It's certainly possible to make educated guesses about questions the
>relative strengths of nature vs. nurture, but it's also not very good
>scientific practice. Scientific rigor is demanded when one is drawing
>conclusions under the auspices of scientific methodology,
I would agree that you shouldn't claim more rigor than you've been able
to achieve. I expect that you would agree that there is nothing
scientifically wrong with drawing conclusions relevant to practical
issues using as much scientific methodology as you can and using less
trustworthy methods to fill in the gaps.
>especially if one is claiming something as incredibly damaging as as
>"whites are, on the whole, inherently more intelligent than blacks".
Whether a claim is incredibly damaging depends on the circumstances in
which it is made and how it will be taken. The claim you mention says
nothing about any particular black person and seems if anything to
support aiding rather than injuring black people. In contrast, claims
that particular scholars or entire populations have racist attitudes
that are so pervasive and deep-seated and so harmful in their
consequences that resolute and comprehensive government action is
needed, ultimately to root them out and in the mean time to prevent them
from having any consequences, seem more troubling to me. That's
particularly true since the latter type of claim is firmly established
as the basis for government policy.
[I'm not saying the claim you mention is not risky, only that there are
other risks that to me in America in 1993 seem worse.]
>Besides, is there any way to "prove" someone doesn't have racist
>attitudes?
No. That's the wonderful thing about accusations of racism.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Sat Jun 5 11:09:53 EDT 1993
Article: 7079 of talk.philosophy.misc
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Ethics and random thinking
Date: 5 Jun 1993 07:57:41 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 22
Message-ID: <1uq1nl$e2v@sun.Panix.Com>
References:
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Keywords: ethics, uncertainty, ice cream
feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Michael Feld) writes:
>[I]f human acts are the result of QM, or if the human desires and
>beliefs that themselves give rise to the decision to perform such acts
>are themselves the result of QM episodes, then the acts are neither
>"free", nor "willed" nor "ours"; indeed, one is not responsible for
>acts that result from the vagueries of chance.
When QM episodes are said to be random, does that simply mean that they
follow some sort of normal distribution and aren't causally linked to
other preceding physical events? If so, it seems that they could be
caused by events (e.g., events in the soul) that are neither physical
events nor causally linked to any preceding physical event.
Another way to put my question: in the quoted language are you
attributing some positive content to "the vagueries of chance" that
doesn't belong there?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Sat Jun 5 11:09:58 EDT 1993
Article: 391 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Libertarianism versus Conservatism
Date: 5 Jun 1993 08:02:27 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <1uq20j$edm@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993Jun4.042526.21320@afit.af.mil>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
mwalker@novell.com (Mel Walker) writes:
>Can I continue with the teachings of Confucius? I consider them to be
>highly moral, and good advice by which to live life (although not
>necessarily the word of God).
I love Confucius as well. (Just an aside.)
>What I still can't figure out is, why do we need to force other people
>to follow the moral commandments of God, when even God doesn't force
>people to obey them?
What immoral acts are there that anyone wants to prohibit that don't
injure other people directly or indirectly?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Sat Jun 5 18:01:27 EDT 1993
Article: 7089 of talk.philosophy.misc
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.cognitive
Subject: Re: Soul Survey
Date: 5 Jun 1993 18:01:02 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 51
Message-ID: <1ur52u$jck@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <93Jun5.071034edt.41313@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
Xref: panix talk.religion.misc:54721 talk.philosophy.misc:7089 sci.cognitive:1459
christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>[Student's] faith in their own souls is sectioned off from the standards
>of critical thought that we try to imbue in them in university [ . . . ]
>I take it that nothing *could* in principle count as evidence for an
>immortal soul. This is not to claim that there is no such thing
>(Calvin's unwarranted assumption about my beliefs notwithstanding)
>[ . . . ] My question concerned what those bases [for belief in the
>soul other than standard epistemological principles] are, and whether
>they, or philosophico-scientific ones guide people's choices when making
>decisions in other important domains.
Maybe one difficulty is the word "evidence". At least in a statement
like "there is no evidence for X", I would have used that word to refer
to anything whatever that gives one a real reason to believe X. I would
also have thought that someone who tries to imbue the young with
standards of critical thought would follow those standards in his own
thinking and disbelieve those things that (as he thinks) there can be no
possible reason to believe.
Another difficulty is the claim that nothing could in principle count as
evidence for an immortal soul. If an improved ouija board were invented
that anyone could use to converse (to all appearances) with the dead and
find out things that could be verified but only the dead had any way of
knowing, that would be evidence for an immortal soul. Ditto for a new
form of hypnosis enabling people to recall prior lives including
verifiable details that could not otherwise be known. Ditto for a
vision in which a man told you that there were immortal souls and other
things (some of which were verifiable) and his words impressed you with
an irresistable sense of truth.
Although it seems possible in principle for such fairly direct evidence
to exist, I imagine that none of your students had anything of the kind.
Instead, I suppose each of them has some overall theory of what the
world is like that includes immortal souls. Perhaps they are
interactionist dualists, a position for which I believe rational
arguments can be presented (like "the alternatives are even worse"), and
find that the easiest way to understand interactionist dualism is to
assume that a "mind" is a substance that remains the same through
changes and could in principle survive separation from the body with
which it interacts. Then whatever considerations seem rationally to
support that position would constitute rational evidence for an immortal
soul. (Of course, the reasoning of many students on this issue is
likely to be extremely informal and to rely implicitly on appeals to
tradition, authority and so on. The same is true of the implicit
reasoning any one of us engages in on most subjects.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Sun Jun 6 10:21:23 EDT 1993
Article: 7096 of talk.philosophy.misc
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.cognitive
Subject: Re: Soul Survey
Date: 6 Jun 1993 09:56:18 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 30
Message-ID: <1ust22$3qe@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1ur52u$jck@sun.Panix.Com> <1urvihINNit7@aludra.usc.edu>
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Xref: panix talk.religion.misc:54742 talk.philosophy.misc:7096 sci.cognitive:1467
jbarrett@aludra.usc.edu (Jonathan Barrett) writes:
>[T]he well-confirmed principle: everything is susceptible to explanation
>in terms of physical laws, events and properties. Obviously this isn't
>fully confirmed, but all the available evidence suggests it is true.
A great many things have been so explained. I'm not sure we should
infer that everything can be so explained. For example, I have a hard
time imagining what an explanation of that kind would look like for
qualia, the truths of mathematics or the existence of the universe as a
whole.
>So here's the scenario on which we get reason to believe in souls:
>1. Brain scientists are unable to give explanations of behavior in
>terms of brain states.
>2. There exists a theory that explains behavior, but the properties
>it postulates aren't physical.
I don't think any brain scientist is able to explain why I am typing the
particular sentence I am typing now. My behavior can be explained with
reference to my subjective beliefs and intentions, which are not
obviously physical properties.
Also, I don't understand why behavior is all there is to explain about
human beings. Why shouldn't qualia have to be explained as well?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Sun Jun 6 10:21:26 EDT 1993
Article: 398 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Libertarianism versus Conservatism
Date: 6 Jun 1993 09:58:39 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 40
Message-ID: <1ust6f$40g@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1umh8gINNk50@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <1993Jun4.204311.7218@leland.Stanford.EDU> <1urh8mINNjrg@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
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Xref: panix alt.society.conservatism:398 alt.politics.libertarian:3683
hhuang@athena.mit.edu (Han-Young Huang) writes:
>As a starting point, an individual owns his or her own self and
>property.
Why is that a sensible starting point? Why not say instead "the ends of
man are virtue in community and beatitude", or "the purpose of life is
to know and love the good, the beautiful and the true", and that the
purpose of government is to promote those ends or purposes? The obvious
reason for your starting point is a belief that there is no end of man
or purpose of life apart from the ends and purposes particular
individuals happen to choose for themselves. I think that's the source
of the complaint that libertarians are ethical relativists.
One fundamental problem with this starting point is that it doesn't work
in the case of children. The idea is that people have their own values
and they act to further those values. However, those values are
developed through one's education and upbringing, which one is in no
position to choose. So parents necessarily make value choices for their
children. What can libertarianism possibly say about that situation?
>Pollution has a statistical effect of shortening people's lifespans --
>quite coercive!
It seems that anything people do that affects me would also be coercive.
If people build ugly houses so I have to put up with surroundings that
make me miserable, or if they lead crummy lives so I have to go live in
a cave to avoid the odious human race, then I'm having stuff thrust on
me against my will that I hate. If enough other people agree with me,
why is there more of an objection on your clear libertarian principles
to having the government repress aesthetic or moral pollution than (say)
olefactory pollution? If I have a property right to my mental states
and my mental states are adversely affected by all kinds of stuff other
people do, then why shouldn't the government act to protect my property
rights?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Sun Jun 6 18:05:19 EDT 1993
Article: 400 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Libertarianism versus Conservatism
Date: 6 Jun 1993 15:16:13 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <1utfpt$m1h@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1urh8mINNjrg@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <1ust6f$40g@sun.Panix.Com> <1ut9m2INNaji@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
Xref: panix alt.society.conservatism:400 alt.politics.libertarian:3685
hhuang@athena.mit.edu (Han-Young Huang) writes:
>I forgot to mention that the case of children is a thorny one for
>libertarians. At what point does a child become this full libertarian
>individual with full rights?
It strikes me that one problem is that libertarians want to make
everything the property of individuals who are free and equal and can do
what they wish with their property. If children are not among the free
and equal individuals then it seems they must be the property of their
parents, who would have the absolute right to deal with them as they
choose. I can't think of another solution that doesn't betray
libertarianism.
>>>Pollution has a statistical effect of shortening people's lifespans --
>>>quite coercive!
>>
>>It seems that anything people do that affects me would also be coercive.
>
>This is the anarcho-capitalist criticism of libertarianism -- that
>when does something cease to be ``coercive''?
I think the a.-c.'s are right in observing that a government can't pick
and choose among acts that affect others without their consent and call
some of the acts "forbidden uses of force" and others "OK exercises of
rights" without deciding that some consequences of the acts of others
are intolerable while others we all just have to put up with, and a
government can't make that decision without giving a particular view
about how things that affect people should be evaluated the force of
law. So evaluative neutrality can be achieved only by either saying
that all such acts are "coercion" or that none of them are. In either
case, the prohibition on initiation of force makes no sense.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Mon Jun 7 06:06:45 EDT 1993
Article: 13215 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: The LIBERAL ELITE -- real-life monster or weird fantasy?
Date: 6 Jun 1993 22:29:55 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 223
Message-ID: <1uu973$kmo@sun.Panix.Com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
Calvin Ostrum writes:
>| >In article <1tp39e$gt9@sun.Panix.Com> jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>| >
>| >| On the third hand, liberalism is (perhaps among other things) the
>| >| ideology of a particular class, those who are concerned with the
>| >| management and control of society as a whole.
>
>But I think there has to be a tighter connection between class members
>than is offered here [ . . . ] I certainly don't think all such people
>are liberals, in any common sense of the world liberal. Aren't Bush and
>Quayle in this, for example?
You may have missed an earlier posting in which I went into more detail
as to who I was talking about. The people I had in mind (in the United
States) include the national elites in law, politics and public service,
education, journalism and the media. Do you object to the assumption
that those are the people who are professionally concerned with the
management and control of society as whole, or to the assumption that
those people are markedly more liberal than people in general and that
their liberalism serves their interests as a class?
Obviously they're not all liberals. Anyone who like Bush or Quayle is
elected to high public office is a _ex officio_ a member of the class.
My claim, though, is that the views associated with recent Republican
administrations have not been characteristic of the class.
>I would have appreciated commentary on this quotation [from Rawls].
Send me another copy and I will comment.
>| The conception of a state that is neutral among varying conceptions of
>| the good is an odd one, since man is a social animal and most of the
>| goods he cares about are goods that can exist only in society and are
>| favored more by some societies than others. So it seems clear that "a
>| basic framework that allows everyone equally to pursue their own
>| personal conceptions of the good" is an impossibility.
>
>Certainly that would be an impossibility. Since such a framework would
>be liberal perfection, or liberal utopia, and since perfection is
>impossible for most human artefacts, I am not sure why this fact is
>particularly relevant.
The point was not the practical difficulties in achieving the framework.
