tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.comments2023-05-19T09:55:15.881+01:00Analysis and SynthesisRichard Baronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17869390364282686725noreply@blogger.comBlogger178125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-57485384560788917652017-03-20T17:08:24.087+00:002017-03-20T17:08:24.087+00:00In a Chinese story a man´s son falls from a horse ...In a Chinese story a man´s son falls from a horse and brakes his leg. The neighbours pity the man, but soon after a war brakes out, most of the young men in the village have to go to war and they never come back, but the injured son survives. <br /><br />Morale della favola: <br />you can never know for sure whether what happens to you is good luck or bad luck.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-9646409940017001402013-05-23T07:04:34.961+01:002013-05-23T07:04:34.961+01:00Very interesting. There is a lot I could say abou...Very interesting. There is a lot I could say about this, but it might take me some time to get my thoughts together. I will be making a more substantial comment some time in the near future.<br />Bernard Hurleyhttp://bernardhurley.posterous.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-16498058931682800432013-04-30T16:11:44.280+01:002013-04-30T16:11:44.280+01:00Many thanks for this detailed response. As usual w...Many thanks for this detailed response. As usual with your posts, it repays multiple readings.<br /><br />Re my paragraph, "From the 'veil of ignorance' point of view ...", I was not thinking of the deliberators as the individuals who would be affected. I was trying to express a sense that in the post-veil world we would worry less about the impact of a policy on specifiable groups as the starting point would have been as fair as possible. I see now that this is very similar to your future world where specifiable groups do not yet exist. <br /><br />Both give us a starting point where everyone is notionally equal. If the odds of being impacted adversely by a policy are also equal, then I feel we consider the affected people as having been unlucky rather than having been treated unfairly. The more the odds shift, the more we may worry about securing equality of outcomes in order to mitigate the unfairness.<br />Isabelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-55068849711752027362013-04-26T21:22:21.846+01:002013-04-26T21:22:21.846+01:00[Continued from the previous comment, because of t...[Continued from the previous comment, because of the limit on the number of characters in each comment]<br /><br />On your paragraph, "From the 'veil of ignorance' point of view ...", I see the position of the deliberators somewhat differently from you. Yes, they would vote for the less dispersed distribution with the higher mean, but I do not think one could identify anyone who would draw the short straw. There are two reasons for my view, and I feel more secure about the first one than about the second one, although the second one is a generalization from the first one.<br /><br />The first reason is that no-one behind the veil has any particular life expectancy, so no-one has a starting point from which they can be made worse off.<br /><br />The second reason is that it is not at all clear to me that we can attach sense to the idea of selecting a function that takes each identified deliberator to an identified person in the post-veil world. It is tempting to imagine that there would be such a function, because we can say, to our actual selves, "Imagine that we were all put behind the veil; would we design a society like the one we actually inhabit, or would we arrange things differently?". So we imagine taking ourselves behind the veil, one actual person to one deliberator. We then think that we could simply take the inverse of that one-one function, and have a one-one function from deliberators to people in a post-veil world. I think we may be fooling ourselves about the sense in a function from deliberators to post-veil people. In order to make the Rawls story work, we have to attach sense to the idea of some unspecified function or other drawn from the class of all one-one functions from deliberators to post-veil people. But that is not the same as attaching sense to the idea that we could select some particular function, drawn from that class, as the one that would in fact operate.<br /><br />On your final points, the basic question seems to be, has a particular person someone lost anything if the odds shift against her, when there is no guarantee that she has in fact been made worse off? Arguably, there never will be any fact as to whether she has been made worse off, because there never is a determinate outcome under the old odds, since the outcome, age at death, arises only under the new odds. At least, if there is a determinate outcome under the old odds, it is certainly unknowable in practice.<br /><br />It feels as though the answer to this basic question should not depend on the precise odds. On the other hand, some odds make it more comfortable to conclude that there has been a loss, and other odds make it more comfortable to conclude that there has not been a loss. Suppose that someone was a member of a well-defined group, half of which would live to 97 or more under the old distribution. Under the new distribution, 99% of that group will die by age 92. That looks dramatic enough to ground a complaint. Alternatively, suppose that under the new distribution, 45% of the group will live to 97 or more. That looks like a mild enough change to think that complaints would not be well-grounded.Richard Baronhttp://www.rbphilo.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-36452041300676040202013-04-26T21:21:33.604+01:002013-04-26T21:21:33.604+01:00Hello Isabel,
