bugzysegal

The actual problem is that the person would be morally permitted to prevent the flagpole person from entering....imagine a farm barred by electric fence and someone trying to escape some natural disaster. The voluntarist can never be required to act. This does not jive with moral intuitions. Positive action can be morally required according to the intuitions of many. Are they all wrong? Why are your intuitions about property more important than others intuitions about life? An unmanned train is headed towards a drive stuck on the track. Are you morally required to flip a switch that would divert the train into an unpopulated ravine? Also you dont own the railroad, you a merely a passerby. Or even simpler are you morally required to tell someone about to be injured of the impending danger? Reframe the question as one of required positive action. Can you think of no scenarios like this? If "value" has any meaning, it revolves around sentient human life and is necessitated by it. Value simply can't be infinitely flexible, for that would make the word meaningless. There are some situations where there is value and others where there is not. Plain and simple. All cases of the former involve human sentience.

So in my conversation with Stefan I enumerated certain positions that I did not clarify well enough. I would like to remedy that here and I will perhaps revisit these in a follow up call. When I noted that certain axioms are immune to considerations of "True" or "False" and I sited "a way of life" as an alternative approach, what I meant was something like the following: When we look at certain base assumptions, we make them, not because we know they are true. If "knowing" is the kind of thing that requires verification and the assignment of truth value (T or F) then these fundamental principles simply cannot be known. That doesn't weaken their use however. It's useful to look at words like "this" or "that" or logical operators like "+" to realize that these things aren't themselves correspondent to reality, but we use them in meaningful ways. The "essence" of "+" comes from how we practice addition. Similarly the usefulness in pointing to particular things to have a child understand the word "this" is very limited. In the case of ordinary nouns, ostensive teaching (pointing too) is quite useful. Outside these bounds, shared practices and social conventions are determinate to a great extent. To say that only things which can be said to be "true" or "false" have meaning is inaccurate. Why is this important? The foundations of our language are of no singular nature. There are bounds of true and false, beyond which important notions lie. This directly has barring on Stefan's example of Wittgenstein's response to Moore. He noted that Wittgenstein questioned whether we can know or be certain of "that I have a hand." Wittgenstein's response was something nuanced and reflective of the ideas above: To doubt that one has a hand is non-sense. It can be neither true nor false that we are victims of a Cartesian demon, because doubt requires a background with which to be embedded in. In this way statements like "I have a body" are as indubitable as existence. A further distinction from the call I will quickly cover is the private language or Robinson Caruso thought experiment. Stefan seems to dismiss it as absurd that one should develop language because it is too sophisticated(this is highly likely). We can think about a much simpler notion though. Could it ever be the case that a child alone develops a single symbol? The answer is no for the verification reasons I sited in the discussion. That is, one would never be able to truly know they are using the symbol consistent with past uses. This is where the "shared practice" evolves out Wittgenstenian philosophy.

In UPB Stefan recounts Aristotle's declaration that any purposed system of ethics should reflect our most basic of moral intuitions. Moreover any system that regarded rape or murder as good should be disregarded as useful. In NO WAY do I wish to contest that. My actual question is why we view certain moral intuitions as necessarily foundational and indubitable, but not others? Do Utilitarian theories(for example) place greater emphasis on other moral intuitions and what would be a rationale for disregarding subsequent reasoning? That is how do we decide that evaluative systems as a whole are more valuable or "correct" than others in a non-arbitrary manner? Might there be some scenarios where Utilitarian reasoning does a better job of reflecting our underlying intuitions? I am only really familiar with virtue ethics, deontology, Utilitarianism, and Libertarian natural rights theories. For the purposes of this discussion I will stick to to Utilitarian thought experiments, but if you have ever thought of or encountered areas of Libertarian thought that are better solved by one of the other ethical theories, please chime in! My example is the flag pole example: An apartment owner notices a clamoring outside his window. She looks outside and sees a man hanging from a flagpole in distress. "Please can I break the window? I'll repay you whatever you ask." asks the dangling man. "Not only are you not allowed to destroy my property, but you are not allowed to trespass into this apartment which I own! I won't take your money either." responds the woman. As a background, the dangling man slipped off the balcony because a flash freeze had left frost on the outer surfaces of the apartment building. There is no contract or custom establishing that property is forfeit to the saving of a life in this community. Utilitarian thought would say, the cost of the window and replacing the window would be less than the value of a life. The value of volition and choice in regards to the window and trespassing are outweighed by the value of an actual human being. Society would be better off objectively if the apartment owner acted against her own will and merely obeyed the Utilitarian edict that human life has intrinsic value. It's not wrong when, to avoid some danger, we trespass on the property of others i.e. the frequent trespassing through private property during natural disasters. Conversely it would be wrong for people to keep people from doing so.