It was the conceptual impossibility of all goods coexisting (e.g.,
eating your cake and having it too). It may make sense to treat a state
of affairs as an ideal if it is practically impossible, but not if it is
conceptually impossible.
>Rawls [ . . . ] along with many others [ . . . ] are not of a utopic
>cast of mind: they perceive liberalism as a pragmatic system which
>enables people pursuing their own conceptions of the good to get along
>with other "reasonable" conceptions that radically disagree with their
>own.
It seems likely that the test of reasonableness will be the capacity of
the authoritative social institution in the liberal social order (the
state) to maintain itself in the face of the conduct to which the
conception of the good gives rise. The pragmatic result will be that
conduct that experts determine endangers the liberal state can be
repressed and conceptions of the good that give rise to such conduct can
be placed in official disfavor (such a determination wouldn't be left up
to the democratic process!), while the equal dignity of all other
conduct and conceptions of the good will be insisted on no matter what
they endanger and what people generally think. The effect will be to
reinforce the status of the state as the sole authoritative institution
and of expert ideologists within the state.
>[E]arlier, he was griping about liberals because they want to tell
>people what to do. Now he is griping about them because they won't tell
>people what to do.
No, I was pointing out that they want to tell people what to do and
griping that what they tell people to do doesn't make sense.
>People will think that their conception of the good is worth pursuing.
>They may even, within the liberal framework, try very hard to convince
>others to adopt it as well, by religious proselitization for example.
>They may think other perceptions of the good are inane, not worth much,
>or even harmful to those that hold them. However, they seem to possess
>a strong intuition that certain techniques are not allowed. For
>example, laws establishing their own religion (conception of the good)
>as the state religion. Rawls is attempting to systematise those
>intuitions into a general framework that makes sense.
The issues then become as to Rawls whether his framework makes sense and
for liberalism in general what the main tendencies and likely outcomes
are. I was trying to discuss the latter, which seems more important
although also more difficult.
>Doesn't Jim share some of these intuitions? Would he set up his own
>religion as a state religion, if he could, for example?
You can't force things like religion. On the other hand, if people
generally have a particular religious outlook I don't see anything wrong
in principle with the government doing things that reflect and favor
that outlook. I wouldn't have any objection to prayer in public
schools, for example.
>Would he choose to completely ignore the Bill of Rights if he had the
>power and opportunity to do so?
The question is too vague to answer. In general I would agree there are
lots of things it makes no sense to to force, and that the government
should use orderly procedures in dealing with the people.
>There is another way out of the dilemma Jim proposes which I have not
>mentioned, of course. This is that a person's own active and personal
>choice of a good is partly, if not largely, constitutive of its very
>goodness.
This seems to me true of the most important human goods. I would say
"willing participation" instead of "choice", but that seems a minor
point. The requirement of choice or willing participation is still met
even if the person's upbringing and environment lead him to recognize
the good and encourage him to choose it.
>I've recommended Taylor (specifically "The Malaise of Modernity") to Jim
>before, and would like to hear comments on this material.
I may get to it, and even tell you my thoughts if the "would like to
hear comments" includes me and you promise to be civil.
>| Every society has a ruling class.
>Is this a contingent or necessary truth? Is it inductive generalisation
>or inference to the best explanation based upon empirical observation,
>or is it a priori?
Contingent. I suppose it might be false for some small societies with
primitive economies.
>What is a ruling class, exactly, anyway?
The class of people who devote their time and efforts to government --
the overall coordination of activities within society. In large and
complicated societies that's a separate function which is a full-time
job for a lot of people that requires special knowledge and talents, and
in any society it's a function that requires those who perform it to
have a special sort of esteem and authority.
>I don't see that it has to offer us a ruling class in any normal sense
>of "ruling class" at all.
A liberal society will have the usual needs of any society for a ruling
class. In addition, it needs a class that authoritatively articulates
liberal ideology, applies it to concrete situations (which conceptions
of the good are OK because they're "reasonable" and which aren't, which
modes of showing disrespect to OK conceptions of the good are forbidden,
etc.), and communicates it to the people at large.
>[Liberals] don't even have to believe that all conceptions of the good
>are deserving of equal respect, except in the political sense of
>respect.
I don't really understand what you mean by "the political sense of
respect". I can understand that by convention we treat people and
things as equals when we think they are nothing of the kind, but that
kind of convention seems more like a matter of the practicalities of
social life than deep principle, and I thought liberals tended to
consider their views matters of deep principle.
>[T]o assume all ".com" posters are "people at commercial establishments"
>-- in the sense of employers, employees, owners, whatever -- is a little
>bit slick. The whole thing seems to be really just an opportunity to
>mindlessly spout the usual "statist = liberal = politically correct
>university ideologues = bad" rhetoric.
No one had to assume "all" anything. The only assumption needed was
that people at .com sites were more likely to be associated with
business and people at .edu sites were more likely to be associated with
educational institutions. I agree that the .com/.edu thing was
generally used as a springboard for a general discussion of the
relationships among academia, business, liberalism and libertarianism.
Readers can decide for themselves how much of the discussion was
mindless spouting.
>So Jim may not be a libertarian, but many of his views and heroes
>provide great comfort (and praise) for them.
Sure.
>I don't think Jim's work experience is typical of many. In that he has
>a very high-paying job in a high-status profession, where he is able to
>experience a great deal of personal autonomy, and which he finds
>personally challenging and rewarding, and where he can be fairly
>confident that he can always make an excellent living using the skills
>he is able to exercise and keep honed through this job [ . . . ]
One problem with using personal details from private email messages in
an implied _ad hominem_ argument is that the details may grow out of
date. I quit my job several months ago because (as I told you) I didn't
much like it, and I am not now employed.
>Most of the adult waking life of most of us is spent at work or
>preparing to be at work. And we work for bosses, and do what they tell
>us to do. I suspect they have a far greater degree of control over most
>of us that does any liberal politically correct statist government
>elites.
What's the point? That most people have more fun at work when the
government is liberal than otherwise?
>Although Jim is not a libertarian, he seems happy to employ their very
>crude notion of "force", and their equally crude notion of "free".
There's nothing obviously wrong with using the language used by those
who hold a political position in explaining why they hold that position.
>Also, if you can agree on a "thin" theory of the good such as that
>possessed by representatives in the original position, I think it would
>be possible to distinguish between manipulative and non-manipulative
>ways of attempting to affect people, at least in a crude way.
Do you wish to explain, or do you leave me to read
>The relevant material about the thin theory of the good [, which] is
>contained mostly in chapter 7 of "A Theory of Justice".
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Mon Jun 7 09:27:41 EDT 1993
Article: 7116 of talk.philosophy.misc
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.cognitive
Subject: Re: Soul Survey
Date: 7 Jun 1993 08:01:29 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 40
Message-ID: <1uvamp$ed7@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1urvihINNit7@aludra.usc.edu> <1ust22$3qe@sun.Panix.Com> <1utmtgINNl7l@aludra.usc.edu>
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Xref: panix talk.religion.misc:54793 talk.philosophy.misc:7116 sci.cognitive:1480
jbarrett@aludra.usc.edu (Jonathan Barrett) writes:
>[ . . . ] things that can't be explained at all, just plain brute
>facts. The existence of the universe is a good candidate for such a
>fact. After all, whatever explanatory mechanisms you employ, you've got
>to have brute facts somewhere. Otherwise you just end up in an infinite
>regress.
One function of religious explanations is the avoidance of such brute
facts. "God made everything and God's essence is his existence." The
argument is that an unclear explanation is better than no explanation
whatever.
>If you do think there are mathematical truths, how do these wispy
>ghost-like numbers in the platonic realms causally interact with us
>(presumably they've got to if we're to have mathematical knowledge)?
That's a problem if you already accept the view that the only
interactions are physical interactions, but not otherwise.
>Why not just suppose that the painfulness of pain is just a physical
>property of the brain?
I don't understand the supposition.
>[I]f beliefs and desires are real and explanatory, there's no reason to
>think that they're not physical properties...unless you want to make the
>extraordinary claim that two individuals with identical brain states
>will not produce the same behavior in the same contexts.
Can any physicists advise us whether under quantum mechanics "identical
physical system" is a well-defined term, and if so whether all initially
identical physical systems in identical environments will remain
identical forever thereafter? I was under the impression that the
answer to at least one of those questions was "no".
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Mon Jun 7 09:27:42 EDT 1993
Article: 7117 of talk.philosophy.misc
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: >Soul Survey
Date: 7 Jun 1993 08:02:58 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <1uvapi$egh@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993Jun6.160443.11847@galileo.cc.rochester.edu> <1utnrrINNm5a@aludra.usc.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
Keywords: Soul, James, Genuine option, pragmatism
jbarrett@aludra.usc.edu (Jonathan Barrett) writes:
>[ . . . ] I want X to be true, so I believe that X is true. The only way
>I can think of of getting anything sensible out of this is if one could
>show that the universe is more likely to be more emotionally satisfying
>than less emotionally satisfying. Then emotional satisfaction might be a
>guide to the truth. But surely no one seriously thinks that could be
>demonstrated.
No more than it can be demonstrated that the universe is more likely to
be more intellectually satisfying than less intellectually satisfying.
I suppose "emotional satisfaction" refers to all the aspects of the
manner in which we choose one theory over another that have not been
formalized. Why suppose that it can ever be done away with as a basis
for theory choice?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Mon Jun 7 09:27:50 EDT 1993
Article: 419 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: On Issues of Culture (was Re: Libertarianism versus Conservatism)
Date: 7 Jun 1993 07:59:04 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 19
Message-ID: <1uvai8$e7h@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1unsa5INN6t5@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <1uq1r2$e6c@sun.Panix.Com> <1uubvjINNmvk@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
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Xref: panix alt.society.conservatism:419 alt.politics.libertarian:3717
hhuang@athena.mit.edu (Han-Young Huang) writes:
>I would say that issues of ``what kind of world people think they live
>in and what sorts of things are so important based on their role in that
>wordl that they override other concerns'' are *humanist* issues,
>particularly philosophical issues. These humanist and philosophical
>issues may or may not wish to deal with the religious aspect of
>humanity.
I don't think "man is the measure of all things" works. We didn't make
ourselves, and we won't treat "importance" as important if we view it as
our own invention. So it seems to me these issues can't be dealt with
adequately without reference to something that transcends humanity (that
is, without reference to the religious aspect of life).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
-- W. B. Yeats
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 8 07:59:43 EDT 1993
Article: 456 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Libertarianism versus Conservatism
Date: 8 Jun 1993 07:59:38 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes:
>I think a libertarian society under a libertarian government would not
>have the characteristics claimed by libertarians. The use of force and
>fraud are held in check not merely by fear of punishment by the state,
>but by many other social factors, IMHO; and libertarians would introduce
>changes that would seriously weaken these, leading to an actual increase
>in the problems that libertarians care most about.
It seems to me that the main such factor is the integration of the
individual in a social network of durable ties to particular other
individuals through institutions such as the family. It seems to me
that libertarianism would strengthen those ties by making them far more
necessary to individual well-being -- people would no longer be able to
rely for help in difficulties on claims against society in general.
>Examples include removing the minimum wage laws, together with social
>safety nets (since increases in poverty are correlated with increases in
>crime, and there is a plausible causal mechanism);
No doubt you are familiar with the arguments that minimum wage laws hurt
the people at the very bottom, who are the ones most likely to become
criminals. Also, one plausible causal mechanism is (social safety
net)=>(disorderly lives)=>(crime).
>removing licensing from certain kinds of professions (since unskilled
>doctors will start roaming the country as they did a century ago; there
>are (rare) cases even now of unqualified people performing operations,
>who are only caught when something goes wrong);
You know the argument that it will still be possible to have
ABA-certified doctors. (I don't care all that much about this issue.)
>and introducing competition into education (since quantitative
>performance evaluation measures are as yet still a crock, so resources
>would be diverted into advertising rather than teaching).
The point of competition in education is to let parents make the
decisions in these matters. Parents typically care very much about
their children, and live with them so they can see what is going on with
them better than anyone else. Parents also have relatives, friends and
neighbors who have older children, and the mothers I know spend endless
hours talking and comparing experiences about everything conceivable
that affects their children's welfare. Parents also have spent years of
their own lives at school and typically have views based on experience
of what parts of it were helpful and what parts were not. So it's not
clear to me why parents aren't better placed to make decisions in these
matters than the people in charge of a government education monopoly.
