What's wrong with politics ?

1234568

Comments

  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    Russ: Because there seems a potential contradiction in asserting that totalitarianism is objectively morally bad and also that objective morality is inherently totalitarian...

    ISTM that the only place where morality is objective and where totalitarianism is a desirable fact is the Kingdom of Heaven where God is the author.

    To my mind, the objection to totalitarian societies rests less on the claim that they are intrinsically bad as opposed to liberal democracies being intrinsically good, but that experience suggest closed societies are less congenial than open ones.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    Russ wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Russ wrote: »
    I think you're confusing the proposition "no laws are morally legitimate" with the proposition "not all laws are morally legitimate"

    I don’t think I am, because you regularly make blanket statements until someone forces you to roll back to a more qualified version after pointing out that logically you’ve proposed that no-one should be forced to go against their own individual views.

    I'm saying that forcing someone to go against their own views is something that is inherently contrary to the Golden Rule (I.e. not something that you would want done to you).

    Well you're wrong then. Because that isn't what the Golden Rule says.

    I'm literally wondering at this point whether you have ever, ever been an employee. Or had a boss of any kind. Because you're essentially suggesting that being someone's boss is somehow immoral or at the very least creates moral quandaries.

    Similarly, I'm genuinely wondering whether you've ever been a parent. I know you've been a child, but I'm speculating that you really hated it.

  • RussRuss Shipmate
    orfeo wrote: »
    ...you're essentially suggesting that being someone's boss is somehow immoral or at the very least creates moral quandaries.
    Becoming someone's boss means taking on the moral duty not to be the sort of boss you wouldn't want to have...

    Maybe you're the sort of parent who can say "because I say so" without a lurking sense of moral failure ?
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    Russ wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    ...you're essentially suggesting that being someone's boss is somehow immoral or at the very least creates moral quandaries.
    Becoming someone's boss means taking on the moral duty not to be the sort of boss you wouldn't want to have...

    Maybe you're the sort of parent who can say "because I say so" without a lurking sense of moral failure ?

    You're not a parent are you?

    Parents say that when there is either insufficient time for a full explanation, or where a full explanation would be a waste of breath, mental energy and precious dwindling stocks of sanity, or (usually) both.

    I suspect a similar dynamic can arise in employee/employer relationships. Hell, I'd prefer not to use our change management process. My view is that it's a crock but I have to go against that view all the time.

    Some of the Field Service engineers probably have a similar dim view of my network printer installation protocols.
  • Whereas being on the bottom rung of the institutional ladder I dream of having a change management process to stem the tide of constant changes.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Dafyd said:
    Again you're eliding the difference between 'objective morality' and 'claiming to know what objective morality is'. In any case in which there is moral disagreement we do not know beyond reasonable doubt what the objectively moral answer is.

    Not sure that distinction does what you want it to do.

    If you're saying that Doc Tor isn't a totalitarian for believing slavery is wrong, but is a totalitarian for believing that he knows that slavery is wrong, he won't be impressed.

    I think you're positing that objective morality exists but our knowledge of it is partial.

    I'd like to think that after discussing a moral issue with you my partial knowledge is a little more complete - one small step closer to full knowledge.

    But if full knowledge is totalitarian and that's bad, then that might be a small step in the wrong direction.

    Knowledge, ISTM, is inherently non-democratic. And knowledge is a good thing. Because democratic is only a good thing in a limited sphere; a safeguard against a minority coercing a majority.

    And totalitarian and undemocratic aren't quite the same thing, despite the common division of the world into democratic societies and totalitarian ones.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    Russ wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    ...you're essentially suggesting that being someone's boss is somehow immoral or at the very least creates moral quandaries.
    Becoming someone's boss means taking on the moral duty not to be the sort of boss you wouldn't want to have...

    Maybe you're the sort of parent who can say "because I say so" without a lurking sense of moral failure ?

    Maybe if you'd paid any attention over the years you'd be fairly confident I'm not a parent.

    The problem with your notion of what sort of boss you want to have is that it in no way involves thinking about what sort of employee you ought to be.

    Seriously. Any number of conversations with my boss about how I personally would want to do things never happen because I know perfectly damn well there's no reason why my personal way of doing things should take precedence over the way the boss wants things done. That's the nature of the relationship. That's a big part of what having a boss means.

    There are undoubtedly things I would rather do differently. Fairly little things, generally. But I don't waste everybody's time constantly arguing for a change in the way things are done just because I'm being 'forced' / required to do things in a way other than the way I personally want.

