On Atheists

I'm an atheist. I do not believe in god, nor have I ever. Generally speaking I don't believe in the soul nor do I believe in fate. However, the idea that atheism somehow automatically corelates with materialism and naturalism is absurd, thank you very much Pharyngula. From the mouth of PZ Myers
himself:

And oh, yeah, I'm passionate about atheism, but atheism isn't about nothing: it's about valuing reason over superstition, about conquering unfounded fears, about facing the real world without crutches and lies to hold you up. I'm sure someone is going to sit there and dissect the letters of the word and tell me that atheism means only an absence of belief in gods, but screw that — it's about a whole philosophy of thought that is built on materialism and naturalism. It is an idea with substance.

No, in fact, atheism does not suppose materialism or naturalism, it supposes only that there is no god(s). This is exactly why this new movement of atheists(white, middle-class, male lead movement I might add) needs to have a name other than simply "Atheism." Because it is not simply atheism.

What worries me more, and this I most definitely don't fault PZ for, as he is too smart to fall right back into this sort of trap, is the apparent use of evolution as a basis of moral behavior in comments such as:

I have never understood how the morality argument gains any traction at all with anyone simply because you can see rudimentary and sometimes more than that in virtually all other primate groups not to mention other animals.

Morality seems a matter of opinion about natural behaviours of our species. If someone can't understand why they need behave properly to havegroup acceptance I suggest they first observe chimps and then a primary school. You can see many the same lessons being conveyed.

And, even more so in this comment:

But more than this, as an atheist, I see my one and only life in this universe as the only chance I get to leave a positive legacy. My off-spring need the best possible example to follow in order to give them the best chances of passing on my DNA -if they view immoral behavior as okay, then the chances increase that they might not survive to reproduce.

Yes, because that is a basis for morality, that it is useful. Or was I uninformed that one must also be a Utilitarian to be an Atheist. Unfortunately this argument falls into the same trap that theists are so often accused of falling into, argument from good ends. One cannot say that something is moral simply because it is useful, unless there is some proof that utility is a good unto itself, the existence of which I am not aware. Moreover, this all presupposes even the existence of morality. Why does the materialist and naturalist view need morality? If it is simply to convince the theists that we don't just start killing people when we think there isn't a god then it's rather pointless, we could instead simply not kill people.

Myers is himself somewhat guilty in all this talk of morality, though it isn't clear if it is simply a matter of confusing the question or not. Responding to the accusation that "they have particularly failed in their attempt to present a coherent system of morality that in no way rests on a belief in the supernatural." Giving him the benefit of the doubt, he is not arguing the point about which the theist wish to argue. Perhaps this is simply more of the dreaded "framing," but I think not. The theist position is that we can call nothing moral or immoral without God, not that we cannot act morally without a belief in god. The latter is clearly absurd, though many theists certainly make the argument, but the former is a real issue. Can we actually accept morals into our ontology if we accept only what is physical as that which is real?

Worst of all is that so few of these people are willing to engage in conversation about substantive topics, ones which atheists can legitimately disagree on and still be atheists. They dislike the problem of induction even being brought up. They seem to take Occam's Razor as some sort of logical dictum and not as a useful, albeit flawed, tool.

This have been bugging me for a while. Nothing is more frustrating than those who claim to be rational and who then reject either the rational ends of their beliefs, or refuse to discuss those beliefs to in depth because it might threaten their little world view.

Distance Matters

The issue of proximity in terms of moral responsibility is an important one. In his essay Famine, Affluence and Morality Peter Singer puts forth the argument that in the modern, globalized world because we are able to have knowledge of events around the world, and because we can be in contact with people in areas affected by events such as famine who know what should be done to mitigate the harms done by said events, we cannot use proximity as an excuse for inaction. This is problematic because the issue of proximity is more than just an issue of knowledge, it is also an issue of getting the resources to those who need it, and distance always increases the amount of resources needed to get the aid to those who need it. Thus, as long as there is harm which can be mitigated at a close proximity we are morally bound to mitigate that harm first because our mitigating attempts will be more successful.

Singer argues that both the knowledge of global developments and the ability to give money to those in the region who know how to deal with the problem expand our moral duties. While this is true in the abstract it is not true practically speaking. The issue of knowledge is the first problematic aspect of his argument. Assuming that we have knowledge of a harm occurring does not mean that we have knowledge of how to mitigate said harm. Singer seemingly deals with this issue by referring to people in the region who do know methods of mitigating the harm, but this presupposes that we know which people in the region know the correct way to mitigate the harm. By supposing that a specific organization in the region has a better handle on the situation we are making a moral decision based on faulty epistemic assumptions. These events general occur in far flung regions of the world and in cultures quite different from ours. While I personally have more than a passing knowledge of the famine in East Bengal I would still be at a loss as to say which organization would best allocate my funds. This is however not the case for local organizations dealing with hunger in the Bay Area. Because of my proximity to harms in the Bay Area and my knowledge of the groups dealing with the problems I can make an informed decision on where to best put my resources.

