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demagogue on 12/8/2012 at 10:51

Bitches don't know about my wall of text skills.

Edit: Interestingly I am teaching anti-discrimination against women this week, and given that this is now a thread on democracy & equal rights, I want to retroactively specify that the term "bitches" should refer only to the men of TTLG, in an amusing way to question their masculinity but actually a way to show camaraderie through faux insult, with the implication that I am schooling them in the art of wall-texting. That said, the women of TTLG are also invited to be school'd, with the understanding that they of course have equal standing as individuals that can think and decide matters themselves without any implication of inferiority or being less of a person. That is all. :)

Yakoob on 12/8/2012 at 16:46

I like the discussion but, fuck demagogue, you need to learn to edit your text :| will read later when I have more time.

EDIT: ok read your wall-o-text. I get your argument clearly now. But I still disagree. To a degree :)

So I can agree with "innate moral judgmenet" in human percpetion in the world, IF you are referring to brain biology and evolution. I agree we are not completely shaped by our environment aaand our biology does play a role. Heck, the very fact our perception is biologically light-based is what drives the unnerving feeling of drakness. It's, as you say, "innate." But even that, I would argue, is somewhat pliable. There are confirmed cases of "wild kids" (aka lost in a jungle as infants) who would walk on all 4s instead of their legs because they saw the monkeys (aka their immediate society) do it.

I think our biology and genes give us a mold, but it's our environment that shapes it into who we are, if that makes sense.

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I doubt that DDL didn't know these exceptions existed until he looked up in a law book, and only then "ah, ok, so a soldier isn't murdering an enemy, because that's what it says in the law book. But if the provision didn't provide for it, then it would be murder." He got these examples from his own intuition of how these situations work.

And here is the crux of our disagreement, for I think it's exactly because said DDL looked it up in the law book. EXCEPT, it's not a law book but growing up in a society that, directly and indirectly, teaches him that soldier killing an enemy isn't murder. After all, different culutres look at murdering people in certain circumstances differently, and yet the citizens are completely fine with it.

Unless you boil soldier murder down to my example of "killing in group member = nono, killing outgroup member = good" in which case, it's all about self-interest and preservation. Again, simple logic, not morality. The fact some soldiers voluntarily defect or even sell-out their own soldiers without qualms is proof of that.

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There are a number of experiments showing that infants across cultures recognize at a certain age (the same across cultures) that when a toy is taken from them without reason, they show reactions of it being "unfair" (versus when it's taken with a good reason).

Frankly, I call bullshit. Not you, but the study. Do you have a linky to it? I mean, how do you even measure if the kid thinks its "unfair", you can't exactly ask an infant. I'm wagering it boiled down to "take toy, watch if kid starts crying in situation A B and C;" in which case its a stretch to go from "kid is unhappy" to "kid knows it is unfair."

If I do something "wrong" (i.e. harmful to someone) and get "punished" (i.e. take toy away) it's not that I know the punishment is fair - rather I knew that my action has potential re precaution of said person retaliating and harming me in return. I know the risk involved, so its no surprise when it occurs (as opposed to cases where "punishment" comes for no reason). it's not a morality; its basic logic.

DDL on 12/8/2012 at 18:18

Unfairness in that context I'd interpret at "toy was removed without reason" as opposed to "toy was removed with clear reason".

It's not that the infant has a sense of 'fairness', it's just that it's old enough to be starting to form a framework of how the world fits together (through learning from parents, experience and observations), and how the world SHOULD work (like toys being removed before food arrives, or before bedtime), and things that suddenly go against that framework (like toys being removed for absolutely no reason) are jarring and confusing.

Really though, my original point could be boiled down to this: if the law can be broken, it's an arbitrary construct.

So physical laws? Not breakable (though you have to give those CERN guys credit for working on it)
Human laws? Effortlessly breakable.

I'm happy to accept that the level at which those arbitrary constructs are engrained into our collective culture is INCREDIBLY deep, but the fact that they can be broken, and in fact ARE broken, on a regular basis, highlights just how arbitrary they still essentially are.

And for all that, it highlights exactly how important they are. You can try and walk through a table as much as you like, but physics isn't going to let you. We can rely on physics to keep us in line on that front.

Stopping you stabbing someone? Nothing in the universe inherently prevents you doing that except yourself (and those around you). We should do our best to adhere to these social norms as much as possible BECAUSE they're arbitrary constructs, not 'despite' their arbitrariness. They're arbitrary, wholly breakable, but they're all we've got between us and barbarism.

