91 Message 91: From exi@panix.com Mon Jul 26 03:05:10 1993 Return-Path: Received: from usc.edu by chaph.usc.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+ucs-3.0) id AA27145; Mon, 26 Jul 93 03:05:08 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: from panix.com by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA07536; Mon, 26 Jul 93 03:04:42 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: by panix.com id AA23755 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for more@usc.edu); Mon, 26 Jul 1993 05:55:15 -0400 Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1993 05:55:15 -0400 Message-Id: <199307260955.AA23755@panix.com> To: Exi@panix.com From: Exi@panix.com Subject: Extropians Digest X-Extropian-Date: July 26, 373 P.N.O. [09:55:02 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: R Extropians Digest Mon, 26 Jul 93 Volume 93 : Issue 206 Today's Topics: [3 msgs] ADMIN: digest bug [1 msgs] BOOK VINGE [1 msgs] MEDIA: tv in general [2 msgs] MEDIA: tv in general [1 msgs] Machine Slavery (Was: Re: Wage Competition ) [2 msgs] Meta: Who is on the new software? [2 msgs] Natural law and natural rights [1 msgs] Supposedly: Wage Competition [1 msgs] TV: THREAT OR MENACE? [1 msgs] Wage Competition [1 msgs] What are big upcoming problems? [1 msgs] orbit [1 msgs] Administrivia: No admin msg. Approximate Size: 61056 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1993 23:19:59 -0600 (MDT) From: J. Michael Diehl Subject: Machine Slavery (Was: Re: Wage Competition ) According to Stanton McCandlish: > >Quoth J. Michael Diehl, verily I say unto thee: >=>Well, I'm writing this with quite a bit of homebrew under my breath, but what >=the heck... I submit that the computational power involved in displaying the >=.avi animation represents much of the power of the original computer. Add to > >this the computation that you admitted was involved in drawing the individual >>pictures, and I bet you have about as much "work" being done as was being done >=>by the original computer. Your computer has a finite capasity. What is the >>difference between using this capasity to "compute" and "showing what it looks >>like to compute?" Well, am I drunk, or is computational work conserved? > > Very well. Let's say I take an instamatic polaroid of my PC calculating > Julia sets. I dare say the ciruitry in the camera is not doing anywhere > near the computation that the computer is. Now, I have a picture of my PC > calculating. This would seem to me to be a simulation of calculation. That is not a simulation of calculation; its a picture of calculation. > And even if we go with the original argument, I'd still have to say that > the (imaginary) computations of in the .AVI simualation are qualitatively > different from the real computation going on on the real PC to display the > anim file. They may be QUALITATIVELY different, but they are potentially QUANTITATIVELY the same. ========================+==========================================+ J. Michael Diehl ;^) | Have you hugged a Hetero........Lately? | mdiehl@triton.unm.edu | "I'm just looking for the opportunity to | mike.diehl@fido.org help| be Politically Incorrect!" +=========+ al945@cwns9.ins.cwru.edu| Is Big Brother in your phone? | PGP KEY | (505) 299-2282 (voice) | If you don't know, ask me. |Available| ========================+================================+=========+ PGP Key = 7C06F1 = A6 27 E1 1D 5F B2 F2 F1 12 E7 53 2D 85 A2 10 5D This message is protected by 18 USC 2511 and 18 USC 2703. Monitoring by anyone other than the recipient is absolutely forbidden by US Law ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1993 23:19:59 -0600 (MDT) From: J. Michael Diehl Subject: Machine Slavery (Was: Re: Wage Competition ) According to Stanton McCandlish: > >Quoth J. Michael Diehl, verily I say unto thee: >=>Well, I'm writing this with quite a bit of homebrew under my breath, but what >=the heck... I submit that the computational power involved in displaying the >=.avi animation represents much of the power of the original computer. Add to > >this the computation that you admitted was involved in drawing the individual >>pictures, and I bet you have about as much "work" being done as was being done >=>by the original computer. Your computer has a finite capasity. What is the >>difference between using this capasity to "compute" and "showing what it looks >>like to compute?" Well, am I drunk, or is computational work conserved? > > Very well. Let's say I take an instamatic polaroid of my PC calculating > Julia sets. I dare say the ciruitry in the camera is not doing anywhere > near the computation that the computer is. Now, I have a picture of my PC > calculating. This would seem to me to be a simulation of calculation. That is not a simulation of calculation; its a picture of calculation. > And even if we go with the original argument, I'd still have to say that > the (imaginary) computations of in the .AVI simualation are qualitatively > different from the real computation going on on the real PC to display the > anim file. They may be QUALITATIVELY different, but they are potentially QUANTITATIVELY the same. ========================+==========================================+ J. Michael Diehl ;^) | Have you hugged a Hetero........Lately? | mdiehl@triton.unm.edu | "I'm just looking for the opportunity to | mike.diehl@fido.org help| be Politically Incorrect!" +=========+ al945@cwns9.ins.cwru.edu| Is Big Brother in your phone? | PGP KEY | (505) 299-2282 (voice) | If you don't know, ask me. |Available| ========================+================================+=========+ PGP Key = 7C06F1 = A6 27 E1 1D 5F B2 F2 F1 12 E7 53 2D 85 A2 10 5D This message is protected by 18 USC 2511 and 18 USC 2703. Monitoring by anyone other than the recipient is absolutely forbidden by US Law ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 00:19:53 -0700 From: dasher@netcom.com (D. Anton Sherwood) Subject: orbit Mike Wiik reports: > Extropians > seem to be, to some extent, Transhuman (In FM-2030's scoresheet, you get > the biggest points for actually having been in orbit :) How much of an orbit is required to count? *\\* Anton Ubi scriptum? