So, uh, yeah! Here's the political philosophy thread. Place to discuss rad stuff like first principles, Kantian ethics, and Robert Pippin. Fair game are any questions about any current political event that you think might be too distracting in a main thread (or that you simply want to articulate without worrying about people calling you names). Any conversation is fair game here, imo, but you have to be prepared to defend any assertion. And the further down the rabbit hole the better, so if you state that X principle is a priori good, then be prepared to get into a discussion about ethics and different ethical systems. I don't think anyone on this board is a professional philosopher, so obv we'll be feeling through a bunch of issues as they come up. Also! A good place to discuss actual real political philosophers and books by those people. If this doesn't get used for anything else, it'll be a place for me to post my thoughts about issues that I don't feel like get called a fascist for having, so if anyone has any interest in those thoughts, this'll generally be the place. I'm also going to be severely limiting my posting on current politics threads and stuff because - uh - fucking annoying. Anyway, have at it.
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 16:08 (2 years ago) Permalink
rad thread idea, and productive to have it outside of main thread imo
― "It's far from 'lol' you were reared, boy" (darraghmac), Friday, 30 July 2010 16:19 (2 years ago) Permalink
but man if u think it'll stop people calling u names :(
Anyway, there's actually something I want to discuss and think about right out of the gates. It's in the new Zizek book, Living in the End Times and it's a quote from Robert Kagan. I'd love to discuss the quote independent of Kagan + Zizek's personalities (tho if that's illuminating it can obviously be brought in) because I find it independently provocative. Here's the quote in question:
Europe is turning away from power, or to put it a little differently, it is moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Kant’s “Perpetual Peace.” The United States, meanwhile, remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might... Perhaps it is not just coincidence that the amazing progress toward European integration in recent years has been accompanied not by the emergence of a European superpower but, on the contrary, by a diminishing of European military capabilities relative to the United States. Turning Europe into a global superpower capable of balancing the power of the United States may have been one of the original selling points of the European Union — an independent European foreign and defense policy was supposed to be one of the most important byproducts of European integration. But, in truth, the ambition for European “power” is something of an anachronism. It is an atavistic impulse, inconsistent with the ideals of postmodern Europe, whose very existence depends on the rejection of power politics... Europe’s new Kantian order could flourish only under the umbrella of American power exercised according to the rules of the old Hobbesian order. American power made it possible for Europeans to believe that power was no longer important... Most Europeans do not see the great paradox: that their passage into post-history has depended on the United States not making the same passage. Because Europe has neither the will nor the ability to guard its own paradise and keep it from being overrun, spiritually as well as physically, by a world that has yet to accept the rule of “moral consciousness,” it has become dependent on America’s willingness to use its military might to deter or defeat those around the world who still believe in power politics.
The ellipses are as in the Zizek text (p. 169), the original Kagan piece was published in Policy Review in 2002 and can be read in full here: http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/7107 -- Something possibly to be discussed is if Zizek is using Kagan to say something different than what Kagan is actually saying.
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 16:20 (2 years ago) Permalink
Oh, people can call me shit here, but if someone calls me a fascist I'll ask them to explain what the term means. lol.
Another quote that's relavent:
If the postmodern world does not protect itself, it can be destroyed. But how does Europe protect itself without discarding the very ideals and principles that undergird its pacific system? “The challenge to the postmodern world,” Cooper argues, “is to get used to the idea of double standards.” Among themselves, Europeans may “operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security.” But when dealing with the world outside Europe, “we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era — force, preemptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary.” What this means is that although the United States has played the critical role in bringing Europe into this Kantian paradise, and still plays a key role in making that paradise possible, it cannot enter this paradise itself. It mans the walls but cannot walk through the gate. The United States, with all its vast power, remains stuck in history, left to deal with the Saddams and the ayatollahs, the Kim Jong Ils and the Jiang Zemins, leaving the happy benefits to others. The problem is that the United States must sometimes play by the rules of a Hobbesian world, even though in doing so it violates European norms. It must refuse to abide by certain international conventions that may constrain its ability to fight effectively in Robert Cooper’s jungle. American power, even employed under a double standard, may be the best means of advancing human progress — and perhaps the only means. Instead, many Europeans today have come to consider the United States itself to be the outlaw, a rogue colossus.
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 16:22 (2 years ago) Permalink
I heart this thread already! oh to be young and in college again...
I was talking with a fellow former UCSC politics major awhile back and he was complaining to me about how academia has more or less reduced politics to a branch of statistical analysis, that everything these days is about polling data and test studies which made me very sad... cuz my favorite stuff was always the theory and the history. number crunching has its place, but come on.
― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 30 July 2010 16:23 (2 years ago) Permalink
Basically, to just begin to unpack this quote - this has been on my mind a lot, and it's the question of whether a certain amount of outdated State struggle is essential to preserving and furthering what Kagan calls the Kantian paradise. We understand what that means, I think, the unyielding ethical moment. Kant posits that ethics are evaluated action by action as a general rule -- would the world work if everyone did this action? And if it wouldn't, it can never be done ever. This is unyielding -- Kant's on the Supposed Right to Lie for Philanthropic Concerns discusses the case of a murderer asking you where his victim is. Kant says you can refuse to answer him, but you can't lie to him, because lying is never ethically appropriate (even if necessary to mediate some greater struggle -- the moral decision is always pure on its own). The Hobbesian struggle is definitely much more murkier. Kagan is suggesting here that you can have this Kantian paradise, but only if the Hobbesian decisions are being handled by someone else. So -- is this so?
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 16:26 (2 years ago) Permalink
Btw, ftr, the Cooper being quoted above is Robert Cooper's The Breaking of Nations: Order and chaos in the Twenty-first Century
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 16:27 (2 years ago) Permalink
This is not a philosophical point, but I'm not sure about the claimed "diminishing of European military capabilities relative to the United States". France for instance has lots of nuclear weapons, & the state is quite in support of this. At the air & space museum I visited just outside Paris a few weeks ago---a public museum, mind you---had an exhibit celebrating France's nuclear arsenal, with decommissioned nuclear missiles on display, & quotes from all the recent French presidents proclaiming the importance of France having a nuclear option separate from NATO. So while it's true that the USA can out-occupy foreign nations (to the extent that the USA can do this at all), the French are pretty confident that they can nuke the fuck out of whoever poses an "ultimate" threat.
― Euler, Friday, 30 July 2010 16:28 (2 years ago) Permalink
I consider myself very ignorant of European Union politics but in general those quotes ring true to me... I maintain a deep suspicion of Europe's ability to successfully deal with its many internal ethnic divisions, however, and wouldn't be surprised if those one day erupt, yet again, to ruin this "post-history" paradise that Kagan describes.
x-posts
― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 30 July 2010 16:28 (2 years ago) Permalink
Kant's on the Supposed Right to Lie for Philanthropic Concerns discusses the case of a murderer asking you where his victim is. Kant says you can refuse to answer him, but you can't lie to him, because lying is never ethically appropriate
yeah i never had any time for Kant tbh
― "It's far from 'lol' you were reared, boy" (darraghmac), Friday, 30 July 2010 16:29 (2 years ago) Permalink
Ok, to reduce this question to a recent event: We all agree that sending predator drones to suspected terrorist homes feels icky. And yet, possibly someone needs to be sending those predator drones so that other countries can condemn sending them. I believe what Kagan is positing is that if you don't send drones, you will simply have to deal with war and terror yourself. So the United States emerges as this military power and sends the predator drones in (and even makes jokes about it at White House Correspondent dinners -- because this is now who we are in the world, this is our job so-to-speak), and then Europe can be a location that can afford not to send predator drones. It's a very provocative argument! On one hand, I want to say that no one needs to send predator drones, that the Kantian model can be embraced across the board. But there are real issues of coercive violence that aren't addressed by Kantian morality -- who asserts Western positions + values if no one uses coercive force? (Obviously assuming that Western positions + values are worth asserting, but I'm certainly willing to hear an opinion that says that they are not worth asserting.)
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 16:31 (2 years ago) Permalink
I don't understand that reference - why doesn't the murderer know where his victim is? or is it that someone has stated the intent to murder the victim and is asking you where to find that person? If so, I don't really have a problem with Kant's response.
― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 30 July 2010 16:32 (2 years ago) Permalink
The way I learnt it in undergrad is that the murderer knocks on your door and the victim is hiding upstairs. He asks, "Where is the victim?" You can refuse to answer, but you can't say, "He went that way," and lie. Because lying is wrong on its own, even if it might save the victim's life.