    And then of course there's the fact that I work for the government, and fundamentally my job is about implementing government policy. Not my policy. And yes, there ARE aspects of my job that involve saying in some form or other "seriously, you want me do what?". But at the end of the day, if the answer is loud and clear that yes, that's what the government wants - even if we put it on record that the advice we've given is that's it's a really bad idea - the job involves doing what the government wants.

    It's the very essence of the employment relationship that there's someone else who ultimately makes the policy decisions. And it seems you can't handle that notion. That's not a question about whether you'd make a bad boss. It's a question about whether you'd make a really lousy employee.

    I'm actually paid rather good money because of my brain and my capacity to say "hang on a minute" and challenge the instructions I get. But that's fundamentally different to an attitude of suggesting it's morally wrong to make me execute instructions I don't agree with. Every public servant is expected to do what the government wants, and that's really no different to any company expecting its employees to operate in line with company policy.
  • The reason I think slavery is wrong is because I have empathy with the testimony of slaves: I don't want anyone to be a slave, and don't want to be a slave myself, so agitate for anti-slavery legislation.

    Whether there is any external morality which says slavery is either permissible or forbidden is immaterial to my opinion.
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate

    Russ, I'm having great difficulty in following your line of argument largely because the various elements don't seem to cohere; nor do I see where you want to get to.

    Your major concern is with morality, which you regard as objective and knowable to a high degree through discussion and argument. (Aquinas would see this as natural law discovered through the exercise of right reason).

    You think it is the duty of governments to be moral, and should pass laws which promote known (to all intents and purposes) objective morality.

    You are against coercion because it is immoral, so that obedience to the moral course is a consequence of persuasive argument.

    You are critical of democratic processes because they lead to decisions that are not necessarily in accordance with known objective moral principles.

    From your perspective you are right to be critical of liberal democratic processes because they are bargained outcomes reflecting the self and group interests and conflicting values of those involved. Democracy is not a suitable method for enforcing moral norms, and is arguably less likely to enforce them than authoritarian (including totalitarian) systems. So, where do you, Russ, propose we go from here?

    Your difficulty, ISTM, lies in your objection to coercion, because the logical outcome of your position is that morality should be enforced by government whatever the opinion of the citizens. Experience suggests that results in moral societies employing more egregious forms of coercion than immoral democracies. Doesn't that leave you with a major problem?

    It would be a great, great, great help, Russ, if you could indicate where you want to get to. Is that at all possible?

  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Russ wrote: »
    Knowledge, ISTM, is inherently non-democratic. And knowledge is a good thing.
    It's funny how you don't mention the concept or fact of disagreement, when that features prominently in the post to which you respond.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    orfeo wrote: »
    Russ wrote: »
    Becoming someone's boss means taking on the moral duty not to be the sort of boss you wouldn't want to have...?
    The problem with your notion of what sort of boss you want to have is that it in no way involves thinking about what sort of employee you ought to be.
    The irony here is that not so long ago Russ was arguing that an employer has the right to demand an employee's compliance with instructions regardless of the employee's moral beliefs and if an employer tells them to do something immoral the employee must either comply or resign. Now Russ is arguing that an employer has a moral duty to respect their employees' moral beliefs.
    Russ' beliefs are basically determined by whichever side he sympathises with at the moment.



  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    The reason I think slavery is wrong is because I have empathy with the testimony of slaves: I don't want anyone to be a slave, and don't want to be a slave myself, so agitate for anti-slavery legislation.

    Whether there is any external morality which says slavery is either permissible or forbidden is immaterial to my opinion.
    The idea that the result of empathy with the testimony of slaves is immaterial to the question of external morality seems to me peculiar.

    As a rhetorical strategy asserting the immateriality of external morality seems to me as if one should respond to Johnson's £350 million for the NHS by questioning whether the NHS is a good thing.
  • It strikes me as not peculiar at all. If someone is proposing to spend £350m on bags of glitter to keep Britain fabulous, questioning whether glitter is the most appropriate way to spend public money is entirely cromulant, as is a debate as to whether the desire to be fabulous is entirely necessary.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    I do not think your analogy corresponds to the argument at the points at which I think my analogy corresponds to the argument.

    In this case, the point of my analogy was that Johnson's plan is not going to benefit the NHS, is in fact going to harm the NHS, and Johnson is planning to sell the NHS out anyway.
  • I think we've gone down an analogy hole. We should be able to talk about the thing.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Kwesi wrote: »
    It would be a great, great, great help, Russ, if you could indicate where you want to get to. Is that at all possible?

    Sorry, Kwesi. I'm not being deliberately obscure here.