The absence of reliable technical methods of evaluation strengthens the
case for parental choice because it makes formal expertize less
relevant. Manipulative advertizing is most likely to be successful
regarding things that people don't have much experience of and don't
regard as central to their lives from a practical standpoint. (I don't
think there are any manufacturers of machine tools who have succeeded
through manipulative advertizing.) People don't have that kind of
relation to the education of their children.
[On a different topic, the universality of the condemnation of murder:]
>Duelling? Gladiators? Stoning adulterers?
Duelling was viewed as both morally wrong and required by honor (at
least that's what de Tocqueville says). Stoning of adulterers was
punishment for a serious crime and so not murder. Gladiators were often
condemned criminals, but sometimes prisoners of war or slaves. All I
can say as to the latter two cases is that POWs became POWs by being
enemies of the state and that forcing to fight is not quite the same as
killing. I don't know what the Roman view was of the morality of simply
killing a slave; certainly, their treatment of slaves was often quite
horrible.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Every thing possible to be believ'd
is an image of truth." (Blake)
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 8 13:30:14 EDT 1993
Article: 7150 of talk.philosophy.misc
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.cognitive
Subject: Re: Soul Survey
Date: 8 Jun 1993 07:55:36 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix talk.religion.misc:54895 talk.philosophy.misc:7150 sci.cognitive:1495
christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>[ . . . ] the peculiar penchant of Americans to include their religious
>beliefs in all kinds of decisions that have little apprent religious
>content (such as political decisions).
What can this mean? A religion usually includes an understanding of the
world and man's place in it, and of the conditions and purposes of human
life. How could something so fundamental and all-embracing fail to
affect one's view of politics?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Every thing possible to be believ'd
is an image of truth." (Blake)
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 8 13:30:18 EDT 1993
Article: 7151 of talk.philosophy.misc
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: The Turing test criticized [Was:... God vs Free Will]
Date: 8 Jun 1993 07:56:49 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References:
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jlamport@donald.claremont.edu (Jason Lamport) writes:
>You are assuming that because we _perceive_ these past and present
>minds/bodies as continuous, that they _really_are_ continuous, in some
>noumenal sense. But the only meaningful definition of a mind or body
>"existing in the past" is that of a mind or body existing as a _memory_
>(i.e. construct) of a _present_ mind.
It appears from your "only meaningful definition" language that you
believe that a thing (such as a mind) can't be conceived as having a
property (such as continuity) that can't be reduced to our test for
whether that property is present (memory). Why believe that?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Every thing possible to be believ'd
is an image of truth." (Blake)
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 8 13:30:30 EDT 1993
Article: 457 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Question for Conservatives
Date: 8 Jun 1993 08:01:00 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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shore@dinah.tc.cornell.edu (Melinda Shore) writes:
>Why is the right to marry the person you love and who loves you a
>special right?
The love that two people feel for each other is not the point of
marriage as a social institution. The point is providing a set pattern
within which reproduction and rearing children can take place.
A set pattern is needed because marriage and childrearing is a long-term
enterprise that can take unexpected turns and can turn out to be
different, less pleasant or more burdensome than expected. That kind of
enterprise is more likely to be successful and satisfactory to the
participants if they have definite responsibilities that they know in
advance, that are not subject to constant renegotiation,
reinterpretation or termination based on the changing desires of one of
the parties, and that are supported by the expectations of the society
in which the participants live.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Every thing possible to be believ'd
is an image of truth." (Blake)
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 8 17:23:22 EDT 1993
Article: 7161 of talk.philosophy.misc
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Soul Survey - religious understanding
Date: 8 Jun 1993 17:23:12 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 17
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References: <1v1uno$9hv@sun.Panix.Com> <1993Jun8.185656.1@condor>
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Xref: panix talk.religion.misc:54931 talk.philosophy.misc:7161
wilsonr@logica.co.uk writes:
>In article <1v1uno$9hv@sun.Panix.Com>, jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>> .. A religion usually includes an understanding of the
>> world and man's place in it, and of the conditions and purposes of human
>> life. How could something so fundamental and all-embracing fail to
>> affect one's view of politics?
>
>Quite so, but is it understanding or myth?
I would think that until we know everything and our knowledge is
completely formalized our understanding of the world will have mythical
elements. It seems out of place to act as if we had already attained
that final position.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 8 20:06:43 EDT 1993
Article: 7162 of talk.philosophy.misc
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: The Turing test criticized [Was:... God vs Free Will]
Date: 8 Jun 1993 17:25:50 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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jlamport@donald.claremont.edu (Jason Lamport) writes:
>There is, almost by definition, no way that we can _conceive_ any
>property outside of our modes of perception (what Kant calls the
>"forms of sensibility").
Why can't identity of substance through changes be an innate idea? A
requirement of language? In either case I suppose it could be conceived
although not perceived.
>Thus any appeal to a "real" past and a "real" relationship between the
>present and the past (such as continuity) will be meaningless, or at
>least useless (is there a difference?).
Why wouldn't it be useful to know (if I were faced with the situation)
whether what a transporter did would kill me?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 9 09:13:30 EDT 1993
Article: 496 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Question for Conservatives
Date: 9 Jun 1993 09:13:24 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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shore@TC.Cornell.EDU (Melinda Shore) writes:
>>The love that two people feel for each other is not the point of
>>marriage as a social institution. The point is providing a set pattern
>>within which reproduction and rearing children can take place.
>
>That strikes me as excessively narrow. There are other
>issues, too, related to property and inheritance rights,
>guardianship, and so on, which matter just as much to
>same-sex couples as they do to opposite sex ones.
People can do whatever they want on such issues through contract,
tenancy in common, testamentary disposition and so on.
>Plus, that doesn't really explain why marriage is legally restricted to
>opposite-sex couples, since same-sex couples can and do have children
>all the time.
Not with each other, certainly. Also, how many such couples there are?
Your point, I suppose, is that adoption is already legally recognized as
the equivalent of natural parenthood, and that same-sex couples do exist
and many of them provide a home for a child that is better than the home
some mixed-sex couples provide. My answer was in the remainder of my
post, in which I said that having a definite social pattern for the
setting in which children are reared is necessary because that's the
only way people can have responsibilities that can be known in advance
and socially inculcated and enforced.
I would add that it helps when the pattern (in this case, the
man-woman-child family) is sufficiently universal and sufficiently tied
to the innate tendencies of men, women and children to be viewed
reasonably as the natural pattern, at least in societies of any size and
complexity. What we can do socially depends on what man is like
naturally, and what man is like naturally can be determined by looking
at what people have tended to do in other societies and especially
somewhat similar societies.
More generally -- raising children is difficult and takes a long time,
and it's typically done far better when the child grows up with
particular individuals who do not view the continuation of their tie to
the child as a matter of choice. The bond between mother and child is a
strong bond in all human societies that are not clearly pathological,
and so is something reliable to build on. The question, if we want to
avoid a society in which single motherhood is the norm, is how as a
general thing the mother can be tied to another adult who will view it
as an essential fact about himself (one of the things that makes him
what he is) that he is tied to the mother and the child. I don't see
any way to do that other than having the father be the "other adult",
and I don't see any way to have fathers as a rule view their
responsibilities to mother and child as something that takes precedence
over their fluctuating personal desires over a period that lasts decades
other than social attitudes that view the father-mother-child family as
the fundamental social unit and the setting in which we best realize our
natures.
This seems like an important matter. Since we are all children at some
time, and since what we are has a lot to do with what our childhood was
like, and since the test of a good society is what kind of people it
produces, the rearing of children is the most important single social
function other than the production of enough food, clothing and shelter
to maintain life (which in America in 1993 is easy). It follows that we
should be very reluctant to sacrifice social patterns that tend
substantially to improve childhood environment.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 9 12:06:16 EDT 1993
Article: 497 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Libertarianism versus Conservatism
Date: 9 Jun 1993 09:15:18 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix alt.society.conservatism:497 alt.politics.libertarian:3842
jaskew@spam.maths.adelaide.edu.au (Joseph Askew) writes:
>It does however mean that there is no solid basis for making any sort of
>value judgments on moral issues.
If so, then what solid basis is there for objections to (say) the
Spanish Inquisition or to what Moses did?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 9 19:55:21 EDT 1993
Article: 532 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: personal attacks on conservative posters
Date: 9 Jun 1993 19:54:42 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <1993Jun8.125037.1813@ncsu.edu>
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In dana@rex.uokhsc.edu (Dana Harris) writes:
>In article <1993Jun8.125037.1813@ncsu.edu> sewatson@eos.ncsu.edu (STEPHANIE ELIZA WATSON) writes:
>>
>>To those extreme radicals
>>who insist on posting in this newsgroup:
>>
>>
>>I am sorry that people like you all have
>>nothing better to do than post hate responses [ . . . ]
>Nice thought Steph, but it'll never happen. They should
>be banished to alt.liberal.attitude.bitch.bitch.bitch.
Can I suggest not crossposting between alt.society.conservatism and the
Quayle and Limbaugh groups? It's not that I don't like Dan and Rush, or
liberals for that matter, but there's something about the combination
that's unfortunate . . .
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Thu Jun 10 13:52:22 EDT 1993
Article: 13252 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: The LIBERAL ELITE -- real-life monster or weird fantasy?
Date: 10 Jun 1993 10:21:00 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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ramsay@unixg.ubc.ca (Keith Ramsay) writes:
>On Rawls' view (and many others'!) the ability of the institutions of
>society to remain stable certainly is *one* important criterion [ . . . ]
>You seem to think that a Rawlsian liberal state would necessarily be
>*more* dependent for its survival upon expert "official" advice. Is this
>so? Can you explain why?
I know very little specifically about Rawls. (Mr. Ostrum introduced him
into the discussion.) I was discussing "liberalism", by which I
understand most generally the tendency on weakening or disappearance of
any feeling for a transcendental source of value to treat desire as such
as the only thing that is authoritative and, since all desires are
equally desires, to treat every desire as equally good. I don't think
that definition is arbitrary; whether I am right in so thinking depends
on how useful it is in understanding the current situation and the
history of the West generally since the end of the wars of religion. It
seems to me that people calling themselves liberals have tended to
exemplify that tendency, and that those things that have clearly been
inconsistent with that tendency have also been clearly illiberal. It's
worth noting that Plato discusses a similar tendency in his account of
social evolution in books viii and ix of the _Republic_.
I don't believe the stability of existing social institutions in general
is an important criterion for liberals except to the extent some degree
of stability is helpful in progressing toward liberal goals. Rather,
that criterion defines one sort of conservatism. Social institutions,
such the family or the social security system, exist to promote ends
that are socially accepted as good and their status as institutions
depends on that social acceptance. (I am not using "social institution"
to include voluntary arrangements among equally powerful and equally
informed persons.) The point of liberalism, though, is that society has
no right to declare some ends to be good and others bad. Therefore, as
a general rule liberalism doesn't like social institutions.
The obvious exception to that rule is that the goal of liberalism itself
(a state of affairs that is equally favorable to the desires each person
happens to have) is to be accepted as good. In addition, whatever
requirements of consistency among desires or other things that help
approximate in practice the goals of liberalism are also to be accepted
as good. Liberalism thus develops its own social institutions that are
rationally constructed with reference to a single ultimate goal
(equality with regard to desires).
The rationality of their construction makes expertize the key to
determining what the institutions should be, while the illegitimacy of
social choice of goods other than the social goods recognized by
liberalism makes it a matter of justice that other institutions not
exist. Since the choice of which goods are to be treated as social
goods is one that experts are specially qualified to make, and since it
is essential to the ideal goal of the liberal state (justice) that the
choice be made correctly, liberalism tends to give that choice to
experts.
>Is there some sort of conduct which you believe is just, but which would
>endanger a liberal state?
A thoughtful and convinced Roman Catholic might try to persuade his
compatriots that the Catholic view of what kind of life people ought to
lead is correct, and that social institutions ought to be arranged to
the extent practical to encourage people to see the value of and to live
that kind of life.
>There is an important principle, which I believe Rawls has noted, that
>the principles of justice in a society should be a matter of common
>knowledge.
Public education is what combines that principle with the choice of
social goods by experts. That is why it is essential that the elite in
a liberal state include the leading figures in education, the media and
entertainment.