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 16:33 (2 years ago) Permalink
You are aware that a murderer is seeking the victim (xp)
― "It's far from 'lol' you were reared, boy" (darraghmac), Friday, 30 July 2010 16:33 (2 years ago) Permalink
also I think it's BS that "Europe" (whatever that means) wouldn't send in predator drones if they thought it was worth it. There's just a much different political/economic calculus over here. I.e. I don't think the differences are about morality as much as they are about dollars & euros (& yuan & yen).
― Euler, Friday, 30 July 2010 16:34 (2 years ago) Permalink
A more provocative example: Acc. to Kant you cannot steal bread to feed your family, or steal anything to do anything good (so by Kant's extreme definition, stealing leaks to release them and save lives is wrong because theft is wrong).
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 16:34 (2 years ago) Permalink
Prob with Kant applied to real-world is that every action or chain of action from every angle all th way down will eventually have some Kantian 'wrong' in it, surely?
― "It's far from 'lol' you were reared, boy" (darraghmac), Friday, 30 July 2010 16:35 (2 years ago) Permalink
One thing a friend of mine was suggesting the other day, that I also thought was really provocative, is that Europe actually supports most American military action around the world, they just do so hypocritically -- demeaning it in the press while simultaneously supporting it in the UN and sending troops to areas like Afghanistan. There was a big controversy a few years ago when the German public discovered that the German army was much more involved in Afghanistan than the German people had been told. There's definitely a sense, I think, of: "You go ahead and do it and we'll protest."
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 16:35 (2 years ago) Permalink
Europe being the govts or the , y'know, the people as a whole, Mordy?
― "It's far from 'lol' you were reared, boy" (darraghmac), Friday, 30 July 2010 16:39 (2 years ago) Permalink
That's a good question, I don't know the best way to parse that.
One thing that I think isn't acknowledged by standard American leftist critiques of the war is that there is vast participation across the Western spectrum -- Germany, Italy, Canada, the UK, Spain, etc, etc all have troops in Afghanistan. Not the amount that the United States has sent, but there is a wide agreement that there should be Western troops in this country at the moment.
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 16:40 (2 years ago) Permalink
Definitely something worth discussing is the relationship in a Democracy between a government and a people -- it could be argued, I think that the relationship between a people and a government is a lot like the relationship between the United States + Europe. The government does things we find distasteful, but that we understand is necessary, and then we complain about it so that we can continue to live in a more Kantian bubble, even while giving support to those actions (by allowing them to continue!). Or, maybe we don't allow them to continue, but the people are so alienated from governance that we don't see a way of changing it even if we'd like to.
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 16:41 (2 years ago) Permalink
I'd certainly agree with you to some extent if you were referring to european govt support/tacit agreement- but not if you were referring to the continent entire (not that the continent entire really makes any decisions in a historic sense anyway i guess)
xp yeah that comes into the area we're talking bout here i think- our govts do things we don't agree with and the US do things that our govts don't agree with but it's maybe a question of outsourcing agency/complicitness to those willing to do the dirty work.
this is all in theory btw cos fuck an afghan campaign
― "It's far from 'lol' you were reared, boy" (darraghmac), Friday, 30 July 2010 16:44 (2 years ago) Permalink
I think we're touching on, what I understand is, the dominant question of political philosophy today, which is legitimacy. What kind of legitimacy does our government have? If you believe that when it does things we don't like, it actually does so with our tacit agreement, then you'll come up with a different concept of legitimacy than if you believe we've been alienated from the governance process entirely (which reads to be as a more Marxist critique?).
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 16:49 (2 years ago) Permalink
I don't believe in the 'tacit agreement' line- beyond that it gets complicated for a Friday evening.
― "It's far from 'lol' you were reared, boy" (darraghmac), Friday, 30 July 2010 16:53 (2 years ago) Permalink
There's another thing I really want to discuss too and that I think is really constantly going on in the background in ILX -- which is what our relationship is to the other citizens in the United States. There's constantly this sense that we're a community apart (the intellectual left-wingers) from those who are apathetic, or are actually antagonistic to questions of human rights, etc. There are problematic politics at the very root of that dichotomy. If nation states are communities performed on mythical levels (an idea I buy into fully) then we suddenly need to drag in issues of Otherness (Lacanian and Levinasian) to deal with these people we occupy a country with and with whom we disagree. Who are they and is the most productive reading that we disagree with them? It might be way more productive to read our disagreements as performing broader questions and concerns -- when we get caught up on who is right and who is wrong we may be missing that the discourse itself is producing ideas and conversations. I have some examples in mind (in particular how racist slave-owners basically forced the emancipation of slaves by seceding when they could have simply kept their shit to themselves and perpetuated slavery -- the dialectic actually produced progression, even tho at the time those people were horrific human beings, their actions directly lead to emancipation).
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 16:53 (2 years ago) Permalink
darraghmac, you don't believe that citizens give tacit agreement to their governance? Is it because you think they're alienated by the State? If so -- I think this is really productive to follow-up on and push against. How do you read Democracy in the United States in that light?
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 16:54 (2 years ago) Permalink
I don't believe that there is always tacit agreement in the actions of govt- I probably believe that the machinations of govt allow for enough delay in 'feedback' (ie changes of govt by the usual means) to allow this not to matter most of the time.
re Democracy in the US- I don't! Just sitting here in western europe enjoying the concepts tbh
― "It's far from 'lol' you were reared, boy" (darraghmac), Friday, 30 July 2010 17:00 (2 years ago) Permalink
There's obviously a lot of stuff to sort through about the value of various kinds of representative systems, and I think many people probably feel like two-parties need to pander to the broadest interests and can't represent more niche, or fringe, positions (that a parliament, for instance, could give representation to). Of course, this cuts both ways, and many European countries have fascist or nationalist parties with representation today in their parliaments and governments.
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 17:03 (2 years ago) Permalink
Speaking of, a New Yorker article about how "special interests" may actually not be a bad thing for a democracy from 2008. I haven't read it in awhile but I found it really interesting at the time and I'm up for discussing it with anyone who is interested: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/08/11/080811crat_atlarge_lemann
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 17:04 (2 years ago) Permalink
Teaser:
“The Process of Government” is a hedgehog of a book. Its point—relentlessly hammered home—can be stated quite simply: All politics and all government are the result of the activities of groups. Any other attempt to explain politics and government is doomed to failure. It was, in his day as in ours, a wildly contrarian position. Bentley was writing “The Process of Government” at the height of the Progressive Era, when educated, prosperous, high-minded people believed overwhelmingly in “reform” and “good government,” and took interest groups to be the enemy of these goals. The more populist Progressives liked having the people as a whole decide things by direct vote; the more élitist Progressives wanted to give authority to experts. But Bentley, who seems to have shared the Progressives’ goal of using government to curb the power of big business, rejected such procedural tenets. In Chicago terms, Bentley was the rare Progressive intellectual who believed, in effect, that the machine had a more accurate understanding of how politics worked—how it always and necessarily worked—than the lakefront liberals did.
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 17:05 (2 years ago) Permalink
omg, haven't read it yet, but serendipitous!
http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/political_philosophy_and_the_left/
― Mordy, Friday, 30 July 2010 17:21 (2 years ago) Permalink
what are "western values"
― max, Monday, 9 August 2010 20:16 (2 years ago) Permalink
I think generally it means like the Enlightenment project
― Mordy, Monday, 9 August 2010 20:18 (2 years ago) Permalink
ex-ilxor of the ancien regime josh k favorited this recently
http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/2010/08/conversation-opening-salvo.html
good post!
― goole, Monday, 9 August 2010 21:19 (2 years ago) Permalink
This is an interesting and provocative argument (I think!) and one that I bet a lot of ilxors would disagree with me about. From Steve Poole:http://unspeak.net/justice/
It is worth pausing to admire Obama’s masterful rhetorical conflation here of two different conceptions of justice. One sense of “justice”, of course, has to do with courts, legal process, fair trials, and the rest. This has to be the sense invoked in Obama’s reference to the desire to bring Bin Laden to justice. In this spatial metaphor, justice is a place: implicitly, a courtroom, or at least a cell with the promise of process. (Or even, in extremis, Guantánamo Bay, still not closed, where indefinite “detention” or imprisonment is Unspeakily palliated with the expectation of some kind of tribunal.) To bring someone to justice is to put them in a place where they will be answerable for their alleged crimes. To be answerable in this sense, it helps to be alive.But it is quite another sense of “justice” — meaning a fair result, regardless of the means by which it was achieved — that is functioning in Obama’s next use of the word: the quasi-legal judgment that justice was done. On what sorts of occasion do we actually say that justice was done? Not, I suppose, at the conclusion of a trial (when it might be claimed, instead, that justice was served); rather, after some other event, away from any courtroom, that we perceive as rightful punishment (or reward) for the sins (or virtues) of the individual under consideration. (Compare poetic justice.) The claim that justice was done appeals, then, to a kind of Old Testament or Wild West notion of just deserts. What, after all, happened between the desire to bring Bin Laden to justice and the claim that justice was done? Well, Bin Laden was killed. He was not, after all, brought to justice. Instead, justice (in its familiar guise as American bombs and bullets) was brought to him.