    I started from the question "what's wrong with politics". The notion that office politics is a bad thing, and politicians are the people we all love to despise ( as the last few posts demonstrate).

    I think it was TurquoiseTastic who put forward the best answer, which is that office politics are bad insofar as they distort the criteria for decision-making.

    And we saw that same sort of distortion at work with the suggestion that Pol Pot (or the other guy) wasn't bad because of what he did, he was bad because he wasn't democratically elected.

    And maybe we love raising two fingers to politicians because they have power over us that we'd really rather they didn't have.

    My libertarian side is opposed to anyone having the power to dictate to anybody else. In a sense where I'd really like to get to is a curtailing of the power of government. A robust notion that X, Y and Z is what government is for, and that everyone consents to being governed for these purposes, but that any coercion outside of that has not been consented to and is therefore morally illegitimate.

    Or else a rigorous argument as to why no such understanding can ever be reached.
    Kwesi wrote: »
    You think it is the duty of governments to be moral, and should pass laws which promote known (to all intents and purposes) objective morality.

    You are against coercion because it is immoral, so that obedience to the moral course is a consequence of persuasive argument.

    Close. I am positing that coercion is the essence of immorality. That the use of power is justified only by consent or to prevent a worse coercion. If a highwayman is robbing travellers I want him prevented. And see that as part of the core function of the state.
    You are critical of democratic processes because they lead to decisions that are not necessarily in accordance with known objective moral principles.
    Yes. When I see governments banning X because that ban is popular rather than because there is anything morally wrong with X, that seems to me an abuse of power. When I see governments raising taxes in order to accumulate a surplus that they will then use to do popular things as election time approaches, I see that as an abuse of power.
    Democracy is not a suitable method for enforcing moral norms, and is arguably less likely to enforce them than authoritarian (including totalitarian) systems.

    There's a sense in which any dictator is more likely to act according to coherent and consistent principles, yes. But authoritarian generally denotes a willingness to use power to coerce others to one's own will.

    The plus side of democracy is that any legal mechanism that an elected politician puts in place is likely to be used by their political opponents in the next round of the electoral cycle and the politician knows it.
    Experience suggests that results in moral societies employing more egregious forms of coercion than immoral democracies.
    I'd like to see the sense of that sentence overturned by a more widespread understanding of coercion as inherently wrong and moral conduct being more about avoiding such wrongs and less about whatever else you think it means.
  • I always have a little smile when I hear libertarians bang on about how important property rights are compared with human rights. As if they don't want to disabuse us of the idea that libertarianism is the right to choose which ditch to die in.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Nah - you have to pay the owner of the ditch for the right to die in it.
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    Russ: I am positing that coercion is the essence of immorality. That the use of power is justified only by consent or to prevent a worse coercion. If a highwayman is robbing travellers I want him prevented. And see that as part of the core function of the state.

    Thank you for your extensive reply to my request for clarification. It deserves a considered response.

    I must confess to having a problem with your proposition that "coercion is the essence of immorality." ISTM that the essence of immorality is selfish surrender to the gratification of individual and group desires, if not unrestrained vices, without consideration given to the impact on others. In some cases such actions are wilful and at other times committed in ignorance.

    [I wonder, too, whether your highwayman would not be justified if he was robbing rapacious land and factory owners or proprietors of slave plantations, and distributing the proceeds to their exploited tenants and workers. In which case you would, presumably, argue for the destruction of the state they constructed to protect their nefarious interests. Your argument looks too utilitarian for my taste!]
    Russ: My libertarian side is opposed to anyone having the power to dictate to anybody else. In a sense where I'd really like to get to is a curtailing of the power of government. A robust notion that X, Y and Z is what government is for, and that everyone consents to being governed for these purposes, but that any coercion outside of that has not been consented to and is therefore morally illegitimate.

    There is nothing particularly libertarian about this confession. What you are stating is a pretty standard defence of the rule of law: that the exercise of power and authority should subject to agreed laws and procedures. I doubt that any of your critics in these posts would disagree that coercion outside those parameters would be neither legally nor morally justified. Why coercion within those parameters might be considered the "essence of immorality" escapes me.

    The problem with libertarianism is that a libertarian believes an individual ought to be free to pursue his/her desires without interference, coercion, from society or the state. In reality that leads to anarchy, a state of constant war, in which the strong (physically, mentally, and so on, depending on context) coerce the weak to the point of destruction. Political societies are welcomed because they impose an order to make possible a peaceful conduct of human affairs through commerce, trade, education, encouragement of the arts, and recreation, underpinned by coercion. It is the absence of political society rather than its presence in which negative passions are given permission to express their impious objectives. Of course, you are correct to highlight abuses of power in political activity, but none here would dispute much of your evidence, but to pretend the absence of politics and politicians would make for a more moral world, ISTM, is profoundly mistaken.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Russ wrote: »
    I am positing that coercion is the essence of immorality. That the use of power is justified only by consent or to prevent a worse coercion.
    Coercion is the essence of immorality. The essence of immorality is coercion and intentionally doing other people down. The two essences of immorality are coercion, intentionally doing other people down, and breaking a contract. The three essences of immorality...