In response to your first two parag...Hello Isabel,<br /><br />In response to your first two paragraphs ("Would the Kantian objection apply ..." and "Should we view society ..."), my feeling is that Kant's way of looking at our interactions only works when we are determinate human beings, with particular lives and characteristics. So Kant would have nothing to say to people behind the veil, except that they should not construct a society in which people would get used merely as means. (The "merely" is important here, if we are to make rooms for Kant's rather unattractive comments on rights to persons akin to rights to things, in Metaphysics of Morals, Ak.6:276-284.)<br /><br />I read your two sentences, "Is it valid ... co-operation", as addressing two points, about how people behind the veil should design their future society.<br /><br />The first point is that the future society had better allow for contractual dealings, and Kant would have expected and welcomed that too. When you have a contract, each party may derive some benefit, a point that is neatly reflected in English law by the requirement for consideration (except when contracts are executed as deeds). But one may derive much more benefit than the other, and may in that sense make a big profit at the other's expense. If X buys something from Y very cheaply, and then sells it to Z for a much higher price, Y could have made the sale directly to Z, and taken the profit himself. Is that X using Y merely as a means? I do not think it is, given that Y voluntarily enters into the contract. Rather, I would see it as co-operation. But in any case, the remedy would be to urge people to negotiate contracts in a reasonable way, not to forbid the free negotiation of commercial contracts.<br /><br />The second point is that of whether, behind the veil, people should take a chance on being on the used end of relationships of use merely as means, given that they might well turn out to be on the user end. Rawls, with his focus on the position of the worst-off, would say that if they were rational, they would not take that chance - although his concern was with objectionable outcomes, such as having to work too hard for too little reward, rather than with the objectionable logic of some relationships. Kant would, I think, say not merely that they should not take that chance, but that they were being something close to inconsistent if they both did take it, and thought they were creating a society in which all examples of the species homo sapiens would be accorded the status of persons.<br /><br />[Continued in the next comment, because of the limit on the number of characters in each comment]Richard Baronhttp://www.rbphilo.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-13004954677624313112013-04-26T15:24:32.409+01:002013-04-26T15:24:32.409+01:00Many thanks for your questions, Isabel. I need to ...Many thanks for your questions, Isabel. I need to stop and think about them, but I shall post a proper response within the next day or two.Richard Baronhttp://www.rbphilo.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-85875811824385819082013-04-26T14:45:59.205+01:002013-04-26T14:45:59.205+01:00Thank you for this thought-provoking thought exper...Thank you for this thought-provoking thought experiment. These are some of the questions it raises in my mind.<br /><br />Would the Kantian objection apply within the society imagined by Rawls? Is it valid to see people as being made use of for another's ends if they had an equal chance of benefitting if the positions had been reversed? Or is this co-operation?<br /><br />Should we view society through the 'veil of ignorance' or take into account personal circumstances?<br /><br />From the 'veil of ignorance' point of view, the changes to lifespan distribution apply equally to all and Rawls' deliberators would presumably have voted for them. Whether the changes are beneficial or adverse to any individual will depend on his or her personal circumstances, but this would then be a matter of being lucky or unlucky within a basically fair system. Someone has to draw the short straw.<br /><br />On the other hand, if we consider personal circumstances, we can argue that the potentially long-lived group are adversely affected. But if we start doing this, where do we stop? <br />a) The group in question only has a higher probability of longevity, based on current scientific knowledge; they do not have a guarantee of extra years. Is a probability enough to entitle them to special consideration? <br />b) The group is statistical and the definition will be somewhat arbitrary. Any number of statistical groups could be defined. There will be issues with cut-off points.<br />c) The definition of the group, and therefore its members, would change over time as science progresses. What if a longevity gene was to be discovered after the distribution of lifespans had been changed? Would its possessors have a valid claim for compensation?Isabelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-8381168698877593962013-04-03T22:54:16.140+01:002013-04-03T22:54:16.140+01:00Hello Isabel,
