one has to go through the dialectical process, and as such, engage in the dialectic rather than ask for a final answer that let's us check a box "yes" or "no" -- "just" or "unjust" — Moliere
Ha! My commonsense solution to the Fairness & Justice problem would be to have a single-sovereign-supreme-superhuman judge to arbitrate between human definitions of My Justice and Your Fairness. Something like Molière's Tartuffe, relocated to heaven. But, since I gave up my religious solution years ago, I just don't worry about it. I'm certainly not a Marxist, except in the sense that he specified the problem for his day & time. His solution was missing the heavenly father to make the children behave. At my advanced age, I'm willing to let those who are more-concerned-&-more-able work-out the details of the next Utopia. :cool:What would your commonsense notion of Fairness or Justice look like, within this human world? Is it specifiable, exactly? — Moliere
No. I’m not arguing for open-ended dialectics. I’m arguing for arriving at some suitably definite dichotomy where just is defined with precision in terms of its “other”.
Negation doesn’t work as just vs unjust tells us very little about this still unnamed other. A metaphysical,strength dichotomy would be pairings like discrete-continuous, chance-necessity, local-global, vague-crisp, flux-stasis, etc.
If we can’t think of something to pair with just in similar fashion - as that which is logically mutually exclusive AND jointly exhaustive - then this in itself an argument for it being not a metaphysically general kind of distinction. It ain’t working as a bounding absolute when it comes to our dialectically formed vocab of ultimate abstractions.
Equality and balance are more robust terms, more overarching terms, as same-different is one of those standard dichotomies that concretely arose out of Greek philosophy. Justice and fairness are more parochial terms. As we have discussed and agreed, you can have the confusion of whether we are meaning equality of opportunity or equality of outcome.
Opportunity implies the competition that will result in a statistical range of outcomes. Lucky for some, unfair to others? Outcome implies a range of individual differences will be averaged over so that none are different by the end. Is that kind of communism just? Does one dream of the kind of discipline that leaves us as equal as an army marching in lockstep?
It is amazing that anyone could bandy these terms around - good, fair, just - as if they were already metaphysically robust … even if we can get by with them as socially coercive appeals in our everyday social politicking. Just claiming that goodness and justice is what your side represents and what your foe doesn’t. — apokrisis
Ha! My commonsense solution to the Fairness & Justice problem would be to have a single-sovereign-supreme-superhuman judge to arbitrate between human definitions of My Justice and Your Fairness. Something like Molière's Tartuffe, relocated to heaven. But, since I gave up my religious solution years ago, I just don't worry about it. I'm certainly not a Marxist, except in the sense that he specified the problem for his day & time. His solution was missing the heavenly father to make the children behave. At my advanced age, I'm willing to let those who are more-concerned-&-more-able work-out the details of the next Utopia. :cool: — Gnomon
It's a long off-topic story. But, if you have the time and the inclination, I have a thesis and blog to underwrite that philosophical inference. :smile:↪Gnomon
Why do you assume that energy (e.g. massless particles ... mental activity ...) is not material? — 180 Proof
the person seeking justice or goodness will say "But equality and balance are not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the parochial terms. That's ethics" — Moliere
I get a sense that this forum has some moralists who feel that the physical world is morally neutral, yet organized human societies should be scrupulously fair & balanced toward some ideal of Justice ; and some amoralists or nihilists who think its all "just one damn thing after another" ; plus perhaps some nameless positions in between. — Gnomon
So a grander view was being asked for than a parochial one. Then Bono unhelpfully heaped on his confusion with a trite depiction that seemed to argue that equality and fairness are different things, or perhaps not. Not even a parochial clarification was attempted.
But as a case in point, we can see that it touches on a valid difference in terms of notions of "fair and just" life opportunities and "fair and just" life outcomes.
So we have then a problem of how to square the two. In the real world, people come with their biological variance and their social variance. In the old days, we were foragers. The biological variance was Gaussian and the social variance likewise. For a million years or so, bodies only evolved a bit, lifestyles only changed a bit.
Then we had the agricultural revolution. Folk still had the same genetic balance of equality/inequality. Luck could make you smarter or stronger than the average. But steadily populations grew and social outcomes became more of a hierarchical competition. You had the explosive growth of empires rising and falling.