    That sounds like consequentialism to me: there is no evil (coercion) you won't commit or think justified if it will prevent more evil (coercion).

    Given your opposition to democratic socialist policies as a form of coercion, I find it disturbing that you are apparently saying that any lesser degree of coercion is permissible if necessary to prevent them from being implemented.

    I'll note that neither the golden rule nor the tao limit immorality to coercion in the way that you posit. So the proposal is revisionist.

    But even if we accept the premise on its own terms, the concept of coercion is being used in rather elastic ways. The basic definition of coercion is threatening physical force to make somebody else perform an action. Now many instances of murder do not meet that definition: the deceased is not being made to perform any action. Likewise, a scam artist isn't using physical force. A burglar is neither using physical force on the body nor compelling any action. Now I presume Russ believes all three are immoral, so he must be using 'coercion' in a rather loose sense. The problem with using a term in such a loose sense is that the definition can be expanded or contracted in an unprincipled fashion to condemn or approve actions, where the speaker's real grounds for condemnation or approval, possibly not acknowledged even by themselves, are other than that they are professing.

  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    Russ: I am positing that coercion is the essence of immorality. That the use of power is justified only by consent or to prevent a worse coercion. If a highwayman is robbing travellers I want him prevented. And see that as part of the core function of the state.

    Permit me to return to this quotation, Russ. Is the argument that the greater the coercion the greater the immorality, so that where a lesser coercion is used to negate or prevent a greater coercion it is a morally justified act? Is that not odd? Surely, the actions of a highwayman in robbing his victims is intrinsically wrong irrespective of the degree of force employed, though the offence may be compounded by the use of violent compulsion. Furthermore, restraining the highwayman may well, (probably would), necessitate a greater use of coercion than that used by or available to the robber himself. Most people would have no problem with that, and would not consider it a greater immorality than the crime itself. Indeed, its employment would not be considered at all immoral. You can have an argument as to what the parameters of state action should be, but to suggest that the use of coercion in law enforcement somehow damns the realisation of those boundaries seems bizarre. You are in danger of suggesting that the forces which defeated Hitler were less morally justified in their actions than the dictator because his instruments of coercion were less than theirs.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Dafyd wrote: »
    The basic definition of coercion is threatening physical force to make somebody else perform an action. Now many instances of murder do not meet that definition: the deceased is not being made to perform any action. Likewise, a scam artist isn't using physical force. A burglar is neither using physical force on the body nor compelling any action. Now I presume Russ believes all three are immoral, so he must be using 'coercion' in a rather loose sense.
    Fair comment. My starting point was "consent justifies all". So I'm using "coerce" for want of a better word that wraps up both "doing things to people that they don't consent to" and "making people do things that they don't consent to".

    The highwayman and the burglar and the conman achieve the same robbery by different means. Seems to me entirely reasonable to restrict "coerce" to the highwayman. If you can tell me what word I should be using to denote the involuntariness of the transaction in all cases.

    Given that I want to acknowledge that someone might conceivably consent to being told a pack of socially-acceptable lies in order to separate them from their hard-earned cash....
    Kwesi wrote: »
    What you are stating is a pretty standard defence of the rule of law: that the exercise of power and authority should subject to agreed laws and procedures.
    Think I'm going beyond that. The word "agreed" does too much work in that sentence - who has agreed on what ? To what has an individual consented ?

    When various people at different times and places have used the powers of the state to murder or torture or rob, does the consent of other people to the procedures that put those people's hands on the levers of power justify the action ?
    ... to pretend the absence of politics and politicians would make for a more moral world, ISTM, is profoundly mistaken.
    I'm not actually arguing for any alternative to politicians. Just initially a clearer understanding of what's bad about them. In the expectation or hope that what such an understanding might lead to is that their sphere of activity be limited.
  • Consent does not justify all. If you're against coercion, then you're going to have to put an awful lot of nuance and caveats in that. Otherwise, you're proposing that consent of unequals is the same as the consent of equals, and we know that's not true, or wise, or wanted.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Consent can be used for everything from eager collaboration to acquiescence at sword point. (William the Conqueror claimed that Harold Godwinson swore allegiance to him as future king of England while his 'guest' in Normandy.) Consent to one course of action is often only relative to other available options. Unconstrained consent may justify a lot, but in the real world consent is often constrained somehow.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    I was wondering, Doc, how far your objection to slavery and my objection to non-consensual transactions spring from a common root. Is this the same impulse viewed through two different lenses ?