And I'm totally not cut out for barbarism (I pumped dex and int, and specced into science).

demagogue on 13/8/2012 at 04:21

I didn't want to make it that long, but ironically making the thing shorter would take more time than I had. Another thing, some of this is textbook legal realism with some recent cogsci thrown in, since it's important to know the "textbook" version, and with more time I might say stuff I think a little differently too, but I thought it was important to start with the general theory first...

Quote Posted by yakoob

IF you are referring to brain biology and evolution.

I think our biology and genes give us a mold, but it's our environment that shapes it into who we are, if that makes sense.

It does make sense, and in a sense it's also half-agreeing with my take (I think) -- since, like a lot of the recent trend in cogsci, I don't distinguish "nature" vs "nurture" as sharply as people used to... There isn't as clear a line between biology and environment (edit: in the creation of schema I mean), there's just the creation of cognitive schema by hybrids or intractable tangles of 1. innate "instincts" & constructions, 2. social learning & 3. environment (they don't care what the source is, so it's easy for them to use pieces from all three)... which is why I think the debate whether "morality" is built into instinct, culture, or the "environment" is actually an unanswerable or non-question. You should just look directly to each cognitive schema and take it on its own, as a mechanism that's shared in a community's minds (some more than others).

Quote Posted by yakoob

Again, simple logic, not morality.

This assumes there's a difference. There wasn't to Kant; since he established all his norms on rules of reason & simple, built-in logic, and as I think what people call "morality" is built out of how the mind constructs, recognizes, and understands situations ... I think the lion's work is simple logic too. And even if you say a logical proposition or a "reason" for action is just a mental construct, it's still "real" in the sense that it still holds. 2+2=4 is just a mental construct, but it's still true because the reasons still hold.

The same thing could be said for having reasons to give someone equal regard because they were a person in your same position, and you couldn't rationally dehumanize them without dehumanizing yourself (irrational because the premise of the whole claim is usually you're human and the other isn't). You might not recognize that that logic holds, and blithely go on being manifestly irrational in your own claims, but it still holds as a reason to give a person equal regard in any event.

Quote Posted by DDL

the fact that they can be broken, and in fact ARE broken, on a regular basis, highlights just how arbitrary they still essentially are.

I understand the point you're making, but this sentence, the conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. Strict arbitrariness couldn't distinguish between the rules of a game and laws of a state, or a policeman with a gun that tells a robber to stop, and the robber himself telling a clerk to stop... But of course we properly distinguish these all the time, very easily because like I was saying above, we have reasons to distinguish them built into how they are constructed in our experience. And you need to have something built into the logic of experience that distinguishes these for all humans from birth, other than "it's arbitrary, poof, out of nowhere, the same status as 'here's an imaginary flying walrus, look at her go' ", or you can't make sense of what a law is versus other categories. Just because a group might not recognize another person has human consciousness or feel pain like they do, or not recognize that that gives them a reason not to torture that other person without a compelling reason against it, it still holds that that other person feels pain like they do, and it still holds that that's a reason not to torture them.

Also generally speaking your binary look on the world is way too formalistic. Actually at the risk of being long again let me spell that out. You're (effectively anyway, IMO) trying to argue reasons don't exist because people can "break" them. Well I can certainly write down reasons for something that are wrong, but the reasons still exist. I can write 2+2=5; I can do it, but I still don't have a reason to say it, so it's wrong. In the same respect, I can say "A person's equal autonomy as a free & conscious human being like doesn't me give me any reason to give them equal regard as myself, even though I claim that right for myself." They can say that, but their conclusion is still irrational -- the own logic they need to make it self-destructs its own claim -- so it's not arbitrary in any logical sense, although certainly we can break it. You're mixing apples & oranges, and then caring only about the oranges in a discussion of apples... i.e., on the "rationality" of moral claims, nobody cares about how the rules of physics work, their rationality is enforced by molecules (by the way, in quantum mechanics, note that to give a full physical description under Feynman's QM, you actually do have to account that your arm actually does pass through the table for the equation to work, not may pass, but something is really passing through because its interference waves are really there; still not letting you get away with not recognizing how "humanly constructed" and thus "arbitrary" our perception is versus the reality, even for something that basic); but in any event who cares because we're talking about apples, we're talking about moral claims, not physics claims. And these are different kinds of claims (different kinds of things "care" about the logic or rationality of it), but that doesn't stop us from looking directly at that logic or rationality, whether it's being "enforced" or not.