>I wonder, however, what concern underlies this phrase "no matter what
>they endanger". What do you believe is allowed to be endangered? The
>liberal conception of justice does not consider the structure of society
>just, if certain people are allowed to rove about wontonly destroying
>everyone else's goods, in the pursuit of their own.
Man is a social animal, and the goods he cares about are realized
largely through the institutions of his society. To pick an example
that has attracted attention recently, many people believe that children
(and therefore adults, in the long run) are happier in a society
characterized by stable marriages, and that if marriage is viewed as
nothing more than a private arrangement between two people for the
purpose of advancing their desires and interests as they conceive them
in whatever ways they find mutually satisfactory, few marriages will be
stable. On the other hand, to define socially the purposes of marriage
and the obligations of the parties is to interfere with intimate
life-choices as to what goods individuals will pursue. So if as I
believe the "many people" I mentioned are right, liberalism (promotion
of freedom in making intimate life choices) can endanger an important
good (happiness) without reference to roving about or wanton
destruction.
>If in a *utopian* liberal state, everyone would be free to pursue his
>or her own conception of good, it is only because to achieve such a
>*utopia*, everyone would have to have conceptions of good which are
>compatible with the liberal conception of justice.
True. It seems that the liberal conception of justice requires public
education efforts to promote that kind of compatibility. Apart from
adult education, it seems to me that the realization of liberal goals
requires extensive state responsibility for childrearing, which gives a
great deal of scope to molding the conceptions of the good formed by the
young.
I should thank you for the clarity of your questions, and I hope I have
responded clearly to all of them. Since it's hard to know which
statements will seem obscure, perverse or plainly wrong to a particular
reader, I hope you or others will comment further.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Thu Jun 10 19:21:30 EDT 1993
Article: 13256 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Terrible definition of liberal (was: The LIBERAL ELITE)
Date: 10 Jun 1993 17:10:51 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
In article <1v7g0c$83g@sun.Panix.Com> jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
> ... I was discussing "liberalism", by which I understand most
> generally the tendency on weakening or disappearance of any
> feeling for a transcendental source of value to treat desire
> as such as the only thing that is authoritative and, since
> all desires are equally desires, to treat every desire as
> equally good.
>Whether one is using liberal in a broad sense -- covering thinkers from
>Jefferson to Hayek -- or in the narrower sense of "modern American
>liberal" -- e.g., Mondale and Clinton -- none assert that "desire as
>such [is] the only thing that is authoritative," nor that "every desire
>[is] equally good."
Very likely that is correct. However, I wasn't trying to find a
formulation of liberalism that a liberal would accept as a statement of
his own views. Instead, I was trying to define the cultural tendency
that makes political liberalism (which at this degree of abstraction I
don't distinguish from the left generally) the dominant political
tradition in America and the West. There must be some such tendency,
and whatever the tendency is it must be durable and go rather deep.
Otherwise, how can one account for the enduring cultural prestige of
liberalism and the left, for the ability of liberals and leftists
plausibly to call themselves progressives and to claim to be going in
the direction of history, and for the striking success over the
centuries of the causes of liberty and equality?
My reasons for believing that the tendency I named is the tendency that
lies behind liberalism and the left are as follows:
1. It appears that the feeling for a transcendental source of value has
in fact been declining in the West generally for a very long time. In
the absence of such a feeling it seems hard to distinguish "what is
good" from "what I want", and it seems likely that such a change in
moral viewpoint would have profound political consequences. _A priori_,
it seems likely that such a decline should provide a lot of the
explanation for the dominant long-term political tendency in the West,
which has been liberalism and the left.
2. The formulation I suggest explains why it is that liberty, equality
and prosperity have been the fundamental goals of liberalism and the
left. "Liberty" means that the institutions and conditions that prevent
one from pursuing one's own desires, whatever they happen to be, are to
be done away with. "Equality" means that the desires of every person
are equally desires, and so count equally. "Prosperity" means that the
material means of satisfying the desires people actually have are to be
increased as much as possible.
3. My formulation doesn't seem that different from a lot of the things
the more self-aware modern American liberals say. We are told, for
example, that liberalism means that each individual has the right to
choose his own values and his own life-plan, and that his choices are to
be accorded equal respect and equal social support whatever they may be.
That doesn't sound that different to me from saying "whatever desires
you might happen to have are equally good". We are also told that we
should be multicultural, which seems to mean in part that one system of
valuing things or set of plans for living should not be treated as
better than another. So I suppose my claim is that such modern American
liberals are the legitimate heirs of the liberal tradition and their
views are a correct statement of liberalism at its current stage of
development, in which the basic tendencies of liberalism and the left
generally have become more explicit than they were in the past.
>Indeed, the German anarchist Stirner is the *only* writer who comes to
>my mind in asserting such claims. Maybe Neitzsche under a loose
>interpretation. These, it should be noted, are illiberal, and so serve
>as counterexamples to Kalb's proposed definition.
I know nothing about Stirner, and would not interpret Nietzsche that
way. (I find it hard to imagine what a "correct interpretation of
Nietzsche" would be like.) Maybe de Sade, who I believe is generally
considered a man of the left, is a writer who explicitly makes these
claims. Is any of this so important, though? As mentioned, it seems to
me that modern American liberal theory often comes close to making such
claims. The people who say things explicitly before the world is ready
to hear them are crazies, after all.
>But most who discard the transcendent as a source of value do not
>thereby move to the alternative that Kalb then describes!
Where would you say they move, then?
>Furthermore, even this definition of liberalism is wrong, since most
>liberals are Christian. (It is a better definition of humanism than of
>liberalism.)
Do you really think liberalism and Christianity go together? Most
people would disagree, I believe.
I would agree that liberalism in historically Christian societies
learned how to appeal to impulses characteristic of Christianity, and
that many liberals think of themselves quite sincerely as Christians and
vice versa.
>I can think of one relation between transcendent value and liberalism.
>It is this: a liberal government does not enshrine some alleged
>transcendent value as its political purpose and agenda. States that
>have done this, such as the Third Reich and the old Soviet Union, are
>indeed illiberal.
I would agree with the first sentence. As to the second, I don't see
how either (1) a state that viewed the will of the German people as
embodied in the will of the Fuehrer as the measure of all things, or (2)
a state based philosophically on historical materialism, theoretically
on the interests of the working class and practically on absolute rule
by the Central Committee or supreme leader, could be said to enshrine a
transcendent value.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Thu Jun 10 20:24:11 EDT 1993
Article: 13261 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Terrible definition of liberal (was: The LIBERAL ELITE)
Date: 10 Jun 1993 19:28:24 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 62
Message-ID: <1v8g2o$cp2@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1v7g0c$83g@sun.Panix.Com> <93Jun10.132031edt.41306@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
>I offered my understanding of the word ["liberalism"] by providing a
>substantive quote from Rawls in an earlier posting, and Jim summarily
>deleted it without comment. Here is that quote again:
>
>" [T]he problem of political liberalism is: How is it possible that there
>" may exist over time a stable and just society of free and equal
>" citizens profoundly divided by reasonable though incompatible religious,
>" philosophical, and moral doctrines? Put another way, How is it possible
>" that deeply opposed though reasonable comprehensive doctrines may live
>" together and all affirm the political conception of a constitutional
>" regime? What is the structure and content of a political conception
>" that can gain the support of such an overlapping consensus? These are
>" among the questions that political liberalism tries to answer.
> (John Rawls, "Political Liberalism", 1993)
I was at a loss as to what comment to make on this quote. My guess
would be that if the doctrines really are incompatible and the holders
of each new doctrine someone introduces have a right to a constitutional
order that is no less favorable to their doctrine than it is to all the
others, there are going to be major problems. Why suppose that the
people who hold all these incompatible doctrines are going to agree over
the meaning of words like "just", "reasonable", "free" or "equal", or on
how the constitution of the constitutional regime is to be interpreted
even if one could be agreed on in the first place? Why suppose that the
goods these incompatible doctrines favor don't exclude each other, at
least in many practical situations?
The obvious way of dealing with the situation described without formally
abandoning liberalism is to reduce the amount of serious legitimate
disagreement. That can be done (1) by reducing the degree to which
people have serious beliefs at all, or (2) by defining as "unreasonable"
and therefore not qualifying for the protections of the constitutional
regime beliefs that can not be accommodated without discommoding the
beliefs of whoever controls the government, or more specifically the
beliefs of whoever in the government is charged with the task of
determining which beliefs are reasonable enough to qualify for
constitutional protection.
>No one is sure what consitututes the good life, with the decadence of
>so many options to choose from. Large corporate interests, sensing the
>ability to make a profit, play on this situation and the result is a
>crude consumerist society that many do not really want yet find
>themselves stuck in. This, I agree, is a serious problem of liberalism
>as commonly conceived. It is not obvious to me, however, that we cannot
>work around this problem and preserve the valuable insights of
>liberalism rather than advocate some theocratic state such as Jim
>appears to be doing.
Is it large corporate interests that you view as the problem? If so, I
don't understand what it is about the size of an interest or the legal
form it takes that leads to the sort of results you describe. Also I'm
not sure what you mean by "theocratic state". "Theocracy" normally does
not mean "government that takes a position on questions relating to the
nature of the good life" or even "government that takes a position on
religious issues". As to workarounds, they often don't work for
fundamental problems such as I take this one to be. I'd be interested
to hear what you have in mind, though.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Fri Jun 11 05:20:00 EDT 1993
Article: 13264 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Terrible definition of liberal (was: The LIBERAL ELITE)
Date: 10 Jun 1993 21:24:38 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 60
Message-ID: <1v8msm$mso@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1v7g0c$83g@sun.Panix.Com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>In modern sense of liberal, I think there is some truth in the notion of
>a "liberal agenda" that would politically enshrine values that go beyond
>those required for an open society. Consider the "politics of meaning"
>and what that might imply.
The problem is that the project of treating all desires equally breaks
down if taken seriously because desires are inconsistent. If someone
then wants to remain a liberal the obvious move is to say that some
desires are not OK because they can not be fitted into the fundamental
project of arranging things so that desires are treated equally to the
extent possible. The non-OK desires then include desires to deny
equality, either expressly (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) or
indirectly (greed, or the desire that more resources be devoted to
satisfying one's own desire than the desires of others). Accordingly,
the commands of justice that can't be left up to the prejudices and
whims of the majority come to include suppression of non-OK desires and
prevention of those desires from having any effect. (I really don't
know what's involved in the politics of meaning. Somehow I don't expect
it to get very far.)
>Like all successful intellectual movements, classical liberalism has
>evolved into a variety of descendants, including modern liberalism,
>modern conservatism, and libertarianism. Which of these descendants is
>the "legitimate successor" depends on where one sees legitimacy. Which
>are fundamentally different from classical liberalism and which are
>fundamentally the same depends on what one considers fundamental.
Agreed. My own view, is that modern liberals are correct in seeing
themselves as the true successors of classical liberals and in seeing
libertarians and most modern conservatives as people who are dragging
their feet because of self-interest or a narrow and cramped perspective
on the meaning of their own tradition. I suppose one could test this
kind of theory by the usual criteria for judging theories (simplicity
and so on).
>In the case of the old Soviet Union, the state was meant -- at least in
>the early days -- to be the vanguard in creating a Communist world
>utopia. In the case of the Third Reich, Hitler promised a thousand year
>reign of the German peoples and their family values. These transcendent
>values are heady stuff [ . . . ]
By "transcendent values" I mean "values that can't be reduced to the
thoughts, feelings, desires, impulses and so on of particular people or
groups of people". I don't think that definition is eccentric, and I
don't see how even the most glorious success in aggrandizing a party or
a race constitutes a "transcendent value".
On a different issue, I don't understand the reference to "family
values". The effect of family values is is to strengthen institutions
that are independent of and not easily controlled by the state, and that
compete with the state for the loyalty and obedience of their members.
I have no idea why the National Socialists would have favored them.
Certainly, nothing in _Mein Kampf_ or _Sieg des Willens_ suggests any
special support for family values; the emphasis is all on racial unity
and homogeneity.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Fri Jun 11 08:51:49 EDT 1993
Article: 13265 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Terrible definition of liberal (was: The LIBERAL ELITE)
Date: 11 Jun 1993 07:02:40 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <1v9oog$obs@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1v880r$l4p@sun.Panix.Com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>True, liberalism (in the modern sense) has won some solid victories, for
>example, the entrenchment of the welfare state. But so has
>conservatism. Consider, for example, the ardent pursuit of the drug
>war.