But it is quite another sense of “justice” — meaning a fair result, regardless of the means by which it was achieved — that is functioning in Obama’s next use of the word: the quasi-legal judgment that justice was done. On what sorts of occasion do we actually say that justice was done? Not, I suppose, at the conclusion of a trial (when it might be claimed, instead, that justice was served); rather, after some other event, away from any courtroom, that we perceive as rightful punishment (or reward) for the sins (or virtues) of the individual under consideration. (Compare poetic justice.) The claim that justice was done appeals, then, to a kind of Old Testament or Wild West notion of just deserts. What, after all, happened between the desire to bring Bin Laden to justice and the claim that justice was done? Well, Bin Laden was killed. He was not, after all, brought to justice. Instead, justice (in its familiar guise as American bombs and bullets) was brought to him.
I disagree! I think the point of "legal justice" is to create a civilizational context to perform actual justice. The problem with vigilantism isn't the vigilantism. The problem is that it undermines the civilizational context. We have established these institutions and agreed to live by their laws. So we set up these hierarchies by which to establish (legislate) and enforce (execute) said laws. But its roughly a facade that, when it does its job, keeps stuff running smoothly. But the truth is always that the context is itself invented and so easily undermined. (That is, side point, why limited government Republicans are idiots. It's no feat to have no governance, just look at all the countries that can't manage it. The feat is governance.) What's one way of undermining it? Attack a civilian populace. One of the primary (and maybe the most fundamental) reason to establish these governances is to help protect us. When you kill a bunch of civilians, you have undermined the very state of the facade. The only appropriate response is using the State's monopoly on power to stop the bleeding. You actually can't use the tools of civilization to plug that hole bc the hole challenges those very tools. That's why (I think) we inuit that we can't really try ppl like Bin Laden. He declares that the entire state enterprise is invalid. In that context, executed him in court or executed him in the battlefield mean exactly the same thing. Except the later reforms the context and the first one doesn't.
(Maybe.)
Anyway, the point being that there aren't two kinds of justice. There's just the one kind of primordial justice and the particular way we funnel it through society. I think I'm actually arguing two distinct things here and I believe one is more provocative than the other. So plz take issue with one, both, or neither.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 10 May 2011 01:01 (2 years ago) Permalink
...two different conceptions of justice. One sense of “justice”, of course, has to do with courts, legal process, fair trials, and the rest.
I agree with Mordy that Poole fails to establish his thesis that we carry around two "conceptions of justice". His invocation of courtrooms and legal process does not establish a fully-formed conception of justice, so much as a context within which we expect to find a just conclusion to a conflict. Justice itself is not legalistic, but an idealized state where conflict is resolved in favor of the superior right.
So, basically I think Mordy's critique gets right at the weakness in the argument and exposes it.
― Aimless, Tuesday, 10 May 2011 03:00 (2 years ago) Permalink
that kagan book discussed upthread is total dogshit, even if the excised quotes are reasonable enough
― no xmas for jonchaies (nakhchivan), Tuesday, 10 May 2011 10:27 (2 years ago) Permalink
I want to get my friend a good 'intro to political philosophy' book for his birthday that isn't boring? Anyone know one?
― forest zombie (Vasco da Gama), Tuesday, 10 May 2011 22:06 (2 years ago) Permalink
it's not really an intro, but i highly recommend Robert Pippin's "Hollywood Westerns and American Myth: The Importance of Howard Hawks and John Ford for Political Philosophy" which is very accessible to new philosophy readers and has the advantage of feeling very current.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 10 May 2011 22:33 (2 years ago) Permalink
http://themonkeycage.org/2011/05/internet-cynics-and-enthusiasts-both-have-it-right/
The experiment’s findings confirmed this prediction. Members of the Internet group were 15 percentage points less likely to believe that the election was conducted fairly and impartially. They were also 12 points more likely to believe that the recount was conducted unfairly when compared to the control group. However, relative to the control group, members of the Internet group were also 11 points less likely to vote.This suggests that—although the Internet may have provided better information about the integrity of the election—this supposed democratic boon may carry a negative side effect. In this case, it appears that Internet users who became more aware of electoral abuses, seemingly also became less likely to believe that their vote mattered. After all, the belief that an election is not being conducted fairly can produce two very divergent responses: some people may respond by protesting and taking to the streets, while others may simply throw up their hands and stay home. Perhaps, then, both Internet cynics and enthusiasts have it partially right.
This suggests that—although the Internet may have provided better information about the integrity of the election—this supposed democratic boon may carry a negative side effect. In this case, it appears that Internet users who became more aware of electoral abuses, seemingly also became less likely to believe that their vote mattered. After all, the belief that an election is not being conducted fairly can produce two very divergent responses: some people may respond by protesting and taking to the streets, while others may simply throw up their hands and stay home. Perhaps, then, both Internet cynics and enthusiasts have it partially right.
I don't know about this 'both have it partially right' piece but I do think the idea that awareness can have a deleterious effect on participation is really interesting, esp when it becomes a feedback loop where the fewer the # of people participate politically the greater the potential for corruption/abuse to occur (less eyes watching, less engaged dissent, etc) which in turn turns more people off to the process and ultimately you reach a stage where it is completely corrupt and ppl are completely apathetic (and only something radically revolutionary could break that particular stalemate). I also wonder if this is the process that the United States is currently engaged in.
― Mordy, Thursday, 12 May 2011 13:35 (2 years ago) Permalink
Does anyone here have a recommendation for an article (etc.) making a secular case for the contemporary Western welfare state? I'm especially interested in such arguments that bear on the USA, as opposed to Europe, but really anything'll do.
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 17:14 (1 year ago) Permalink
Oh, & I should add that I'd prefer moral arguments, not economic or technocratic arguments.
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 17:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
I can't think of one off-hand, but if I do I'll post it. Your question does remind me, tho, that I'm looking for either an article or colorful chart that shows standard of living in the US over period of time ending fairly recently (closest I found was something ending in 1998).
― Mordy, Sunday, 31 July 2011 17:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
can you really separate moral arguments from economic/technocratic arguments?
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 17:42 (1 year ago) Permalink
Sure you can, for example I'm pretty sure that Bismarck's early adventures into social care weren't based on a belief that it was the morally correct thing to do.
― i'm sorry for whatever (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 July 2011 17:51 (1 year ago) Permalink
You can read a bunch of contemporary arguments defending the Poor Law in the 18th Century UK because it protected social stability, too.
― i'm sorry for whatever (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 July 2011 17:54 (1 year ago) Permalink
Bismarck's welfare state might not have been 'social care because helping people is the right thing to do' but there was still a higher level reasoning of 'doing this will lead to what I believe is the best outcome for society'. same w/ the poor law defenders.
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 17:58 (1 year ago) Permalink
I mean someone supports economic philosophy XYZ because they believe it leads to the best outcome for society (or the best outcome for themselves, and there's some reasoning where society will ultimately benefit, or society doesn't matter. but you can't remove morality from this.)
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:00 (1 year ago) Permalink
there were people who made arguments for the Poor Law from morality but there were people who made solely "this will keep the rabble quiet" arguments, in the same way that I know of very few contemporary arguments in favour of Germany's early welfare programme that weren't "undermine the Bolsheviks/keep the State strong". I don't think those are the kind of moral arguments that Euler is talking about? or really that they are moral arguments at all in the usual sense of the word "moral"?
