Government and Philosophy.

That is most definitely NOT how he put it, at least in the DoI.

Sure, you can do that; but if you think one's just as good as the other, you can't understand America's founding principles.

 

Believe whatever you want, & deflect from the central issue. You will find yourself on the side of the oppressors, crushing freedom, individual life, & property.

Quibbling about prepositions, participles, definitions, conjunctions or nuances in intent or meaning is a leftist obfuscation, to distract from the destruction of the American Experiment. You are merely muddying the water.. deflecting from the central issue. I'll restate it for you, in case you want to address the CENTRAL point of my post:

 

Why the hell would I bother with that when you're doing such a swell job of it?

Along with the signers of the DoI, evidently.

Well gosharootie, who knew the Framers were all leftist obfuscators?

The destruction is an effect, the cause of which people like yourself don't dare to look in the face.

Doesn't much matter what you stand on when you're unwilling to stand under that which can enlighten.

 

I just realised I never replied to this; sorry! Since you expanded on your definition of utilitarianism in a later post, I'll reply to that:

I just realised I never replied to your other post; sorry about that!

I wouldn't really characterise this as utilitarianism; utilitarianism, as Bentham and Mills defined it, pertains specifically to pleasure and pain, not just social impact as a whole. I'd say your position is more like situational ethics.

But anyway. My issue with moral statements (particularly relativist ones) is that I don't see how they are the sorts of statements which can have truth-value. As Spooky rightly pointed out, there are instances where "maximise pleasure, minimise pain" does not appear to be an adequate moral criterion, and the same applies to the criterion of net social impact which you proposed. The social impact of an action and one's assessment of it differs according to one's position in society; a worker might object to the exploitation of their labour power, but a capitalist might maintain that this exploitation is beneficial to society overall. There is no objective answer to the question of whether exploitation is ethical - there are only two classes and their different interests. Ideology (and of course, the conditions which give rise to an ideology) also has a bearing on this; a fascist, or a misguided communist for that matter, might argue that years of violence are justified by the glorious fascist/communist society which arises from it. You would probably disagree, but there's no way of ascertaining which ethical judgement is "correct."

 

Well, that's my whole point. At it's root, human morals is subjective. And if you look for a system of morality that's 100% objective, you won't find it cause it doesn't exist.

At it's root, human morality is based on human emotions. And emotions are, at some level, subjective.

The key to any legitimate moral framework is finding balance. It's true that capitalism exploits workers. It is equally true that capitalism benefits society overall. The KEY is to find the balance - to create a society that isn't overly weighted to the capitalist, but that doesn't completely favor the worker either. It may be difficult to find an objective balance point, but that's where logic and rationality come in (one rational argument would be that any society where the top 1% owns the majority of the wealth, is not a moral society).

You are anti-communist, and so you gave an example of a communist revolution. But you don't realize that both Europe and America were largely founded on genocide and slavery. So quite ironic that you would suggest that violence, murder, and slavery don't justify the ends, since your own society is built on that.

 

There is no such thing as "established political philosophy." Because unlike science and mathematics, philosophy is largely subjective, and therefore, anyone can have their own personal interpretation,and it is completely legitimate, as long as there is a logical and rational case for it.

 

I mostly agree with what you say. Morality, at its core, is completely subjective, and you can't really tell someone they're objectively wrong or right on some of these issues. But some beliefs, however, are based on facts that are demonstrably false, and therefore, those moral beliefs can be described as illegitimate.

 

How then do you ascertain when any ethical judgement is 'correct'?
What is the central purpose of the study of ethics? Leads us I suggest to the question of what exactly is the purpose of philosophy itself.

 

Is it more ethical or less ethical in any given situation?

Is there any way to discover a Pareto Optimality.

 

Uh-huh. See, this is what I don't understand about the relativist position: how can an ethical statement have any truth value at all if they are just subjective? This would make ethical statements true insofar as an opinion is true. The most logical thing to do would be to posit that ethical statements are simply not the sorts of things which can be true or not; they're just expressions of norms, class interests and opinions in a particular social setting.

