TDB

Kevin's post above (first reply to OP) gives a better explanation of the sense in which Stef uses "preferable" in the title. Actually, the tests operate only on moral propositions. Moral nihilism can be formulated as a moral proposition. It passes the tests in that form. But it has no effect on UPB, it does not increase or decrease the set of prohibited behaviors, because it doesnt prohibit anything. Or it fails due to avoidability.It probably makes more sense to formulate moral relativism as a denial of the derivation of UPB. In that case, see Robert's post above for the standard response.

I don't understand the jargon. If you mean, is the moral status of an action different depending on whether a cop is doing it or an ordinary person, I'd say no.I made a long detailed answer to your post and the damn iPad ate it.

My first question was more clarification, the second I have a genuine problem. You jump from "it is good for me to be killed" to "I want to be killed" and I don't see how you got there.I once took a stab at summarizing UPB in a UPB FAQ: http://brimpossible.blogspot.com/2014/05/upb-faq-02.html Edit your original post. The field beneath the title field should be the tags field or something similar. Type "UPB" in there without quotation marks and save. The UPB tag should show up and be linked to a search, and your new entry should show up at the top of the search. This is one of he things that confuses me. "Preferable" is being used in two different senses. One has to do with consent, if I consent to be killed it is not murder, it is assisted suicide, euthanasia, and if both parties consent to sex it is not rape. The other sense has to do with means and ends, cause and effect. If you want to achieve X, it is preferable that you Y. If you go through old forum posts you will find me ranting and railing about how confusing and unnecessary this terminology is. I think Stef could have written the entire book without using the word "preferable" and increased the clarity of the message.

Please add the tag "UPB" to this thread. only the OP may do so. But why are we fundamentally the same in spite of these differences? If The moral claim is stated as a general argument about humans, it applies to all humans. Whatever claim can be made for specific cultures, etc. seems like in can be made for all. Why must you want to be killed if it is good to be killed? If we always wanted what is good, morality would not be much of a problem.There are many discussions of UPB on the forum, the ones with the tag can be found by following this link:https://board.freedomainradio.com/tags/forums/upb/

No need. It wouldn't be exclusively about atheism, it just would not exclude atheists by necessarily including god stuff. Subtract god from church and you get philosophy (right and wrong, how to live a good life, conscience, mutual aid) and enough socializing to keep it going, maybe. New communities. That is a pleasant surprise if it is true. Ultimately, rejection of the idea of the state means that we are entitled to opt out of pretty much anything, so in a way, achieving this goal is identical to ending the state. Once people had a choice whether or not to pay for imperialism and mass incarceration, I don't think those phenomena would last long. So yeah, it won't be easy.

Terrific documentary. Rare for something to be so inspiring yet still very depressing. Hmmm, doesn't sound like an endorsement, does it? Forget that I said it is depressing. Tragic, that's it.

You seem determined to define religion in a certain way and ignore how the word is used. Okay, let's play it your way, say people are wrong to use the word religion if no divine being is involved. Let's coin a new word, noigiler, as a category that includes religions and similar beliefs and practices that deemphasize empirical evidence and involve moral traditions, superstitions, metaphysical beliefs, social practices, rituals, etc. etc. but do not necessarily entail belief in a supreme being. I'm not so sure if all of those aspects are ultimately good. Yes, you can form a community centered on a religious belief, but is it really good if it is all based on a lie?You're quibbling. I am not defending any existing situation, I am pointing to benefits that people claim to receive, and wondering, is there a way for an atheist to make a similarly beneficial arrangement, minus the god part? Of course, if all these benefits and satisfied needs are simply imaginary, it will be hard to accomplish. Sounds like it will be easy to improve on them, then. Have we?I am just asking the question. It seems to me there are certain psychological, social, and economic benefits to belonging to a church and participating in their activities. (Actually I am an introvert and I always hated going to church, but some people see it this way.) Should an atheist regard these benefits as atavistic, imaginary, a necessary sacrifice to living in truth, or is there an alternative that would deliver the goods without the gods? Also, since we are deeply concerned with issues of conscience, I am wondering how to leverage that. Both society in general and the government have come to tolerate some deviant behavior from religious persons on grounds of conscience. My impression is that atheists do not get a millimeter of tolerance in this area. Why does this make sense? Why is my conscience less relevant if I disbelieve in gods? How can we make this point, that conscience is conscience? One (perhaps ineffective) way to try would be to establish an atheist religion (noigiler if we must), and claim all the rights and legal privileges that other religions have.Hypotheses:* no such benefits exist* benefits exist, but are too intimately connected to belief in god* benefits exist, but can easily be captured by other sorts of group membership* benefits exist, and only a special sort of group could capture them

Either I lack a lot of context, or you are dancing around your point. I am groping to understand what you're saying, beyond the idea that western medicine might be deeply flawed.