Some may argue that even if this is true we still have a moral duty to give because anything will help more than nothing. Again, this is problematic. To use Singer’s example, imagine I am walking by a pond and see a child drowning, I have a moral duty to save the child if I can do so “without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance.” But imagine further that I am between two pond, one but ten feet away and one two hundred feet away. In the pond nearest me there are five children drowning and I know where lifejackets which could save them all. In the far pond there are ten children drowning and a man who tells me he knows how we can, together, obtain lifejackets to save some number of the children. If I help the children in the closer pond then I can save all the children in the close pond, but I do not know how many children in the far pond will be saved, but I know it will be less than if I help. However, if I help the children in the far pond, I know that the children in the close pond will die, and I still do not know how many of the children in the far pond will ultimately be saved. This is a result of the fact that I must first get to the far pond, thus expending some of my resources, my energy and my time, thereby lessening the efficacy of my help.

Singer’s essay deals with issues in the real world, not simply at an abstract level. In the real world there are harms which I can mitigate in my own community, many just as bad, if not to as great an extent. Because of this by giving money or other resources to mitigate far off harms I am necessarily sacrificing something of comparable moral value and doing less good than I could have otherwise by mitigating harms closer to me.

Quiet Desperation
"The Mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

The path we walk through life is not through an untrod wilderness. It is not free from past influence nor is it free from the influence of our own footsteps. But we are often so focussed on our path that we forget that a path is a made thing and not something which arises from outside humankind. Despite this we often know the frustration of being forced upon our path, whether by individuals or society as a whole. There is a way free from this path, however deep the rut has been furrowed. In Walden Thoreau lays out how we are able to step from the path and lose ourselves and why we should. As he says, “But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear.”[111] We need only nurture those natures and we can see beyond the path and thereby free ourselves to trod new ground.
When younger I lived near an empty lot that was between the street upon which was my house and major thoroughfare, there was, when I first moved there, a small path through the lot, by the time I moved away this small path had been widened significantly by the action of myself and others. I recently met a man who lives on the street and the path is still there, and still wide and well tread. Like this, those who walk the path of society are both following the path and reinforcing the path. People are both a product of the machine and a part of the machine. They know somewhere that this path is somehow wrong. They know what they are expected to cultivate in society, but this clashes with what they must cultivate as an individual, the germs of virtue. It is the clash of these two things which gives rise to the desperation of which Thoreau speaks. We are desperate to allow our virtue to grow and yet the only path we are aware of is that of society. For Thoreau Walden represents the experience which is necessary for each of us to first see the path of society and second that allows us to find a path that lets the seeds of virtue grow. Walden is the experience of being lost, because if we are to see the path of virtue we must first lose the path of society, for like the journey home, our bodies, even without their masters, will follow the path to where it leads.

The bulk of Thoreau’s theory in Walden seems heavily informed by classical Chinese thought. Beyond referencing Confucius, he quotes both Confucius and Mencius. His use of the path as a metaphor is particularly indicative of Chinese philosophical influence. Tao, generally translated as “The Way” but alternatively as “path,” is very important in Classical Chinese thought, not just in Taoism, but also in the writings of Confucius and Mencius. The way is the path which the sage is to follow and is the basis for virtue. Thoreau takes this conception and while accepting the idea in general that society is guided as if on a path, he adds that it is individuals following the path that have created and reinforced the path and not of heavenly origin. He also veers from the classics in that he does not think that the path is here that we can follow to virtue. We must instead look to nature, and it will reveal the failings of our current path, society, and the path to virtue.
"
You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of the common man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends."
This, quoted by Thoreau from Confucius’s Analects, seems to be a case where Thoreau accepts a base idea of Confucius, that laws are but one part of what makes society. The other part is what Confucius describes as the wind bending the grass, that is, those who are put up as superior have a great effect on the actions and thought of others. But he is against the Confucian path for society. In Civil Disobedience he goes so far as to directly deny Confucius:

'“If a state is governed by the principles of reason, poverty and misery are the subject of shame; if a state is not governed by the principles of reason, riches and honors are the subjects of shame.” No: until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant Southern port, where my liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up and estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my property and my life.'

Thoreau does not see poverty as something which should be the subject of shame, in fact he holds it up as noble and the poor as models for right behavior. He sees poverty as closer to the natural way. He cleaves closer to Mencius in his view of human nature.

“A return to goodness each produced each day in the tranquil and beneficent breath of the morning, causes that in respect to the love of virtue and the hatred of vice, one approaches a little the primitive nature of man, as the sprouts of the forest which has been felled. In like manner the evils which one does in the interval of a day prevents the germs of virtues which began to spring up again from developing themselves and destroys them.
After the germs of virtue have thus been perverted many times from developing themselves, then the beneficent breath of evening does not suffice to preserve them. As soon as the breath of evening does not suffice longer to preserve them, then the nature of man does not differ much from that of the brute. Men seeing the nature of this man like that of the brute, think that he has never possessed the innate faculty of reason. Are those the true and natural sentiments of man.”
Man appears as a brute because his evil deeds have crushed the germs of virtue. Society is the pathway that man has created by constant treading upon the the germs of virtue, and because there is a path man follows that path, reinforces that path and thus cultivates a brutish persona. The outward signs of this path are the luxuries against which Thoreau argues. These luxuries act as guideposts along the wrong path. To become virtuous one must avoid the wrong path, that of society, and cultivate the germs of virtue, or rather, allowing the germs of virtue to be cultivated. In The Village Thoreau talks of wondering through the darkest nights trying to find his way home, or more to the point, not of trying to find his way but of not trying and simply allowing his body to find the route home, which it can do “as the hand finds its way to the mouth without assistance.” Thoreau reinforces his view of our natural ability to be know the right thing with this quote from Mencius. “I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.”[178] The path of society blinds us to the wisdom and truth in the world, but it is possible to find that wisdom and truth.