    Is it meaningful to talk of consensual slavery and ask whether this is OK ? Or is that a tangent too far ?
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    If you're against coercion, then you're going to have to put an awful lot of nuance and caveats in that. Otherwise, you're proposing that consent of unequals is the same as the consent of equals, and we know that's not true, or wise, or wanted.

    What people are not your equals, that you claim the right to invalidate their consent ?

  • "Consensual slavery" is something that exists within lifestyle BDSM communities. The key point is that consent is ongoing, and even then it's a fraught issue and prone to abuse. Treating consent as a one-off that once given cannot be revoked is hugely problematic and leads to justifying marital rape, among other things.
  • Again, we're back to the 'freedom' that libertarians promote: the right to choose which ditch to die in (and as @Dafyd points out, even that might be in a privately-owned ditch for which you'll have to pay for your corpse to occupy).

    If you offer a starving person food in return for whatever conditions you set, is that coercion or consent? I know which I would think.
  • @OP "what's wrong with politics ?"

    It's the politicians who think that they know things but as ignorant, and have limited concepts of evidence-based decision making. Who respond to arguments not data. We can blame their professions- most frequently lawyers. Thus we have pandemic responses that think it's health versus economy, climate responses that seek to balance environmental disaster also with economy.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
    edited November 2020
    I always liked Jim Wallis’s understanding. He talks about wind testers and wind changers. Because politicians need votes then will always be prone to projecting what they or their party will go down well with the electorate. Essentially he likened the process to licking fingers, sticking them in the air and testing which way the wind is blowing.

    On the other hand there are a few who operate out of conviction that whatever the current of public opinion may be, simply following it is insufficient for the challenges. Such folks he described as wind changers. Able to persuade by words and deeds that things need to change.

    It’s well known in the UK that Sir Humphrey (Yes Prime Miniser) showed up the politicians dilemma in these terms. “Far-sighted policies will only lose you the next election. Far-sighted and courageous policies will not only lose you the next election but also the one after that”.

    Politicians have been described as uncommon people will common opinions. I guess the problem they have always faced is that being far-sighted and courageous doesn’t fit all that well into the role.
  • "Consensual slavery" is something that exists within lifestyle BDSM communities.

    Despite use of the term, it's not slavery. More like the pretense of slavery.
    The key point is that consent is ongoing, and even then it's a fraught issue and prone to abuse.

    This seems to misunderstand the concept of slavery. If you can quit, you're not a slave.
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    Russ: I'm not actually arguing for any alternative to politicians. Just initially a clearer understanding of what's bad about them. In the expectation or hope that what such an understanding might lead to is that their sphere of activity be limited.

    ISTM that most, if not all, of the contributors to these posts could agree with your propositions: that political society is desirable, that like other human beings politicians are flawed, and it is, therefore, a good thing for politicians to be constrained by the rule of law. That being the case a measure of coercion is required to enforce legally enacted legislation, and to defend the boundaries you are anxious, Russ, to defend.

    The area of disagreement between us is over the extent to which a government has a right to interfere in social and individual activities, and whether those boundaries are determined and revised pragmatically by a polity to suite itself or whether there are principles external to it, (God's laws or natural rights), that trump and limit the legitimacy of any proposed culture-bound constitutional arrangements.

    Your remarks about the desirability of restraining highwaymen would seem to indicate you have abandoned the proposition that "coercion is the essence of immorality", if by that you meant coercion is essentially immoral. If you have, indeed, removed your assertion re coercion it would remove an unwelcome culture-de-sac in our discussion. (That does not preclude, however, a discussion on what might be considered proper and improper methods of coercion, and the justification of their use in various contexts).

    I wonder, too, whether we need to sort out how considerations of 'morality' relate to the discussion on the failings of politics. To my mind the activity of politics is no more intrinsically good or evil than any other necessary or inevitable social activity. Given that individuals and societies function within the context of original sin, for want of a better phrase to characterise the human condition, immoral behaviour is to be found in any context, even, believe it nor not, within ecclesiastical structures. So, too, in most contexts is the desire to do good. The problem is to create structures and processes that promote the better rather than the worse. Whatever we opt for will have some negative consequences, but it is also the case that some will have more immoral outcomes than others. In your view, Russ, the libertarian approach is more preferable than others, and you are perfectly entitled to promote it. Perhaps that would be a good starting point on which to focus the argument after so much verbiage on all sides, including my own.