Wrestling capitalism (a system inherently in the class interests of the capitalist class) and the workers' interests into some kind of compromise is utterly impossible. The very basis of capitalism is the diametrically opposed interests of two diametrically opposed classes, one of which necessarily exploits and oppresses the other, and the struggle which results from this opposition of interests will, at some point, lead to either revolution or implosion. As for the top 1% thing...well, why is that immoral as opposed to merely unsustainable?

As my signature and username say, I am in fact a communist, and I would be more than prepared for a violent revolution and years of chaos if this is what it takes (and it is what it takes) to achieve proletarian revolution. However, when I'm not discussing capitalism vs. communism I prefer to be neutral about my opinion on that debate. I wasn't saying anything against communism (or fascism) either; I just said that some communists might say that the end goal of communism justifies the means of violent revolution and that there is no way of ascertaining whether this is a "correct" ethical judgement.

- - - Updated - - -

You can't, I don't think. Ethical statements cannot be true or untrue.

And what is the purpose? Obfuscation. And often, pretty packaging for reactionary ideas.

 

I agree with you, truth is truth.

 

Well, there are two levels to morality. At it's base, morality and ethics are based on ideas that have no basis in objective "truth". Things like "human suffering is bad and human well-being is good" or "fairness is good and unfairness is bad" are completely subjective. On the other hand, all human beings do share an emotional sense that these these are true, and insofar that we have these emotional senses, that is about as objective as you can get (perhaps our brains are genetically hard-wired for these things, thus imparting some sort of objectivity to these ideas).

However, once you accept these basic things (ie that human suffering is bad and fairness is good), you can build on top of these ideas, a whole superstructure of moral and ethical rules that are based on logic and rationality, thus making these principles, objective on certain levels.

Compromise is always possible. Those who suggest that compromise is not possible are idealists/purists , or what I call "the naiive." Generally, these are people who have been brainwashed so completely into their own philosophy or point of view, that they cannot deviate at all, and see any attempt to dilute their views as affront to themselves. It is the very basis for all radicalism in this world, ranging from radical religious groups such as ISIS to radical racists such as Hitler. Purism is bad. Pure communism is just as bad as pure capitalism - and equally as blind.

Of course communism and capitalism are reconcilable. It is certainly possible in a capitalist society, that some, but not all, of workers interests are protected, just as some, but not all of the interests of the executive class, are protected.

At the end of the day - both communism and capitalism are BS ideologies. Both are horribly false and flawed. But both also have elements of truth in them. In by combining the elements of truth in both philosophies ,you come up with a more genuine philosophy--that's more reliant on practicality and truth - rather than blind ideology and false beliefs and assumptions.

As for whether the violent means justify the ends for communism, you can certainly find a "correct" solution. You do this by performing mind experiments. There are several types of mind experiments. You can take situations that are "known" to be moral , and compare them to the proposed communist revolution, for example. There are many other logical and rational ways to figure this out - it's not 100% subjective.

 

Humans do not share exact feelings on what constitutes human suffering so using that as a basis for morality is flawed. Basically the majority will define it which is what we do now anyways. Basically morality and ethics do not exist in the natural world, they are human constructs defined by social contracts we as individuals make with our groups or state so they can be enforced by law.

This is why when people question whether or not God is moral it's a ridiculous argument becaus God is not bound by human rules.

 

Terms like "human suffering" or "well-being" are so open to interpretation that they're essentially meaningless. Since every society, and every stratum of every society, conceptualises these things differently, we're back at square one: there is no way to ascertain which set of moral and ethical rules are the most rational and will achieve the greatest amount (another vague term) of human wellbeing because every social context, application and opinion is so different.