Then the industrial revolution and now social outcomes could be hugely varied. And indeed, political structures were rejigged to make that part of the game. Liberal philosophy advocated for all to have the opportunity to get fat and rich, every person getting the just desserts they could earn.
But unfettered capitalism doesn't work. Some kind of balancing in the other direction – an evening out if outcomes are too uneven – has to be built into the politics. Marxism was one such response – but better institutionalised by social democracies than communist autocracies.
So yes, there is some ethical meat in this. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". We can see that as the kind of formula which connects the biological variance and sociological variance, that connects the distribution of opportunities to the distributions of outcomes in the hope of approaching some happy medium.
But then the rub. The happy medium is in turn dependent on the underlying entropic foundations of that society. There is a burn rate that the political thermostat is attempting to regulate. The populace must produce – or these days consume – at a rate sufficient to keep the system on the road and growing, while also paying for the matching social safety net (including its state security apparatus) that stops the social fabric tearing itself to shreds.
If you neglect to discuss this deeper thermodynamic dimension to human affairs – what it means to have moved from foraging, to agriculture, to fossil-fueled industry – then it will seem as if social settings are decided within some ethical bubble. Politics can ignore the burn rate it exists to control and can just fluff about debating good vs evil, Marxism vs Liberalism, your whatever vs my whatever. — apokrisis
What use are these fools who insist on the abstract purity of their ivory towers. — apokrisis
Now let's get back to more pragmatic issues like the trolley problem and anti-natalism.... :grin: — apokrisis
Well, you might be disappointed. It's the view that the world is made only of particles, of bits of matter, bashing against each other. That's a view that went out of fashion with Newton's action at a distance. Matter is not "the sole fundamental substance".OK. What do you mean by "materialist" or "materialism"? — Gnomon
Painted using a matte house paint with the least possible gloss, on stretched canvas, 3.5 meters tall and 7.8 meters wide, in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid.
Both are of Picasso's Guernica. Somehow matte house paint on canvas is the very same thing as a powerful anti-war statement. Two quite different ways of talking about the very same thing.An anti-war statement displaying the terror and suffering of people and animals.
I think of societies as organisms, but ones which we do not understand very well. — Moliere
there is this other, materialist-scientific side to Marxism that I believe your account gets along with fairly well: just in the place of "thermodynamic dimension" it's "Capital", — Moliere
Beauty, not use, is my stated aim. I at least think it's important. — Moliere
I don't even need philosophy to be true to be worthwhile, much less do I need it to be useful. — Moliere
If we try to shoehorn everything into on type of discussion, we are going to miss very important distinctions. — Banno
Who is this "we"? I've put a lot of effort into the literature that exists to explain history, politics and society this way. — apokrisis
Maybe you don't. But maybe that is because you can take your lifestyle for granted as something that is just magically there as a stable foundation.
Or maybe you are instead disillusioned with the world as it is given to you, but have little hope in changing it? Philosophy has to be a comfort, a solace, rather than a plan of action. — apokrisis
A pleasant sentiment. But how do you in practice aim for it? — apokrisis
I would agree that civilisation does seem to be on its own mindless path. It does exceed our control. Oil just wants to be burnt and it doesn't care about us except to the degree we serve to accelerate that entropic purpose. We opened the Pandora's box and we are being swept along by the larger forces that have been unleashed.
But my attitude is that you only have the one life. And right now is the most spectacular moment in human history. We can see how the whole metaphysical deal got put together. So sit there and understand what is going on right before our eyes. Fluffing about with philosophical distractions is a waste of an opportunity when this is the moment that reality is becoming properly known to us for what it metaphysically is.