It seems to me that for centuries the clear overall tendency has been
toward liberty and equality. Consider the situation with regard to
equality at 50 year intervals since 1100 (near the end of _Democracy in
America_ de Tocqueville takes us up to 1840, after which most of us can
continue on our own). Of course, no trend proceeds without local or
temporary reverses.
As to the drug war, I believe that like protective legislation generally
it can be reconciled with liberalism. As I've mentioned elsewhere,
unavoidable limitations on the principle that all desires are equal
arise because desires are often incompatible. Since the tendency of
liberalism is to undermine all institutions other than the state (such
institutions are supported by illiberal social attitudes and do
illiberal things), liberalism prefers that such conflicts be resolved by
the state rather than by private, informal or traditional institutions.
One conflict among desires, of course, is the conflict between the
desires one has now and the desires one will have in the future.
"Individual responsibility" is a private, informal and traditional
institution for dealing with that conflict, but liberalism prefers that
the state do the job.
>Regardless, it is not clear that the trends, once we well delineate
>them, are best understood by a *cultural* explanation.
Whatever works is good, I suppose. Even if an economic or institutional
explanation is possible a cultural explanation might still work if
economics, institutions and culture are closely enough related. Let
1000 flowers bloom. Get wisdom where you can find it. I could go on
like this . . .
>But if "liberalism and the left" have such an "enduring and cultural
>prestige," how does one account for the Presidents that America has
>elected since WW II?
Footdragging on the part of the people, together with a sense that there
might be something wrong with liberalism that has never given rise to a
coherent political theory that people are willing publicly to support.
It's worth noting that not even the Reagan Administration was able to
reverse liberal gains and in defending its position had to use liberal
terminology (liberty, equality, equal opportunity, rights of the
individual, democracy).
>Distinguishing "what is good" from "what I want" has *nothing* -- nada,
>zip, NOTHING! -- to do with whether value has a "transcendental source"
>or not.
I believe we've had something very like this discussion twice before and
have gotten nowhere. If someone else wants to pick it up, fine.
>> "Equality" means that the desires of every person
>> are equally desires, and so count equally. ...
>
>[ . . . ] The second fallacy is -- again -- the confounding of the
>political realm with the personal and cultural. Yes, an open society
>must let the desire to be productive and the desire to slack off, the
>desire to worship and the desire to blaspheme, etc., "count equally"
>UNDER THE LAW. Unfortunately, Kalb omits this important qualification.
>This does *not* mean that individuals must view these desires equally
>nor that our culture must equally endorse them.
The personal is political, though. Quite some time ago liberalism
reached the stage at which it became ready to use the powers of the
state to dismantle structures of oppression arising within a regime of
formal legal equality. If our culture doesn't equally endorse desires
that are consistent with the well-being of the liberal state and the
success of its projects, then it's time for the state to promote
multiculturalism. If individuals don't view such desires equally then
the schools should be required to make more of an effort to teach
acceptance of differences.
>There is a *tremendous* difference between saying that "each individual
>has the right to choose his own values and his own life-plan" and saying
>that "whatever desires you might happen to have are equally good." The
>recognition of this difference is crucial to a free society, since
>political freedom must ultimately permit people to choose bad values and
>follow poor life-plans.
You seem to be saying that people should have the right to fail within a
regime of private property, free contract and formally equal rights, and
if they do fail and suffer for it that's just tough. Hardly a liberal
sentiment. Some would call it blaming the victim.
If your point is that it's possible for liberalism to develop to the
point of destroying itself, I agree and even think it very likely.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!panix!not-for-mail Fri Jun 11 13:29:15 EDT 1993
Article: 641 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Bookstore censorship
Date: 11 Jun 1993 09:13:21 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 24
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <1va0dh$4kr@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993Jun10.133006.13281@liberty.uc.wlu.edu> <1v8sb1$7rn@usenet.rpi.edu> <1v9kjc$qk2@balsam.unca.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
In article <1v8sb1$7rn@usenet.rpi.edu> jonesm2@alum01.its.rpi.edu (Michael David Jones) writes:
>Why? Why don't you just display some of those conservative free-market
>principles and admit that the bookstore has the right to carry what they
>want, not what you want.
Nobody is suggesting that the bookstore be legally compelled to carry
anything. It has a right to carry what they want and other people have
a right to criticize what it does.
It's at least legitimate to criticize people for not adhering to their
own stated principles, and my impression is that people in the
publishing and bookselling industries typically deflect criticism of the
stuff they publish and sell by arguing the importance of a wide-open
marketplace of ideas that they serve in a neutral manner.
It would be different if the local Maoist book collective refused to
carry R. L.'s book because of its content. But I think one of the cases
cited was the case of a college bookstore, which I would think would
have institutional reasons not to refuse to carry books on account of
their political content.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Jun 11 16:37:41 EDT 1993
Article: 13269 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Terrible definition of liberal (was: The LIBERAL ELITE)
Date: 11 Jun 1993 15:11:06 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 54
Message-ID: <1valca$7up@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1v9oog$obs@sun.Panix.Com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>I find it curious that your criticism of modern liberalism focuses
>precisely on those areas where it differs most from classical
>liberalism, and yet you perceive it as the "legitimate successor" of
>classical liberalism. It seems to me that if you consider these areas
>so important, then you would consider modern liberalism to be an
>unfortunate perversion of its heritage.
I don't think classical liberalism can be a stable basis for political
society, and I think it tends to evolve into modern liberalism. Here
are some of my reasons:
1. Classical liberalism is based on the protection of property rights.
Since property is of interest primarily as a means for its owner to be
able to realize whatever desires he happens to have, it appears that the
moral basis of classical liberalism is that it's a good thing for people
to be able to do whatever they happen to feel like doing, so long as
they have justly gained the means to do so. Thus, the cultural aspects
of modern liberalism (those associated with what are called the "social
issues") are implicit in classical liberalism. My impression is that
most present-day libertarians recognize this, and are (crudely speaking)
socially liberal but economically conservative.
2. Classical liberalism requires formal equality of all persons under
the law, and therefore universal suffrage. By setting people free to
pursue wealth it also results in gross inequality. A society in which
classical liberalism prevails will be a society in which people care
very deeply about acquiring and owning property (otherwise they would
not have made protecting property the fundamental purpose of the
political order), and people who don't become rich will be unhappy about
their situation. At some point the non-rich will realize that they have
the political power to help themselves to some extent to the property of
the rich without immediately killing the goose that lays the golden
eggs. In order to keep winning elections the accepted ideology will
evolve to justify some degree of redistribution and thus come to
resemble modern liberalism on economic issues as well.
3. In order for classical liberalism to work, people have to respect
property and justice as defined by the laws. Such respect requires
discipline, mutual forbearance and public spirit. However, the
political order recognizes no goal higher than pursuit of the means to
do whatever one happens to feel like doing. The pursuit of that goal
tends to weaken mutual forbearance and public spirit. In addition,
people who want to make money or gain political power find it
advantageous to weaken the self-discipline of their intended customers
or supporters. So respect for property and justice as defined by the
laws tends to disappear, and people pursue their interests by the
shortest means possible (for example, by having the state give them what
they want). In addition, the people become incapable of self-government
and so the state becomes their custodian by default.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jun 12 13:31:30 EDT 1993
Article: 686 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Repeat Question
Date: 12 Jun 1993 09:42:20 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <1vcmfs$b5r@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993Jun12.042325.8300@midway.uchicago.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
rivk@ellis.uchicago.edu (Naomi Gayle Rivkis) writes:
>I'm curious to know whether most conservatives still support the major
>causes which they have largely lost within the last century or so. Yes,
>it's a moot point in most cases, as the relevant changes are basically
>here to stay, but I'm interested in the pure if-I-could-have-it-my-way
>answers. So, to conservatives: do you oppose allowing blacks and women
>to vote? What about racially integrated schools? The right of Jews to
>live in the state of Maryland?
What's the reference to the right of Jews to live in Maryland? You seem
to be referring to an incident I've never heard of.
I would agree that egalitarianism is a liberal cause that tends to give
conservatives problems in many of its applications, but I wouldn't call
opposition to black suffrage, women's suffrage, racially integrated
schools and the right of Jews to live in Maryland litmus-test
conservative causes.
As to your specific questions, the answers are no, no, no and no. (I'm
assuming that by "racially integrated schools" you don't mean "making
sure that all schools public and private are in fact racially mixed".)
What I would do "if I could have it my way" depends on circumstances. I
think that outlook is typical of conservatives and of sane people
generally. I could think of situations in which I would oppose all the
things you mention. I could also think of situations in which it would
seem best to allow *only* blacks or women to vote or only Jews to live
in Maryland. The issue is what the overall situation is and whether
within that situation the measure would make sense and contribute to
something worth pursuing. An example related to ethnic or religious
limitations on the right to reside is that I have no objection in
principle to the State of Israel, even though the policies that favor
the settlement of Jews there in preference to non-Jews are (as I
understand the matter) part of what makes that state what it is.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jun 12 17:35:58 EDT 1993
Article: 13276 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Terrible definition of liberal (was: The LIBERAL ELITE)
Date: 12 Jun 1993 17:35:38 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 144
Message-ID: <1vdi7a$9qk@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <93Jun10.132031edt.41306@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <1v8g2o$cp2@sun.Panix.Com> <93Jun12.141659edt.49761@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
cbo@cs.toronto.edu (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
>| Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>What is this?
Me, in my new mode.
>| >No one is sure what consitututes the good life, with the decadence of
>| >so many options to choose from. Large corporate interests, sensing the
>| >ability to make a profit, play on this situation and the result is a
>| >crude consumerist society that many do not really want yet find
>| >themselves stuck in [ . . . ]
>|
>| Is it large corporate interests that you view as the problem? If so, I
>| don't understand what it is about the size of an interest or the legal
>| form it takes that leads to the sort of results you describe.
>
>The legal form and size are irrelevant. What is relevant is the degree
>of power exerted by the interests that are not conceptually related to
>those of the person who is being coerced by them.
The degree of power exercised over each of us by the institutions of his
society is very large. Since man is a social animal, I take it that
those institutions are much of what makes us what we are. So what you
say seems to imply that the institutions of society should be based on
the common good. I was under the impression that liberalism had trouble
forming a useful conception of the common good.
>The debates about whether or not "liberalism" was coherent or desireable
>grew out of this original issue, which Jim treated in a very one-sided
>way. "Liberal elites who run the whole government: bad. (My conception
>of) Family, Business, Church: good".
I made a variety of claims and presented a variety of arguments with
respect to liberalism ("the liberal state tends to undermine and render
powerless all social institutions other than the state; in the liberal
state the permissible and mandatory ends of politics must be determined
on theoretical grounds by an elite that is the custodian of the theory;
the liberal state often has no principled way to choose among
conflicting goods and can therefore be expected to favor those goods
preferred by the governing elite for that reason alone").
I believe I said very little about the family except to say that the
family is an institution that is not the state that therefore limits the
power of the state, and that the family is necessary for the realization
of important goods. I don't recall saying anything about business or
the church in this exchange except that business is associated with
"letting people do what they want to do" in the libertarian sense and
that it would be OK for a Catholic to campaign to have his church's
conception of the good for man followed by the state in determining the
common good.
It might make my position clearer to say that I prefer classical
liberalism to modern liberalism because it has less liberalism in it
(the principles of liberty and equality are not applied as extensively,
so it is possible for social institutions based on substantive common
goods to retain more vitality). However, for reasons given in another
post I doubt that classical liberalism is a possible choice today even
if it is otherwise worthy of choice.
It's quite possible that what I said was one-sided. If you think it
worth the effort, you could point out where you think I left out or
downplayed important things, or was simply wrong. The more specific you
are the more helpful it would be to me personally.
>Earlier Jim was quite clear about his emphasis on the legal form of the
>elite and powerful interests. It was just the state we had to worry
>about. It was not big business, or even small business which is still
>much bigger than the individual people it employs. (And it certainly
>wasn't old-fashioned institutions like the church and family, about
>which only praise was offered).