  • The US response to the pandemic is revealing libertarianism for the psychopathology it is. If actions to prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands of citizens are held to be reprehensible according to your ideology, then there is something fundamentally wrong with that ideology because it is driving citizens to expect their government to collude in their killing when measures with comparatively litle real impact, such as the wearing of masks, would reduce the chances of their death significantly. It's all a matter of probability and chance, rather than cast-iron proof, but if your ideology can't cope with that either, this is further proof of its status as infantile nonsense.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Kwesi wrote: »
    ISTM that most, if not all, of the contributors to these posts could agree with your propositions: that political society is desirable, that like other human beings politicians are flawed, and it is, therefore, a good thing for politicians to be constrained by the rule of law.

    Society is desirable; whether it is desirable that it should be more-political or less-political is part of the question in the OP.

    Whilst it's no bad thing for the executive power to be constrained by the law, where the executive commands a majority of the legislative body through the party system, that isn't an effective constraint.

    A more effective constraint applies when the law is subject to the constitution and the constitution can only be changed by referendum.

    If what people believe that it is morally legitimate for them to vote for in a referendum is constrained by an understanding of moral rights, then we're getting somewhere.
    The area of disagreement between us is over the extent to which a government has a right to interfere in social and individual activities, and whether those boundaries are determined and revised pragmatically by a polity to suite itself or whether there are principles external to it, (God's laws or natural rights), that trump and limit the legitimacy of any proposed culture-bound constitutional arrangements.

    Yes. And maybe we're all too quick to assert natural rights in our defence against what those nasty people over there want to do (note to self - do not mention death camps) while denying that natural rights constrain our own ideas of how the world should be.
    Your remarks about the desirability of restraining highwaymen would seem to indicate you have abandoned the proposition that "coercion is the essence of immorality", if by that you meant coercion is essentially immoral.
    I see no contradiction in saying that killing people is inherently wrong but allowable in self-defence. Or in applying a similar argument to coercion. But maybe that's tangential to the main point, which is as you've summarised above.

  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Russ wrote: »
    Seems to me entirely reasonable to restrict "coerce" to the highwayman. If you can tell me what word I should be using to denote the involuntariness of the transaction in all cases.
    This is, not for the first time, as if you were to ask what we should do about witches who sell their souls to the devil and work black magic on their neighbours, and then upon it being pointed out that there are no such thing as witches, you respond by agreeing as long as we can tell you what word we should be using to denote the phenomenon of people using black magic that you've identified.

    You claim that there is some single essence of wrongdoing that applies to all three cases. It's not the job of those of us who believe that there is no such single essence of wrongdoing to try to suggest a word for such a thing. It's up to you to establish the point.


  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Dafyd wrote: »
    Consent can be used for everything from eager collaboration to acquiescence at sword point.
    That there is a spectrum of responses from enthusiastic agreement through toleration and fatalism and reluctance to outright refusal seems clearly true. Without that undermining the notion of consent.

    We can reasonably think it a wrongful act to compel someone to marry a suitor they reject, while recognising that down the ages many women have married under some level of pressure of circumstances. For financial security, or to escape a difficult situation in the family home.

    The villain of Victorian melodrama who seeks to wed the heroine by threatening to ruin her father if she does not deserves to be hissed and booed off the stage. The hero who declares that if she marries him there will always be a place for her destitute father in their family home does not. Even if to a particular mindset they're both offering much the same trade-off.

    The distinction between doing someone down and choosing not to help them (in a world in which one can always find someone else to help) is an important one.

  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    Dafyd wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Russ wrote: »
    Becoming someone's boss means taking on the moral duty not to be the sort of boss you wouldn't want to have...?
    The problem with your notion of what sort of boss you want to have is that it in no way involves thinking about what sort of employee you ought to be.
    The irony here is that not so long ago Russ was arguing that an employer has the right to demand an employee's compliance with instructions regardless of the employee's moral beliefs and if an employer tells them to do something immoral the employee must either comply or resign. Now Russ is arguing that an employer has a moral duty to respect their employees' moral beliefs.
    Russ' beliefs are basically determined by whichever side he sympathises with at the moment.



    I think I'm officially giving up on expecting coherency from him. Arguing is the thing.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Dafyd wrote: »
    You claim that there is some single essence of wrongdoing that applies to all three cases. It's not the job of those of us who believe that there is no such single essence of wrongdoing to try to suggest a word for such a thing. It's up to you to establish the point.