― i'm sorry for whatever (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:02 (1 year ago) Permalink
it's not really an intro, but i highly recommend Robert Pippin's "Hollywood Westerns and American Myth: The Importance of Howard Hawks and John Ford for Political Philosophy" which is very accessible to new philosophy readers and has the advantage of feeling very current.― Mordy, Tuesday, May 10, 2011 10:33 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark
― Mordy, Tuesday, May 10, 2011 10:33 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark
― swaguirre, the wrath of basedgod (bernard snowy), Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:04 (1 year ago) Permalink
the best means of preserving the State is a technocratic argument. it can easily be divorced from any reasoning about what is right or wrong in an ethical sense, which isn't the same as saying that technocrats and economists don't also have ethical sentiments beyond their work, hard as that is to imagine.
― i'm sorry for whatever (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:04 (1 year ago) Permalink
I'm saying that 'this will keep the rabble quiet' people still had some moral/economic system they believed in, and this logic apparently didn't break it.
I get that euler is probably talking about a different type of moral argument, I'm just saying that there's a moral system behind any economic system and I don't think you can isolate them.
likewise the technocratic 'but does it work irl?' side can't be ignored either - it doesn't matter if you can reason w/ pure philosophy that it's moral for the government to give everyone in the country 1 million dollars.
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:05 (1 year ago) Permalink
I mean someone supports economic philosophy XYZ because they believe it leads to the best outcome for society (or the best outcome for themselves, and there's some reasoning where society will ultimately benefit, or society doesn't matter. but you can't remove morality from this.)― iatee, Sunday, July 31, 2011 7:00 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark
― iatee, Sunday, July 31, 2011 7:00 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark
i basically agree with the last part, but not the first. i don't think policy is decided for purely economic *or* moral 'reasons'. rather: economic imperatives, political imperatives... morality is in there somewhere sometimes.
― je suis marxiste – tendance richard (history mayne), Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:06 (1 year ago) Permalink
xp i'll def check out the Nietzsche book. he's such an excellent writer + fun to read which is so rare for philosophers at his level
― Mordy, Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:07 (1 year ago) Permalink
i think what euler wants is an argument for the welfare state as an end goal & one that's good in itself, as opposed to an argument for the welfare state as a byproduct of a "successful" state, or the welfare state as "good for [stability/peace/the_market]" instead of just good
― max, Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:11 (1 year ago) Permalink
I think the moral vs. technocratic element basically comes down to, is this decision grounded in something "outside of" the positive existence of the state—which normative or moral commitments would (presumably) be, through the appeal to "human rights" or w/e
― swaguirre, the wrath of basedgod (bernard snowy), Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
I don't think you can detach that from economic thinking when the welfare state is an economic concept xp
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:14 (1 year ago) Permalink
i don't think policy is decided for purely economic *or* moral 'reasons'.
Agreed, although I'd argue that some considerations tend to trump others when it comes down to getting politics done. But I was talking about arguments in general and there are plenty of pro-welfare arguments from political philosophers and others which don't foreground moral considerations, even if they're floating out there as some unspoken other.
― i'm sorry for whatever (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:14 (1 year ago) Permalink
xp
I don't think the Welfare State is a purely economic concept.
― i'm sorry for whatever (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
but what you or i think is immaterial to the question which was "have some people argued for it from morality without bringing in other reasons?"
― i'm sorry for whatever (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
this is like saying 'is the number 4 good'
the welfare state only exists in the context of an economic system. whether that system works irl (technocrat) and whether that is the 'best' system (economic philosophy) can't be removed from the discussion.
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:19 (1 year ago) Permalink
what does the 'welfare state' mean in the context of an amazon rainforest tribe? nothing.
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
xp yeah I agree, that's one of the things that keeps doing my head in whenever I try to post
― swaguirre, the wrath of basedgod (bernard snowy), Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
still tho I think it should be possible in practice to separate "arguments in favor of expanding social welfare provisions on the basis of economic efficiency" (e.g. Keynes) from "arguments in favor of expanding social welfare provisions because failure to do so would leave citizens inadequately cared for" or w/e
― swaguirre, the wrath of basedgod (bernard snowy), Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:23 (1 year ago) Permalink
(where "expanding social welfare provisions" could obviously also be "maintaining at a given level" or "not cutting back", etc, depending on context)
― swaguirre, the wrath of basedgod (bernard snowy), Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
right, but keynes ultimately believed that economic efficiency would lead to greater good for society.
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
for the individual iirc
― je suis marxiste – tendance richard (history mayne), Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:25 (1 year ago) Permalink
i agree you can't really have a moral argument for the welfare state without addressing the rest of the political-economic system
xxp "ultimately", sure, but along the way everything is framed in terms of an amoral analysis of the tendencies of a capitalist economy—business owners are asked to go along with it not out of some altruistic desire or obligation to help their fellow man, but because it will help avert (a certain type of) economic crisis!
― swaguirre, the wrath of basedgod (bernard snowy), Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:28 (1 year ago) Permalink
(I mean I guess you can say that "the economy ought not collapse" is a moral stance, but hopefully it's an uncontroversial one...?)
― swaguirre, the wrath of basedgod (bernard snowy), Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:29 (1 year ago) Permalink
I don't think the 'along the way everything is framed in terms of an amoral analysis of the tendencies of a capitalist economy' matters. there is a moral belief system behind the logic of capitalism and the 'along the way' is not objectively amoral. those businessmen would say they're creating wealth and jobs for society and it's morally wrong to prevent that.
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:32 (1 year ago) Permalink
if you remove political-economic considerations then how would a purely moral argument differ from that for almsgiving or any other 'social' altruism?
― MY WEEDS STRONG BLUD.mp3 (nakhchivan), Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
max is right, I would like arguments for having a welfare state that aren't just "it's stimulus!", that make a case that it's a morally good thing to collaborate under the aegis of a state to ensure the common welfare of fellow citizens via the redistribution of wealth.
Arguments that a welfare state protects the state sit in a middle ground, since "the state" is a moral structure inasmuch as it has the legitimacy to dispense justice & thus protecting it could be a moral end in itself...but also could be stand-ins for "we need to preserve the present economic status quo & this'll do the trick".
Yeah, a welfare state is an economic structure, since it involves transferring wealth. But it's a moral structure too, & I want to see what kind of secular case can be made for it as a moral structure. I get that the case is gonna depend on which society we're talking about; the "social imaginary" of the USA is different than France, etc.
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
again, I don't think you can isolate that moral structure.
I mean you can say
"if we are to agree that political-economic system X works irl and is the 'best', what's a moral argument for a welfare state?"
otherwise how can we argue about the moral structure of whether the gov't should give poor people $ if we don't agree on the real world effects of the gov't receiving/spending money and poor people receiving/spending money?
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:43 (1 year ago) Permalink
I think we can take for granted that some basic degree of wealth is necessary for the good life: enough for food & shelter at least. Let's add health care also. How much more do we need to know about the "real world effects" of having the wealth necessary for those transferred by the state?
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:54 (1 year ago) Permalink
Of course in taking for granted that such wealth is needed for the good life, I don't mean to assume that it's self-evident that everyone is entitled to the good life, if even only on other people's dime. That's exactly what I want to see argued for.
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 18:57 (1 year ago) Permalink
real world effects:
a. does gov't wealth transfer XYZ ultimately (after all short and long-term effects are factored in) lead to more economic growth for the country? (are we assuming that more economic growth is an inherently good thing, if we already have reached the basic degree of wealth?) b. does gov't wealth transfer XYZ ultimately (after all short and long-term effects are factored in) lead to a fairer share of wealth? (are we assuming that a small gini coefficient is an inherently good thing? why?) c. if we have to make a decision between a 'rising tide' vs. smaller gini coefficient, what's the point where we'll sacrifice one for the other? d. does the economic context affect the morality of wealth transfer XYZ? (is it moral for greece to increase the size of its welfare state today?)
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 19:08 (1 year ago) Permalink
wrt a: no, we shouldn't assume economic growth is an inherently good thing.wrt b: fairness is a moral concept.wrt c: I'm interested in arguments that decide the "point" on moral grounds.wrt d: I think morality doesn't apply to democratic nations as a whole, but only to individual agents.
It's not shocking that so many classical economists were utilitarians.
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 19:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
c. you can't decide that point on moral grounds without agreeing to an economic framework and working out the math. you can plot that trade-off on an graph, put your finger on it and say "there, that's the moral point" but the graph first requires an agreed-upon economic framework. d. then how can you discuss the morality of an economic concept?
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 19:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
and b. yeah I prob shouldn't have used the word fair, that term already assumes something. I meant 'smaller disparity'.