To see the path of society one must first remove oneself from society. Through nature and our interaction with it can we see society for what it is. Nature does not hew to our expectations, and so we are shown not what society wants us to see or what we want to see but simply what nature reveals. This interaction with nature is exemplified by Thoreau’s experience with the red squirrels at the approach of spring. The squirrels got under his house and “kept up the the queerest chuckling and chirruping,” while Thoreau was reading or writing. Try as he might he could not scare off the squirrels, they were not afraid nor would they leave despite his stomping. In this we find a path of action outside of society. We should be like the squirrels in some respect, we should follow our nature. As the squirrels nature is to play and make noise, regardless of the entreaties and arguments of society or individual person.

To bring this discussion to a more personal level, I just recently had the experience of driving some sixteen hours, from Santa Fe to Oakland. A more apropos illustration of Thoreau’s metaphor of society as a path could not have been found if I went looking. There I was, stuck in a car driving upon a path of asphalt. I had only the choice of which path would serve best to get me to my destination, and not the chance to blaze a new path. Moreover, I was on this literal path because of my metaphoric path. I had to get home so as to write this very paper in time, else I would do poorly in a class I require for my degree. But the drive itself illustrated further the problem of following a path, especially in the contemporary world. While driving I had no time to look at the world, no time to watch the sunset, to see the beautiful hill as I drove by at eighty miles per hour. Moreover, I was in this car, stuck interacting with the world not as a person but as a machine person, hybridized with the auto, my actions and reactions funneled through the machine. A sort of cyborg, not permanently fused to the machine, but dependent upon it. Like this my path in life is hybridized. I attend this university because I wish to learn, just as I drove because I wanted to get home. But it is what flies by along the side of this path that worries me. I have knowledge funneled through the academic format with which I interact. My responses to that knowledge, writings, opinions, etc., is also funneled through the academic path. I respond in writing, such as this essay, or in discussion in class. I often find that I lack the ability to explain the concepts and idea I learn, or think I have learned, to those outside of academia. It is the equivalent of giving walking or cycling directions in San Francisco when you have only driven a car. There are so many one-way streets and ways closed to a driver, routes so designed because it is more efficient if one assumes that driving is the norm, that one giving directions for a car is required to give longer and more circuitous directions that would eve be necessary for more simple forms of transport. Likewise, the vocabulary of academia is so laden with history that I can hardly use a word without it having be used for some thought hundreds of years that is often different and sometime opposite what I intuitively would use it to mean. To explain concepts one must first explain the layout of the language to be used, what cannot be used, what can be used the seemingly wrong way, and what is still open; the last of these of course being the simplest and shortest of the explanations, like telling a person driving in San Francisco that they should assume that they will not be able to turn left.

What worries me most about all this is that I do not see the space in the contemporary world to remove oneself to nature as did Thoreau. Yes, it is possible to return to nature, to camp and hike and such, but it has become such a mediated experience that we hardly see nature for what it is and instead see the conception of nature which society has given us. It is as Thoreau relates in Walden, when he returns to the site of his cabin after the fact and finds that others have used his path. Likewise, we use paths through nature which society has built. We lack the wild lands that existed at the time in which Thoreau was writing. We lack a place separate from society. Perhaps I am too pessimistic in this assessment, but I have searched, I have traveled to places near and far to find something outside all these expectations; but, I always feel the burden of society upon me. I see this in a way as because of Thoreau, or more exactly as a result of society’s response to the threat of Thoreau, and it is a threat. Society has altered to become more invasive, more totalitarian, extending further into our perception of the world. It has trod so heavily upon the germs of virtue that I have my doubts that we can ever escape this path we are on.

We follow these paths, created by man, reinforced by man. They lead our perception and our actions. We must first be separate from them, be lost, before we can see and understand them. We are forced on this path, by threat of force and other more insidious methods. My desperation is that we now lack for a Walden Pond to remove us from these paths.

What is the incentive to create without Intellectual Copyright?

I the comments on my previous post someone brought up the perennial question noted in the title here. And it is a decent question. What is the incentive to create without the possibility of monetary gain?

I should note first that I have only once "made money" off of my intellectual property. I put made money in quotes because I didn't really make money, but I charged. Also because I didn't really charge for the intellectual property. A few years ago some friends and I put out a zine that was all haiku. We all sold them, but would also email the full contents to pretty much anyone who wanted them, with the condition that they wrote us a haiku that we could include in a future issue. Needless to say, we didn't actually make any money, we lost some, but we got some great haiku.

Back to the point. What is the incentive?