The fact you can make or act on an irrational moral conclusion, and the physics doesn't enforce it like it does an irrational claim of a physical rule, doesn't mean it's not still irrational and wrong. I'm not saying its equivalent to math claims either (since the sources are a little different), but it's the same in this sense, that if you wrote 2+2=5 on a test, the pen and paper aren't going to enforce it so it's impossible to write it; only the teacher has a reason to put a big red X on it, and you won't have any countervailing rational reason to defend your answer, so she's right and the student is wrong. The whole cognitive construction was just saying where these "reasons" come from; in the built-in logic of how situations or things are given to us, how we understand them (normal human & social life, and how people and society works, basically; edit: in that sense you might say moral claims are "enforced" by the logic of how society and humans work; they still have a logic you can be irrational about, and society will "dysfunction", the logic will breakdown if you're "wrong", aside from the fact you're argument will be wrong because it's irrational in any event, even if society functions ok when it's broken, so I don't want to put too much emphasis on that. It's the reasons or logic that matter, not the effects... e.g., again, a reason being like people have equal status as equally free, rational, & autonomous beings). Yes, they're not directly enforced by the universe, but they're not perfectly arbitrary either, and the reasons & the "rightness" and "wrongness" of different reasons, are all still there. Does this help distinguish what I'm saying from the counteragument you're making?

Edit: With the punchline being, of course, in political theory, a state won't mind that a "rule" isn't built into the universe -- we already know it's not. But they care a whole lot about whether they have a rational reason to coerce somebody to obey a rule (which reason that person can't disagree with without being irrational, e.g., under their very own logic they've already claimed for themselves). That's why that's the key question in political theory, not so much what you're worried about. So in that respect, I wasn't even trying to disagree with you, only saying that's not really the key question in political theory, this other thing is. You need a right or compelling reason to coerce somebody under law, not the thumbprint of God or the universe vouching for it (edit2: which by the way wouldn't give you a right anyway!! We wouldn't trust the word of Nature even if it did compel us; what matters is the reasons. Even God or the universe would need a rational reason we can't rationally disclaim to tell us how to behave).

CCCToad on 14/8/2012 at 04:32

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Thank you. Lately, I've also started to take issue with that, as people are discovering that you have far more control over your own mind than you think. It's never an easy process, but its entirely possible to stand up and reject the "nurture" (aka programming) that you've had over the years and choose to adapt a more positive outlook in life.

You're an asshole because your childhood was so hard? No, you're an asshole because you CHOOSE to let that influence you. You're depressed because you've suffered so many setbacks? No, you CHOOSE to let those setbacks get to you. And successful people? Most of the time they simply choose to not let obstacles get in their way.

For example let's take this guy:

Inline Image:

http://www.manolith.com/files/2012/07/oscar-pistorious-olympics.jpg

While adopting a positive outlook alone is no guarantee of being an Olympian, I do have to ask the question: How many people in his situation would even have accepted athletic success as a possibility and kept trying?

Sg3 on 14/8/2012 at 11:21

Quote Posted by CCCToad

No, you CHOOSE to let those setbacks get to you.

Ugh, no--this statement isn't even answering the question it pretends to answer. So sick of hearing this; "X chose Y" is a cop-out for explaining something, not the actual explanation for it. It's the equivalent of "it just is!"

Daddy, why is grass green? "Because it's green, son. It just is." That's what you're doing here with your "successful people are successful because they choose to be successful" bullshit. It's not only grossly simplistic, but it's also actually dodging the question entirely. : /

demagogue on 14/8/2012 at 12:29

Uh ... anyway, the punchline here is, was, governments need to have a good reason why they can compel people to follow the law, or it's not really legitimate. Then you have to figure out where such a reason comes from. If you say reason (edit: moral reason) is built into how people construct the social world, then for some it makes a difference if that's coming out of "nature" or "culture"... Since nature applies to everyone (so everyone is "bound" to it), culture just to your own culture.

And maybe someone thinks, well if it's culture, then there can be different cultures, or even if there are some "global" cultural norms, it's still possible someone could be outside it and imagine up their own culture, and who's to say it's not just as valid (the argument would go) -- so it's not reasons that have to apply to everyone (as opposed to like math, which is apparently true whatever culture you're in). But then the problem was law and morality aren't really part of nature in the literal sense. But they aren't entirely arbitrary culture either, since obviously a lot of cultures share norms & a lot of the "logic" of how society works applies to every culture (what I talked about last post)... They come out of this weird nature-culture hybrid.