By talking about the state one can talk about the overall legal regime
and form of society. Big or small business, church and family might
exist within a variety of settings, and in any event I said very little
about any of them.
>In an earlier message, Jim dismissed what I consider to be a very
>relevant observation with a completely irrelevant and what appears to
>be deliberately obtuse remark:
>
>| >Most of the adult waking life of most of us is spent at work or
>| >preparing to be at work. And we work for bosses, and do what they tell
>| >us to do. I suspect they have a far greater degree of control over most
>| >of us that does any liberal politically correct statist government
>| >elites.
>|
>| What's the point? That most people have more fun at work when the
>| government is liberal than otherwise?
I am perfectly happy with your formulation:
>"What's the point? That most people experience more of the good at work
>(and consequently, outside of it afterwards), when the government is
>liberal rather than otherwise?"
Is that a claim you would make? It seems an odd one to me. You seem to
agree:
>Incidentally, I wasn't saying that liberalism as commonly construed
>would add more of the good. I was suggesting this as a possible
>*criticism* of liberalism.
I took you to be speaking up for something that people would commonly
call liberalism (I still don't know what other kind of liberalism you
have in mind). As a result I didn't see any serious point in what you
said and responded facetiously.
>It might even be an internal critique of Rawls style liberalism: the
>liberal "rules of justice" arrived at by Rawls do not seem to me as if
>reasoners in the original position would choose them, privy as they are
>to the thin theory of the good. Now I'm willing to call the corrected
>result "liberalism", but many appear not to be. I would recommend in
>particular Jon Elster's paper "Self-realization in work and in politics:
>The Marxist Conception of the Good Life". I think (if I recall it
>correctly) I would agree with much of the "conception of the good life"
>contained therein, yet it seems not to go *that* far beyond Rawls's thin
>conception.
If you think it worth your while, you could say more in this newsgroup
about what your revamped liberalism would look like.
>With my reference to "theocracy", I am merely guessing at the kind of
>state Jim would himself like to see. In previous messages he has already
>indicated his wish to impose religious instruction in the public schools
>(if not explicitly in the curriculum, at least through organised public
>prayer in the schools).
Until 1963 most public schools in the United States started the day with
a prayer or Bible reading (normally something from the Psalms).
Objectors could withdraw, although obviously there were social pressures
against doing so. "Theocracy" is not commonly used to describe pre-1963
American society.
>He mitigates the audacity of this claim by adding that "religion should
>not be forced", but I don't find this too encouraging.
Why audacious? It is impossible for people who educate children to
avoid making fundamental choices of value and outlook on the world on
their behalf. Also, I think I said "can't" rather than "should not".
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Jun 13 09:15:36 EDT 1993
Article: 698 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Question for Conservatives
Date: 13 Jun 1993 05:46:52 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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earwurm@netcom.com (Daniel Benbenisty) writes:
>When you counterfeit and spend the money, you are devaluing the dollar -
>in a very real sense, you are STEALING a little bit from every other
>person who owns U.S. currency.
Sounds like more a statement of moral principle than fact. Do you
believe that a careful study of each person who owns U.S. currency would
reveal that he had lost something by my action? Do you believe that you
could find anybody who could be shown to have lost anything? If not,
why wouldn't my action be a victimless crime?
The point is that contentions regarding "victimless crimes" tend to miss
the point. When we believe a social institution is important we impose
penalties on people who act in ways that undermine it even if there's no
one who suffered any discernible injury. My counterfeiting example
seems to show that we all feel that way about the institution of money.
It is currently a matter of dispute whether we should feel that way
about the institutions of marriage and the family. To the extent we do,
we may be inclined to say things like "When you engage in sexual
relations outside of wedlock, you are devaluing matrimony - in a very
real sense, you are ATTACKING to some small degree every family."
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Jun 13 14:22:23 EDT 1993
Article: 704 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Question for Conservatives
Date: 13 Jun 1993 09:56:25 -0400
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earwurm@netcom.com (Daniel Benbenisty) writes:
>[If I counterfeit money and spend it] you will find that the U.S.
>economy (and to a smaller extent, the world economy) had lost exactly
>the same amount of goods/services that you had purchased with the
>counterfeit money - without YOU providing any goods/services in return.
>Essentially, you have stolen from the U.S. economy - that's why
>counterfeiting is a Federal crime.
You are assuming that the increase in the money supply would have no
effect on the use of unemployed resources. Suppose I only spend
counterfeit money when the economy is in the doldrums and an increase in
consumer purchasing power would help things. Would it be OK then? For
all I know, production would go up and economies of scale would cause
prices to drop! In any event, "the U.S. economy" is an abstraction
rather than a particular person who is capable of being a victim, so I
still say my act is a victimless crime.
>What do you think would happen if you counterfeited and spent 1 trillion
>dollars? You ever hear of the word "inflation"?
I agree that $1,000,000,000,000 a year would not be a victimless crime.
I'm only talking a few hundred thou though. Do you think you could show
that a particular price somewhere would be affected? If not, why do you
think your reverence for the monetary system and your personal moral
aversion to counterfeiting justify putting someone in jail whose chosen
way of life differs from your own? (I hope in your answer you will
avoid appeal to theories that purport to show that some ill-defined
abstract entity like "the economy" or "the money supply" would be
harmed!)
>If you want a simple example of this, then consider the following: I
>counterfiet about 1 million dollars and then go around my neighborhood,
>spending it on goods and services. The local merchants, encountering a
>greater demand, raise their prices a bit, fucking over every other
>consumer in the neighborhood just a tad. These merchants, in turn, have
>a little more money to spend, thus creating a slightly greater demand in
>surrounding neighborhoods, etc. etc. Now, if I had actually created
>some goods/services to balance all this money I have just spent, there
>would be no net inflation. But because I have NOT created any goods or
>services, there is inflation.
I doubt that spending a couple hundred grand a year in New York City
would in fact cause any prices to rise. (If you think it might I'll
agree to spend part of the year in Tuscany.) And if the idea is that
I'm injuring the locals in NYC so I ought to get thrown in the slammer,
it's not clear to me that the effect on the NYC locals would be
different from the effect of a planeload of Japanese tourists coming
here and spending money acquired halfway around the world. Maybe they
should all be jugged too.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Sun Jun 13 16:06:45 EDT 1993
Article: 715 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: NAS linkage of PC with deconstructionism
Date: 13 Jun 1993 14:45:22 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>Why does a conservative organization, set up more or less to combat PC
>in academe, feel compelled to constantly denigrate deconstructionism?
>I.e., why the linkage between PC (and other academic evils) and
>deconstructionism [ . . . ] insofar as deconstructionism is nihilistic,
>it is nihilistic with respect to *secular* intellectualism (a term I
>prefer to "Secular Humanism" because it doesn't have unwanted historical
>associations).
I don't think of them as specifically conservative -- I thought their
basic goal was to combat PC from the standpoint that truth is knowable
through the free exhange of opinion and objectively valid methods of
inquiry that are open to all. Both Thomas Aquinas and traditional
liberals would have agreed with that, but my impression is the decons
don't.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Jun 14 16:05:09 EDT 1993
Article: 734 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: FRC: RU-486 (fwd)
Date: 14 Jun 1993 13:50:17 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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gary@sackbut.mitre.org (Gary Bisaga) writes:
>So ... why does the Family Research Council have problems with RU-486 or
>for that matter with abortion in general? It seems that neither of
>these have any bearing on the stated aims of the group, to support the
>traditional family.
I don't have any specific knowledge about the FRC. It seems to me,
though, that one of the main things that until now has sustained the
family as an institution in modern urban society is a system of thought,
feeling and habit that treats sex as essentially related to having
children, and obligations regarding our children as things that override
whatever individual preferences we might otherwise have. To favor the
right to abortion is to reject that system, or at least to construe it
quite narrowly.
>In addition, you state the totalitarians have done their best to destroy
>the traditional family; this may be true, but, my readings of Lenin and
>Hitler indicate that both were very "pro-family," both in their
>agreements with the above sentiments and with their condemnation of
>abortion.
Which readings? I don't recall anything pro-family in the National
Socialist or Marxist writings I've read, but my acquaintance with those
writings is imperfect. The ones I have read certainly led me to think
that any pro-family policies they might have adopted would not, for
them, have been matters of fundamental principle. Also, my impression
is that the old Soviet Union and other communist countries have been
characterized by easy and frequent abortion and divorce and by an
emphasis on the role of the state in the rearing of children.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Jun 14 16:05:57 EDT 1993
Article: 13307 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Law
Date: 14 Jun 1993 16:03:21 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix alt.politics.libertarian:4237 talk.politics.theory:13307
thant@disney.com (Thant Tessman) writes:
>The central conflict between libertarian and other ideologies lies in
>what the ultimate purpose of law should be. Is the purpose of law to
>facilitate social interaction by maximizing mutual consent? Or is it's
>purpose to better mankind by imposing, by force if necessary, a moral
>structure on society?
I understand the purpose of a just legal system to be the promotion of
goods those bound by the system have in common. Respect for the laws
promoting those goods then becomes the imposed moral structure. I'm not
sure you would disagree -- you might say that the good we all have in
common is the facilitation of social interaction by maximizing mutual
consent, and I expect you would impose by force a moral structure
calling for respect for contracts and property rights because you
believe such respect is needed to promote that good. I'm not sure why
you would be right in doing so, though. If the facilitation of
interaction by consent would benefit you a lot but some other purpose
(the establishment of a welfare state, for example) would benefit me
much more, it is not obvious that the purpose you propose is something I
share with you. Why should I view myself as bound to support a legal
system based on it?
>Obsession with human moral failings obscures the logical contradiction
>created by the fact that the governors are just as human as the
>governed.
One possible test for a good system of laws is what kind of people the
people become who live under that system. Why couldn't a people accept
that test and develop their system of laws using as a criterion the
effect of changes in the system on what they understand as their virtues
and vices? Your objection shows that one reason virtue can't be
dictated is that reliably virtuous dictators are hard to come by. I
don't think it shows that it's futile for a society to accept a
particular moral tradition as authoritative.
>Another approach is to leave the purpose of human existence unspecified
>- that the persuit of happiness must be carried out by each individual
>for themselves.
The pursuit of happiness can't be carried out by each individual by
himself because man is a social animal and the things he pursues usually
have an essential social element. If a woman's idea of happiness is to
be a good wife and mother she's not going to be able to do it unless the
society she lives in has definite standards of what a family is and what
the members of a family owe to each other. If her preference is to be
an in-your-face Lesbian and an Amazon she's not going to be able to do
that either unless she can find an appropriate setting in her society
for doing so.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 15 07:34:35 EDT 1993
Article: 758 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Question for Conservatives
Date: 15 Jun 1993 07:21:42 -0400
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earwurm@netcom.com (Earwurm) writes:
>You're not increasing "consumer purchasing power" by forging money and
>spending it on yourself [ . . . ]
It increases my purchasing power and I'm a consumer.
>If you agree that 1 trillion dollars, counterfeited and spent, would
>victimize alot of people (basically, everyone except for the
>counterfeiters), you must agree that a lesser amount would hurt people
>to a lesser degree - not to NO degree. Spending money raises prices -
>if you don't acknowledge this simple fact, I'm going to go around in
>circles forever with you.
I don't acknowledge that each instance of spending money actually raises
any particular price. If I counterfeited and spent $.01 no price would
go up. It seems to me very likely the same would be true if I
counterfeited $200,000 and spent it in New York City over the course of
a year. You are thinking of the economy as a mathematical system; I am
thinking of it as a collection of events perceptible to the senses.
Case in point:
>Counterfeiting is a way of stealing about a fraction of a cent from
>everybody.
This statement makes sense only if you are thinking about a mathematical
model of the events we refer to collectively as "the economy" rather
than about the events themselves.
>As far as I can tell, you are trying to construct the argument that
>those who rally against the criminality of certain crimes (drug use,
>etc.) on the basis that such crimes are victimless, are hypocritical -
>because some of the crimes that EVERYBODY regards as unacceptable are
>actually victimless.
I would say "confused" rather than hypocritical.
The following are points we agree on:
>I'm getting sick of repeating this without your understanding or
>acknowledging it.
>But please lay of the counterfeit crap - it's really not very
>stimulating.
>Look, this is probably about the least challenging argument I can have
>on this group. I've come here for the Argument Clinic, dammit!