I think the idealists (idealism = ignorance or denial of material reality, which is why it's hilarious that proponents of historical materialism are sometimes given this label) are those who try to reconcile two irreconcilable sets of class interests. I'm not opposed to compromise - that's why the minimum programme exists - but compromise is unsustainable. And I certainly don't get personally affronted by advocacy of compromise; that's ludicrous. Heck, if I didn't want people to dilute and misinterpret my views, I wouldn't be a radical.

So how would this combination/compromise work? What would it entail?

How would this work, and how would it yield an objective answer? I don't think there can ever truly be consensus on a moral statement.

 

You keep on asking how you can find an "objective" answer to moral questions. That is a fools errand.

If you are looking for a purely OBJECTIVE answer to moral questions, you are wasting your time. It DOESN'T exist. Morality, at its most base level - is subjective, and there is no objective right or wrong. You just need to accept that.

But that doesn't mean that morality is 100% subjective either. For example, discrimination against blacks was based on false facts - ie the false fact that blacks were somehow inherently inferior to whites. Principles can be deemed illegitimate on the pure basis that they are based on facts that are demonstrably false. And therefore, moral principles that are based on false facts, can be deemed illegitimate for that reason.

Compromise is quite simple, actually. When you have two parties with irreconcilable interests, compromise simply means that each party gets some, but not all, of what it wants.

For example, a market economy, with strong protections for workers and strong laws that protect certain power of workers would be a good compromise. It would protect the interests of workers while allowing producers to have some power as well. Everyone would feel well satisfied in such an arrangement, and it would be sustainable.

Remember, in a purely competitive market economy, producers do not have any more power than workers. It is only with the introduction of outside forces (ie competetive barriers) that allow power to be consolidated on one side or another.

Communism is an unsustainable and naiive philosophy - because it requires the consolidation of money and power. And any time money and power has been consolidated at any time in our world's history, it has led to corruption and horrible human suffering.

 

I probably should have worded that last part of my post more clearly; I was asking how any objectivity at all could be derived from mental experiments. And subjective entities cannot have truth-value. If anything is subjective, it is not a truth, but an opinion.

I don't see how your example of prejudice against black people involves an ethical claim at all. I would agree that prejudice against black people is baseless, but neither wrong nor right.

Compromise is simple in theory, but often it ends up leaving everyone worse-off. France is a capitalist country with strong protections for workers - in fact, the labour code is several thousands of pages long. France is also a country whose president's approval ratings are in the single digits and which has had an anaemic economy for quite some time, which ultimately undoes any benefit gained by the workers from their legal protection. And of course, capitalism's inbuilt problems for workers - alienation, exploitation, anarchy in production etc. etc. - are not and cannot be alleviated in the slightest by regulations.

Capitalists have power over workers in the same way as they might have power over their natural capital. They buy workers' labour as a commodity and can control what happens to this commodity.

Nope. Communism requires the eventual abolition of money and power.

 

Of course objectivity can be derived from mental experiments - since mental experiments require use of logic and logic is an objective tool (logic is either objectively right or wrong).

Subjective things can have truth value. Opinions can be true. For example - saying that pizza tastes good is subjective. But it is also truth value, in that most people who taste pizza enjoy it. The sensation of enjoyment is an objective sensation, even though it forms the basis of an opinion. The same is true for morality.

Prejudice against blacks is wrong if it is based on false logic. It would be like claiming that pizza tasted good, without ever tasting pizza, but making that claim based on some logical thought process that was false. Thus, the very basis for the claim is merit-less, thus making the claim merit-less as well.

France's poor economic performance is due to a whole range factors, that I will not go into. But there are many other examples of countries that have protected workers - such as canada and scandanavian countries.

Remember - pure capitalism is not hostile to workers. In fact, a purely competitive market favors neither workers nor producers. In a purely competitive market, producers are on the same level as workers, as the maximum amount of economic profit that anyone can make is zero. Thus, it is truly a level playing field. The problem arises when there are distortions in the economy that move us away from a purely competitive environment.