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 19:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
I think that if you are asking 'why should...' anything, then you are asking a moral question. All of the arguments for the welfare state (or any other kind of state) are moral, because you have to decide on a goal, and why that goal is better than any other. For us in general? We all know why the welfare state is better - fewer people starve, die of unnecessary illnesses or exposure due to homelessness, Whether these are worthy ends is, of course, a moral argument.
― textbook blows on the head (dowd), Sunday, 31 July 2011 19:52 (1 year ago) Permalink
fewer people also starve, die of unnecessary illness etc. thanks to the wealth gains from free markets
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 19:53 (1 year ago) Permalink
wrt c: sure, fix some economic framework & ask what's the right action given that framework. I was thinking of this as less "first principles work" than "given current economic reality, what's the best secular moral case for a welfare state?"
wrt d: we're being asked to pay taxes in order to support our welfare state. is our participation in that transfer of wealth morally permissible? obligatory? optimal?
alternately: is participating in that transfer conducive to the good life?
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 19:54 (1 year ago) Permalink
Well, if we assume that reducing death, illness, homelessness etc. are worthy goals then the question becomes socio-economic: Does our current course of action help us achieve these goals. Free markets do help in this process, to a point, but a stage is reached (a long time ago) when it becomes an obstacle to these goals. Either way, we always have to first decide what we want from life, what a society or government is for. Then it's just statistics.
― textbook blows on the head (dowd), Sunday, 31 July 2011 19:58 (1 year ago) Permalink
'given current economic reality' - I mean, there is no easy or absolute 'economic reality', there are drastically different ways of looking at macroenconomic data and there are very different lenses with which people look at it. and even those have changed drastically over the last decade. 'fix some economic framework' isn't easy or quick - and in the process, you've already included a certain moral framework.
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:02 (1 year ago) Permalink
basically I think economists are the moral philosophers you're looking for
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:03 (1 year ago) Permalink
By "current economic reality" I mean our present economic practices: how we trade, etc. My proviso was there to indicate that I'm not envisioning some kind of reductio against Western capitalism.
xp absolutely not, they are as I said earlier mostly utilitarians, & that's the kind of technocratic reduction I want to avoid.
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:06 (1 year ago) Permalink
Who would be a deontological economist, some of the hardcore Monetarists or Adam Smith types?
― i'm sorry for whatever (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:09 (1 year ago) Permalink
idg technocratic as a bad word. I mean it's used to describe mcnamara types, but in a strict sense, why is a technocratic view of things reductionist?
I'd say anyone approaching this subject without realizing how much of it is political-economic is being reductionist.
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:10 (1 year ago) Permalink
if, changing nothing else, we decided it was illegal to charge more than $1 for a prescription in america, the immediate effect would be very, very good socio-economically, as millions of people would have cheap access to medicine. the long-term effect would not be entirely good. you can't isolate these actions from their effect on markets.
i feel as if iatee you are saying that all political or economic arguments are founded on a fully-examined set of ethical beliefs? is that correct or what am i misunderstanding?
― i'm sorry for whatever (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:11 (1 year ago) Permalink
euler do you think there's a religious argument for the welfare state?
― max, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:12 (1 year ago) Permalink
no, not always full-examined! but it makes more sense to examine the morality *behind the system* than a specific concept within it.
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:12 (1 year ago) Permalink
why is a technocratic view of things reductionist?
Here's why. Take the following passage:
if, changing nothing else, we decided it was illegal to charge more than $1 for a prescription in america, the immediate effect would be very, very good socio-economically, as millions of people would have cheap access to medicine.
Being "good socio-economically" ≠ being good. That's the reduction I'm trying to avoid.
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
I was responding to "are worthy goals then the question becomes socio-economic"
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:14 (1 year ago) Permalink
max: yeah, I think so, in classical Catholic writing on social justice for instance.
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
it makes more sense to examine the morality *behind the system* than a specific concept within it.
is that a kind of abstract morality belonging to or residing in the system itself then?
Euler, are you looking for a non-utilitarian argument for the welfare state?
― i'm sorry for whatever (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
NV: that would be great! A secular non-utilitarian argument.
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
the long-term effect would not be entirely good. you can't isolate these actions from their effect on markets.
No, I agree with you. I think we're making the same point. So the decision to immediately charge $1 for meds would end up not fulfilling our criteria for a good economic policy.
― textbook blows on the head (dowd), Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
(because if we're going to have any impact on the current austerity programs in the West, we're going to need arguments that don't simply have sectarian appeal.
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
basically, I think this is a great question: is 'clearly defined form of keynesianism xyz' moral? y/n
moral analysis of a welfare state will be an inherent part of that discussion. and 'how should a welfare state operate' is included in that model.
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
I agree, iatee.
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:19 (1 year ago) Permalink
i have real difficulties with secular, deontological ethics. where do you begin to draw the authority for your "ought" from?
― i'm sorry for whatever (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:22 (1 year ago) Permalink
so maybe we don't disagree much!
but until you pick and very clearly define your keynesian economics xyz / whatever else - which involves economic logic of some sort - I don't think you can approach the welfare state. it doesn't exist as an approachable concept without that context.
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
Sure, iatee: but I don't think that's the end of the task. Transfers of wealth within such an economic system is what needs to be judged as moral or not. I'm happy to fix such systems & ask for each one, if that transfer is moral, & then vary the systems & ask those questions again. We could treat those systems as a parameter & see how the morality of the welfare state varies for each such value.
xp to NV: Kant says that "oughts" derive from the nature of rationality. That's pretty wacky too.
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:30 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah i get what Kant says
― i'm sorry for whatever (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:35 (1 year ago) Permalink
okay I gtg but I will try and make this point quick:
I don't think you can construct an overarching economic logic from the bottom up - from judging the morality of a billion individual acts. the economic logic ultimately has to be overarching and so while you can maybe 'judge' the individual acts moral or not moral, the morality of the bigger system itself is far more important.
― iatee, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:36 (1 year ago) Permalink
xp to NV: yeah; my impression of the "state of the art" today is that no one really gets why rationality itself should be the ground of morality & so neo-Kantians like Korsgaard are working on grounding morality on autonomy, which Kant mentions in accord with the categorical imperative ("treat people as ends not means to ends") but whose connection in the texts is not especially.
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:37 (1 year ago) Permalink
what i'm getting at seems to relate to your idea that states can't be "moral" in themselves. i agree to the point where i wd argue that systems of economic organisation aren't "moral" and that an individual's political beliefs have to be founded on something other than morality.
― i'm sorry for whatever (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:38 (1 year ago) Permalink
xp to iatee: not sure what you mean by "the morality of the bigger system itself is far more important" but I think we're just failing to communicate properly a bit here.
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:38 (1 year ago) Permalink
ok, NV: the hard thing for me is to see where an individual's beliefs about what she ought to do are "political" & where they are "moral".
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:39 (1 year ago) Permalink
a big part of the problem is that we can probably agree on a very broad deontological morality that is pragmatically true for the vast majority of people. eg. it is wrong to kill another human being (except in defence of yourself or a third party). as soon as i apply that kind of ethics to the political sphere, i get into a hugely difficult argument about how my actions contribute to the state, whether states' actions contribute to killing people, what would be the best kind of state to avoid killing people etc.
the sheer multiplication of individual contributions to the functioning of a state makes an uncomputable system of consequences based on individuals' ethical choices, it seems?
― i'm sorry for whatever (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:46 (1 year ago) Permalink
and i'd argue that the same near-chaotic system works to exclude utilitarian moral decisions too.
― i'm sorry for whatever (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
Wondering why utilitarianism is out of the equation here, and if you're similarly down on other forms of consequentialism eg Rawls' theory of justice. Deontology is a non starter imo.
xp to euler
― ledge, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
xp to NV: yeah, those are in particular problems of representative democracy, since my main political act in such a system is my vote for/against people who will make the decisions of the state.
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
your main political act in a representative democracy needn't be your vote tho. you could have a moral imperative to become actively involved in a party for example.
― i'm sorry for whatever (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 July 2011 20:53 (1 year ago) Permalink
xp to ledge: I accept the usual objections to utilitarianism, but more importantly I think it distorts what we're doing when we reason morally into a type of calculation, which closes off lots of considerations that ought to be part of moral deliberation: what particular people mean to us, for instance.
