Voluntaryism vs. Statism – The 8 Step Cross-Examination

February 2, 2011 · Posted in Philosophy · Comment

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Logic & Evidence vs. Abuse & Trauma

January 27, 2011 · Posted in Philosophy · Comment

I would like to point out a pretty good example of how it is that indoctrinated people “think” these days.

Somebody recently posted this question on reddit:

Reddit amateur economists and philosophers, what are the standard rebuttals to arguments against a progressive tax?

Let me first say I’m American, and in the south, so I get a lot of anti-government/anti-tax people starting conversations with me.

I get into it all the time with people who advocate “fair” taxes and flat taxes. I am of the opinion that these taxes are regressive and shift the tax burden to those who can least afford it, but I often find myself backed into corners where I have to admit that I want corporations to pay a large portion of their profits in taxes. What are some key points I can use to drive home the necessity of a progressive tax?

How can I prove that progressive taxation is the only feasible tax system for America?

You notice how he puts the conclusion first and then tries to look for every conceivable justification that amateur economists and philosophers can possibly throw at him?

This is not an isolated event. This is how most people try to tell themselves that they are participating in intelligent public discourse.

Why do we reasonable people quickly get frustrated with the thought-zombies around us who say things like the above?

Because our process is “Question >> Logic >> Evidence >> Conclusion”, we automatically tend to assume that everyone else goes through this process as well.

We forget that the majority of people around us went through “Mental/Physical Abuse/Neglect >> Trauma >> Coping >> Conclusion >> Contrive evidence and logic to back up traumatic conclusions”. – A childhood scar tissue in other words.

So then people like us often get frustrated if we don’t understand how this kind of traumatic mindset works.

We think that, since logic and evidence is at the root of all our conclusions, surely we can start with logic and evidence and gently guide them to the right conclusions that same way. We forget that it never was logic and evidence that got them to hold their conclusions in the first place.

Thus we have to show compassion, rather than frustration, with people who have been indoctrinated and traumatized in one way or another.

If we don’t, then this in itself is a failure on our part to use logic and evidence to arrive at conclusions on how to best communicate knowledge to those who were never taught how to think, to give them the proper “tools”, as it were, to reason through questions from first principle and arrive at reasonable conclusions themselves.

This is why I think I should try a bit harder to focus on communicating the method of logic and evidence to people, rather than force-feed them my own conclusions.

Tags: abuse, evidence, logic, trauma

Civil Disobedience & Suffering For Freedom

January 26, 2011 · Posted in Philosophy · Comment

Tags: civil disobedience

The Ethics of Voluntaryism – An 8 Step “Cross Examination”

January 16, 2011 · Posted in Philosophy · 10 Comments

The key here is to get agreement on a step by step basis and refer back to points that have already been agreed upon, should the other person ever contradict himself at any point in time.

Here’s how I would approach it:

1. Let’s say we want to establish a set of rules of preferable human behavior that lays out what people should or should not do (= ethical framework). Do you agree that at the very least the framework you come up with in the end should NOT allow for the mass genocides, enslavement, or displacements of large number of peaceful people by others? Do you agree that we can safely say that a framework that prevents mass genocide, imperfect and improvable as it may be, is at the very least better than one that DOES allow for such depredations?

So what I want to establish here is a sine qua non for any ethical framework. Everyone knows that people will not always follow rules with perfection, that’s a given. But let’s make the assumption, for the sake of the opposing side’s potential arguments, that people do follow the ethical framework we come up with with 100% perfection. Shouldn’t we make sure at the very least that under that assumption the framework does not allow for any of the unspeakable horrors that we have seen throughout history? Given that people don’t follow any framework with 100% precision, surely if it already allows for mass murder under perfect compliance, then how can it possibly be viable once people start deviating from the rules proposed?

If you can’t get the other person to agree with you on this, then there really is no point continuing the discussion. As you will notice reading on, agreement on this point eliminates certain tricks that dishonest and inconsistent people tend to use whenever they have no more arguments to support their ethical framework.

2. Do you agree that any set of rules about human behavior is always and by necessity absolute and immutable?

This is formulated as a question but it really is an axiom. The other person needs to understand this and fully grasp it. There is no way to deny that any proposed ethical framework is immutable and absolute. There is no way around this.

Why? Well, this is because even in the most extreme case where somebody says that there should be no rules at all he is in effect proposing an absolute and immutable rule: That you should not establish or follow any ethical rules.

With the average statist you’ll be having the conversation with it’ll be a lot easier. He may say something like “No, I think the majority may, at times, change the rules imposed, through the process of voting.” – So unwittingly he is, again, proposing an immutable, absolute, and overarching rule, and that is that whatever rules the majority votes on are the rules that should be followed.

Again, don’t bother continuing the discussion unless you get agreement here.

3. Do you agree that any immutable human behavioral rules proposed should apply to all humans equally, no matter what their color, religion, race, origin, location etc. is?

This is the requirement of universality. A crucial definition for any ethical framework, just as with any other scientific framework, is that its rules need to apply to all its subjects, in this case human behavior, equally. The idea of equality for all before the law is pretty widespread. So it shouldn’t be too hard to find agreement on this question.