So that brings you back to the question, is it enough to feel okay throwing a guy in prison that claims he didn't "understand" your law was really wrong, or the state doesn't have any right to make it (assuming it's a respectable law like don't steal or murder). We do make exceptions in law for the mentally ill that literally can't understand "wrongness", which sort of assumes there are certain moral norms & laws that are built into a human's mind that isn't insane. I think there are too, but the fact a LOT of culture is also meshed into norms just complicates the whole thing. Anyway, that's why the nature-nurture thing matters here, and why the fact they get mixed up in practice is an issue.

DDL on 14/8/2012 at 14:47

Well, you could raise a human in a totally culture-free, education-free, interaction-free environment and see how much behaviour is nature-based instinct. That would probably just give you an insane wolfboy, though, since as a species we're now largely dependent on transmitted cultural influence to survive.

I was merely stating that there's a very clear line between laws you cannot break and laws you shouldn't break, and all human laws and conventions fall into the latter. And the latter is chock full of grey-area-styled spectrum phenomena that rely hugely on context, be it cultural influences, circumstances, mindstate, political climate etc etc.
When I say it's arbitrary, I mean exactly that. We can state that "this is where we draw the line between murder and manslaughter", but that's an arbitrary line being drawn on a spectrum phenomenon. The same could be said for killing in self-defence, and there we're drawing an arbitrary line between crime/not crime. A person has been killed either way, but whether this is 'wrong' or not (or if wrong, HOW wrong) is largely open to interpretation.
The same could not be said for say..the existence of a table (though if you wanted to be picky, you could cite the uncertainty principle, but while it clearly throws a spanner into the works of "is/isn't" it is nevertheless entirely consistent in its ambiguity: the ambiguity is itself a concrete unbreakable law, and no discretionary judgement based on interpretation is possible).

Yakoob on 14/8/2012 at 17:21

Demagogue - I totally dig your argument of "morality as product of logic." If I get you right, then, morality is innate in the sense that it logically and rationally makes sense, and not because of some abstract ideas like "all life is sacred" or "god wants you to do that."

Lemme give a simple example: lets assume the world consists of only you, Bob and buffalos, and it is universally and unquestionably easier to kill a buffalo (and thus get food) if you cooperate with Bob. In this case, the life of Bob is fully beneficial to you, and so, killing him is innately "wrong" because it's the irrational choice to make. Did I just about get your logic here?

(also, before you say "kill Bob after you hunt the buffalo" - that is again irrational because you will need to hunt more buffalo the next day, so keeping him alive is in your best interest)

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The same thing could be said for having reasons to give someone equal regard because they were a person in your same position, and you couldn't rationally dehumanize them without dehumanizing yourself (irrational because the premise of the whole claim is usually you're human and the other isn't).

This is a good example of what you said, but it hinges on two implied assumptions: 1) that all humans are equal; and 2) that applying ideas/concepts/laws/etc. to one person is equivalent to applying to another

Now lots of societies do believe in both of these, in which case your logic stands. But personally... no I don't think all humans are necessarily equal, and no I don't think ideas/concepts/laws/etc. can always be universally applied to each human, because of that and context factoring in. In which case, it's possible to dehumanize others without necessarily dehumanizing yourself, and lots of divided societies espouse this on a consistent basis.

Quote Posted by Sg3

Err you're making a gigantic, erronous mental leap here. There is a difference between "you can change your innate behavior patterns" and "people are successful because they are successful." I don't even know how you arrived at that from CCCToad's post :weird:

DDL on 14/8/2012 at 17:31

'Course good ol' bob is only worth keeping alive as long as he's useful, if we're following harsh logic. Killing him isn't 'wrong', it's just 'not useful at the moment'.

And the same COULD be said for modern society, really: murder isn't generally useful for society, whereas killing enemy soldiers totally is. Plus you might level up and unlock mortar teams.

:sly:

As to Sg3's point, I think it was more a case of pointing out that "you can be anything you set your mind to" is a bit..facile. Also, bullshit. Pistorius happens to not have lower legs, but he's also a superb athlete, and while he does a fuckton of training, at olympic level it's genetics that makes the difference.
He'd also have been less effective as an olympian or paralympian if, say, he'd been born with muscular dystrophy instead of missing lower leg bones.