Sorry for the awkward quoting, my iPad ate the embedded quotes. I'd say UPB says a is confusing and B is more clear, or perhaps, that. B demonstrates that A is actually about a universal principle. Stef never used my "subject/object" distinction, maybe he has a better way of putting it.Perhaps you can help me find a better way to express my thought. My thought is, universality means that the moral agent making a decision before acting stands for any and all moral agents, and no valid moral principle can subdivide that category. However, it does not similarly limit the recipient of action. The restrictions I face with regard to sexual activity are the same as all other moral agents. But we will not apply the same rule to a child as we would to an adult, with regard to sexual activity. With regard to an adult, consent is the primary moral factor. With regard to a child, consent is not really possible. (This ignores the issue of how we distinguish adults and children.) Maybe there is a fudge factor there in the concept of consent, as children automatically do not consent, despite what words may come out of their mouths.Self-defense is another example, where I may treat persons differently according to the activity they are engaged in. UPB categorizes the action from the standpoint of the actor, and the characterization is the same for all moral agents. So is it okay for me to eat the corpses of murder victims, who were murdered for the purpose of selling them as food, so long as I don't participate in the actual murders? It's not the first time I've disagreed with something in the book. The question is, do we consider that a shallow error, a misapplication of the basic idea, or a deep error, a necessary and accurate application? The book has a number of shallow errors. See pages 40-42. I think a lot of things get said on the board that Stef would not and need not endorse. I know I've done it. In this case, I think he will go along with it. I can't find an example specifically addressing his, but in several places in the book he discusses the prerequisite of choice and on page 91 he says I interpret is as meaning, UPB defines the lines of what is moral and immoral, not the appropriate response to a particular violation. If someone holds a gun to your head and makes you do something evil, you have violated UPB, but Stef would not condemn you in the same way he would if you participated willingly. This obviously opens up a question of degree, how credible and certain does the threat against you need to be before you get a pass? Maybe I am copping out, but I consider this to be in the lifeboat category, an interesting thought experiment that no one will ever face. Do you have a candidate? Should I interpret this to mean, UPB should be abandoned because it treats propositions differently according to their formulation, rather than their meaning? I'd love to have some derivations clarified. I'm pretty sure Stef would say it is a waste of his time, as the benefits accrue mainly to academic types who will not be persuaded in any case. He's leaving stuff like that for us. can you formulate communism and capitalism so that they pass the tests? I see UPB as defining a set of behaviors that are categorized as evil/prohibited, everything else is by assumption allowed. New propositions either add to the set, or do not. I suppose it <i>would</i> be awkward if enough propositions passed that everything was categorized as evil. Do you think you can do it? I read you as claiming moral nihilism is an incompatible rival meta-ethical theory, that moral nihilism and UPB cannot both be true. In that case, for MN to be true, some step in the derivation of UPB must be false, erroneous. Stef doesn't refer to it as a moral rule. The fact that it is not a moral rule helps it flunk the UPB test.Maybe your confusion come from flipping between treating MN as a moral proposition, or a characteristic of moral propositions, and treating it as a meta-ethical principle on the same level as UPB?The question I have after reading Stef's quote is, where is the clear, careful derivation of all these UPB nuts and bolts? UPb has a <i>lot</i> of jargon and moving parts, some of which are derived clearly from the performative contradiction, some of which just appear in the text as an exercise for the motivated reader. I consider myself pretty motivated, but I have not been able to put the puzzle together yet.

Yeah, language is a bitch. Feel free to use a better word.