Well, the interesting thing about this question is that it ignores the vast expanse of human history during which there was no IP law. That's right, Mozart had no control over his work. And yet people still made art, still invented. What's more, it skips over the more important question: What is the goal of creating art or inventions. Under capitalism and with IP law, there is no incentive to help people without money, so if I had the potential to create a device that would help only people who couldn't buy it, then the profit motive would encourage me to simply not create it.

But we all know that isn't how reality works. Artist create art, whether they get paid or not, and often they don't, often they lose money. I would go so far as to say that the majority of people who create works under copyright don't make money on them, or even "make money." They do it because the have a need to. They do it because the act of creation is an integral part of the human experience, whether it be the creation of a painting or the coding of a program or the invention of something simply because you know it will help people.

People created before there was capitalism. People created before there was money. People probably created before there was language.

Whatever happens, people will create. It's what we do.


P.S.This wasn't aimed at you T-Ray, you just sparked a rant that had been a long time in the making.

People Power
Federalist 51 is a daunting prospect for interpretation. It is short and concise, as are most of the Federalist Papers, but it seems to change subject from its initial discussion of partition of powers in the government to methods of preventing the tyranny of the majority by the creation of a large number of competing factions. This is however not the case. The theme of partitioning powers is constant through the paper, even in the second section when it appears otherwise. This apparent disconnect is accounted for by the fact that the people and by extension the factions which they form are internal to the government. That is to say, the partition of powers laid out in the constitution is complemented by the partition of powers among the various factions. When one reads Federalist 51 with this understanding it becomes a more coherent document.
There are two expedients which Madison proposes to maintain the partition of power as proposed in the constitution. Both rest upon the supposition of competition between people being the normal state of affairs. The first of these, which is a natural outgrowth of the structure of government already, is to give each department of government power separate from the other departments. This will check the various departments because those who make up the departments will be unwilling to give up power and thus will fight usurpations by the other departments. The second method is to have so many factions as to make any one of them unable to gain a majority and in doing so impose tyranny upon the minority. This is to be achieved by sheer size of territory and number of people included under the federal government, which is to be of such a size and include so many diverse groups that it cannot help but be composed of a number of factions too great to allow for a majority.
Part of the problem with the first provision, in terms of Federalist 51, is that it begs the question, in a way. The question Madison puts forth is specifically this:
“To what expedient, then, shall we finally resort, for maintaining in practice the necessary partition of power among the several departments, as laid down in the Constitution?”[Madison, Federalist 51]
The question, essentially, is what will make sure that the different branches of governments do not encroach upon each others power. Yet, later we find that it is in fact the very partitioning of power among the branches that will ensure the separation of powers. Or, to be more specific, the natural political ambition of man given the context of a government so organized will keep each branch in check. As Madison says: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” This is problematic in the context of Federalist 51 because, though Madison sees government as “the greatest of all reflections on human nature,”[ibid.] he also says that the expedients are to be internal to the governmental structure, and it is a great leap to say that government is a reflection of human nature and mean that human nature is interior to government structure. Part of the problematic aspect of Federalist 51 is that the question with which it begins is not really the question it wishes to ask. Or, if it is the question it wishes to ask, it is not the question it ultimately answers. The question it answers is what structural aspects are necessary to keep government from becoming tyrannical.
It takes as its one of its suppositions that men are flawed, or “are no angels,” and uses this to explain why the partition of power in the method laid out will stop power from accruing in one branch, which would lead to tyranny. Moreover, the second provision, sheer size as a way to increase the number of different factions, seems to be wholly outside the discussion of separation of powers. Indeed, the discussion in the paper switches tracks in the last paragraph, from a discussion of separation of power, to one of how to stop a majority in the social realm from seizing control and tyrannizing the minority. However, the opposite is the case. While it is true that the discussion of factions does not specifically mention the idea of separation of powers it is a manifestation on the social level of said separation. In the same way that the government structure is formed to play each branch off each other, in a formalized way, having a large republic, and thus a great number of factions, causes a similar competition for power. This competition does not seem to be a part of the government because it is prior to the government. These factions are not formed by the government, with possible exceptions, but are those groups for which the government is formed.
“Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradually induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful.”[Madison]
In this quote Madison connects Liberty and Justice. Moreover he notes that even strong factions, analogous to the strong man, desire the protection of a government because of “the uncertainty of their condition.” This evokes the earlier claim that government is a reflection of human nature.
Despite the fact that the factions appears to be external to the government structure, it is not. In the words of Abraham Lincoln it is a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.” That is to say that because it is a republican form of government the people are not external to the government, they are the constituents of the government. This may be a difficult claim to support, but without this view to connect the two sections of the paper it would seem that Madison simply decided to switch topics, which, while possible, would be unlikely. This does appear to contradict the language which Madison uses, specifically when he says: “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” This appears prima facie to rule out the idea fore mentioned, but it does not. To say that a government must first control the governed is to say in this context that it must bind people together into a governed mass, it must form a polity. Then to say that it must control itself means that that polity must constitute itself in such a way so as to minimize the possibility of tyranny. So the great number of factions are in fact internal to the government structure, by nature of being composed of men. Madison uses similar language of submission to government in numerous places, in the earlier quote about the weaker and stronger places, but he never explicitly rules out the people as an internal aspect of the government.
Even in the Constitution, which Madison defends in his paper, the preamble says that the people “ordain and establish this Constitution,” and the Constitution then lays out the way in which power is to be distributed, that is that way in which the polity has chosen constitute itself. It does not put itself above the people. It establishes the method by which the people will organize themselves so as to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” The power rests with the people, they have merely organized themselves in such a way as to secure their liberty. There is further evidence of this interpretation when Madison says “by creating a will in the community independent of the majority.” This would mean that it would be possible to have a government outside of the people, a monarchy or tyranny, but Madison rejects this.
A response to this interpretation would likely be that though Madison does not clearly say that the people are not the government, the language he uses clearly implies it. This is a valid criticism, but given the two possibilities: one, that Federalist 51 has the constant thread of forming a government using mens’ ambition as a method to ensure liberty and that said government includes the people; or, two, that Madison switches to an obliquely related topic in the second half, almost seeming to ramble on. Though one could suppose it is not impossible that Madison merely had to fill column inches in the newspaper in which the Federalist Paper was first printed, the first option seems more likely.
So we see that we must accept that when Madison speaks of the partition of powers he refers not only to the plan laid out in the Constitution, but also to the masses of people. This is because the masses of people are in fact a part of the government. The reasoning for this partition is because men are naturally ambitious, and thus the form of government must follow this fact. Despite the fact that he does not clearly state that the people are part of the government, it must necessarily be true is we are to accept Federalist 51 as a coherent argument.