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 21:03 (1 year ago) Permalink
xp to NV: sure, you could choose to become a representative yourself. I've been thinking a lot about that recently, kinda thinking we all here should run for office (no idea how reasonable that is to do in the UK; in the USA it's totally doable)
― Euler, Sunday, 31 July 2011 21:04 (1 year ago) Permalink
even given the constraints I gave earlier (we start ot w/ "let's assume political-economic system x"), if we put 'the welfare state' in a glass box, look at it and conclude 'this is a morally good thing' and then put 'lower taxes' in a glass box, look at it, conclude 'this is a morally good thing' - well, I'm not sure what the usefulness of that exercise was. they don't operate in glass boxes, they operate as parts of the same system.
bigger picture: I don't think you can analyze an economic object that operates in a utilitarian system from a non-economic, non-utilitarian POV. non-utilitarian economic systems and economic logic exists. in theory and in history and in the world today. but 'the welfare state' as we understand it, and as matters to america in 2011 can't exist without that framework.
― iatee, Monday, 1 August 2011 00:46 (1 year ago) Permalink
so if you're gonna say 'okay, I'm gonna accept utilitarian ethics as a framework for how the economic world operates because it's pretty hard to build a comparably sophisticated model - *however* - after accepting that, I'd like to make future decisions using 'ethical system XYZ'.
sure, then you can pick your overarching (utilitarian...) political-economic logic based on 'ethical system XYZ' and if that includes some sort of welfare state, then you can manage cost-benefit decisions of that welfare state using 'ethical system XYZ'. I think there is some room for that...
― iatee, Monday, 1 August 2011 01:14 (1 year ago) Permalink
I've got a question I wanna throw at you guys. It's a rhetoric question. There's this rhetoric move where you are explaining why somebody did something bad. For example, "he killed that woman bc of his deprivation + impoverishment" or, "they flew the planes into the twin towers bc of united states support for israel and military bases in saudi arabia" or "they conduct terror attacks because of settlements in the western bank." You've probably heard many examples of this - basically a cause is assigned to a particular condemned action. Now when you use this trope, you tend to say (to disavow condoning the action): "I'm not justifying [attack/murder/whatever], I'm just explaining the context for it. But the distinction between contextualization and justified has never been properly unpacked for me. In a real rhetorical sense, what is the difference between a justification and a contextualization? Doesn't context provide justification?
Which is to say: If X caused Y (which is the contextualization assertion) how can you simultaneously assert that Y is independently worthy of condemnation and also that X is a cause for it? If X caused Y, then X is entirely to blame. Y is just the consequence. Justification is inherently packed in. Now you could argue that X provides a space for Y to occur in, but that Y is independently caused. But lots of things provide spaces for other things to happen in and you wouldn't say that have any culpability at all in those things happening. For instance, packed subways can give cover for perverts to rub themselves on victims, but packed subways have no culpability for that action. If you said, "let's understand why this person was victimized -- it was because the subways were allowed to become packed," people would rightly protest because we understand that action Y has to be individually fueled and context X cannot explain it. However with this hot topic political discussions, we do talk in this way. We simultaneously try to assert that X can explain Y, but that Y is also at fault on its own merits. How do we reconcile this (apparent?) rhetorical paradox?
― Mordy, Wednesday, 28 September 2011 19:07 (1 year ago) Permalink
depends on who's making the rhetorical move - at its basest, this argument totally is "X caused Y" and the "i'm not justifying" is made in bad faith. but i think most people don't believe in a hard causality of human action. in that case, the argument is closer to "without X, no Y, but X is not sufficient cause" i.e. the arguer is suggesting that altho moral culpability resides in the perpetrators of Y that culpability is diminished, not disappeared, by event X. and this applies in lots of legal areas i think, when we talk about "mitigating circumstances". those circumstances tend not to excuse a crime but to diminish the severity of punishment because they claim a partiallly causal trigger.
― Dios mio! This kid is FUN to hit! (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 28 September 2011 19:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
(in yr subway argument nobody sensibly wd claim that conditions which allowed the crime to take place where also partially causative)
― Dios mio! This kid is FUN to hit! (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 28 September 2011 19:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
(incidentally i think i do believe in hard causality but i have no choice)
― Dios mio! This kid is FUN to hit! (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 28 September 2011 19:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
It's interesting bc the claim X caused Y is never accompanied by the explicit claim that Y's culpability is diminished, and in fact I will often see that rhetorical move made w/ the simultaneous claim that Y's culpability is in no way diminished, which, I think you're agreeing, is paradoxical.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 28 September 2011 19:29 (1 year ago) Permalink
My philo friend I'm talking to says that the question is the divisibility of explicability and excusability and is inherent in the question of PSR. So for Spinoza where you could reconstruct everything if you understood all the causes, there is no divisibility at all between them but for, say, Kant where there's a moment of choice, that can divide them in that moment.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 28 September 2011 19:31 (1 year ago) Permalink
causality is tricky here- I don't get that it's a X caused Y claim exactly, it seems more like it's a "without which, not" claim, a counterfactual move: if the US didn't have a military presence in Saudia Arabia, then the militants wouldn't have been so pissed off and risen up in anger about this, etc. What is hard is that all the agents in the scenario that we do live in are in the world where there was an X, so talking about those actors but subtracting the supposedly necessary but insufficient factor forces us to mutate our agents into a-US-that-didn't-militarize and Saudi-youth-who-weren't-pissed-off etc. and we don't have those ready to hand
But here we would need to unpack what we mean by cause anyway. You could talk about material, formal, final and efficient causes ala Aristotle if you wanted to get technical about it. The "guilty party" is the efficient cause, and the people bringing up the backstory are selling a retributive story about preceding events as the final cause, from which it sounds like you just demur.
― the tune is space, Wednesday, 28 September 2011 19:33 (1 year ago) Permalink
To be clear, I'm not really making a claim about whether a final cause can be held responsible or not. I'm just asking whether it's paradoxical to both evoke the final cause and assert that that has no affect on the actor's culpability here and now. For example, isn't it paradoxical to say that 1. US actions in Saudi Arabia caused Osama Bin Ladin's attack on the World Trade Center and 2. OSL is entirely culpable for those actions?
― Mordy, Wednesday, 28 September 2011 19:36 (1 year ago) Permalink
I guess the trouble is that the word "entirely" would suggest that causality could inhere in a way that, in Aristotle's account, it can't, because lots of different conditions have to be met in order for an action to be able to occur, and nobody could be "entirely" responsible for the state of affairs in which one thing causes another in such a way, so the splitting of responsibility between the material or substantial conditions and the efficient conditions is such that "entirely" isn't going to be technically possible within the frame of this theory- maybe accounts of causality that grow out of a physics of matter or claims about action just aren't helpful if you're going to talk about "responsibility" in an ethical register rather than "causal"? I'm no Aristotle expert here, by the way, just a fan. As far as ethics goes, you can be responsible enough, but "entirely" loses some force when it really is short hard for "responsible enough to be described as the primary/principal actor or agent".
― the tune is space, Wednesday, 28 September 2011 19:44 (1 year ago) Permalink
I think there is a difference between motivation and justification. We could take a hypothetical situation where 4 people, A,B,C, and D, are all starving. A goes to his kitchen and makes a sandwich, B sells his labour and buys a sandwich, C steals a sandwich, and D kills someone and takes their sandwich. In all cases are entitled to say, when asked to explain their actions, that 'they were starving'. But their levels of justification is different. And I think we would tend to think C was more justified than, say, E, who stole a sandwich from B just because he wanted to watch B starve. So here the 'X' stays the same but the 'Y' that results is different.
It's the formulation X caused Y that causes the problem. Hunger didn't 'cause' D to kill someone, but it motivated the act. Israel and the USA didn't 'cause' the 9-11 hijackers to do what they did, but they seem to have motivated their actions. So Y can be worthy of condemnation, and be motivated by X, without the strict x causes y formulation. Assuming we believe that what motivates an act goes some way towards justifying it then people are entitled to use background information to alter the justifiability of an action.
In fact, to use the 9-11 example, we can imagine motivations which radically alter the justifiability of the act. So in the X caused Y formulation, the nature of X shifts the nature of the act. To jump into irritating hypothetical mode: If Bin Ladin had a nuclear weapon in NY, and threatened to detonate it if the attackers did not carry out their mission (and, for some reason, they had good reason to trust him), then you might conceivably consider the attacks to be moral. If the situation in X caused Y is a women killing her husband, then it makes a great deal of difference if she did it for his life insurance or to protect herself from her husbands violent rages. The action could still be wrong (i.e. if her husband lost his job and started drinking and she irrationally assumed that she was under threat because of greater spousal violence amongst alcoholics. X) but the nature of X does alter the moral nature of Y.