You may not get a racist to agree with you here, but then, why would you want to debate a racist on such complex matters anyway! :)

4. Do you agree that any such set of absolute and immutable behavioral rules has to be consistent and free of contradiction?

This is testing the person on his acceptance of logic, meaning his connection to reality. Again, if someone disagrees on this fundamental point, you can stop talking to him right then and there. If one says you can have a moral framework that says “You should never rape others.” and then in the next sentence “You are allowed to rape others.”, then he’s not someone to be taken serious.

5. OK, let’s say you find something useful in nature that nobody else has touched or used before. You take control of it and transform it for your own use. For example, you find trees, chop wood, and build a small 1 person cottage. Do you agree that if someone else tried to occupy your cottage against your will, that you should be allowed to assert your control over it, and, if he initiates violence against you, use violence yourself to defend it?

This is a crucial step. The answer to this question establishes property rights as derived from homesteading.

I will go through the different possibilities of rules regarding preferable human behavior to deal with this situation now, always keeping in mind the 4 points that we have agreed to above:

(a) Denial of Ownership Claim

Let’s say the answer is that you’re not allowed to use violence to defend your control of the property and that it’s OK for the other person to occupy your cottage and to use violence if you insist.

Thus the absolute, universal, and immutable rule would have to read “Everyone should be allowed to take control of things that another person controls.”

The rule essentially tells you not to assert any claim to things that you’re in control of. But at the same time it tells you that it’s OK to assert claims to things that others are in control of. But the very moment someone takes something from you, he takes control of it and violently asserts a claim to what he now controls in so doing.

Now you would again, according to the rule, have the right to assert your own control over the cottage against the other person’s will. It would be and endless back and forth.

So the whole rule defeats itself. You can’t establish a rule that says “You ARE NOT ALLOWED to assert claims to control things that you have gained control over and you ARE ALLOWED TO assert claims over things that you have gained control over”, and expect it to comply with the requirement of logical consistency established under #4.

(b) Democratic Approach

One could say that the other person does have the right to occupy your property against your will if the majority of people within some relevant territory agree to the appropriation, in other words, “if it’s majority will”.

This would mean that any group of people could always, and at any time, kick another group of people out of their houses, if only they get 51% of the vote, or whatever other percentage the rule requires.

If the people whose homes were being intruded dared to raise a gun to assert their control, this would mean that in last resort the majority representatives would have the right to gun them down in order to gain control of the properties in question.

Thus invoking majority will, and acting in 100% accordance with the principle, allows for mass genocide or at least enslavement and displacement for the disowned on a large scale, without any violation of the moral principle proposed.

So if your conversation partner agreed to #1, then he cannot possibly support this approach to the question of property rights, since, as we said, any ethical framework should at the very least not allow for mass genocide or displacements of innocent and peaceful individuals, which our peaceful homesteaders in our example are without any doubt.

(c) Nobody Should Control Anything

Another consistent and universal moral rule would be to say that nobody should even homestead anything at all in the first place; that we should all be without control of any goods provided by nature.

Since I think it is safe to assume that anyone who’s debating you does not do so in the nude (at least I would hope so), this proposition can be discarded relatively quickly. But even without clothes, anyone you’re debating must be standing, sitting, or lying somewhere.

He is thus using up and controlling, at least for a brief period, room provided by nature. Thus it would look pretty silly for him to make the case for no ownership at all while violating it on every possible level.

Furthermore, if he agreed to #1 above, then it is pretty clear that he would be contradicting himself in any case here. For if humans should not take control of anything in nature they would all starve to death within a few days. Any ethical framework that desires to prevent mass starvation has to discard of this option completely and unconditionally, if it is to be taken even remotely serious.

(d) Property Rights

Another possibility to approach this question would be to say that nobody should occupy another person’s homesteaded property against his will. From this follows that the homesteader may use violence to prevent the initiation of the occupation of what he has homesteaded. Otherwise, if he was not allowed to, then we’d be back to (a) which is invalid.

This is, out of all the options of establishing an ethical rule to address the question, the only consistent one that also conforms with the four aforementioned requirements.

6. Do you further agree that if you and another person decide to exchange your homesteaded goods between one another, that no third person may initiate violence to prevent the two of you from doing so?

This question establishes the right to free trade.

If #5 has already been agreed upon, then 6 logically follows from that. If one were to initiate violence to prevent the transaction from occurring then he’d be in violation of the very property rights established for homesteaded goods under #5.

7. Do you agree that nobody should be allowed to occupy, against your will, any of those goods that you have acquired in such free exchange?

This question can be approached in exactly the same fashion as question #5, just that here the goods have been acquired in exchange and not via homesteading, except that point (c) is not relevant here since the denial of free exchange and enforcement thereof would violate the conclusions from question #6.

This, then, fully establishes that any form of theft of peacefully acquired goods, be it homesteading or be it mutual voluntary exchange, is to be universally proscribed in any valid ethical framework.

8. Do you agree, then, that people who initiate the occupation of things that others have obtained via either homesteading or free exchange (such as government bureaucrats via taxation), are violating the absolute rules established above?