Solid criticism bro. Yeah undermining the foundations of your entire belief system is irrelevant. There's no way that could have any implications for actual real life scenarios right?

My concerns are twofold. One, using common language it's easy to uncover problems about the limitations of grammar and philosophical statements. The liars paradox and Russell's paradox are two clear cut examples of this. It is curious that you can start with logical elements that are both reflective of the nature of reality, and combine them to arrive at a contradiction. Wittgenstein actually views things like these as only meaningful as far as they are useful; suggesting that if one might find some application of the principles therein as usable in mathematics or some other sense, then and only then should they be regarded as telling us anything. I'm actually going to follow up with another call to Stefan about the nature of truth and "I have a hand" statements. Wittgenstein's take is far more nuanced that I believe Stefan gave credit. Certain notions (I exist, the world did not pop into existence last Thursday, I have a hand, I've never been to the moon) aren't knowledge(T or F) and yet they are indubitable. In order to doubt these things, an entire litany of things must be true in order for me to doubt at all. This closes off the door to the most radical forms of skepticism, but doesn't tell us much about the nature of Truth. Russell's paradox is particularly sinister. Imagine the set of all round objects. Is the set of all round objects round? No. So you can say "the set of all round objects is not a member of itself" Imagine a set of all sub-sets of this nature: the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. Is this set a member of itself? The second concern is backwards looking from the point of observable and useful phenomenon that operate outside the bounds of binary truth values. These include the list of those listed on Wikipedia, but are certainly not limited to that list. In fact there may be many applications of paraconsistency that we have not discovered or do not yet understand(things either we know we don't know, or don't know that we don't know). My contention is this, if a way of reasoning is entirely founded upon non-contradiction and there is evidence suggesting blind spots in that kind of reasoning, one should approach conclusions made prior to the discovery of the blind spots with a renewed sense of skepticism. I will be calling back to form my argument on this particular issue after I formulate my position and have some materials and sources. BOTTOM LINE: consider conclusions about mathematics prior to the understanding of the concept of "0" Might these conclusions have been dramatically misguided or woefully incomplete and might UPB suffer similar ailments without addressing alternate forms of reasoning?

Ah the difference is that your example is a categorical mistake. 4 has no smell nor an attitude. Here we are dealing with truth values. Calling it nonsense is not an argument but a conclusion. Some would say conflict is due to the nature of assertions. G.E. Moore looks at the statement "It is raining and it is true that it is raining" and says that this sentiment strikes us as odd; that this oddness is due to redundancy. If assertions carry with them the declaration of truth, then reflective sentences such as "this sentence is false" strike us as contradictory, not as a category mistake. One could then frame the liar's paradox when viewed vacuously as being inherently contradictory. You might conclude that any statement that isn't grounded on tangible facts, like this one, can't be meaningful. I would counter that the weight assertions carry varies contextually. Some are statements of belief, reasonable belief, mere belief, etc. Each of of these is weaker than truth and the paradox arises. What's curious is why being able to assert something like this might be useful in computing. What does that say about the possible meaning content of "liar" like statements?