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1993 03:58:12 -0600 (MDT) From: Stanton McCandlish Subject: MEDIA: tv in general Well, I decided to watch tv tonight, for once in 3 months. Catch me if I err, but can I safely say that this medium is dead as a doornail? Let me give you my tv experience this time around: 1st show: Some innane midnite soap, featuring an inordinate number of "black" people. I have no idea what show this is though it appears to be some "feature" of the Fox network. It revolves around some working-class folks, which is all fine and dandy. However most of the cast are "black"; I only recall some 3 or 4 "white" people in the whole show. Is this realistic? Somehow I don't think so. This show would have us believe that "black" people ALL have ratty hair, live for rap music, and outnumber skinny, ineffectual "white" people about 5 to 1. 2nd show: Guess what? The World Wrestling Federation. I'll hardly go off on this, as we all know this is fake as hell. The issue here is the memetics. The WWF issue of the day is "Lex Luger", and his drive to be accepted into the WWF chapionships so he can challenge the Bad Guy champion, who happens to be from Japan, according to the Idot Box. OK fine. Somehow in support of Lex's desire, some Red Blooded 'Maircan wrestler challenges another of themthere foreigners to a match. With much fanfare he gets the crowd chanting "USA USA USA", and trounces the Bad-Guy-by-Association. Next a "representative of the WWF" comes on screen and says Lex can fight for the title. Now, does this need comment, or is this the crap I see it for? Considering how many dolts believe this junk is for real, should "we" (meaning potential transhumans) consider this a threat? If an assine tv show is enough to spur people into a statist patriotic xenophobic frenzy, do we not have something to worry about? How is one to effectively spread the word of anti-statism when the populace at large appears to be ready to wave the flag at the least provocation, cheering and literally begging for violence? 3rd show: actually a commercial, as if there's a difference. This one's an ad for a dinosaur video. Imagine that. Some Famous Person is here on the Holy Tube to encourage us to purchase this video of very cheezy animated dinosaurs, the most successful organisms on the planet, according to the advertizers. Is it just me, or is there a memetic plague of horrific proportions underway here? Pardon me for my skepticism, but I cannot view this device as anything other than a brainwashing tool. I'm at a loss here. I just don't know what to do about this. What can one do about a such mindwiping tool, other than to say, if you have a tv, UNPLUG IT. Right now a commercial is on for another video, that proposes to reveal "The Monuments of Mars: The Terrestrial Connection", complete with tie-ins between "the Face" and the Celtic goddess Sidona, hidden secrets from NASA vaults, and the spiritual meaning of Martian monuments. This is really sickening me. Please forgive this rather unclear post, but I'm so astounded by the CRAP on tv right now I can hardly even type... -- Stanton McCandlish * Space Migration * Networking * ChaOrder * NO GOV'T. * anton@hydra.unm.edu * Intelligence Increase * Nano * Crypto * NO RELIGION * FidoNet: 1:301/2 * Life Extension * Ethics * VR * Now! * NO MORE LIES! * Noise in the Void BBS * +1-505-246-8515 (24hr, 1200-14400, v32bis, N-8-1) * ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 11:48:28 +0100 From: Rich Walker Subject: MEDIA: tv in general Stanton finds much to worry about on tv. I agree; I know, at least one person a minute, somewhere, says British TV is better than American: I have no way of testing this claim. To speak purely subjectively: there's a lot of engrossing crap. There's a lot of stuff that is almost worth watching as entertainment. There's the news - say no more. There's the quality drama &c: and I must display a certain philistinity here when I say most of it tires me... (Except on the World Service, of course) And then there's the prime Bulldada (Aside: there are three good things to come out of the Church of the Subgenius: 1. the notion of bulldada. 2. A deity and role-model of style. 3. A way of eliminating people: devout subgenii tend to be worth ignoring, unless the mix is leavened with some more useful memes. But this is a personal prejudice) There's these wonderful guys who do late-night scheduling for the various channels, and there's some fine stuff slipped in: for example, Kolchak re-runs: the one the other night was particularly poignant, (and seemed somehow... familiar) having as it did a doctor seeking immortality: he'd almost got the mix right, but every time, it wore off after 21 years, so he had to go off and slay 6 young girls, in order to revitalise himself for another 21 so he could try and get it right this time :-> And, the reason I started on this: WCW wrestling. Now, I don't know precisely the difference between the two, but I've watched a few of them and the closest I've seen to what Stanton describes was someone in the crown (age: 10 or so) with an american flag painted on their face. Watching it has much amused me late in the evening, if only because it's the closest thing to comic-books you get on tv... Of course, the really worrying thing about TV in this country is, as the Conservative Party keep telling us, the fact that it's run by a bunch of people with a strong political bias. And most of the people who work there seem to have one too, but in the opposite direction. Me, I'd favour something with an apolitical bias, but I guess I'll have to wait a bit longer for that. ramble ramble Rich! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 11:48:28 +0100 From: Rich Walker Subject: MEDIA: tv in general Stanton finds much to worry about on tv. I agree; I know, at least one person a minute, somewhere, says British TV is better than American: I have no way of testing this claim. To speak purely subjectively: there's a lot of engrossing crap. There's a lot of stuff that is almost worth watching as entertainment. There's the news - say no more. There's the quality drama &c: and I must display a certain philistinity here when I say most of it tires me... (Except on the World Service, of course) And then there's the prime Bulldada (Aside: there are three good things to come out of the Church of the Subgenius: 1. the notion of bulldada. 