This question fundamentally establishes the unethical and immoral nature of the concept of government. It simply follows from everything that has been said above. It leads to the natural conclusion that, if one has agreed to all the prior points, the government has to be abolished completely and unconditionally.

It will be very hard to get explicit agreement here, even when people fully get in their heart of hearts that it has to be answered in the affirmative.

However, the good thing is that any counter arguments that people will advance at this point will in one way or another always contradict the points they have already agreed to before.

Conclusions

So you will now always have a way to go back to previously agreed upon principles to demonstrate to people who object to voluntaryism, that their belief system at the very least faces some serious problems that they might want to work out before flat out objecting to a system that happens to be nothing but the necessary outcome of rigorous logic and reasoning from first principle.

Also, don’t get caught up in the lure of pragmatism. People will, even after agreeing to all of the above, often say that we’re just not in a position to make such radical changes and that we have to work within the system etc…

Such objections are missing the point. It may be true that in our lifetime valid ethical rules will not be able to permeate all of society. But that has nothing to do with the validity of the concepts proposed. People at some point also did not believe that the earth was round until sufficient evidence was provided. Abolishionists did not harp on the practicality of abolishing slavery, but on its moral necessity. Feminists accurately pointed out that denying women the right to property ownership was immoral, nobody would say today that their ideas were invalid because they were impractical at the time.

True change takes time. What has been destroyed and eroded over multiple generations will not be fixed in the timespan of a few years or even decades. What is important is to consistently and unabashedly point out the rank immorality at the core of the system to as many open and curious people as possible. The corresponding societal changes will follow sooner or later.

Tags: ethics, morality, statism, voluntaryism

Ethical Relativism

January 16, 2011 · Posted in Philosophy · Comment

Tags: ethical relativism, ethics, morality

Logical Fallacies, Religion, and Hypocrisy

January 4, 2011 · Posted in Philosophy · 3 Comments

All bigoted beliefs by definition defy the consistency of reality, that is – logic. Thus, wherever you encounter bigotry, hypocrisy is not far.

Religion, as a subset of bigotry, is by necessity one of the most fertile grounds for hypocrisy.

Not that I care for this person’s blog at all, and not to pick on the guy in particular, but this is the kind of stuff that you always need to look out for to sniff out moral corruption, hypocrisy and irrationality at its core.

Here the guy kindly instructs the reader on All About Logical Fallacies. In particular he enlightens the reader about the following:

Argumentum ad populum: This common logical fallacy relies on the fact that “everybody” believes it or accepts it as true, therefore it is true. It can also be used to replace specific authorities with a more collective “all scientists”, “all politicians”, “all reasonable people” claim.

Illogical Ian: I know its true, because everyone says its true!

Logical Leo: I don’t think it’s true. So since everyone doesn’t say it’s true, it must not be true, then?

Illogical Ian: Well, most reasonable people say its true!

Logical Leo: It wasn’t too long ago that most reasonable people though that slavery wasn’t a terrible idea.

Illogical Ian: That’s a different thing man…

Logical Leo: And not too long ago, the vast majority of the American public supported the invasion of Iraq.

Illogical Ian: Hold on…

Logical Leo: I can give you plenty of examples where public opinion, or the opinion of a large group of any people, turned out to be wrong. In fact, I can only say with certainty that no one knows everything, or really, anything. At some point, some part of their understanding will be proven wrong. Hopefully, at that point, they will embrace the new understanding and logic. Either that, or leave themselves behind on the dustbin of history.

So far so good. The claim that something is true because many reasonable people think it is, is a rampant fallacy indeed. Thus our friend from above justly cautions:

If you use any of the logical fallacies below, you are embracing deception and lies. Pay attention to this and rid yourself of all logical fallacies.

Awesome! Great! Yay! Let’s see how consistently he applies his own preachings.

In this post he writes about Eye Witness Accounts from 2000+ years ago which supposedly constitute convincing evidence about the truth of claims in the Bible, all based on Lee Strobel’s “The Case For Christ”.

Aside from the fact that I can’t wait for this guy to act consistently and also make the same case for Zeus, Hera, and 10,000+ other gods from long gone superstitions, based on their “eye-witness accounts”, another person wrote a comment about this post:

There is absolutely no substantive, rational evidence provided by Strobel to support the divinity of Christ or miracles performed. Likewise, to claim that the four gospels provide an accurate portrayal of Christ when a number of alternative gospels were suppressed by the early church is amusing at best.

… to which the author replied with what he considers evidence, in particular he said this:

Hundreds of millions of people worldwide have attempted to follow Jesus, and have received some sort of divine manifestation that his teachings are true and that he is, indeed, all that he claimed to be in the Bible. Prove that these hundreds of millions of people are lunatics, liars, or frauds.

Sounds familiar, Illogical Ian, doesn’t it?

Now, I’m sure the guy is currently busy as hell, ridding himself of this logical inconsistency, just as he cautioned his readers to do.

Because, as we all know, it’s important to practice what you preach, right? Right?? =)

Tags: atheism, hypocrisy, logic, religion