I'd say the best example however is the liar's paradox. "This sentence is a lie" You can't say the sentence is neither true nor false, because that is essentially saying that it is not a sentence. However, if you try and say it is either true or false, paradox arises. Saying it is both eliminates the problem. This is a semantics issue. If you can find another way to define UPB's core tenants other than grammar and semantic relation, you avoid even needing to address this. For further explanation as to why the liars paradox is solved by assigning both "true" and "false" truth values.... If we are going about assigning truth values in the normal way we proceed as follows: "The apple is red" we look at the apple, the apple is red so boom "True"! or the apple is green "False". Either way, no problem. When it comes to the liars paradox we evaluate "This sentence is a lie" ah, well lies are false so "False", but if it is false that's actually what the sentence told us so "True", but wait if the sentence is accurate then it is "False" etc, forever reversing the assignment of truth conditions. If it is true and false, it can be so all the way down. There is no re-assignment of truth values. This wouldn't require that apples be both red and not red, but would issue it as a mere possibility. Just as the possibility that an apple may not be red doesn't endanger the fact that it is red.

I'm not sure special relativity states anything can mean anything else. I think it very specifically talks about space/time being relative to speed of the observer and the relation of that speed to the speed of light. That being said...the idea that the world is just information is a type of mathematical realism that is highly contentious. We don't need to go to a dictionary to see what a word means, infinite or otherwise. if you want to know the meaning of a word, look how it's used. Meaning is use.

More than a two way truth value system is not only reasonable, it's useful in the real world. See paraconsistent logic. The fact that this logic exists and is meaningful mean there may be many other systems of logic that reflect different aspects of "reality" as you would like to say logic does. It doesn't negate that true and false are possible, but that there are more possibilities. Also remember I was asked to list foundational axioms. I did. Your whole system is a series of axioms. http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/books/UPB/Universally_Preferable_Behaviour_UPB_by_Stefan_Molyneux_PDF.pdfSee page 125. That is the full set. Necessarily there is some state of affairs that is true and unprovable in your formal system. It's even more damning that Stefan tries to ground the whole thing in logic. Russell and Whitehead already tried to prove that some ideal logical language can be fully proved. After their failure Godel proved that this could never be done, such that any formal system (i.e. logic) will either be inconsistent or incomplete. On top of that, we shouldn't take any axiom as being anything other than what we use it for. It, in itself, cannot be "reasonable" or "right" and there simply is no such thing as "self-evident axioms." Axioms serve as bedrocks for reasons. You can dig no further. You can say "these things taken to be true are easily applicable and useful in an array of situations" but that is determined after the fact. Also, Labmath, are there videos or short summaries of Friedman's or Hayek's portraits of freedom? I'd love to see them. I am actually a Libertarian but for practical reasons. Nozick gives a wonderful argument for voluntarism in "Anarchy, State, and Utopia"

“Logic” is the set of objective and consistent rules derived from the consistency of reality. Reality is objective and consistent These are actually stated as core tenants of UPB. They are also factually wrong. Well actually the first one is definitiively wrong, whereas the second is factually wrong. Logic is simply a tool useful in may realms of inquiry. For the second things see Wikipedia on "paracosistent logic" and note its applications to real world scenarios. Regardless of the relative strength of either of these axioms, they are foundational.

Well, we may one day discover a workable Theory of Everything. I don't believe we will because of Godel's theorum, but I don't know if you can rule it out. For the first part, "objectivity" as describing something grounded in things deeper than the behaviors, traditions, customs, and practices of a culture, like pointing to some truer truth, is mistaken. That is, there is no value added to saying it's objectively true that 2+2=4. If that means anything, then it is objectively true that those red delicious shiny things(imagine I had an apple in my hand) = apples. When you say well sure they are both objectively true because they point to some true about some fundamental true state of affairs about reality, I would ask then is the word "this" or "that" or "pain" less objective? For the second part...what details would you like? I can give you the full fact set of the case, or make up ones. I'm not sure how it's relevant, but I'll still give you what you ask.

True. That's why I described it as the equations falling short. But I think the point is that nothing can be taken as fundamentally true. We have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes right? Today its quantum gravity, tomorrow its super string theory.