Basically, I could be one of those people who might say that people attack Israel because of the occupied territories (not to have a political discussion, and It's oversimplified), but I wouldn't like someone to say that the occupation 'explains' the attacks on Israel, nor that it justifies the attacks, but I could say that the occupation motivates the attacks.
I'm sure plenty of people do say X caused Y (no idea how much they mean it), but as far as agents go, I think 'X motivates Y' makes much more sense and clears some of this up.
Assuming I understand the problem at all, and I'm not sure I do.
― trapdoor fucking spiders (dowd), Wednesday, 28 September 2011 20:05 (1 year ago) Permalink
trying to think of a situation where the X in this is really taken to be THE cause of Y rather than one of many causal factors of Y, but i dont think that is ever the case in these constructions
the other kinda tricksy thing here is that by getting into distinctions re:contextualization vs justification, we are stepping outside of str8 formal logic so that sort of question of rhetoric is a lot harder to engage i guess
also i have a O_O level sinus headache so i make no claims to making any sort of sense at all here so
xpost
― guh (jjjusten), Wednesday, 28 September 2011 20:08 (1 year ago) Permalink
at the risk of sinking myself further there also seems to be a missing intermediary step, sort of a X caused Y caused Z, where X is a situation, Y is a mental/physical state, Z is an action taken because of/thanks to that mental/physical state - in which case there could be other Y's (just to use 9/11 other Y's could be things as lofty as choice of faith and as pedestrian as able-bodied or capable of getting to NYC on said date) and X could be more truly causal in the intended way w/o the messy distinction between justified/contextual.
― guh (jjjusten), Wednesday, 28 September 2011 20:19 (1 year ago) Permalink
oh man i just reread that and confused myself, fucking cold medicine man
― guh (jjjusten), Wednesday, 28 September 2011 20:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
Haha, sleeping pills and alcohol for me. I would definitely watch a TV show where famous philosophers debate issues under various levels and kinds of intoxication. There could be a random drug machine, the audience could vote on who it gets administered to, etc. Would be cool.
― trapdoor fucking spiders (dowd), Wednesday, 28 September 2011 20:32 (1 year ago) Permalink
could we say that context provides partial justification? I think several posters allude to that above.
― dayo, Wednesday, 28 September 2011 20:45 (1 year ago) Permalink
like maybe rhetorically they're not treating the cause as a strictly binary proposition (all or nothing) but suggesting that it's just a factor among many. or am I missing the point here? (it's been a long day!)
― dayo, Wednesday, 28 September 2011 20:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
maybe accounts of causality that grow out of a physics of matter or claims about action just aren't helpful if you're going to talk about "responsibility" in an ethical register rather than "causal"?
i think this is key here. a physical model of causality as related to human actions wd be based at a molecular level, i.e. the concept of causality in science is not the same as the concept of causality in ethics even tho they're often used in a fuzzy, interchangeable way. one is part of the debate re. determinism, and yet i don't feel that anybody making the assertion "action Y was caused by situation X" is ever really making the claim that the actors had no choice.
― Dios mio! This kid is FUN to hit! (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 28 September 2011 21:06 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah I think that's right. and it's a good thing we don't treat ethics like physics, too.
― dayo, Wednesday, 28 September 2011 21:09 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah i dont think its ever intended as a binary proposition but the statement is formed that way - i guess that the question is whether simply stating it that way implies justification in some way? but if the construction was different, ie something value-loaded like "he killed that woman because he was evil" i dont think there would be any idea that somehow the speaker was implying that evil was a justifying stance, so idk
xposts
― guh (jjjusten), Wednesday, 28 September 2011 21:09 (1 year ago) Permalink
it's a good thing we don't treat ethics like physics, too
well for one thing that's why utilitarian arguments suck, yes.
like i said upthread, i think some people genuinely want to imply that there is a physics type causation between political action and political reaction but the nicest thing we could say about people making that kind of argument is that they are at best a bit naive and muddled
― Dios mio! This kid is FUN to hit! (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 28 September 2011 21:12 (1 year ago) Permalink
take them to out behind the shed
― dayo, Wednesday, 28 September 2011 21:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
utilitarianism is srsly the dumbest of all the ethical philosophical attempts, i got some angry red penning for a paper on utilitarianism basically along the lines of "maybe you should be less sure that you are so much smarter than J.S. Mill." but fuck that, I am.
― guh (jjjusten), Wednesday, 28 September 2011 21:16 (1 year ago) Permalink
i can see some value in utilitarianism as a critique of deontology but as an ethical system in its own right it's mostly pitiful
― Dios mio! This kid is FUN to hit! (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 28 September 2011 21:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
really tho i believe they both prove off the back of each other that ethics is a system for describing what people shd have done after they've done something else
― Dios mio! This kid is FUN to hit! (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 28 September 2011 21:19 (1 year ago) Permalink
pity that the entire field of economics is underpinned by it
― dayo, Wednesday, 28 September 2011 21:19 (1 year ago) Permalink
i have issues with economics as a field too
― Dios mio! This kid is FUN to hit! (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 28 September 2011 21:20 (1 year ago) Permalink
i think the person we really need to talk to is captain lorax
― max, Wednesday, 28 September 2011 21:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
really difficult to say OBL is the final cause of 9/11 when according to the latest smearograms bush brought down the towers
― max, Wednesday, 28 September 2011 21:48 (1 year ago) Permalink
if anyone can explain this to me I would be very interested in understanding it:http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/11/conditional-close-election-markets.html
― Mordy, Friday, 4 November 2011 14:48 (1 year ago) Permalink
about habermas on eurozone: http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?id=939
― Mordy, Friday, 21 September 2012 04:07 (8 months ago) Permalink
Moishe Postone has been blowing my mind lately: http://platypus1917.home.comcast.net/~platypus1917/postonemoishe_historyhelplessness.pdf
The disastrous nature of the war and, more generally, of the Bush administration should not obscure that in both cases progressives found themselves faced with what should have been viewed as a dilemma—a conflict between an aggressive global imperial power and a deeply reactionary counterglobalization movement in one case, and a brutal fas- cistic regime in the other. Yet in neither case were there many attempts to prob- lematize this dilemma or to try to analyze this configuration with an eye toward the possibility of formulating what has become exceedingly difficult in the world today — a critique with emancipatory intent. This would have required developing a form of internationalism that broke with the dualisms of a Cold War framework that all too frequently legitimated (as “anti-imperialist”) states whose structures and policies were no more emancipatory than those of many authoritarian and repressive regimes supported by the American government.Instead of breaking with such dualisms, however, many who opposed Ameri- can policies have had recourse to precisely such inadequate and anachronistic “anti-imperialist” conceptual frameworks and political stances...Let me elaborate by first turning briefly to the ways in which many liberals and progressives responded to the attack of September 11. The most general argument made was that the action, as horrible as it may have been, had to be understood as a reaction to American policies, especially in the Middle East.1 While it is the case that terrorist violence should be understood as political (and not simply as an irrational act), the understanding of the politics of violence expressed by such arguments is, nevertheless, utterly inadequate. Such violence is understood as a reaction of the insulted, injured, and downtrodden, not as an action. While the violence itself is not necessarily affirmed, the politics of the specific form of vio- lence committed are rarely interrogated. Instead, the violence is explained (and at times implicitly justified) as a response. Within this schema, there is only one actor in the world: the United States.
Instead of breaking with such dualisms, however, many who opposed Ameri- can policies have had recourse to precisely such inadequate and anachronistic “anti-imperialist” conceptual frameworks and political stances...
Let me elaborate by first turning briefly to the ways in which many liberals and progressives responded to the attack of September 11. The most general argument made was that the action, as horrible as it may have been, had to be understood as a reaction to American policies, especially in the Middle East.1 While it is the case that terrorist violence should be understood as political (and not simply as an irrational act), the understanding of the politics of violence expressed by such arguments is, nevertheless, utterly inadequate. Such violence is understood as a reaction of the insulted, injured, and downtrodden, not as an action. While the violence itself is not necessarily affirmed, the politics of the specific form of vio- lence committed are rarely interrogated. Instead, the violence is explained (and at times implicitly justified) as a response. Within this schema, there is only one actor in the world: the United States.
Critiquing the left w/ Marxism is like a dream come true.