Statistical analysis does not imply controlled experiments. Economists do stats all day long, controlled experiments are rare. Mises claimed that empirical data could illustrate economic principles, but could not verify or refute them. We still have a choice, do statistics, wave our hands vaguely, or just quote the theory. None are particularly satisfying.To come at it from a more FDR direction, you are arguing from consequences, not from morality. Statists will try to convince you that Denmark or Sweden is a socialist paradise, but they cannot tolerate true dissent. Austrian economics doesn't predict anything, it explains everything. It is a tautology. a vital dependent variable is not observable, much less controllable. In case this all begins to look like a digression, let me summarize. I read you as claiming "Venezuela proves private property is good and socialism is bad." If you were arguing with a socialist, they'd say something like "what about Sweden and Denmark?" Misis would probably say something like "socialism is impossible, Venezuela is just really inept interventionist capitalism." I actually didn't think the discussion was about state socialism at all, but an attempt to understand what the heck the ancoms really want. So I should probably just shut up.

Charitable giving certainly conforms to the conventional idea of virtue. Maybe too much so, in that it often gets attached to teh idea that profit is evil. What is better, coming up with an idea that is so good that people will pay for it, or coming up with an idea that sounds beneficial but has no business model to keep it going? Profit is a limited metric, but charity has no metric at all. If some of the more deluded personalities of history had had enough wealth to do large "charitable" works, they might have done serious harm. OTOH, sociopathic CEOs can make enormous profits by gaming the rules, so there's just no absolute guarantee. I'm rambling now. My impression is that the consequences of UPB are not much more than/different from the NAP, the real contribution of UPB (if it does contribute) consists of the derivation/justification of the NAP, plus a way of shooting down bogus moral claims made by persons who want to manipulate you.

I agree, but I don't think you can come up with a slam dunk statistical analysis. they want some different flavor of property, under a different name. The slogans sound so much better that way. Not too clear what they would do about it if someone started forming a stock market in the middle of their utopia (assuming by powerful magic that it could be brought into existence).

question of interpretation. My impression is that Stef was heavily influenced by Rand, so as assume many others on this forum might be also. Rand used the word "whim" with a very negative connotation, as if it opposed rationality and objectivity. I am not enough of a Rand fan to parse this out properly. "Inspiration" and "curiosity" seem less ambiguous, I can endorse those for all ages. "Whim", I am not sure.

Depending on the development of their brains, there may not be much difference. As in, following their whims is a form of exploration. Learning, which is in their rational self-interest, involves exploration. So explore!

All those consumers are conspiring against me to make prices too high! Oh, the humanity! Stef often warns about speculating about the future then jumps right in and does it. Have you ever read "The Transparent Society"? Not really following this thought. Are you saying ancaps deny intrusive economic suppression exists in Africa? I think you could be clearer. Are you sure you're being objective here? I don't have a problem thinking big pharma is corrupt, but... Has a lot of empirical evidence piled up lately indicating that Eastern medicine is the be-al-end-all and I failed to notice? Well, I agree with your conclusion, but you are making some fairly sweeping generalizations. And that's a bit like doing econ stats on regions with and without a state, and using those conclusions to debunk ancapism, see what I mean? They don't just want to end private property, they want to replace it with something specific, which as far as I know, has almost never been tried. Not sure what that means. Saying they just want to change the name? This is the part that always confuses me, use a different word for it and it becomes good. To me it is just a set of rules, whether you call it private property or possessions doesn't matter. Of course, they do want different rules. I'm not sure what the details are.

It sounds silly to me. Do they want to reform it somehow, or just abolish it?

UPB's strength is that it is objective, based on the self-contradiction involved in justifying evil. But this also limits it. One can't pin down positive virtue in a similar way, or at least I don't see immediately how to do it.Take another approach, then. What if we believe that "If you seek goal X you must develop personality characteristic Y." (There's some better description of virtue than "personality characteristic" I am sure.) If nothing about X and Y violate UPB, Y seems like a good candidate as a virtue.Are there particular goals we "ought" to desire, an objective ranking? Is desiring a particular goal a virtue in itself? Assuming that the constraints of UPB are not violated, are all goals of equal value? Is it subjective, dependant on the attitude of the individual?