Since we agree on these points we should drop the discussion.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 15 13:22:29 EDT 1993
Article: 13327 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Social setting (was: Law)
Date: 15 Jun 1993 13:21:56 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:13327 alt.politics.libertarian:4329
turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>> ... If a woman's idea of happiness is to be a good wife and
>> mother she's not going to be able to do it unless the society
>> she lives in has definite standards of what a family is and
>> what the members of a family owe to each other. ...
>She only needs to find a husband who has like views. All she needs of
>"society" is that it permits the familial arrangements she desires. It
>does *not* have to have "definite standards of what a family is and what
>members of a family owe to each other."
You have a rather asocial view of social institutions. Does placing
"society" in quotes mean that you don't believe in such things?
One problem with your view is that in order for "good wife" to mean
something there have to be social standards for the situations to which
that combination of words can be applied. Another is that if a woman
wants to be a good wife and mother in a family as traditionally
conceived, she wants the obligations of the members of her family to be
objective obligations that do not depend on the continuing will of each
member. I don't see any way of giving the notion of "objective
obligations" practical efficacy (which is part of what she very likely
would want) other than having them recognized and formally or informally
enforced by society at large.
>Now admittedly, the woman with traditional desires may find it that
>fulfilling those desires requires more effort in a society that permits
>a variety of familial arrangments than in a society that imposes those
>desires by default. But there is a long distance between "requiring
>more effort" and "not going to be able to."
I've argued above that a woman with such desires would have a conceptual
rather than a practical problem in a society that treats all consensual
arrangements for living together equally and doesn't privilege those
arrangements that it defines as "families". (It seems to me that your
expression "permits a variety of familial arrangements" is too weak.)
Obviously, there would be practical problems as well. For example,
tradtional marriages last a long time, and things change. So regardless
of what a woman's fiance may tell her it would be imprudent for her to
choose the traditional "wife and mother" role unless there are strong
social pressures of one sort or another on husbands to walk the straight
and narrow. Such pressures wouldn't exist unless people had clear ideas
about what husbands should do. I'm not sure that your distinction
between "requiring more effort" and "not going to be able to" would be
all that significant in such a setting.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 15 15:51:17 EDT 1993
Article: 13330 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Can you tell your left from your right?
Date: 15 Jun 1993 13:56:59 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:13330 alt.politics.libertarian:4331
thant@disney.com (Thant Tessman) writes:
>I'm not talking about mere theft. I'm talking about attempts to justify
>its institutionalization on moral grounds.
But "theft" is defined as part of an overall moral system. So if those
attempts are successful, then the "theft" isn't theft but something
else.
>> One possible test for a good system of laws is what kind of people the
>> people become who live under that system. Why couldn't a people
>> accept that test and develop their system of laws using as a criterion
>> the effect of changes in the system on what they understand as their
>> virtues and vices? [...]
>
>Who is going to implement that system?
The same people who would otherwise implement a system that defines and
protects property.
>What guarantees their virtue?
What guarantees the correctness of a libertarian system of laws?
>If people understood and agreed upon a system of virtues and vices,
>why would it need to be imposed?
I take it that virtues can't be imposed directly and it is impossible or
impractical to forbid some vices. Nonetheless, laws can favor or
inhibit particular human qualities, and the suggestion was that people
might judge laws by looking at their tendency to favor whatever they
define as virtue just as libertarians judge laws by their tendency to
protect whatever they define as property. Agreement on what constitutes
"virtue" would not negate the need for laws any more than agreement on
what constitutes "property" would.
>The housewife/amazon must decide for herself whether the path she's
>chosen is most likely to bring her happiness. This doesn't deny the
>existence of social context within which to make her decision. It
>does mean that no one has the right to decide for her.
The decisions of other people define for her the social context. Why
shouldn't she have something to say about that? Conversely, if her
decision helps define the social context other people find themselves
in, why shouldn't those other people have something to say about her
decision?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 15 21:08:27 EDT 1993
Article: 13340 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Social setting (was: Law)
Date: 15 Jun 1993 21:04:30 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:13340 alt.politics.libertarian:4367
turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>The standards [for being a "good wife"} can be common to a community,
>to those who practice some religion, or to those who advocate a
>particular familial arrangement. Meaning does not derive from the
>universal acceptance of a standard throughout society. (If this were
>the case, it would be impossible for an American to be a "good Moslem"
>or a "good Jew.")
True enough. You had said that all the woman had to do was to find a
potential husband who saw things her way. Now it appears we may agree
that in order to realize her goal of being a "good wife" she and her
husband must be part of a community of some sort that accepts a
particular standard for what a "good wife" is.
>It is -- and always has been -- impossible to force people to live up to
>such obligations [as being a "good wife and mother"]. At most, one can
>define the consequences of failing to do so. And even this has
>traditionally had only small influence compared to other factors such as
>sense of duty (usually derived from religion or concern for children) to
>keep spouses loyal to a miserable marriage.
As you point out, the primary things that make possible or facilitate a
woman's success in being a "good wife and mother" are not legal
sanctions but rather things related to the community in a more informal
way, such as sense of duty (including feeling of responsibility to
children) and religion. You seem to agree that legal sanctions (for
example, legal enforcement of the husband's obligation of support or
legal penalties for adultery) may contribute somewhat to the goal. That
is all I would claim for them.
>> Obviously, there would be practical problems as well. For example,
>> tradtional marriages last a long time, and things change. So regardless
>> of what a woman's fiance may tell her it would be imprudent for her to
>> choose the traditional "wife and mother" role unless there are strong
>> social pressures of one sort or another on husbands to walk the straight
>> and narrow. ...
>
>This *assumes* that traditional family arrangements are a bad deal for
>the husband in the long run and are a bad deal for the wife in the short
>run, so that only some kind of external influence -- e.g., "social
>pressures" -- can keep husbands on "the straight and narrow," thus
>justifying the wife's entering into the arrangement.
Not at all. Suppose I had said "a supplier might be tempted at some
point to breach a 20-year coal supply contract, so a prudent utility
wouldn't base too much of its business strategy on such a contract
unless it was enforceable". Would I be *assuming* that such a contract
is a bad deal for either party?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Jun 15 21:08:29 EDT 1993
Article: 13341 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Social setting (was: Law)
Date: 15 Jun 1993 21:07:38 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:13341 alt.politics.libertarian:4369
wall@pa.dec.com (David Wall) writes:
>>[I]t would be imprudent for [a woman] to choose the traditional "wife
>>and mother" role unless there are strong social pressures of one sort or
>>another on husbands to walk the straight and narrow.
>All that's necessary is that the assumptions made by the woman and her
>fiance be stated as a formal contract. For a case like "traditional
>marriage" with the weight of history behind it, such a contract would
>probably come in a number of standard forms available from your
>stationery store just like apartment rental agreements are there now.
The suggestion doesn't seem realistic to me. I don't think that a
traditional marriage could be reduced to a formal contract that would be
adequately enforceable by a court. (Plaintiff: "Your honor, the
contract says my husband has to love, honor and cherish me and he
didn't!" Judge: "A preponderance of the evidence shows that he didn't
honor you enough. I therefore award specific performance and costs to
the plaintiff.")
Explicit contracts work well when the parties have clearly definable
interests that either (1) can readily be evaluated in monetary terms by
third parties or (2) the contracting parties can be ordered by a court
to fulfill. Quite apart from the problems a court would have in
figuring out what the facts really are, marriage is a long-term
arrangement that may make open-ended and unforeseeable demands on the
parties and involves interests that can't be reduced to money and
obligations that people can't sensibly be ordered to perform.
It seems to me that such arrangements will not be stable (and therefore
people who rely on them for important things will not be acting
sensibly) unless people grow up knowing what they are (which requires
definite standards) and both the participants and those they deal with
view the way the participants conduct themselves in the arrangement as
one of the basic things that determines whether they are good people or
bad people (which requires that standards be both definite and strongly
held).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 16 05:53:26 EDT 1993
Article: 13343 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Social setting (was: Law)
Date: 15 Jun 1993 21:42:59 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 33
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:13343 alt.politics.libertarian:4376
mls@panix.com (Michael Siemon) writes:
>This is, for me, one of the most peculiar aspects of "family values"
>advocacy. There seems to be this *assumption* that people will by
>default do ANYTHING in preference to the advocates' desired model.
I've never noticed such an assumption, any more than I've noticed an
assumption among libertarians who want the state to protect property
rights that people will by default do ANYTHING other than respect those
rights. I take it that libertarians believe that property rights are
what make the world go round, and that there is a role for the state in
supporting them so that people can rely on property rights with more
confidence and their beneficient influence can be maximized. Some
family values types feel the same way about the institution of the
family; others are less concerned with supporting state action to
support family values and more concerned with opposing cultural trends
that undermine them.
>Which ignores the evident fact that *most* human families in all
>societies, regardless of religious or other sanction, have been
>monogamous child-raising couplings, with more or less extensive support
>from culturally defined extended families.
I would imagine that cultural attitudes and social institutions in those
societies support those monogamous child-raising coupling in a variety
of ways. If so, there seems nothing inconsistent with the things you
mention in advocating that our own society retain such attitudes and
institutions. Even if people have a tendency to do something good
(e.g., refrain from killing other people) laws and social institutions
can promote or retard that tendency.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 16 17:34:46 EDT 1993
Article: 13366 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Law
Date: 16 Jun 1993 17:32:56 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Message-ID: <1vo3i8$h2h@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <9306161522.AA09354@void>
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Xref: panix alt.politics.libertarian:4437 talk.politics.theory:13366
thant@disney.com (Thant Tessman) writes:
>A libertarian system of laws would be an attempt to institutionalize
>only those social relationships which were based on shared values
>systems as and for whom they already exist.
I don't think the attempt succeeds or can succeed short of anarchism,
and I don't think anarchism is an option.
The minarchist form of libertarianism, as I understand it, would define
certain social relationships, such as my right to define the conditions
on which you can use a piece of land or deny you the use of the land
altogether, as "property rights" and enforce them. It might be that you
evaluate those relationships as unjust and not at all reflective of your
values (you might believe that the use of property should be decided by
voting rather than by the unilateral decision of one man whom the
minarchist state designates as the "owner" of the property). You would
nonetheless be bound by those relationships, even though they aren't
based on values you share.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 16 17:55:17 EDT 1993
Article: 795 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: An Interesting Pattern
Date: 16 Jun 1993 17:54:46 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 19
Message-ID: <1vo4r6$iuh@sun.Panix.Com>
References:
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
In clc5q@uvacs.cs.Virginia.EDU (Clark L. Coleman) writes:
>Of course, the pattern is obvious: We conservatives are just paranoid,
>and the benevolent Left just wants equal rights and apple pie for all.
>They don't want women drafted into combat roles, or churches throttled
>from speaking out against homosexual acts, or public funding of abortions.
>Those are just "scare tactics" from the conservatives.
The cultural agenda of the Left lends itself to the kind of two-step you
describe because that agenda opposes the social prejudices and
stereotypes that make up much of what is ordinary called "common sense".
So when the Right worries about the results of some leftist initiative,
those results can easily be shown to conflict with what
middle-of-the-road people view as common sense, and unless the Left has
made it unusually explicit that those results are exactly what it is
after the natural conclusion is that the Right is being paranoid.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 16 17:55:19 EDT 1993
Article: 13367 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Social setting (was: Law)
Date: 16 Jun 1993 17:34:40 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 33
Distribution: usa
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References: <1vlqau$bb0@sun.Panix.Com> <1993Jun16.161519.18946@kadsma.kodak.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
pajerek@telstar.kodak.com (D. J. Pajerek) writes:
>A case could be made that the single cultural trend most damaging to
>family values has been the 300-year rise of industrial capitalism, which
>has 1) largely destroyed the function of the family as a productive
>economic unit (as opposed to merely a consumer); and 2) resulted in the
>introduction of technologies which give tremendous power to the
>individual, which in turn allows the individual to survive without the
>support of social structures such as the family.
Industrial capitalism has certainly made the family seem less inevitable
and so has made the strength and well-being of families more dependent
on publicly-accepted values and moral standards. Maybe that's why
people got so much more strait-laced in the early 19th century. On the
other hand, even today it wouldn't be economically practical for people
generally to get by without the family in the absence of government
welfare and related programs, if only because no one is a wage earner
all his life.