2. A deity and role-model of style. 3. A way of eliminating people: devout subgenii tend to be worth ignoring, unless the mix is leavened with some more useful memes. But this is a personal prejudice) There's these wonderful guys who do late-night scheduling for the various channels, and there's some fine stuff slipped in: for example, Kolchak re-runs: the one the other night was particularly poignant, (and seemed somehow... familiar) having as it did a doctor seeking immortality: he'd almost got the mix right, but every time, it wore off after 21 years, so he had to go off and slay 6 young girls, in order to revitalise himself for another 21 so he could try and get it right this time :-> And, the reason I started on this: WCW wrestling. Now, I don't know precisely the difference between the two, but I've watched a few of them and the closest I've seen to what Stanton describes was someone in the crown (age: 10 or so) with an american flag painted on their face. Watching it has much amused me late in the evening, if only because it's the closest thing to comic-books you get on tv... Of course, the really worrying thing about TV in this country is, as the Conservative Party keep telling us, the fact that it's run by a bunch of people with a strong political bias. And most of the people who work there seem to have one too, but in the opposite direction. Me, I'd favour something with an apolitical bias, but I guess I'll have to wait a bit longer for that. ramble ramble Rich! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1993 04:51:36 -0600 (MDT) From: Stanton McCandlish Subject: Machine Slavery (Was: Re: Wage Competition ) Quoth J. Michael Diehl, verily I say unto thee: -=>That is not a simulation of calculation; its a picture of calculation. What's the difference? What is a picture if it is not a simulation? If you have a better example of a simulation, please elucidate. -=>They may be QUALITATIVELY different, but they are potentially QUANTITATIVELY -=>the same. I'd have to say that if A differs QUALitatively from B, the odds of A and B being QUANTitatively similar, much less identical, are astronomically slim. How would the instance of a computer computing something be even vaguely qualitatively OR quantitatively like unto a polaroid, drawing, or animation file of a computer ostensibly "computing" something? I suppose some philosophy can creep in here, since who's to say the picture "really" is a picture of a computer computing and not a computer sitting idle, besides ME since the picture is MY artistic work, and I get to define what it is by the "rules" of art, as it were? Which in turn leads me to ask: what the hell is a "simulation of computation" in the first place but a subjective morass? I'd like to see a logically quantifiable example of a simulated comptuation. Not to say there is not such thing, I just want to see one, and to see how one can definitively say it is in fact a simulation, and not true computation. -- Stanton McCandlish * Space Migration * Networking * ChaOrder * NO GOV'T. * anton@hydra.unm.edu * Intelligence Increase * Nano * Crypto * NO RELIGION * FidoNet: 1:301/2 * Life Extension * Ethics * VR * Now! * NO MORE LIES! * Noise in the Void BBS * +1-505-246-8515 (24hr, 1200-14400, v32bis, N-8-1) * ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1993 05:02:13 -0600 (MDT) From: Stanton McCandlish Subject: MEDIA: tv in general Quoth Rich Walker, verily I say unto thee: -=>Stanton finds much to worry about on tv. You betcha. -=>I agree; I know, at least one person a minute, somewhere, says British TV -=>is better than American: I have no way of testing this claim. I do. UK tv consists primarily of soaps and ludicrous game shows, "dramas", and comedies, plus a HUGE number of syndicated US tv shows. In otherwords, the days of Monty Python are long gone, and there is little difference any more. -=>To speak -=>purely subjectively: there's a lot of engrossing crap. There's a lot of -=>stuff that is almost worth watching as entertainment. such as? >:) -=>There's the news - -=>say no more. Rats. I really wanted to. Seriously. -=>There's the quality drama &c: and I must display a certain Arrghggh. What's the missing part? And what the hell is "quality drama"? I have yet to see such a thing on tv. EVER. -- Stanton McCandlish * Space Migration * Networking * ChaOrder * NO GOV'T. * anton@hydra.unm.edu * Intelligence Increase * Nano * Crypto * NO RELIGION * FidoNet: 1:301/2 * Life Extension * Ethics * VR * Now! * NO MORE LIES! * Noise in the Void BBS * +1-505-246-8515 (24hr, 1200-14400, v32bis, N-8-1) * ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 12:57:21 +0100 From: Rich Walker Subject: Wage Competition [Stanton takes me up on a few points; exercising correct net.behaviour, I respond vigourously to the ones I can respond to, and pretend the others never happened #-{>] me=>I agree; I know, at least one person a minute, somewhere, says British TV me=>is better than American: I have no way of testing this claim. him>I do. UK tv consists primarily of soaps and ludicrous game shows, >"dramas", and comedies, plus a HUGE number of syndicated US tv shows. In >otherwords, the days of Monty Python are long gone, and there is little >difference any more. Ah, but Monty Python was always an aberration... You've hit most of ITV and BBC1 square on the head. You've also hit a lot of Channel 4 and BBC2, and it's basically the bits you've missed where that are worth watching pop up. I agree, the rest is creeping slime, rotting away at the foundations of humanity, seeping through our eyes and ears into our heads, and there slowly... painlessly... lovingly... removing every vestige of sanity it can find. HP Lovecraft would _love_ TV: it'd give even him nightmares... me=>There's the quality drama &c: and I must display a certain him>Arrghggh. What's the missing part? And what the hell is "quality >drama"? .I have yet to see such a thing on tv. EVER. I'm referring to the stuff that gets praised in the arts sections of the papers. The so-called quality tv often cited as the benefits of whatever part of their system is currently under assault. Period drama. `Classic' comedy. Biting news programs... Hard-hitting consumer programs. Anything that has a qualifier attached to its genre name, basically. And I agree: most of it's crap. Some of it's _watchable_ but it's still, well, crap. Rich! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 12:57:21 +0100 From: Rich Walker Subject: Wage Competition [Stanton takes me up on a few points; exercising correct net.behaviour, I respond vigourously to the ones I can respond to, and pretend the others never happened #-{>] me=>I agree; I know, at least one person a minute, somewhere, says British TV me=>is better than American: I have no way of testing this claim. him>I do. UK tv consists primarily of soaps and ludicrous game shows, >"dramas", and comedies, plus a HUGE number of syndicated US tv shows. In >otherwords, the days of Monty Python are long gone, and there is little >difference any more. Ah, but Monty Python was always an aberration... You've hit most of ITV and BBC1 square on the head. You've also hit a lot of Channel 4 and BBC2, and it's basically the bits you've missed where that are worth watching pop up. I agree, the rest is creeping slime, rotting away at the foundations of humanity, seeping through our eyes and ears into our heads, and there slowly... painlessly... lovingly... removing every vestige of sanity it can find. HP Lovecraft would _love_ TV: it'd give even him nightmares... me=>There's the quality drama &c: and I must display a certain him>Arrghggh. What's the missing part? And what the hell is "quality >drama"? .I have yet to see such a thing on tv. EVER. I'm referring to the stuff that gets praised in the arts sections of the papers. The so-called quality tv often cited as the benefits of whatever part of their system is currently under assault. Period drama. `Classic' comedy. Biting news programs... Hard-hitting consumer programs. Anything that has a qualifier attached to its genre name, basically. And I agree: most of it's crap. Some of it's _watchable_ but it's still, well, crap. Rich! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 13:24:15 +0100 From: Rich Walker Subject: Supposedly: Wage Competition Whoops. Apologies to everyone for sending the last two messages twice, and one pair under the wrong title... Rich! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1993 10:10:54 -0400 (EDT) From: Carol Moore Subject: Meta: Who is on the new software? You listed who is on. Is it possible for individuals to know how many people are blocking their messages? Also, will there be a way to prevent individuals from receiving one's messages? General Question: Is it polite net-iquette for individuals to send others nasty personal messages and then reject replies as "unread." A certain "extropian" keeps doing this to me and I wish they'd stop but obviously can't tell them that by private post. Thank you for your kind consideration. --------------------------------------------- (-: cmoore@cap.gwu.edu :-) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 10:13:51 WET DST From: rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray) Subject: ADMIN: digest bug For those of you using the digest on the new list software, I'm sure you've noticed a slight cosmetic bug (missing subject line, badly formatted header section). It has been fixed. -Ray -- Ray Cromwell | Engineering is the implementation of science; -- -- EE/Math Student | politics is the implementation of faith. -- -- rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu | - Zetetic Commentaries -- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 11:29:11 CDT From: capntaz@dudemar.b24a.ingr.com (Heath G. Goebel) Subject: BOOK VINGE -- Heath G. Goebel, ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 11:53:44 CDT From: capntaz@dudemar.b24a.ingr.com (Heath G. Goebel) Subject: What are big upcoming problems? > From: Robin Hanson > Subject: What are big upcoming problems? > > So I am led to ask: What are the biggest upcoming "problems" posed by > the technologies that we have a comparative advantage in > understanding? One problem I worry about is increasing state power. The political climate today makes it easy for the guv'ment to imprison/murder dissidents. And because of technology, the government can easily outgun a person trying to defend themselves from the government. In recent weeks we've seen two cases of note: Waco and Randy Weaver. I mean if the BATF, CIA, FBI, SS show up at any of our houses, fighting back with our own armaments (as suggested many times by T.C. May) is a sure path to real death. When will the balance shift? -- Heath G. Goebel, ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1993 13:46:55 -0400 (EDT) From: Carol Moore Subject: Meta: Who is on the new software? As we can all see from the message address, Harry did *not* make this only a "private" message, but a public one. So I feel it is correct for me to respond publicly since it brings up issues of concern to all members of the list ------------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1993 10:29:48 -0400 (EDT) From: Harry Shapiro To: extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: Re: Meta: Who is on the new software? ::private ::: a conscious being, Carol Moore wrote: > Is it possible for individuals to know how many > people are blocking their messages? Not at this time, but as of a day ago, you were the most excluded user by at least an oder of magnitude. [end relevant part of Harry's message] Are you one of the individuals who cannot not know how many people are blocking a particular individuals messages? If so, how can you state that an individual is "the most excluded user by an oder (sic) of magnitude?" If you do in fact know the exact or approximate numbers, and since you have publicly made this statement, could you then tell me what they are? 6 people have asked to block 15 people and I'm the only one blocked by 3? 