I only have one life, and so I like to help and see the future grow -- there will always be difficulties, and the horrors of the future scare me, but we can see it through. — Moliere
But what is the plan? Beyond being polite and amiable to your fellow human? — apokrisis
I mean, that's at least step 1, yes? If you can't be polite and amiable to your fellow humans, then it's unlikely anything will come of our efforts. — Moliere
I'm somehow trying to figure out my own anarcho-marxism, whatever that amounts to. — Moliere
I suppose. That is the title of this thread.So does the sense of injustice include, or perhaps derive from, a desire to make things better? Then it makes not difference if the source of the injustice is a human or a cancer, the response is a desire to make things fair? — Banno
Obviously you didn't take the time, or have the inclination, to "check" the off-topic & off-forum evidences presented in the thesis and blog. That's just as well, since your materialist or "immanentist" worldview might categorize the abstract, theoretical, mathematical, incorporeal grounding of Energy/Information/Qualia as over-your-head (transcendent), or off-limits (prejudice), and as the unreal, imaginary, statistical measurements of a rational mind. :joke: :cool:↪Gnomon
:ok: So you do not have any concrete grounds to assume or claim that energy (i.e. activity) is not material. Just checking ... — 180 Proof
Off Topic : You ask good philosophical questions, but you seem to expect Materialistic answers to Abstract inquiries. You expect 17th century deterministic answers, even though the foundations of post-classical physics are indeterminate. My understanding of Physics is post-classical, and entangled with Meta-Physics (the observer effect). Apparently, post-classical philosophy doesn't "make sense" to you. And your snarky (passive aggressive "sir") presentation is not good for communication.↪Gnomon
(1) If, as you claim, energy is not material, then how does it interact with the material (e.g. mass-energy equivalence) without violating fundamental conservation laws?
(2) And the philosophical corollary to the physics question: how does a non-material substance3 interact with material substance (re: substance duality)? — 180 Proof
(1) According to physicists ... Energy is Causation, and Matter is one of its effects : Noumenal Energy transforms into Phenomenal Matter. So, Energy is the fundamental "substance" (essence)*2 of the physical world. — Gnomon
Off-topic : I normally don't reply to 's jibes, because his philosophical worldview specifically & disdainfully excludes my own. So, the sciencey stuff is necessary to provide some common ground for discussion. However, his questions were timely, as I am currently reading a book that, among other things, discusses the New Physics (Relativity & Quantum) of the 1920s.(1) According to physicists ... Energy is Causation, and Matter is one of its effects : Noumenal Energy transforms into Phenomenal Matter. So, Energy is the fundamental "substance" (essence)*2 of the physical world. — Gnomon
But this is simply nothing like how physics talks. You are projecting. It is your central misunderstanding.
An ontology of "stuff" is medieval science. Stuff as alchemy. Stuff as fluid stuff and corpuscular stuff. Stuff as a substance with inherent properties like gravity or levity. Stuff like calorie as the heat that flowed from one place to another.
Physics broke with this"essences" metaphysics by mathematical abstraction*6 — apokrisis
For example, when I say "Energy is Causation"*1, it's a philosophical notion, not a conventional science concept. — Gnomon
When I say "energy is fundamental"*2, I am including all of the various pre-material fields*3 that physicists postulate as foundational. For example, within an amorphous holistic electromagnetic field, a single Photon, the "carrier" of energy, can split into an Electron & a Positron, the primary elements of Matter*4. But, it's the energy field that is fundamental and essential, not the particles. — Gnomon
Off-Topic : My "way of thinking" is characteristic of Philosophy, not Science. I've been trying to convince you that I'm not competing with scientists to produce practical applications of physical processes : atom bombs, cell phones, etc. Instead, I'm trying to update some ancient philosophical worldviews for application to the complexities of the contemporary chaotic world. The philosophical approach to understanding is Theoretical instead of Practical ; general instead of specific ; universal instead of local ; essential instead of detailed.If your way of thinking has any real advantage, it has to be able to lead to better answers than the scientists have already figured out. Explain what is observed in some self-consistent fashion rather than ignore the critical details that don't fit your essences story. — apokrisis
Do I understand you correctly to mean that : if the world is Deterministic, then a single wrong act makes the whole world system unjust : "a rotten apple spoils the whole barrel". And a single act of injustice makes the whole system unjust? No personal accountability?If determinism is true, there can still be morality in that we can consider an action right or wrong. Further, we can still give moral reasons in a determined setting. . . .
To Gnomon's original question - in a deterministic universe, if a wrong act is committed, then the world is thoroughly unjust ↪Gnomon because any attempt to punish is itself unjust. — NotAristotle
False dichotomy – modern science (physics, chemistry, etc) is both reductive and holistic.The primary distinction between my worldview and that of most physicists & chemists is Holism vs Reductionism. — Gnomon
:100: :up:[In] a science-constrained metaphysical discussion, you have to take more account of what the science actually says. — apokrisis
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