    What's your difficulty here ?

    I've put "consent justifies all" on the table as a premise. And suggested that under that premise there is no wrong in you handing over a chunk of your worldly wealth to someone provided that you fully consent to do so (and they fully consent to receive it). So that the undoubted wrongs committed by the highwayman, the burglar and the conman can all be seen as different forms of acting as if they had your full consent (to take your property) when they do not.

    One takes advantage of your absence to rob by stealth, one coerces (in the strict sense) you to hand over your valuables, and one deceives you into giving consent to a different transaction than the one which is actually happening.

    Seems obvious to me that you do not need three separate Commandments to prohibit these three crimes, because they are all manifestations of a single essence of wrongdoing. Which is to treat you as something less than a person whose consent or lack of consent is to be respected.

    You may of course accept the logic but deny the truth of the premise...
  • "consent justifies all" contains within it "taking advantage", because of course it does. It's an nonsensical axiom.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Russ wrote: »
    I've put "consent justifies all" on the table as a premise. And suggested that under that premise there is no wrong in you handing over a chunk of your worldly wealth to someone provided that you fully consent to do so (and they fully consent to receive it). So that the undoubted wrongs committed by the highwayman, the burglar and the conman can all be seen as different forms of acting as if they had your full consent (to take your property) when they do not.
    You're confusing (full) consent is sufficient to justify anything with (full) consent is necessary to justify anything.
    You're also assuming that the premise tht (full) consent can makes an action that would otherwise wrong be right implies that what is wrong about the action that would otherwise be wrong is that there is no consent. Saying that consent overrides considerations that would make the action morally wrong is not at all the same as saying that there are no considerations that make the action morally wrong beyond lack of consent.
    That there is a spectrum of responses from enthusiastic agreement through toleration and fatalism and reluctance to outright refusal seems clearly true. Without that undermining the notion of consent.
    It certainly does undermine the notion that there is a certain level of consent sufficient of itself to determine whether an action is moral or immoral. To put it another way, the word 'fully' in the second post is ruling most of the difficulty out of consideration.




  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    Russ: The distinction between doing someone down and choosing not to help them (in a world in which one can always find someone else to help) is an important one.

    I'm not entirely sure of the general thrust of your argument, but it seems odd to claim that sins of omission are less culpable than those of commission. Perhaps I should re-read the parable of the Good Samaritan. I guess it's that my neighbour is someone else's responsibility.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    "consent justifies all" contains within it "taking advantage", because of course it does. It's an nonsensical axiom.

    Taking advantage would be an act like charging more for ice cream in hot weather.

    What's wrong with that, in a society where all the potential purchasers of ice cream have no problem with it ? Not convinced that's a valid counter example.

    But if you take a virtue ethics approach, being the sort of person who would take advantage of another's misfortune does seem like a bad thing. But then by focusing on the character of the person, virtue ethics arguably rules out anybody else's consent as a determining factor. Would a virtue ethicist politely decline to join AreThoseMyFeet's BDSM group because inflicting pain isn't something a virtuous person would do ?
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Kwesi wrote: »
    it seems odd to claim that sins of omission are less culpable than those of commission. Perhaps I should re-read the parable of the Good Samaritan. I guess it's that my neighbour is someone else's responsibility.

    I see nothing odd in claiming that helping someone who is your particular responsibility (perhaps because he is tied to you by a bond of friendship) is a stronger duty than helping someone who is not. And if wrongs of omission of particular responsibilities are equivalent to wrongs of commission, then it follows that other wrongs of omission are not.

    If A = B and B > C then A > C.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Dafyd wrote: »
    Saying that consent overrides considerations that would make the action morally wrong is not at all the same as saying that there are no considerations that make the action morally wrong beyond lack of consent.

    Can you explain how consent could over-ride considerations other than lack of consent ?

    Seems to me that if for example you consider blasphemy to be inherently wrong, then it does not become OK just because your listener consents to it. Whereas if you see blasphemy purely as a matter of offending your listener, then their consent removes that wrong. Because treating them as a person like oneself means allowing them to choose whether what they gain from listening to you on that particular subject is worth whatever feelings of offence your words may evoke.


  • Russ wrote: »
    Doc Tor wrote: »
    "consent justifies all" contains within it "taking advantage", because of course it does. It's an nonsensical axiom.

    Taking advantage would be an act like charging more for ice cream in hot weather.

    What's wrong with that, in a society where all the potential purchasers of ice cream have no problem with it ? Not convinced that's a valid counter example.