20 people have asked to block 8 people and I'm the only one blocked by 20? More precision is obviously of import. Plus as an uppity female questioning whether it is not inherently intellectually entropic for extropians to be merely "locally extropian", I'm curious. Thanks for the clarification. (-: cmoore@cap.gwu.edu :-) ------------------------------ Date: 25 Jul 93 14:11:55 EDT From: Sandy <72114.1712@compuserve.com> Subject: TV: THREAT OR MENACE? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT Reply to: ssandfort@attmail.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stanton told us what is WRONG with TV in his opinion. I'm here to support the other side--sort of... THREE REASONS TO WATCH TELEVISION #1 SOME TV IS GOOD--Well, not much, really, but it does provided some good entertainment and information if you are a (very) selective viewer. Has there ever been any situation comedies better written than "The Simpsons"? I can't think of any. The closest that come to mind were the "Dick van Dyke Show" and "Rocky and Bullwinkle" (and related Ward and Scott productions). In spite of some obvious biases, the investigative reportage of "60 Minutes" is top notch. Intelligent, critical thinkers, such as the folks on this list, should have no trouble separating the wheat from the chaff on the several fine news programs on TV. And then there is "Jeopardy!" Need I say more? #2 SOME TV IS BAD--bad, that is, in a special way. It is difficult to comprehend the sheer soporific quality of some broadcasting. After a hard day's work, there is no better way to "zone out" than watching TV. Similarly, TV is an excellent way to satisfy our needs for cheap and tawdry titillation. Prime time TV abounds with exploitive jiggle shows and plebeian bedroom humor. These are things most of enjoy (whether or not we admit it) from time to time. How nice to be able to indulge in the privacy of our homes at no out-of-pocket cost. #3 TV PROVIDES IMPORTANT "META-INFORMATION"--Irrespective of what the people on the Extropian list would prefer, they have infinitesimal influence on TV programming. What is broadcast on TV is the result of the *market* created by viewers. Yes, producers, writers, directors, advertisers network executives have more direct control over content, but if they don't please the viewers, they don't get renewed. Period. Television is one of the purest reflections available, of modern popular culture. This is good for us. It provides an invaluable look into the soul of our fellow humans. If we--as political activists, entrepreneurs and aspiring transhumans--can watch TV for the messages between the lines, we can know the hearts of our friends and our enemies, our allies and our oppressors. TV can tell when everyone else will zig, so we can profit by zagging. S a n d y >>>>>> Please send e-mail to: ssandfort@attmail.com <<<<<< ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 93 14:49 EDT From: "Andrew I Cohen" Subject: Natural law and natural rights I enjoyed James Donald's recent essay on natural law. He has a compelling vision of natural law as the functional product of stable, long-term norms for regulating human interaction. The notion of NL appearing throughout the essay seems to be that of some objective body of rules by which, necessarily and independently of human wishes or whims, people can live, and live together peacefully. I am still a bit concerned about the grounding of such NL, and how it is that we have access to it. It's an interesting move to liken NL to some objectively "external" observable fact, but it's not yet clear to me that such NL has a universal nature so rigid that there is some one conception of it which is correct. I like the idea of casting NL as a body of stable rules, but it is unclear (1) how we can access such rules and (2) whether there is some sufficiently singular notion of NL that would get the job done. Looking to (1), James seems to suggest that people can understand what NL is by looking to history. Some rules, when followed, simply do not work. Imposing them, even by brute coercion, is doomed to failure. People can thus understand the content of NL by looking at what norms have worked for societies in the past, and which not. > > The problem of "how do we know natural law" is no > different from the other problems of perception. The > arguments used by those that seek to prove that we > cannot know natural law, therefore natural law does > not exist, are precisely the same as the arguments > that we cannot know anything, therefore nothing > exists, and many notable philosophers, such as > Berkeley and Bertrand Russell, who started out arguing > that natural law does not exist ended up concluding > exactly that - that nothing exists. Hmm. This seems a bit quick. Granting that people can have some notion of what "works" in cooperative contexts does not go very far to showing the specific content of the norms we're looking for. Clearly there's more room for dispute on the content of some such NL than there is in accounting for, say, the nature of a precipice. How do we account for that difference? I'd peg it on the more "normatively enriched" content of NL. There's room for debate over its content, so maybe the universality and objectivity of NL are not sufficiently available for us to generate a stable body of rules in practice. In case my worry isn't entirely clear, let's see where this goes. James provides an interesting argument that a deer can have knowledge of a tiger in the brush, without the deer's being able to offer up a tidy account > starting from the laws of optics and the probabilities > of physical forms, how it rigorously deduced the > existence of the tiger from the two dimensional > projections on its retina, nonetheless the tiger was > there, outside the deer, in the objective external > world whether or not the deer correctly interpreted > what it saw. > Indeed. This, incidentally, is a nice challenge to the long tradition in ethics (dating back to Plato, I believe) that a person is virtuous only to the extent that that person has a well-grounded understanding of what virtue is. This diminishes the chance that some not-so-well-educated