Right so the theorem itself is aimed at logic systems, but it says something about the limitations of any given system of logic as a whole. Mainly that a system can't prove all propositions able to be constructed within them. Plainly, if we were to say that natural language is reducible to logical atoms of truth, there would be some construction of those atoms that wouldn't be provable in that system, or the system would seem itself inconsistent. You say "Aha, but you said it wouldn't be provable within this system, but that means you can possibly prove in it another." True, but this system will have the same problem with another proposition, Thus there are limits to which logical conceptions of freedom can answer questions, and they only answer questions within the larger framework of the language they are built into. The last part of that conjunction has much wider implications, but is unnecessary for this discussion.

You are boxing my position in to your schema...analycity, then saying that my "argument" is nonsensical and inapplicable. We are playing different games and you are accusing me of cheating or being too stupid to play the game. Then you take my behavior to confirm your analytic hypothesis. It's annoying to be told what I mean by someone who has less experience in the field than I do (which arguably is still very little). If you say that you were doing anything other than belittling me with your previous statement, I fail to see how that's possible. "I thought you were bsing...this has been instructive" Yeah I responded with annoyance because you were being condescending. There was a huge reformation against your entire method of inquiry in the 20th century. I'm on this philosophy board because I think you, like myself not too long ago, are under the spell of philosophy. "Suppose one of you were an omniscient person and therefore knew all the movements of all the bodies in the world dead or alive and that he also knew all the states of mind of all human beings that ever lived, and suppose this man wrote all he knew in a big book, then this book would contain the whole description of the world; and what I want to say is, that this book would contain nothing that we would call an ethical judgment or anything that would logically imply such a judgment. It would of course contain all relative judgments of value and all true scientific propositions and in fact all true propositions that can be made. But all the facts described would, as it were, stand on the same level and in the same way all propositions stand on the same level. But what I mean is that a state of mind, so far as we mean by that a fact which we can describe, is in no ethical sense good or bad. If for instance in our world-book we read the description of a murder with all its details physical and psychological, the mere description of these facts will contain nothing which we could call an ethical proposition. The murder will be on exactly the same level as any other event, for instance the falling of a stone. Certainly the reading of this description might cause us pain or rage or any other emotion, or we might read about the pain or rage caused by this murder in other people when they heard of it, but there will simply be facts, facts, and facts but no Ethics." The bottom line is there are no moral facts. This is why I was trying to refocus ethics on usefulness and how language (ethical or otherwise) itself gets meaning through use. Also your koolaid is gross. "Where's your argument? I want to see an argument...argument! Argument!! ARGUMENTS?!!!" "Your arguments are woo woo, and flibertygibbits fitang fitang, word salad" "Therefore you have emotional deficiencies and ulterior motives for saying what you do and Libertarian ethics must be right you darn statist!"

Your condescension isn't clever or infuriating. Holism and movement against theorizing is not itself contradictory. It's nice to realize you think your smarter than the greatest minds of the last century. You want a neat formulaic refutation? All principles are tautological, circular, and cannot prove themselves. This undermines any theory they inspire that requires proof in all things that are meaningful, because these principles are themselves unproved and simply taken as definitions. If you try and rescue the situation by saying that meaning only comes from language where it represents embedded logical truths, verified by experience you run into greater problems. One main one is that any formal set (let's say the set of all meaningful logical statements) is either incomplete, or inconsistent. This is Godel's incompleteness theorem. It has been verified by mathematicians and logicians since its inception. I'm sure you'll dismiss this as, "I don't see how this applies to life", or "it's all woo woo" when in fact linguists and logicians have been dealing with these exact concepts for decades. If you still can't see why this should effect the decision to live your life by formalized systems of philosophy, I can only pity you. You should not ascribe to formalized philosophies, because they can't reveal anything to you, you don't already take as true. Moreover you are fooling yourself into thinking that their methodologies tell us something about the world. They don't.

You can directly analogize everything I'm saying to words like "good" or "bad" Giving tangible examples is just nice and concrete...and also indisputable. Align all good behaviors in the world and there is no single element running through them because there is no special class of ethical language to which ubiquitous principles apply. The search for foundations, principles, and conclusions is mistaken. that's what is directly implied by "anti-foundationalism" Philosophy is a mistaken endeavor.