>What the FV types object to is the appearance in the popular media of a
>so-called 'role model' (M. Brown) engaging in behavior that violates
>traditional FV.
>
>As though a) it never happens; b) if we just don't talk about it it will
>go away.
I don't think the FV types would object if the popular media took the
view that a) it happens quite a lot and b) it ought to be talked about,
as long as they also took the view that c) it's a bad thing that causes
lots of very serious problems so people shouldn't do it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Jun 16 17:55:21 EDT 1993
Article: 13368 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Social setting (was: Law)
Date: 16 Jun 1993 17:37:58 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <1vo3rm$heb@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1vl4tt$8k3@usenet.pa.dec.com> <1vlroq$dts@sun.Panix.Com> <1vnp7m$pdd@usenet.pa.dec.com>
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Xref: panix talk.politics.theory:13368 alt.politics.libertarian:4439
wall@pa.dec.com (David Wall) writes:
>What we have now is a situation in which everybody has a vague idea of
>what the obligations of marriage are, and no two people, even if brought
>up in exactly the same religious or philosophical tradition, are likely
>to agree about what those are in the extreme cases [ . . . ] [W]ould
>they be more sensible and prudent to make their assumptions explicit?
I think it would be a good idea for a couple about to get married to
talk through just what their assumptions and expectations are, what
their home life was like and what they have concluded from it and so on.
I doubt that a written contract intended to be legally enforceable would
help much. For the couple to start off acting like people with adverse
interests dealing at arms' length seems unfortunate, and except for rich
people with lots of property to worry about most of the things the
parties would be concerned about would be hard to foresee and enforce
legally anyway. Also, how likely is it that both parties would do a
good job of negotiating the contract?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Thu Jun 17 19:34:56 EDT 1993
Article: 13392 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Efficacy of moaning and groaning (was: Social setting)
Date: 17 Jun 1993 19:34:31 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 24
Distribution: usa
Message-ID: <1vqv27$bhk@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1vltr3$keu@sun.Panix.Com> <1993Jun16.162211.19058@kadsma.kodak.com> <1993Jun17.161656.8210@kadsma.kodak.com>
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pajerek@telstar.kodak.com (D. J. Pajerek) writes:
>The point I'm trying to get across is: if the traditional family is in
>fact disintegrating, if divorce and single-parenthood are on the rise,
>we need to look at the fundamental causes of these phenomena, and not
>just bemoan a 'decline in values'.
Contrasting "fundamental causes" with "a decline in values" suggests the
following well-known form of explanation: (stage of development of
productive forces) => (most efficient mode of organizing production) =>
(need for rights and duties within the productive process to be assigned
in a particular way) => (ideology justifying that assignment of rights
and duties, including morality, religion and philosophy). The opposing
view is the view that ideas are not simply a function of material
conditions and therefore in themselves have consequences.
I suppose most people would go for a mixture of the two approaches. I
agree that looking for material causes could be productive. But if
anything short of a wholly materialistic theory of history is true, it
seems that bemoaning a decline in values could also be a productive
activity.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Jun 18 06:04:45 EDT 1993
Article: 846 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: "Those people" (was Re: alt.society.conservatism...)
Date: 17 Jun 1993 19:58:03 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <1vr0eb$e0r@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993Jun14.165425.20136@ncsu.edu> <1993Jun17.183307.22175@ncsu.edu> <1993Jun17.183849.22404@ncsu.edu> <1vqju6$jre@access.digex.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
In dfc@apple.com (Don Coolidge) writes:
>Despite the plethora of scientific reports (including the loud AMA one)
>strongly linking homosexuality to genetics, despite the observance of
>homosexual behavior in almost all captive species of mammals (which
>creatures Stephanie, as a "good Christian", would undoubtedly consider
>incapable of thought and, hence, choice - so where does it come from if
>it's not choice, Steph?), Stephanie persists in her myth that it's only the
>gays themselves who promulgate the "opinion" that sexual orientation is
>genetically based.
Out of curiosity (and assuming you're reading this in a.s.c. rather than
a.f.d-q), do you believe the differences in behavioral tendencies
between men and women have a weaker or a stronger genetic link than the
differences in such tendencies between homosexuals and others? If you
believe there is a genetic link in both cases, do you believe the
resulting differences should simply be accepted in both cases?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Jun 18 16:56:42 EDT 1993
Article: 13403 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Efficacy of moaning and groaning (was: Social setting)
Date: 18 Jun 1993 16:56:03 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 28
Distribution: usa
Message-ID: <1vta53$4p5@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993Jun17.161656.8210@kadsma.kodak.com> <1vqv27$bhk@sun.Panix.Com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>Unwed motherhood, per se, is *not* a social problem. The Murphy Browns
>in our society are *not* indadequate parents. The problem is inadequate
>parents [ . . . ] the important value is "be sure that you can provide
>the material, emotional, and educational support a child needs before
>you have children."
If the issue is what the basic social arrangements should be as to
childcare and related matters, it seems to me the important value is
"accept a scheme of values and practices that has a realistic prospect
of being generally accepted and if accepted will result in children
generally growing up in a favorable material, emotional and educational
environment". A scheme like yours, that imposes abstractly-stated
duties on each individual separately, doesn't seem workable to me. It
seems to me you're likely to get a lot better results out of a system in
which (1) each person grows up with a rather definite idea of what his
responsibilities are going to be with regard to providing a favorable
environment for his children, (2) that idea is supported by the ideas
other people have and complementary with the idea the other parent will
have, and (3) the ideas are definite enough and strongly enough held to
determine behavior over a period of decades even if there is adversity.
It's worth noting that the sort of approach I suggest is not unique to
traditional Christian moraltity. So far as I can tell it's all but
universal, which gives me hope that even today it is feasible.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jun 19 05:56:48 EDT 1993
Article: 13407 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Efficacy of moaning and groaning (was: Social setting)
Date: 18 Jun 1993 19:41:23 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 27
Distribution: usa
Message-ID: <1vtjr3$esf@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <1993Jun18.193129.1179@kadsma.kodak.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
pajerek@telstar.kodak.com (D. J. Pajerek) writes:
>How and why do values arise? Normally because certain behaviors
>contribute to survival and overall well-being, both for the individual
>and society.
How can well-being be assessed apart from a system for evaluating states
of affairs?
>[P]eople are now far more able to survive and be happy as *individuals*,
>without the need for mediating institutions such as the family. This is
>because of changes in technology and in the economy.
Certainly, the need that productive adults have for the family is less
immediate. I would think that (less immediate necessity for some
people) + (continued benefits for most and necessity for many) =>
(greater need for moral sanctions).
>The only value that's fundamental is survival. Everything else flows
>from that.
I would think that it is the survival and prospering of good things that
is fundamental. So a theory of what things are good must be even more
fundamental.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jun 19 10:22:39 EDT 1993
Article: 13415 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Efficacy of moaning and groaning (was: Social setting)
Date: 19 Jun 1993 09:50:16 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>> ... A scheme like yours, that imposes abstractly-stated
>> duties on each individual separately, doesn't seem workable
>> to me. ...
>
>I think the important values I noted ["be sure that you can provide the
>material, emotional, and educational support a child needs before you
>have children"] are fairly concrete.
The proposal seems to be that before becoming pregnant, carrying the
pregnancy to term and keeping the child a woman should assess the
material, emotional and educational support her child is likely to need
and her ability to provide that support for the next two decades, and
act rationally based on that assessment. A man should make the same
assessment before agreeing to take on responsibility for a child. Since
children differ in what they need, people differ in what they think
children need, the concrete circumstances in which children have in fact
been successfully reared vary greatly, and people are bad at predicting
the future, especially with respect to things of which they have no
experience, it seems that we can expect from such assessments only what
we would normally expect from assessments of future events made with
respect to vague criteria by inexperienced people of ordinary capacity
under the influence of strong emotions (like those aroused by thoughts
of one's own children).
It seems to me such assessments couldn't be relied on as the basis of a
childcare system, and the practical outcome of your proposal would be
that children would end up the responsibility of the welfare system. We
could explore how bad a thing that would be, but my impression is that
our most important disagreements lie elsewhere.
>Much of the "decline in values" which you criticize has occurred
>precisely because the notion of transmitting values where a "person
>grows up with a rather definite idea of what his responsibilities are
>going to be" has failed in the last couple of generations.
Certainly, it's less effective than in the past. The question then
becomes whether it is dispensable, and if not what can be done about the
decline in effectiveness.
>To reinstitute the transmission of values, the new values must be
>closely connected to reasons that people grasp. Transmitting "definitie
>ideas" with little explanation behind them will no longer work. The old
>explanations -- such as they were -- will no longer work.
I believe you are right that more explanation is needed than in the
past. It also seems to me that (1) theory and events are giving us a
practical demonstration that applying the individualist and contractual
approach to childrearing and related matters is a bad thing, and (2)
liberal thought and leftist thought generally has reached a dead end.
So it is possible that in the future public argumentation for
reactionary moral positions will improve greatly in quality.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jun 19 13:16:18 EDT 1993
Article: 436 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Care to explicate a buzzword?
Date: 19 Jun 1993 09:42:22 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <1993Jun19.000119.12252@news.vanderbilt.edu>
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rickertj@athena.cas.vanderbilt.edu (John Rickert) writes:
>I thought I'd ask about the meaning (or significance, if you prefer)
>of a word I seem to see a lot of these days: "healing." It seems
>especially frequent on books by and for liberals. Would anyone care
>to clue me in what the deal is?
As used by liberals, "healing" seems to refer to bringing about a state
of affairs in which there are no serious unsatisfied wants or adverse
interests and no great need for discipline or self-control. If you
don't think it's sensible to view that as the goal of politics, such
books may be of little help to you except unintentionally.
>Nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus.
If you believe that you don't believe in "healing", which is the view
that it is possible to make problems dissolve by political means.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jun 19 13:16:21 EDT 1993
Article: 911 of alt.society.conservatism
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.society.conservatism
Subject: Re: Eagle Forum
Date: 19 Jun 1993 09:46:41 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 22
Message-ID: <1vv5c1$jt0@sun.Panix.Com>
References: <9306180012.AA19028@bottom.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun.panix.com
harsch@bnr.ca (Joseph Harsch) writes:
>One cannot support BOTH censorship and the US Constitution (well, it
>happens all the time, but it's still contradictory).
Why not?
1. It's consistent with the text as it stands ("CONGRESS shall make no
law . . . ") for the states to establish their own systems of
censorship.
2. If you take an original intent approach, "freedom of the press" is
consistent with a lot of things that people would call censorship today.
According to Blackstone, that phrase meant only that people didn't have
to get advance clearance before publishing something. It didn't mean
they couldn't get prosecuted thereafter if what they published was
obscene, blasphemous, libellous or whatever.
3. The Constitution provides a procedure whereby it can be amended.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
From panix!not-for-mail Sat Jun 19 13:16:27 EDT 1993
Article: 13416 of talk.politics.theory
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Efficacy of moaning and groaning (was: Social setting)
Date: 19 Jun 1993 10:25:47 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 30
Distribution: usa
Message-ID: <1vv7lb$ldd@sun.Panix.Com>
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gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>The reason I bring this up is that I think the use of force is central
>to the conservative idea [ . . . ] Which brings up one of the main
>advantages of liberalism: it uses up less social energy.
The use of force is central to any form of society that can actually
exist. Whatever the principles on which a society is based, there has
to be an _ultima ratio_ for those who reject the principles or some
application of the principles to comply.
Of course, there are distinctions. It seems to me that one difference
between the Left and the Right is that the Left prefers force to be
applied only by the state, because at least in theory it can be applied
in a more uniform, rational and just fashion that way, while the Right
prefers force to be applied by private actors (like a property owner or
a _pater familias_), because the state's form of rationality leaves out
too much and because the state would otherwise grow too powerful. On
both sides there are also self-interested motives, of course.
Liberalism as we have known it in America seems to me a transitional
stage in an overall movement toward the Left in which the ability of
private actors to use force is reduced without correspondingly
increasing the use of force by the state. That stage can last until
orderly habits created under the old regime of private force lose their
strength and the state finds itself obliged to create order by using
force more directly.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Who lives without folly is not so wise
as he thinks." (La Rochefoucauld)
Do let me know if you have comments of any kind.
Back to my archive of posts.