Intellectual property and John Locke

As the previous post noted, Locke loves the capitalism because it increases output of the stuff people need and like. And it with this in mind that the U.S. Constitution includes protection for private property, which is an integral aspect of Capitalism. There are many valid criticisms of Capitalism in general and of the conception of property in the Lockian sense, but that is beyond the scope of this writing. For Locke property boils down to labor, essentially he says "I worked to make this thing, therefore it is mine." He comes to this conclusion by theological and practical reasoning. God gave the earth to Adam to exploit and so all men are allowed to exploit it. It is only when the exploitation of resources by more than one man interact that society is needed. The problem with these views is that they come from a point in history when labor is scarce and resources are plenty. He even says that more men is better than more land.(P42 line21-22) To this day the Lockian conception of property is the closest to the common conception of property in the U.S. The more you work the more property you get, in theory at least.

This all breaks down horribly when applied to intellectual property. Intellectual property is not, and in many ways has never been, a scarce commodity. I can promulgate an idea without losing that idea. Yes, I lose control over the idea and what others can do with it, but unlike physical property it doesn't matter. With physical property control matters because one wishes to be able to use one's property, physically; and, with intellectual property one can still use the property even when others can use it. For example: If I go out and pick some berries, those are my berries because I did the labor to obtain them. I have the right to control over those berries because if I do not have that right then I am deprived of the berries in a real physical way, and cannot eat them. However, if I labor and produce a song and then let someone hear and that person thereby learns the song, possesses it, if you will, I still have access to all the immediate benefits of the song. I can still sing it to make myself happy. I can still sing it to make others happy. True, I cannot sell the song if it is allowed to circulate for free, but that presupposes that I should have a right to sell it in the first place.

The framers of the constitution understood this. They including in the constitution what would be the beginning of U.S. intellectual property. "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries" from Article one section eight. Clearly they don't think that there is a natural right to control of intellectual property, it is instead a created right. It was necessary that they put this created right in the constitution because it had not before been enshrined in common law or legal code. It is however important to note that this section of the constitution is not protecting a natural right such as the first amendment, it is creating a legal structure which allows people control of their writings and inventions. This last point is important because more and more in contemporary times people have begun to think of intellectual property as a natural right, which it is clearly not. We can see even more that it is not a natural right if we look to the history of the world. Before the constitution, there was not a legal mechanism for enforcing these rights, because they do not exist.

Previous to the legal codification of intellectual property artistic creations and idea were either protected by secrecy, i.e. no one has access to the Mona Lisa long enough to copy it, or were open for public consumption, as in a folk song. Someone wrote all those songs we now consider traditional. Whiskey in the Jar was written by someone. We don't know who, but even if we did, they would have had no rights to control who sang it or wrote it out as sheet music because there were no laws about it at the time. Even Mozart had no rights to his music. How then can we say that intellectual property is necessary to increase the number of goods available in our society. It, in fact, reduces them. It reduces them because it makes goods less available by the restrictions it imposes and because it limits the ability of others to make alterations to those goods in a way that makes them better.

Does John Locke like proto-capitalism?

You bet your ass!

This is all referenced from John Locke's Two Treatises of Government. More specifically, Chapter five of book two.