I think we agree. We should not aut...Hello Isabel,<br /><br />I think we agree. We should not automatically assume that the experts are right, even if they all agree amongst themselves. One way of putting my view, which would accommodate both your point, and my point about the global warming sceptics, would be to say that while we should not assume that the experts are right, we should also not claim that they are definitely wrong without good grounds. That still leaves plenty of scope to challenge the experts by pointing out weaknesses in their arguments and alternative interpretations of the evidence.<br /><br />You are also right that theories can start off as minority opinions. An excellent example from recent years has been Dan Shechtman's work on quasi-crystals. He faced considerable scepticism at first, but less than 30 years later, he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.Richard Baronhttp://www.rbphilo.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-15906872174954771092013-04-03T20:49:51.781+01:002013-04-03T20:49:51.781+01:00Isn't it dangerous to assume that the scientif...Isn't it dangerous to assume that the scientific consensus is always likely to be right? It seems to me that there are plenty of cases where it is not based on rigorous assessment of evidence but instead is dominated by received opinion, inertia, the establishment, special interests, politics, fashion, etc. A current example could be the consensus that sugar has no harmful effects on health. <br /><br />Surely every new theory is a minority opinion at the beginning, even if it is integrated into the consensus very quickly.<br /><br />The concept of a specific ethical failing of opposing a consensus sounds suspiciously like an obligation to agree with the majority, and I'm glad you reject it. The forces of conformity, even when apparently benign, are not entitled to unquestioning support. <br />Isabelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-15400486586560145562013-04-02T21:17:26.132+01:002013-04-02T21:17:26.132+01:00Ah, I see. That is the option I numbered 2, in my ...Ah, I see. That is the option I numbered 2, in my previous response. I agree that people can take that view, although as I indicated, there are quite a high proportion of jury trials in which they should not, because there is scope for reasonable disagreement.Richard Baronhttp://www.rbphilo.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-46602878680958698102013-04-02T20:09:03.767+01:002013-04-02T20:09:03.767+01:00I simply meant that if a person has decided that i...I simply meant that if a person has decided that it is not reasonable to hold a view then the fact that a person holds that view may lead them to conclude that that person is not reasonable!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-37869803486156516042013-04-02T17:39:05.952+01:002013-04-02T17:39:05.952+01:00Hello Joseph,
I am not sure of the precise nature...Hello Joseph,<br /><br />I am not sure of the precise nature of your concern.<br /><br />You might mean that I have got tangled in double negatives, and have said the opposite of what I meant, but having looked at the words again, I don't think that has happened.<br /><br />Alternatively, and I guess more probably, you might mean that there would, or could, be grounds to think that the dissenting jurors were not reasonable people. There are two options here.<br /><br />1. There might be general grounds to think that they were not reasonable people. Once someone had heard other jurors debate the evidence, he or she might well form an opinion as to whether each of the others was a reasonable person, based on how they argued, or on other remarks that they made. I agree that this could well happen in practice. I was, however, excluding this possibility by fiat, in order to see where the argument could go.<br /><br />2. The fact that they dissented could itself be taken as evidence of unreasonableness. There are some occasions when a single point of disagreement shows the dissenter to be unreasonable in the relevant field, and may cast doubt on their reasonableness more generally. Someone who thinks that the Earth is flat is unreasonable in geographical matters, and someone who rejects evolution is unreasonable in zoological matters. But if we consider jury trials, it will often be the case that there is scope for reasonable disagreement about what the prosecution has or has not proved. There may in practice be jurors who take the attitude of "If you disagree with me, then you are not just mistaken, but unreasonable". That would, however, itself often be an unreasonable attitude.Richard Baronhttp://www.rbphilo.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-55194784280562886382013-04-02T15:23:40.460+01:002013-04-02T15:23:40.460+01:00I am not sure that 'there is no ground to thin...I am not sure that 'there is no ground to think that they are not reasonable people' is correct. Joseph Templetonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-85640250030233995882013-03-08T16:10:07.859+00:002013-03-08T16:10:07.859+00:00I was really exploring my understanding of reasona...I was really exploring my understanding of reasonableness by comparing and contrasting the tax avoider and the narrator of Notes from Underground, who we discussed a few weeks ago. <br /><br />In both cases society appears to be obliging them to carry out a calculation of advantages in which their real desires are excluded from consideration, but on different grounds.