Conflicts would arise from different concepts of property/possession. My impression is, left anarchists might not respect your property boundaries if you have "too much" land or if you were letting some land lie fallow. You, of course, feel entitled to use force to exclude them. They in turn would feel entitled to use force to exclude you. It might not be impossible to come to a workable compromise, but it's not clear what it would look like, if so. I am not sure what they would feel entitled to do about the existence of a factory where workers did not own the capital equipment. Though now that I think about it, while the factory is operating, how can you tell who owns it, besides looking at a piece of paper? Maybe they would have more objection to how profits were shared out. I'm not sure what they would want to do about it, but perhaps some protesting, striking, other nonviolent annoyances? Or maybe they would go all Starbucks on your ass and smash things. I guess you would want to employ a DRO that knows how to handle 'em. [edit]My point being, the definition of "aggression" pretty much takes for granted a basic property/possession system, and that is a bit of a controversy with these guys. I had to look it up after the Peter Joseph debate, but I didn't think it was quite that bad. The verbiage I found at wikipedia failed to really "explain" it, but seemed to suggest it was a politically correct name for 2 related things: simple poverty and a sort of evil twin of the invisible hand, the second order effects of state intervention, that enables some persons (state agents, the politically connected) to disregard the rights of others. They seem to think they should use the state to fix it, an idea that could perhaps replace the old cliche about putting out a fire with gasoline.Maybe we could appropriate it. When a cop shoots your dog, that's structural violence, man. Or just plain violence? Is it structural violence when the zoning board won't let you grow vegetables in your front yard? Or when someone who could not buy a gun because of gun control laws gets killed by a mugger? Is all prison violence structural violence? When Obama drones a wedding party, is that structural violence? Maybe we should stick to "abuse" or "atrocity." Always with the bait & switch. "This time I will let you kick the football, Charlie Brown, I promise." Not sure what you're trying to say.

This is a good counterexample to the approach taken by OP. He speculated about the possibility of using brain scanning to erase the line between subjective and objective. But even if we can quantify people's subjective experiences in various dimensions, they still differ from person to person, and it seems unlikely that the distinction would lose all relevance. Maybe it would be simpler to point out that chocolate and vanilla are substitutes, it's not a choice made at the margin. Maybe it isn't simpler.Can OP's approach be taken far enough that we could scan your brain and predict whether you would choose chocolate or vanilla, buy the pen or not? I suppose. Kevin's point is that these choices are still subjective, even if they were predictable. For this to become objective, we would need to be able to say "You chose chocolate, but from your brain scan I can see that this was a mistake, you actually preferred vanilla." I have trouble thinking up a sci-fi scenario for that.

I could repeat my comment from above, but If it didn't make sense the first time, it won't help now. Hmm, that seems a bit like "How is it not blue?" Not sure how to answer, it seems too obvious. NAP is a moral principle. The 2 guys test is a test used to evaluate moral principles. How about the coma test, I don't need to explain how that is different from the NAP, right? That is also a test used to evaluate moral principles. It is not a moral principle.Maybe the 2 guys test represents a meta-ethical principle, "if it is impossible for two moral agents in the same room to obey a moral principle, that principle is false."

And, that relates to the 2 guys in a room test in what way?

I was trying to say, that's why he wrote a book, instead of just saying "me too." He wanted to provide the foundation. Whether or not he succeeded in making it clear is another question. NAP is just "Is anyone initiating force?", 2 guys in a room tests to see whether they can obey the same rule at the same time. I did some review, found something: An analogy can illustrate a point, but hardly counts as an argument. The real question is does the analogy necessarily fit? Might not there be something about morality of persons that is not as consistent as mass and gravity? Making the analogy does not prove anything.Human beings share common physical properties and requirements, therefore strong universality. I am not sure this follows. Also, assume someday we will encounter aliens or transhumans, and hence must interact with moral agents that do not necessarily share these properties and requirements, is strong universality defeated?Seems to me he ought to derive universality from the experience of arguing, as one of the premises he claims follows from the act of debating.

No, convince you that intelligent people share this flaw. Maybe even you and I may not be immune.

Absurdum also includes proof by contradiction, as in, if your argument concludes A and not A, then you know at least one of your assumptions is false. If you only made one assumption, then you have proved that assumption is false. In the case of Stef's derivation of strong universality, I'd say it's more a case of knowing that we either must accept his use of strong universality or reject his assumptions. He complicates this for me by not explicitly deriving strong universality in the text. He treats it as uncontroversial.