Advocating for Proto-Capitalism
In cases such as these, where we lack a statement from the author one way or the other, on whether a given state is good or bad, it is a necessity to first determine what the base normative assumptions from which the author works are. In the case of Locke we see that he views that which is good for men, both specific men and men in general, as good, specifically in regards to the acquisition of those things which are necessary for sustaining and enjoying life. It is because of this that he sees the proto-capitalistic state as a good thing. That is to say that more resources is better and because Proto-Capitalism allows for greater resource production, Locke views it as good.
Locke’s normative assumption is not explicitly stated, not in the second book of his treatises at least. It is however implicit in a number of assertions throughout the chapter on property. This can be found first and foremost in his description of land which has been worked. He consistently refers to land which has been worked so as to increase production of food as “improved.” We first see reference to improvement in ¶32: “As much land as a man Tills, Plants, Improves, Cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property.” (Locke, 290) In this case he separates improvement from other labors which man can perform upon a tract of land, but in his later usage we find that he considers those things to be forms of improvement. Indeed, in the same paragraph Locke states, “God and his[man’s] Reason commanded him to subdue the earth, i.e. improve it for the benefit of life.”(Locke, 290) Clearly tilling and planting would be included under that improvement. Moreover, this is as close to an explicit normative assertion as Locke offer, and it makes clear that improvement is tied to benefiting life, by which he means men’s life, for Locke’s is a clearly anthropocentric philosophy.
On the other side of the coin we see Locke’s statement on waste. “So little, that even amongst us, Land that is left wholly to Nature, that hath no improvement of Pasturage, Tillage, or Planting, is called, as indeed it is, wast;” (Locke, 297) Here we see reinforced that Locke views the other things listed earlier as types of improvements. He also sees land which lies unimproved, left wholly to nature, as a bad thing, and thus that land should be cultivated to the extent that men can use it’s products. This idea of waste does bring up a caveat of Locke’s; letting things which benefit man go to waste once labor has been spent upon them it tantamount to robbery. “But if they perished, in his Possession, without their due use...he invaded his Neighbour’s share, for he had no Right, farther than his Use, called for any of them, and they might serve to afford him Conveniencies of Life.”(Locke, 295) So greater production is only good if those things produced are used, it is for this reason that Locke sees the proto-capitalism which he describes as a good thing. We see this view of wasting things which are necessary to life as bad again in ¶46.
In ¶42 Locke goes on to say that more men is better and that the role of the good prince is to encourage, or “incourage” as it were, and protect the process of improving land. In this is the beginning of his showing that he thinks proto-capitalism is good, because he follows this in ¶45 with the assertion that “yet there are still great Tracts of Ground to be found, which (the Inhabitants thereof not having joyned with the rest of Mankind, in the consent of the Use of their common Money) lie waste, and are more than the People, who dwell on it, do, or can make use of, and still lie common. Tho’ this can scarce happen amongst that part of Mankind, that have consented to the Use of Money.” Here he clearly thinks that the proto-capitalist state is necessary for the sort of improvements and increases in production which he views as good.
One could argue contrary to these views that he sees proto-capitalism as a bad because it ends up with wasted resources, and outcome which he clearly thinks is bad. However, to argue this assumes that he sees proto-capitalism as necessarily being wasteful, a contention for which there is a lack of evidence. There are those who would argue that proto-capitalism would be inherently wasteful, this is however not the point. One could also argue that the inequality in wealth is bad, but Locke states that money is not bad thing, nor is hoarding money. “Gold and Silver, which may be hoarded up without injury to any one.”(Locke, 302) So he is clearly not a critic of self-interest, if acquiring property is good and hoarding wealth is good, then what could be wrong with self interest in regards to property, especially in light of the fact that he sees the inequality as something which men have consented to?
It is clear that Locke thinks that increased production of those thing which benefit man, both necessities and luxuries, is a good thing. Further it is clear that he sees proto-capitalism as a good method for increasing that production. It is true that he might not think that the governments which arise from this proto-capitalism are universally good, but that is a function of the government not of proto-capitalism.

New Privilege Exposed/Discovered

Well I was just reading the comments in The post on the post on marriage over at I Blame the Patriarchy and I ran into this in a comment by maribelle (excerpt):

Ways in which his male privilege rears its ugly head:

1. The privilege of always being right. This is HUGE. He simply cannot see himself as wrong about anything–from whether to make a left turn on Maple to how we raise our children. No large or small mistake can penetrate his consciousness. Even if he’s obviously, demonstrably wrong, (i.e. sinking in a bog near Maple) it is never talked about again. (Three years of therapy later there are grudging apologies, but usually so sour they are an insult in and of themselves. Best thing about therapy–he never yells now. I love that. They can learn. He told me when we married that he was “nothing if not trainable.” That has been generally accurate–about some things.)

#1 alone ensures that our marriage will be forever unequal.

But there’s more:

2. The privilege of always being smarter. He has a PhD. I have a BA. If I happen to know some fact that he doesn’t, from some obscure fact about the Trojan war to Alberto Gonzalez’s latest DOJ outrage, it fries his ass and he has to look it up independently, then act as though my knowledge of a topic predating his were a freak accident.

To this end, he will MAKE UP INFORMATION. I kid you not. Someone will ask a question and he will extrapolate on some subject on which he knows nothing. If I call him on it (in private) he shrugs it off as seeming reasonable or inferable from the facts at hand. In my book, I call it “lying.”

3. The privilege of thinking he’s better at something than I am. Anything and everything, including my areas of professional and amateur expertise.