<br /><br />With the man from Underground, society does not even acknowledge the existence of his dark desires - they are irrational so he cannot possibly have them. <br /><br />With the tax avoider, society considers his desire to be rational but illegitimate. It is he who wants a benefit from us so we can dictate the rules. Here, reasonableness seems to be more like fair play than anything to do with rationality.<br /><br />The concept of reasonableness seems to have many different aspects: here alone we've touched on evidence-based beliefs, consensus, calculation of benefits, fair play, and the legal concepts of the reasonable person and reasonable doubt. <br />Isabelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-31119202232291391262013-03-07T19:32:14.237+00:002013-03-07T19:32:14.237+00:00Hello Isabel. I think there are two ways of taking...Hello Isabel. I think there are two ways of taking your questions, as a matter of law and as a matter of ethics.<br /><br />As a matter of law, the norm in UK anti-tax-avoidance legislation is to catch someone out if the saving of tax was a main purpose of their actions (not necessarily the main purpose). There is no explicit comparison with alternative actions. That is, the legislation does not ask what was the purpose of preferring course of action X to courses of action Y or Z. But it is perfectly sensible to make comparisons with alternative courses of action, in order to work out why the taxpayer preferred X to Y and to Z, because that teases out the features of X which led to the choice. Once we have identified those features, they can point to particular purposes in choosing X. If, for example, the distinctive features of X were convoluted steps that would not have been taken if there were no tax system, it becomes easy to argue that the saving of tax was a main purpose of X, and to state that conclusion without mentioning Y or Z. The comparison gets us to the conclusion, but it is not part of the conclusion, so we can use the conclusion in order to apply legislation that does not mention comparisons with other actions.<br /><br />Turning to ethics, if someone chooses a course of action other than the one they would have chosen in the absence of a tax system, we can conclude that tax considerations motivate them. Would it be unreasonable to consider tax consequences? I think not. Tax reduces the money one has left for oneself, and it would be pretty harsh to say that one should not consider the amount of tax one will have to pay.<br /><br />Should we condemn someone who chooses a tax-saving course of action? I think that takes us back to the usual ethical questions about particular tax-saving schemes. Some, like arranging documentation and the timing of transactions carefully to make sure that one obtains a tax relief that Parliament probably intended to be available in the relevant circumstances, strike me as acceptable. Others, such as the contrived schemes that the Times has been exposing since June last year, strike me as wholly unacceptable, even if they are legal.Richard Baronhttp://www.rbphilo.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-4445123925937124122013-03-07T16:11:56.257+00:002013-03-07T16:11:56.257+00:00When considering a tax avoidance scheme, is it rel...When considering a tax avoidance scheme, is it relevant to consider other courses of action that the putative avoider could have taken? If there was another course of action that had more benefits in every respect except that of avoiding tax, and he was aware of this option, was it unreasonable of him not to choose it? <br /><br />Is he obliged to calculate the benefits of possible courses of action - excluding any tax avoidance benefits - and then choose one with a reasonable number of advantages? (Obviously the weightings given to the various benefits would be open to debate.) If he makes an irrational choice in terms of this calculation, do we then assume the motive must be tax avoidance?<br />Isabelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-4142554265264487642013-02-13T16:12:00.669+00:002013-02-13T16:12:00.669+00:00I think we would feel impelled to treat it as a mo...I think we would feel impelled to treat it as a moral client, even if we believed it wasn't. <br /><br />The ability to simulate human emotions, even in the most crude and limited way, seems to be enough to make us want to treat mechanisms as though they were moral clients. In Freedom Baird's experiment studying the ethical dilemma of apparently causing distress to a sociable robot, the participants had to hold a doll, a live gerbil and a Furby upside down for as long as they felt comfortable doing so. When turned over, the Furby started whining, moaning and saying it was scared. Most people felt guilty about the Furby within thirty seconds and had to turn it right way up again, although they were fully aware that it was a robot.Isabelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-67481468982945388282013-02-01T17:04:45.773+00:002013-02-01T17:04:45.773+00:00Thank you Isabel, that is interesting. If we look ...Thank you Isabel, that is interesting. If we look at it your way, and incorporate the distinction between what rational people would want and irrational desires, before considering what a particular individual (D, in my analysis) actually wants, that puts the whole thing in a different light. I would have to re-work the analysis, perhaps along these lines.<br /><br />There is a class, F, of advantages, broadly, the fulfilment of rational desires. Then there is a class, G, of disadvantages, broadly, the fulfilment of irrational desires. Any member of F, but no member of G, can appear in the recommendation that results from a rational computation. (Incorporating "any member of F" at this stage rules out the inclusion in F of something that cannot appear in the result, the option that I contemplated in my original post, as idle inclusion.)