In a purely competitive environment, nobody can control what happens to any commodity. That's cause in a purely competitive market, prices are set by the laws of supply and demand, and no single individual is able to have any effect on those laws. And yes, producers can buy workers' labor, but they cannot determine the price of the labor nor can they determine its quantity. Nor can the workers determine these quantities either. They are set by the market.

The problem with communism, is that it inevitably leads to the consolidation of power. Capitalism depends on self-organization. Communism requires planned organization. And thus, it requires someone to do the "planning." This inevitably leads to corruption which leads to human sufferring - 100% of the time.

 

I believe we should merely use socialism to bailout capitalism, whenever it promotes the general welfare.

 

Fine, then; any moral objectivity at all.

How is morality even an objectively-felt sensation? Unlike enjoyment, morality is socially-rooted.

Meritless =/= morally wrong.

O-I-L.

Also, Scandinavian countries' small populations are a big plus. Almost anything works on a small scale.

If you're talking about perfect competition, that is an abstract model. It has never existed and never will.

Also, prices are derived from value, which has the same determinant regardless of the extent of competition: socially-necessary labour time. If prices were indeed determined by supply and demand, one would expect to see far more fluctuation.

That "someone" is the working-class, through organs of mass participation like the Russian soviets (before the revolution was doomed by its isolation). If the revolution is not isolated and if we learn from our mistakes, corruption will not arise from this.

 

Morality is an emotionally based construct. Insofar as emotions exist on an objective level, and they do - morality also exists on an objective level.

Something cannot be both logically incorrect and morally correct at the same time. Morality must make sense logically, at some level.

So are you saying that in countries that produce oil, compromising between capitalism and socialism is an acceptable outcome, but somehow, such compromise is not acceptable in non-oil producing countries? Seems to make little sense there.

Perfect competition is an abstract model, but parts of it do exist in various forms. The forces that created deviations from perfect competition can be compensated for, through government policy - hence the concept of "compromise."

Prices are always determined by supply, and demand - not by value. If you can do something of great value, but many other people can do the same thing - then the price of your skill is not going to be very high, even though there is great value in what you do.

The "working class" cannot be in charge of running an economy. The working class are largely uneducated people, and would not be able to run an economy efficiently. To have an economy work, you either have to have a mechanism that creates efficiency through self-regulation, or you need to have extremely smart people who generate efficiency though intellect alone by distibuting resources in an intelligent manner. But that requires consolidation of power (since only few people possess the intellect to run such an economy) And consolidation of power inevitably leads to corruption.

Money/power is either consolidated or unconsolidated. If it is unconsolidated, it requires self-regulation and it can only work through capitalist markets, since there is no other known mechanism of self-regulation. If it consolidated, it leads to corruption. Thus, socialism, from a logical standpoint, can never work.

 

How is morality derived from emotions?

But not every illogical statement is thought of as immoral.

When a country produces oil, it can get away with economic policies which would be otherwise unthinkable. Look at Saudi economic policy: without oil wealth, policy like that would have caused total collapse.

Nor are the policies of Canada and the Scandinavian countries socialism combined with capitalism. A system with private property, wage labour and commodity production and distribution and a state and class system cannot be combined with a system with socialised property, distribution according to need, a planned economy and no state or class system. That's completely contradictory. These countries are social democracies: capitalist countries with interventionist economic policy and welfare states.

When has it existed?

Nor is the value of my skill, in that case. Prices can't deviate from value too much without causing businesses to make losses.

That's pretty funny given that the working class are responsible for the production of all the goods and services. The bureaucratic strata/intelligentsia are part of the working class, too. And before they destroyed feudalism, the bourgeoisie weren't all that educated either.

I think people overestimate how smart economic planners have to be. Planning would, I imagine, be a largely administrative job, involving the gathering of statistics from various production units and divisions, calculation of how many raw materials etc. go into a given production unit, how much of the finished product needs to come out and what the additional production costs are, decision of what production process to use and subsequent calculation of what is needed to carry it out and finally the drawing up of a transportation schedule to get everything to the right place at the right time. That really isn't so difficult.