4. The privilege of choosing his own work. Yes, he “helps” a lot around the house–some weeks he does more than I. But what chaps my hide is that he always picks the jobs he wants to do, and I am expected to pick up the rest. EX: He “cycles laundry” (puts in washer/dryer) but our daughter and I fold it. Yet every Sunday as he lists the chores he did that weekend ( a bizarre ritual at which I am expected to coo and bill) he lists “I did the laundry.” Whatever.

He NEVER scrubs the pans because he “hates” it. (Me, I live for it.) He cooks because he hates to do dishes. He mows the lawn because he WILL NOT vac and dust. on and on.

#3 and #4 I don't really have a problem with anymore, though #3 was definitely a problem for a while. The second half of #2 also used to be a problem, but isn't anymore. Of course I thought of it as being pretentious more than privilege, but whatever.

I still have huge problems with one and two. My further problem is that I don't really know how to deal with them. A bid part of that is because the stuff that I've dealt with already is often a matter of behavior whereas the ones I have problems with are more assumptions I am making about myself and other people. I have tried to change my behavior in regards to these, but I notice that I still immediately think them and instead of saying something I just suppress what I would say, or I do this when I am being aware of myself and my actions.

I really need to figure out how to attack them at the root of the problem, the assumptions.

Further Gender Musings

I had a realization a couple of days ago: I gender dogs as masculine and cats as feminine. At first I didn't think that much of it, but I'm finding it weirder now. I can see why I would do that, but I do it to the point where when I first come into contact with a dog I assume it is male, and vice versa with cats. Further indoctrination in the gender/sex binary to be broken I suppose.

That leads me to another point. It seems like there is so much deprogramming to be done, where the heck does one start? I mean, I consistently recognize these ingrained behaviors, schema, as mentioned in an earlier post. I do think that recognizing them is the first step, then acting to change them.

“Ideology and hegemony are opposite ends of a continuum…At one end…‘ideology’ is used to refer to struggles to establish dominant meanings and to make justice claims on the basis of alternative ideologies…At the other end…the term ‘hegemony’ is used to refer to situations where meanings are so embedded that representational and institutionalized power is invisible." (Silbey 1998, 276)

Schema are the everyday actors of hegemony. They are the ways that we as individuals further the oppression of different groups, sometimes even groups to which we belong. I like the way that Sibley (to me by way of Haslanger) talks about the continuum, where we have the presumption of something being natural, whatever that means, on the end of hegemony. I.E. womens place is in the home, black people are not as intelligent as white people, etcetera. and then as ones eyes are opened one moves towards ideology, or the recognition of things as ideology and not as part of a natural order.

So, here I am, slowly moving across the continuum towards ideology.

"We have electoral fraud, rampant corporate corruption, a culture of militarism and war," Williams said. "If you care about democracy and self-governance and any kind of representative system, the only constitutional way to preserve what's left of the Republic is to peaceably take apart the empire."

From here.

And let me say, I completely agree. I would love to see California secede. I realize that practically it is implausible, or at least a long way off, but I don't think it's a bad thing to start talking about. In a way I think this goes back to my previous post on a left/right libertarian coalition. If we can join forces we could do exciting things like reduce the size of the national guard, thus reducing the power of the feds to take it over and fight wars. In lieu of the national guard we could institute a large state-wide emergency response organization, based not on centralized command but on decentralized aid efforts.

One of the reasons that Katrina was such a disaster was because the feds refused to allow private citizens with boats and transport into the city to help rescue people. Throughout history the initial response to large scale disasters has always been by private citizens. Go read about the earthquake in '89, it was the people on the scene of the freeway collapses, regular commuters not emergency personnel that saved the most people. Where as during the aftermath of Katrina there were literally lines of people with boats trying to get into the city to rescue people, but alas centralized authority must be maintained.

In an interesting aside; in imperial China the emperor would have been dethroned if he had acted the way bush did. Natural disasters were seen as a sort of omen; and, if the imperial government did not successfully mitigate the disaster their mandate to rule was thought to be revoked. So emperors have fallen for mistakes lesser than our current presidents.

Back to the point: We need to encourage all of these secessionist movements, they may not succeed, but they might bring about less centralized government control.