fellow could be thoroughly decent and firmly _know_ what is right and wrong. What James is urging, and I agree, is that a person can have knowledge without being able to provide an account. (Still: isn't this knowledge less epistemically secure than, say, Aristotle's knowledge?) Similarly, we can all have well-grounded knowledge without being experts in neurophysiology. We're in the same position as the deer. So let's grant this point: knowledge is possible without a thorough understanding, all the way down and all the way across, of how such knowledge was obtained. That works nicely in the case of a group of hikers approaching a precipice: Jack: Look out! Precipice ahead! Jill: Indeed. I see it too. Sam: Precipice? Sure, I think I know what you two are talking about, but, how do you know that's a precipice? Aristotle anticipates such silliness and says that one cannot insist on demonstration of everything; knowledge is possible using certain indemonstrable primaries as premises to one's understanding. (Metaphysics IV.4, 1006a1-28). So something can and must be true and knowable without being "demonstrable". Now, suppose Sam gets petulant: Sam: What do you mean by "precipice"? Indeed, how do you really know that there is a precipice out there? Can you provide an account of the origin of the relevant sensory stimuli and explain the path such stimuli took in reaching your brain, and how it is that you processed such data and reached the conclusion that that is a precipice? The appropriate response to Sam at this point is: Jack, Jill (in unison): Sam -- go jump off a cliff! Great. But let's ask: is NL, in the sense James wants to talk about, the appropriate subject of an indemonstrable first premise? Bear in mind that, in some contexts, Sam's queries would not have been out of line. But at a certain point, responses to his queries have to come down to: "Look! It is the case the P" with "P" being some proposition about the possibility of a link between mind and the world, or, that there is a world, or whatever. So maybe James need only say: "Look! It is the case that there is a NL. We can dispute about its specific content, but surely there is some such body of norms and rules which, independent of human whims or desires, accurately captures how people can live and live together peacefully and productively." Maybe. But there might be so much "wiggle room" in the disputability of the specific content of NL that the notion of NL, as James would use it, is functionally crippled. I hope not. Let's see. > > Society ran itself smoothly. This showed that natural > law was complete and logically consistent. Of course > since natural law is external and objective it has to > be complete and consistent, but our understanding of > natural law is necessarily incomplete and imperfect, > so our understanding of it might have been dangerously > incomplete, inconsistent, or plain wrong. The That's positing a very strong link between the completeness and consistency of NL and its functional success. I think this is the crux of James's thesis about NL, and I think this is where we need to hear more. The "consistency" of a body of norms refers to whether all such norms or propositions (or whatever) can be jointly asserted without generating any contradictions. The "completeness" of such a set refers to whether all possible members of that set are exhausted in describing the set. Logicians have provided proofs of the completeness and consistency of the standard rules and norms in both propositional and predicate logic. But, I be- lieve they've also shown that we can devise a complete and consistent set of rules which significantly departs from the standard set. My point is this: we _might_ articulate a conception of NL which is complete and consistent (though we haven't done it yet, for sure). But some fellow can come along and say, "I've got a notion of NL which departs from yours, and yet mine is consistent and complete, too!" He can play with the fundamentals, but we can note how systems such as the one he's proposing are disasterous in practice. Fine. But then, he can tinker with the specifics of the norms in NL in ways which don't endanger the communities which embrace such norms. It's this "wiggle room" in the conception of NL which can leave "natural law" so flexible that an appeal to it is not entirely helpful. > If natural law > was just something that somebody made up out of their > heads, it would not have worked. Internal > inconsistencies would have lead to conflicts that > could not be resolved within natural law, requiring > the man on horseback to apply fiat law or customary > law to resolve them. Incompleteness would have lead > to unacceptable lawless behavior. None of this > happened, powerful evidence that natural law is not > just something invented, but something external and > objective that we are able to perceive, like the > tiger, like the law of gravity. Sure, but that doesn't firmly indicate some singular conception of natural law. Randall Terry's conception of NL might be that the perpetuation of the species is the supreme moral value, so much so that abortion is impermissible, birth control is impermissible, and parents have very rich responsibilities to their children. That would generate a moral community quite different from what Jack the libertarian might uphold. Now what do we do? > John Locke made a major advance to our understanding > of natural law, by emphasizing the nature of man as a > maker of things, and a property owning animal. This > leads to a more extensive concept of natural rights > than the previous discussions of natural law. From > the right to self defense comes the right to the rule > of law, but from the right to property comes a > multitude of like rights, such as the right to privacy > "An Englishman's home is his castle." Further, Locke > repeatedly, in ringing words, reminded us that a ruler > is legitimate so far as he upholds the law. > I can hear all the anthropologists among us crying out, "whoa! What about the blahblah tribe in blahblahland. . . ." Then they adduce a pattern of norms which works nicely for that tribe and which