Or, both money and coercive power are rendered obsolete and cease to exist.

 

Morality is 100% emotional. The concept of "right" and "wrong" are feelings. If you didn't have feelings, the concept of "right" and "wrong" wouldn't even exist. You'd just be a robot, and robots don't have morality.

It is true that two moral principles can conflict in ways that are illogical (because morality is often subjective). But no moral principle can be based on a false fact, and still be considered to be "correct," because by logic - false facts can only lead to false conclusions.

In a country like Canada, oil is only 4% of the GDP. So I'm not sure where you're coming from. Different countries have all kinds of economic advantages and disadvantages. Natural resources, like oil, are just one of many factors. I'm not sure why you're singling out oil.

A welfare state is a compromised form of socialism - a system by which resources are collected as a society, and doled out to people according to need. It seeks to reduce the class system - So it's not contradictory at all. It is, in fact, a compromised version of socialism. The problem is you're a radical - and radicals have one problem - they don't understand what compromise even means.

The virtues inherent in a perfectly competitive market system are present in any competitive market, although to lesser degrees.

In truth, the term "value" isn't really useful in economics. What's useful is supply and demand. Price is determined by supply, and demand, not value (whatever that means).

The working class are not "responsible" for the production of all goods and services. They contribute to production, but they are just one part of it. Actually, as we move toward a more computerized and robotic society, more and more goods and services are going to be produced without use of the working class.

I think you underestimate how smart economic planners have to be. You are talking about an economy that existed maybe 100 years ago. But today's 21st century economy is extraordinarily complex. There are millions of interactions that occur every second - there are complex economic and interpersonal relationships that affect how economic decisions are made all across the country---it's not simply getting widgets from factory to store. It' so complex that not even the smartest individuals could hope to keep track of it all. The only mechanism that works is self-regulation. Central planning is too slow, too ancient, too inefficient to survive in today's complex world.

As I said money and power will always exist. Money is the only way to run an efficient economy. Take away money, and you take away efficiency. Without efficiency, everybody starves.

 

I feel like we've strayed quite far from the point I was trying to make due to all this need for clarification. What I was trying to get at was, how are these judgements - based on emotion or logic or whatever - moral judgements, as opposed to just judgements concerning the sustainability or benefit of a given thing?

Also, emotions are still derived from social conditions, which differ from person to person. And there are plenty of examples of morality being derived from falsehoods. For instance, across much of the Arab world, women are prohibited from driving, voting etc. because of misconceptions regarding their/our strength and mental capacity - but these prohibitions are justified using moral statements.

Oil is ridiculously important today - as we speak, its price crash is almost singlehandedly sending the stock markets into turmoil. Perhaps I should have mentioned Canada's fairly low population and recent, long economic recession, too.

Socialism has nothing to do with things being "doled out" according to need; that would require a coercive authority. In socialism, people would take what they want according to need - this is what Marx was originally trying to communicate with "from each according to ability, to each according to need" but the meaning was distorted and lost in translation.

Welfare doesn't "reduce" the class system, either. It doesn't change anyone's relationship to the means of production (i.e. class in the Marxist sense).

The virtues inherent in a perfectly competitive market system are present in any competitive market, although to lesser degrees.

In truth, the term "value" isn't really useful in economics. What's useful is supply and demand. Price is determined by supply, and demand, not value (whatever that means).

The working class = people who sell their labour. Who contributes to production in any meaningful way without selling their labour? (And robots don't count; they're not a class, and they need creators and operators.)

It's not individuals who are going to keep track of it; it's a massive database. Precisely because it's the 21st century. The individuals' job will be to organise the information collected and make decisions. Input-output matrices really aren't that complex, especially not now, with all our technology and innovations in data storage.

Indeed, the complex and globalised nature of modern economic production is precisely why a plan at the level of the entire society, rather than individual units acting haphazardly, is needed.