    But if you take a virtue ethics approach, being the sort of person who would take advantage of another's misfortune does seem like a bad thing. But then by focusing on the character of the person, virtue ethics arguably rules out anybody else's consent as a determining factor. Would a virtue ethicist politely decline to join AreThoseMyFeet's BDSM group because inflicting pain isn't something a virtuous person would do ?

    But we're not talking about ice cream, are we? We're talking about economic coercion dressed up as the free market.

    And yes: you realise that under UK law, you cannot consent to an assault that causes harm. There's a lot of talk about the defence of consent in so-called 'rough sex' crimes, where perpetrators have literally got away with murder. This is where your 'consent justifies all' ends up, and it's abhorrent.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Russ wrote: »
    Dafyd wrote: »
    Saying that consent overrides considerations that would make the action morally wrong is not at all the same as saying that there are no considerations that make the action morally wrong beyond lack of consent.

    Can you explain how consent could over-ride considerations other than lack of consent ?

    Seems to me that if for example you consider blasphemy to be inherently wrong, then it does not become OK just because your listener consents to it. Whereas if you see blasphemy purely as a matter of offending your listener, then their consent removes that wrong. Because treating them as a person like oneself means allowing them to choose whether what they gain from listening to you on that particular subject is worth whatever feelings of offence your words may evoke.
    This post is wrong or at least idiosyncratic about morality in so many ways that I'm not going to pick up on everything I disagree with.
    However, I note that even in the course of an example that seems specially selected to support your position, you say 'removes that wrong' - thereby you posit that there is a wrong due to offending your listener: that the wrong as you see it consists in offending one's listener and not in the lack of consent. So that consent overrides or removes (same difference for present purposes) a consideration other than lack of consent.


  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    I continue to have difficulty is detecting where the various arguments are intending to lead. ISTM that 'consent' in the constitutional context is not about the need for individual consent to each piece of legislation or administrative action but to a general consent to be governed within a particular constitutional framework, which in liberal democracies includes procedures to amend the terms when required.
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    Doc Tor: But we're not talking about ice cream, are we? We're talking about economic coercion dressed up as the free market.

    I'm feeling a bit like Doc that we are skirting around the central purpose. I may be mistaken, but ISTM that Russ is inviting us to regard the state as a Highwayman who through taxation and other means seeks to deprive us of our property, wealth and income against our will, which seems to me the nub of the libertarian argument.

    IMO a major weakness of the libertarian position in economic terms is the claim that there is a natural right to private property which the state has been created to protect and should not itself abridge. ISTM that the terms under which a collectivity, sub-state collectivities, and individuals hold their property is the creation of the state not a state of nature. Ultimately, there is only one property owner, the state itself. In ancient Israel, for example, the land was owned by God, and distributed between the tribes, and in the year of jubilee re-distributed accompanied by the forgiving of debts; in feudal society land was held by the king and the major landholders were tenant-in-chief, and so on; in capitalist societies the concept of private property prevailed, though amended in mixed economies; and in Australia the aboriginals had yet other arrangements for the rights of access to resources. Taxation, therefore is not theft by the state, but a decision by the collectivity for a resource to be administered by the collectivity rather than individuals and private groups, and individuals and private associations have no natural moral right of veto: their consent or not is immaterial. ISTM that political society has an implicit claim on all the economic resources within its boundaries. Perhaps, for Russ that is what is fundamentally wrong about politics.



  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Kwesi wrote: »
    I continue to have difficulty is detecting where the various arguments are intending to lead.

    Not sure that there is any grand plan of leading to some preordained conclusion.

    But there's a chance that this line of thought will expose the inconsistency in some people's attitudes. That the individual consent they deem morally necessary in one context they talk down in another. The tyranny of the dictator they can't condemn fast enough so as to replace it with the tyranny of the majority.
    ISTM that 'consent' in the constitutional context is not about the need for individual consent to each piece of legislation or administrative action but to a general consent to be governed within a particular constitutional framework, which in liberal democracies includes procedures to amend the terms when required.

    I'd agree that there is a body of political thought that is about collective consent not individual consent, and about constitutional process as legitimating particular acts of the state.

    Given that when we talk about moral right and wrong it is particular acts and individual consent that matters, maybe you've just summed up what's morally wrong with politics ?

  • What we've collectively (hah) done is summed up what's morally wrong with your politics. I don't think we can extrapolate further than that.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    Ethics can’t be decided on an individualistic basis.

    Coercion is not the essence of immorality.

    Even truly free and fully informed consent does not justify all.

    Rights-based ethical theories are an inadequate basis for discussions of ethics and morality in society.
Sign In or Register to comment.