departs significantly from our western conception of property rights. "A Ha!" James might respond, "let's count widgets! How successful is the blahblah tribe in flourishing? Let's look at median life expectancy, infant mortality, and some measure of their standard of living." Then James would have the anthropologists. > > Natural law is a method, not a code. One does not > reason from words but from facts. The nearest thing > to a written code of natural law is the vast body of > natural law precedent. But a precedent only applies > to similar cases, and is thus rooted in the particular > time and circumstances of the particular case, whereas > natural law is universal, applying to all free men at > all times and all places. Okay. But there's still room for dispute about this method. I'm not trying to "split hairs" by pointing out this room for dispute. Speaking of a singular notion of NL opens the door for such a concern, and it's a legitimate objection. James discusses the role of sociobiology in understanding NL, and that seems like a promising route. But, again, it's unclear that sociobiology will unequivocally indicate some singular conception of NL. Now what do we do with Randall Terry? > Throughout most of our evolution, men have been in a > state of nature, that is to say. without government, > hierarchically organized religion, or an orderly and > widely accepted means of resolving disputes. For the > past four or five million years the capacity to > discern evil lurking in the hearts of men has been an > even more crucial survival capability than the > capacity to discern tigers lurking in shadows. That's a good start. But there might be a gap between "this guy's conduct endangers me" and "this guy's conduct embodies a norm which should regulate human interaction everywhere." James's functional definition of NL, involving three parties and the responses of the third-party to the interaction of the other two -- that is an interesting approach but still doesn't indicate a _stable, singular_ body of norms to regulate human conduct: > > An act is a violation of natural law if, were a man to > commit such an act in a state of nature, (that is to > say, in the absence of an orderly and widely accepted > method of resolving disputes), a second man, knowing > the facts and being a reasonable man, would reasonably > conclude that the first man constituted a threat or > danger to the second man, his family, or his property, > and if a third man, knowing the facts and being a > reasonable man, were to observe the second man getting > rid of the first man, the third man would not > reasonably conclude that the second man constituted a > threat or danger to third man, his family, or his > property. I'd avoid calling this "value neutral;" that imports too much baggage about the objectivity of values. What might be interesting, in any case, is: why the negative tone? This definition tells us what is _in_compatible with NL. So what _is_ NL? Don't we need an algorithm to tell us the positive content of NL? Beyond all that, it seems that two reasonable adults might reach significantly different conclusions about what counts as a violation of NL, using this algorithm. James can say this: it doesn't matter. They might disagree in specific instances about what counts as a violation of NL, but that's beside the point. Sooner or later, all third-party observers are going to agree: Jack's doing X to Jill is impermissible. It's that minimal agreement which can form the basis of NL. Maybe. Maybe indeed. That might be a good way to diffuse the "wiggle room" objection. But then, NL doesn't serve as a _complete_ guide for regulating interpersonal human conduct. The wiggle room objection returns anew, and it's not helped by James's claims about how we understand what counts as a violation of NL. We might not have beefy sociobiological knowledge, but we do have gut responses to certain things, don't we? > if someone uses violence "improperly", he shows > himself to be a danger. This is obvious by direct > intuition, and there is also overwhelming historical > evidence for this fact. Careful, now. Randall Terry is smirking in the background, and he and his crowd have "direct intuitions" quite different from ours. It was interesting that James looked to Hobbes and his criticism of NL. Hobbes is frequently misunderstood, and he may actually be more of an ally than James makes him out to be. In particular, Hobbes made prolific use of the notion of NL as a grounding of his moral and political philosophy. > > Early in the seventeenth century Thomas Hobbes argued > that the nature of man was not such that one could > deduce natural law from it. Hobbes claimed that in a > state of nature, it is a war of all against all, and > life is "poor, solitary, nasty, brutish, and short". > Therefore, he argued, the state is entitled to > unlimited power, and right is whatever the state, > through its laws, says is right, and wrong whatever > the state says is wrong. > This is uncharitable to Hobbes on a number of fronts. There are laws of nature, Hobbes says, which are "principles of reason" that capture what conduces to man's preservation. Such "convenient articles of peace" suggest themselves to human reason and are the only norms through which people can live together peacefully and productively. (Leviathan, chs. 13-14) Political power, in the Hobbesian scheme, derives from the consent of the governed. Their only choice is to embrace the Hobbesian monarch. Sure, Hobbes uses that to conclude that there should be a totalitarian state, but his arguments motivating the degree of state power are invalid. In particular, James overlooks Hobbes's repeated use of the notion of inalienable rights. The state has unlimited authority to do what it wants, but it cannot command a man to do anything "dangerous" or "dishonorouable", nor is a man bound to obey the state when the state is no longer furnishing the conditions of peace. "The end of obedience is protection," Hobbes wrote (Leviathan, ch. 21). So, believe it or not, subjects have a _right_ to revolt. Indeed, they cannot renounce that right. Not only that, there are