This assumes scarcity.

 

Because we human beings, all, have this innate emotional feeling, that we call "morality". We have this innate feeling that something is either "good" or "bad". We've created all sorts of logical frameworks to try and explain this feelings, but at it's core, its simply an emotional feeling, and doesn't necessarily lend itself to logical explanation 100% of the time (although it isn't completely removed from logic either).

I'm not sure of the exact source of the victimization of women in the middle east (either due to misconceptions regarding the innate characteristics of women versus some degree from god). Either way, these principles are based on false ideas (since women don't have these innate characteristics, and god, most likely, doesn't exist), and therefore, we can objectively claim that the subjugation of women in these societies is objectively "wrong" and that these cultures are "bad" cultures. I think those types of claims do have merit, under a logical framework.

There's no logical reason why stocks should have responded the way they did to the low price of oil. Stocks were basically over-valued, and investors were looking for a reason - any reason - to sell. Canada is doing fairly well with it's economic system. The average Canadian family now has an income higher than the average American family. They have a very strong social safety net. Canadians are doing pretty well. There's certainly no evidence that they'd be better off with a communist revolution - they almost certainly would be a lot worse off

The problem with socialism is that it requires a coercive authority. Capitalism works by self-organization through greed. In order for self regulation to work, you need some powerful innate human drive - in capitalism, that drive is greed or selfishness. There is no innate human drive that could power a socialistic society. Without such a driving self-organizing force, you need an outside coercive authority to organize the society and economy. And that coercive authority is prone to corruption.

Welfare doesn't eliminate the classes, but it does separate the distance between the classes. And that's the compromise!!! Compromise doesn't mean eliminating the classes (cause that wouldn't be compromise at all!!). I told you that you, as a radical, wouldn't understand what compromise means.

There are a lot of things that go into production, other than pure labor. For example, in the future, many things are going to be made using robots. Thus all you really need are a few workers to design, build and maintain the robots, but once the robots are put into place, the labor of human beings is going to be obsolete. One of the many problems with socialism, is it doesn't take these changes into account.

As for your database - it's not that simple. You can't just simply create a database and use that to run an economy. The economy is the result of millions of complex interactions and economic decisions that interact with one another in complex ways. These interactions are so complex that even the world's most powerful computers are unable to model them accurately (thus leading to high levels of uncertainty when making economic predictions). You're still thinking about the economy as a widget factory. It isn't. And if you try to run a 21st century economy using methods based on the widget factory, you're gonna fail horribly.

Human biology shows that individuals acting "haphazardly" is far more powerful than the most powerful central plans. Human evolution is nothing more than self-organization. Biochemistry is nothing more than self-organization. And the products of self-organization are far superior than the products of "intelligent design." The power of self-organization is well founded, and you would be foolhardy to dismiss it. Central planning, when it comes to the modern economy, is a dinosaur.

And scarcity will always exist because greed will always exist. As long as people are greedy and hungry for resources and power, corruption will always exist. The best system is the one that is least prone to corruption. And that usually requires a de-centralization of power, which is not possible in socialism.

 

To say that nature is the simply the law of physics is ludicrous. The universe created everything. Every molecule that exists on earth that has transformed into life has come from the universe and will someday return to it. Life itself originated from the processes of the universe and it is quite possible that what you think of as a life force or a spirit is simply a fraction of a universal force from which all consciousness' originate.

As a matter of fact universal consciousness is observable in lower live forms as without the intelligence to do consciously they all work in unison as a single entity.

Once you have accepted the concept of universal consciousness, then the "creator" takes on a whole new meaning. It is quite possible that a universal consciousness is responsible for not only the manipulation of matter which is necessary to form our bodies, but the creation of the laws and philosophies that rule our actions.

People evolving in separate cultures and without contact with each other have developed very similar views of morality and ethics. It is very hard to explain this unless their is some form of universal consciousness which links all people.