A retreat into behaviorism "psychology should have only concerned itself with observable events"... is just that, a retreat. Sure, we may not be able to distinguish when someone else holds contradictory preferences, but we know from our own experiences that such things are possible, and frequent.

How are you using preference?

Intuitions are all that inform your selection of your axioms(i.e. universalizeability). A justification of an axiom is non-sense, because it is the foundation. To dig deeper than a foundation is non-nonsensical. Stop trying to universalize. Life is contextual and so there is a uniqueness that informs every situation. I'm not saying "we all think x; therefore x" What I am saying is that UPB is mistaken and that a great number of people (many of who are smarter than you, I, or Stefan and who have put more productive effort into considering these things) also think so. This should be disconcerting, not an argument in and of itself. Trying to define ethics is the first mistake. Fitting "universal" into that definition is the second one. The rest is dominoes. The idea that a doctor who offers contracts to the public has an obligation which extends beyond his freedom to contract, is something that lays outside the domain of voluntarism and property rights, but is still moral. I'll rescind the "social contract theory" because I'm not actually very familiar with it and suspect it might be fascist. Anyway on Utilitarian grounds, (Utilitarianism is not UPB, it is a competing ethical framework) life has intrinsic value. If it's not obvious, consider walking by a baby drowning in a puddle. There is no one else around. Are you obligated to turn over the baby? Why? If you feel the pull to say yes there is an obligation, but retreat to voluntarism or property rights, you have messed up.This intrinsic value is paramount in the decision making in these cases. The best course of action is weighing the consequences subverting one's autonomy for the sake of saving a life. Aside from the example I gave in a post that's being reviewed, there is the example of planck temperatures. This is where conditions are so hot that the fundamental forces (or more precisely the equations which predict their behavior) break down. "At temperatures greater than or equal to TP, current physical theory breaks down because we lack a theory of quantum gravity.[2]"

Is anarchism the only way to be happy? When it comes down to it....do we not need to proselytize anarchy? I'm asking specifically what modes of communication do you find best for this task. For instance, Stefan debates, discusses, interrogates....which of these do you think has the most demonstrative value or is easiest to incorporate?

Scientists have stopped light. Lights speed is invariant in a vacuum. There are no perfect vacuums, not even space. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2380028/Scientists-stop-light-completely-record-breaking-MINUTE-trapping-inside-crystal.html

Right so I'm not saying, "don't write unless you read others work." What I am saying is once you finish your bit of writing and then do your due diligence.

Value? There is certainly value in realizing that there are times when you would call something ethical that have nothing to do with a respect for property rights. Why are you asking for a preference and an opposite preference? I'd prefer to go to the basketball game(as I love basketball), but also I'd prefer not to (because I value they money the ticket would cost). At one time I both prefer and prefer not to go the basketball game and until I take a course of action, I maintain both as relevant. You have made an error if you try and define a chair as something that has four legs which you sit on. As far as language acquisition, when you teach a child a word, it is their ability to use it correctly that demonstrates their acquisition. For instance a child wouldn't be wrong in calling a giant beanbag a "chair" also, may hippies do. If you aligned all things that were chairs in the world, their would be no one single thread running through all of them. Go ahead try and give me what is common to all chairs other than "we call them chairs".

Ok so "universalizability" from Kant via Wikipedia: the maxim(principle) of your action could become one that everyone could act upon in similar circumstances. If the action could be universalized (i.e., everyone could do it), then it is morally acceptable. In saying that ethics are universalizabile necessarily, you say that in order for something to be moral, it must also be universalizeable. Family resemblance strikes against the idea that there is some common thread that runs through all uses of a word. In defining a word, you are limiting the potential uses of a word erroneously. That means to say that ethics are definitively universalizeable, is incorrect in a meaningful way. What ramifications does this have on the day to day application of ethics? Well we no longer take for granted that each moral edict always applies to everyone all the time.

That's it?