certain normative constraints binding the sovereign. Though he can do no injustice to his subjects, he can still be guilty of some "iniquity", and he'll have to answer to God for it. Sovereigns have responsibilities to organize commonwealths in ways which promote peace within and without. To do so is out of a respect for natural law, because natural law describes what people must do if they are to live together peacefully. In accounting for inalienable rights and the possibility of "iniquitous" conduct on the sovereign's part, Hobbes may have undermined the possibility of a genuine totalitarian sovereign. Hobbes's insights, however, are that people have different conceptions of what counts as right and wrong. Absent a common power to provide a definitive notion of justice, people are left to their own private judgements, and they wind up in conflict. The only way to avoid such conflict is by setting up some "sovereign will" which shall be decisive in any disputes. James may differ with Hobbes on this: maybe, absent a sovereign power, people really wouldn't differ on what counts as right and wrong. Now there's something we can argue about, and it seems like an important premise. I'm sympathetic with Hobbes here: many of us might agree, but enough of us might disagree to make the notion of a single, objective natural law functionally useless without some mechanism in place to keep people to some stable body of norms. Maybe Hobbes was a bit too gloomy in his conception of the natural condition, but people are inclined to their private advantage, and it's that possibility that worried Hobbes enough to say that private judgment of right and wrong is a dangerous guide for regulating interpersonal conduct. This is why I worry about James's account of how we access the content of NL. It doesn't indicate a single shared body of norms sufficiently substantive to regulate human conduct. Perhaps we need to agree to some interpretative mechanism, and whatever falls out of that would be "sovereign" for a moral community. Hobbes said that, but he went to far. I'd agree with Hobbes enough to say: private judgment of NL and other normative questions relevant to social conduct needs to be singular enough to avoid disputes. James hasn't given us a mechanism for that, so we're in danger of falling into just the combative state of nature James so quickly dismisses. James then offers an intriguing historical survey, including some offhand anecdotes, and provides evidence to support the idea that people embrace a conception of NL, that some such conception is the only guide for peaceful interaction, and that the state has often abused or violated NL, usually assisted by intellectuals of dubious stripe. Then he goes on to the subject of natural rights. This is a valid extension of his earlier discussion of natural law, but it must overcome the same difficulties: > > Plainly therefore the state is just another group of > people, and must rightfully be subject to the same law > as any other person or group of people. It has no > superior right to use force to achieve its goals, and > if you grant it such a right, it will in the end > result in the loss of your property and in slavery. > > "Society" does not exist, rights do exist, not as > arbitrary fiats of the state as the utilitarians > claim, but inherently as a result of the nature of > man. No conflict exists between civil order and > individual rights. Both concepts are based on the > same fundamental principles. > > The real issue is not "what is the nature of good" as > utilitarians pretend. The real issue is: Are rights > a discovery by individuals that enable them to get > along peaceably with other individuals, or are they a > creation of a supreme being such as a reified society > or reified state, that imposes peace on a vicious > multitude with no inherent knowledge of good and evil, > thus forcing on them the peace that slaves of a common > master possess. I don't think that's the real issue. I'm _very_ sympathetic with the thrust of the discussion here, but there's still this concern: without some common conception of natural rights, people are left to their own particularized private judgment of what counts as a natural right, and that jeopardizes the possibility of getting a _single, complete, consistent_ body of natural rights. Randall Terry has a notion of what the "right to life" entails, and you can be sure it differs from mine. Hmm, wait, let's get rid of Randall Terry. (Yeah!) My point is this: someone can, without some appeal to supernatural silliness, uphold a secular, reasoned conception of natural rights which differs from us folks on this list. In the face of such disagreement, people might not have much room to work and play well together. "But plainly they do!" James might respond. Sure, at a certain minimal level. But then, our shared conception of natural rights doesn't _completely_ indicate how to regulate claims within a medium- to large-sized moral community. The slack it can't handle might be so big that NL doesn't fully capture legitimate norms for human interaction. James then discusses the abuse of language by some modern intellectuals and points to several examples of the adverse consequences of ignoring natural law and natural rights. I'm not sure I embrace his critique of the utilitarians; surely it is difficult to know someone else's good, but this problem confronts advocates of NL in a similar way: private good doesn't always neatly map on to "public good" or another's private good. All told, I enjoyed the essay. It was quite thought-provoking, as the length of my babblesome reply might indicate. James offers some com- pelling arguments in favor of some notion of NL and NR's. I want his project to succeed, but I still have some serious worries about the content of NL and NR and how we non-omniscient folks access it. Whatever the content of NL and a theory of NR, it may still be too equivocal, so much so that it is not as functionally useful as James would have us believe. Andrew Cohen uandcoh@uncmvs.oit.unc.edu ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 #206 ********************************* &