― Mordy, Sunday, 20 January 2013 20:16 (4 months ago) Permalink
http://jacobinmag.com/2013/04/how-does-the-subaltern-speak/
― Mordy, Monday, 6 May 2013 01:37 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
long response by marxist/postcolonialist chris taylor http://clrjames.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/not-even-marxist-on-vivek-chibbers.html
counter-response by chris heideman http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1297-not-even-marxist-paul-m-heideman-examines-chris-taylor-s-critique-of-vivek-chibber (complete w/ counter-counter response from taylor in comments)
― max, Monday, 6 May 2013 10:45 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
so i'm no expert on these matters, but Chibber seems a bit vacuous?
I am endorsing the view that there are some common interests and needs that people have across cultures. There are some aspects of our human nature that are not culturally constructed: they are shaped by culture, but not created by it. My view is that even though there are enormous cultural differences between people in the East and the West, there’s also a core set of concerns that people have in common, whether they’re born in Egypt, or India, or Manchester, or New York. These aren’t many, but we can enumerate at least two or three of them: there’s a concern for your physical wellbeing; there’s probably a concern for a degree of autonomy and self-determination; there’s a concern for those practices that directly pertain to your welfare. This isn’t much, but you’d be amazed how far it gets you in explaining really important historical transformations.
why do we have to keep fighting this fight? why does marxism need to be "universal" (or have universal application) to be useful/valid/etc?
― ryan, Monday, 6 May 2013 14:58 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
I had a professor at NYU explain in class once that we can't judge or condemn cultures that practice clitoridectomies bc eurocentrism.
― Mordy, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:01 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
i say go ahead and judge but it's that prof's need to claim some "universal" ground (even if it be relativism) that leads him to say such absurd things. judge and be judged!
― ryan, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:09 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
idk what to tell u. i don't think he's vacuous and i think this is an important debate to have (esp bc, as he notes at the end of the interview, post-colonialism isn't going away anytime soon). it's partially about staking out the meaning of liberalism in 2013, and the parameters of what it is trying to do. i think they're trying to do very different things, and mai nafka minnah? lead to numerous different results -- cf adbusters thread for some examples?
― Mordy, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:11 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
― Mordy, Monday, May 6, 2013 11:01 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
idk, i mean, you can still believe in the post-colonist project and also be like, this professor at nyu is wrong and stupid
― max, Monday, 6 May 2013 16:59 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
to some extent tho isn't that the disagreement? can we judge other cultures based on these ideas of universal ethics + morality or is that eurocentric/etc?
― Mordy, Monday, 6 May 2013 17:01 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
no, i dont think so. i mean maybe for some people. i think the whole framing of that question is one that most academics would object to (i hope! maybe not!)--of course you can judge! but what does it mean to judge, how is it related to networks of power, where are your universal ethics grounded? idk im making this up obviously. ive never thought of post-colonialism as being about setting limits like so much as demanding a deeper and more rigorous analysis than orthodox marxism might offer (though not one that is necessarily opposed to marxism, by any means, and probably is grounded in post-marx marxist thought)
full disclosure i havent read chibbers intvw, and i dont know anything about post colonialism, or marxism
― max, Monday, 6 May 2013 17:11 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
Taking the example of cliterectomies. If they can be linked to some socially useful function, then I could see at least some validity to the idea that another culture could value that useful function more highly than retaining non-mutilated clitorises on their females. However, if the only defense of clitorectomies is "it is something we do and we have always done this, so butt out of our affairs and get lost", then the same justification can be used for slavery, human sacrifice, cannibalism, or wearing white before Easter. iow, it can justify any action whatsoever. Such a dismissive justification basically sifts down to: whoever has the power gets to do as they please.
― Aimless, Monday, 6 May 2013 17:28 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
or to put it another way mordy i think that post-colonial analysis and "orthodox marxism" are both insufficient and both necessary to understanding politics & relationship of power? two legs of a stool, or whatever the metaphor is. they keep each other honest.
― max, Monday, 6 May 2013 17:32 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
otm
sorry about "vacuous"--that's the equivalent of making fart noises in response.
― ryan, Monday, 6 May 2013 17:34 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
the point, I like to think, is that you're always gonna be accountable for the theory you bring to bear.
― ryan, Monday, 6 May 2013 17:36 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
Which also means you can be held accountable to Marxism!
― ryan, Monday, 6 May 2013 17:37 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
Add: To say something is wrong because it is eurocentric is no more illuminating than to say something is wrong because it is wrong. No one has, to my knowlege, proved that a eurocentric idea must necessarily be wrong. A European may sometimes have a correct idea, value or judgement in the same way that a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut.
― Aimless, Monday, 6 May 2013 17:39 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
I think you guys (xp) are speaking to something he notes in the original interview:
JB: What made you decide to focus on subaltern studies as a way of critiquing postcolonial theory more generally?VC: Postcolonial theory is a very diffuse body of ideas. It really comes out of literary and cultural studies, and had its initial influence there. It then spread out through area studies, history, and anthropology. It spread into those fields because of the influence of culture and cultural theory from the 1980s onwards. So, by the late 1980s and early 1990s, disciplines such as history, anthropology, Middle Eastern studies, and South Asian studies were infused with a heavy turn toward what we now know as postcolonial theory.To engage the theory, you run up against a basic problem: because it’s so diffuse, it’s hard to pin down what its core propositions are, so first of all, it’s hard to know exactly what to criticize. Also, its defenders are able to easily rebut any criticisms by pointing to other aspects that you might have missed in the theory, saying that you’ve honed in on the wrong aspects. Because of this, I had to find some core components of the theory — some stream of theorizing inside postcolonial studies — that is consistent, coherent, and highly influential.I also wanted to focus on those dimensions of the theory centered on history, historical development, and social structures, and not the literary criticism. Subaltern studies fits all of these molds: it’s been extremely influential in area studies; it’s fairly internally consistent, and it focuses on history and social structure. As a strand of theorizing, it’s been highly influential partly because of this internal consistency, but also partly because its main proponents come out of a Marxist background and they were all based in India or parts of the Third World. This gave them a great deal of legitimacy and credibility, both as critics of Marxism and as exponents of a new way of understanding the Global South. It’s through the work of the Subalternists that these notions about capital’s failed universalization and the need for indigenous categories have become respectable.
VC: Postcolonial theory is a very diffuse body of ideas. It really comes out of literary and cultural studies, and had its initial influence there. It then spread out through area studies, history, and anthropology. It spread into those fields because of the influence of culture and cultural theory from the 1980s onwards. So, by the late 1980s and early 1990s, disciplines such as history, anthropology, Middle Eastern studies, and South Asian studies were infused with a heavy turn toward what we now know as postcolonial theory.
To engage the theory, you run up against a basic problem: because it’s so diffuse, it’s hard to pin down what its core propositions are, so first of all, it’s hard to know exactly what to criticize. Also, its defenders are able to easily rebut any criticisms by pointing to other aspects that you might have missed in the theory, saying that you’ve honed in on the wrong aspects. Because of this, I had to find some core components of the theory — some stream of theorizing inside postcolonial studies — that is consistent, coherent, and highly influential.
I also wanted to focus on those dimensions of the theory centered on history, historical development, and social structures, and not the literary criticism. Subaltern studies fits all of these molds: it’s been extremely influential in area studies; it’s fairly internally consistent, and it focuses on history and social structure. As a strand of theorizing, it’s been highly influential partly because of this internal consistency, but also partly because its main proponents come out of a Marxist background and they were all based in India or parts of the Third World. This gave them a great deal of legitimacy and credibility, both as critics of Marxism and as exponents of a new way of understanding the Global South. It’s through the work of the Subalternists that these notions about capital’s failed universalization and the need for indigenous categories have become respectable.
aka it's very easy to deflect critiques of post-colonialism.
― Mordy, Monday, 6 May 2013 18:04 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
'keeping each other honest' is important. this meera nanda book i skimmed was looking at the way the bjp & other indian conservatives have used various bits of theory as a conversation stopper, seemed pretty interesting even tho she was mean about my sweetheart thomas kuhn:
― ogmor, Monday, 6 May 2013 22:02 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
http://www.thenation.com/article/174219/nietzsches-marginal-children-friedrich-hayek
― Mordy , Thursday, 9 May 2013 14:36 (2 weeks ago) Permalink
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/05/beware-extended-family.html
― Mordy , Saturday, 11 May 2013 15:03 (1 week ago) Permalink
I know I use the term wrongly, but if I refer to 'extended family' I tend to mean non-blood family i.e. community, friends etc.
― the so-called socialista (dowd), Saturday, 11 May 2013 19:09 (1 week ago) Permalink