<br /><br />Then the fulfilment of a desire to act in defiance of the result of a rational computation cannot appear in F, because that desire could not be a rational desire. It could not be a rational desire, because the result of a rational computation is to go as far as possible in fulfilling rational desires, and all of the included fulfilments would be drawn from F. The fulfilments would not include any that were drawn from G, because it is irrational to pursue irrational goals. (If the result of the computation did include anything drawn from G, the agent could defy the result of the computation by not acting to achieve some fulfilment that was drawn from G. And that would be a rational way to act, because it is rational not to pursue irrational goals.)<br /><br />The fulfilment of a desire to act in defiance of the result of a rational computation must therefore appear in G, if it appears anywhere.<br /><br />So your distinction between rational and irrational goals makes the analysis more straightforward. There is no need to contemplate iterations that gradually eliminate all desires apart from the incoherent one.Richard Baronhttp://www.rbphilo.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-56093393044898943572013-02-01T16:30:42.781+00:002013-02-01T16:30:42.781+00:00I think Dostoevsky sees this model of decision-mak...I think Dostoevsky sees this model of decision-making - the careful computation of advantage - as being inherently limited to choices that the rational person would accept as beneficial, "the obligation to want only what is sensible". The gratification of the narrator's masochistic desires could not therefore appear in the set of advantages because Dostoevsky's rational person would not see degradation and humiliation as benefits.Isabelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-73996686158855904092012-12-24T11:46:17.540+00:002012-12-24T11:46:17.540+00:00I was delighted to make the discovery of "mer...I was delighted to make the discovery of "mereology". I thought at first it might be a nonce-word of dismissiveness or reductionism, like "nothing-but-ism". Vincenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-14273503167278135532012-11-07T18:22:50.397+00:002012-11-07T18:22:50.397+00:00I think you could say something like this.
Some c...I think you could say something like this.<br /><br />Some course of action will cost each of our citizens 5 units, but will benefit each citizen in some other country 3 units.<br /><br />Our country has 60 million people, and the other country has 190 million people.<br /><br />If you did not weight citizens differently, you would adopt the course of action, because the cost would be 300 million units but the benefit would be 570 million units.<br /><br />If you weighted your own citizens twice as heavily as the citizens of the other country, you would not adopt the course of action, because the cost would be 600 million units and the benefit would be 570 million units.<br /><br />The big difficulty is to get those numbers of cost and benefit, the 5 units and the 3 units, in the first place. That is one for the economists and the psychologists to work on, using methods like conjoint analysis.Richard Baronhttp://www.rbphilo.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-34503526212280158682012-11-07T15:58:54.927+00:002012-11-07T15:58:54.927+00:00How do you express an interest in a number ?
Can ...How do you express an interest in a number ? <br />Can you give an example ? <br /><br />What works is a vote of mature citizens or subjects who vote for or against a particular decision. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-92100245847756008862012-10-29T20:21:15.166+00:002012-10-29T20:21:15.166+00:00I do not think it need be a question of scholarshi...I do not think it need be a question of scholarship, what one calls areas. Ideally, one should use labels that identify the right areas, and that do not skew scholarly discussion. Thus to take the example of Korea, one might wish to refer to the Korean peninsula if that was the area meant, or to South Korea if that country corresponded, at least nearly enough, to the area meant. (Of course, one would use the names of the political units if that was what one wanted to pick out.)<br /><br />The important thing, from the point of view of scholarship, is that political, ethnic or religious sensitivities should never be allowed to stand in the way of reporting the evidence, and the interpretation one wishes to put on it.Richard Baronhttp://www.rbphilo.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-66409591972428581362012-10-29T20:04:36.677+00:002012-10-29T20:04:36.677+00:00But is it a question of scholarship whether you di...But is it a question of scholarship whether you distinguish between North and South Korea and call the Tibetan Plaeau simply Tibet ? <br /><br />Or is it a question of taking sides with one or other political view ? Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055583406917680385.post-89973322735116880822012-09-05T07:10:48.515+01:002012-09-05T07:10:48.515+01:00Atlas Shrugged Part 2 will be in theaters October ...Atlas Shrugged Part 2 will be in theaters October 12th, 2012.Jayemelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17427813131123839074noreply@blogger.com