A Scheme for Liberation
Thinking about Feminism is not enough to change things. Political solutions alone will not change things because to a large extent the political system reinforces the problem. Politics in the United States grows out of existing social dynamics and is not an imposed system of oppression, it is the reification of organic systems of oppression, or organic hierarchies. Because of this it is not enough to theorize, think about and implement political solutions, we must, as individuals, examine our role in society and first determine how our actions reinforce, intentionally or unintentionally, the systems of oppression that exist in out society.
What we generally refer to as our personal lifestyle consists of our actions and reasons for our actions. Our personal lifestyle is both a manifestation of and a reinforcement of what Sally Haslanger has called schema. A schema is not simply a set of rules and beliefs that we follow, it is an internalized rule set that guides our interactions in the world. Similar to the way we do not memorize the grammar of our mother tongue and then refer back to it when we wish to communicate something, we do not memorize the schema of our social roles and then consult it when we interact with the world. The relationship between schema and action has potentially liberatory effects in that we can alter the schema by our actions and can thus bring about change in the schema and rework them to such an extent that they no longer play a role in the oppression of people. In regards to Feminism in ones personal lifestyle it is the schema for genders that we must change or destroy, for they are that aspect of our personal lifestyle to which we have effective access.1
Because gender is a part of the oppression of women, and gender roles are the action aspect of the gender schema, ones personal lifestyle should be altered so as to not conform to gender expectations and thereby create a space for oppressed people, in this case women, to recreate their own schema, whether that means destroying it or merely altering it so as to shed the oppression attached to it. As a male, who is general identified as being a man, I think that this is one way I can help to get rid of the oppression of women. There is , for me as a male, another, less subtle way to stop the oppression of women. This too has to do with the schema of gender. A great deal of the schema for men is based directly on the oppression of women. Men are expected to treat women not as people but as objects, both sexual and laborers, and as sexual laborers. There are quite a number of ways that men, as a class, can affect the oppressive living conditions of women, most of which consist not of action, but of the lack of oppressive action.
The first of these is for men to not force or pressure women into sex or sexual interaction. This would consist of abstaining from a range of activities, from hiring a prostitute, to staring at a woman’s breasts, to telling her “if you really loved me you’d have sex with me.” We live in a society where these things are tacitly condoned, if not expected. For example: men are generally expected to view pornography or go to a strip club. To forego these activities is not a burden on men in any objective way, or inter-subjective way if you prefer. Yes, it may be difficult to undo years of habitual action, to change ones schema that is, but is that really an argument against the cessation of harmful actions? I suspect that if I told people that I could not stop kicking puppies because it had become such a habit they would hardly be sympathetic to might plight. And yet this is exactly what many use to argue against men ceasing these activities. There is another arguments against not doing these things. One is that these different sexual interaction can be liberatory and not oppressive. I certainly would not argue that sexual interaction are somehow limited to oppressiveness, but to say that because it is possible for them to be liberatory then we should assume that somehow the liberatory nature is intrinsic in the act, is absurd. The ability to use guns for self defense does not justify murder.
There is another important aspect of personal lifestyle that affects me especially as someone identified as a man, that is male privilege. The idea of privilege can be complex but what it boils down to is that because society identifies me as a man I am able to do things that those not identified as a man cannot do, or are chastised for doing. I like to use the metaphor of a car to represent privilege, likely because I am a bicyclist and am negatively effected by car on a regular basis. The car represents, in a real physical sense, the power of privilege. While in a car the driver experiences the world not as an individual alone, but as a hybrid of individual and machine, wherein all the driver’s reactions to and interactions with the world are made by the driver but through the car. This hybrid, or maybe cyborg is a better name, insulates the driver from negative effects of many of his actions because the car offers both a protective shell and an enhancement of physical power. This hybridization is often so complete as to feel personally harmed when his car is injured or even impeded.
Viewed through a Feminist lens there are a number of implications to this metaphor. If we look at the differing goals which feminists have we can describe some of them as wanting everyone to drive, some as wanting drivers to make to follow rules so as to make the world safe for non-drivers, and some, myself included, as wanting to do away with cars all together. Moving beyond the metaphor, what we are talking about is power, how it is connected to the self in the form of privilege and how best to deal with power and privilege in the real world; because, while I may have given up driving years ago I cannot simply sell my privilege, it is thrust upon me by society. Here we return to schema.
The hybridization of car and driver is representative of schema. A driver does not consciously think about pushing the gas and the brakes and steering, he has internalized the driver schema to such an extent that his reactions to stimuli external to the car take place in an unconscious way; again, like speaking his mother tongue. He is enmeshed with his power so much that it has become a part of his identity. Parallel to this, I have internalized the schema for a man. I cannot simply step out of the car, as it were, because it is a social creation and while it can be perpetuated by me, it is more so given to me. So my job, in regards to my personal lifestyle, is to rid myself of the car of privilege. A large part of this is the way that I interact with women, but it is equally important how I interact with men. I must break the schema I am given so that other may be liberated.
I hope that I have successfully laid out the ways that I feel my views on feminism informs my personal lifestyle, and why feminism should necessarily inform everyones personal lifestyle. The liberation of oppressed peoples is the great challenge of our time, and, while it is difficult, to simply give up in the face of difficulties is not an option I accept.


note:Much of this paper draws from Sally Haslanger's talk at the APA-Pacific 2007 Constructing the Social: Practices, Categories, Kinds

PHOENIX INSURGENT: Smarts and wealth: Defending an egalitarian distrubtion of brains

PHOENIX INSURGENT: Smarts and wealth: Defending an egalitarian distrubtion of brains

Phoenix Insurgent has some good points in here about the rise of neuroenhancers, or "cogs, though I've never heard that term before. But, I'll have to disagree with him that this will necessarily end up being the sort of thing where the rich end up as the beneficiaries and the poor end up screwed.

This is not to say that the poor will end up with equal access to the drugs or that the rich won't end up using them more and more. It is to say that we have a number of assumption, as a society, when it comes to things like these. The first is that more intelligence is better, specifically, the ability to do well on certain tests and the ability for rote memorization correlate with some sort of "good" in the same way that wealth does. I don't mean to say that intelligence is somehow a bad thing, but I think the normative aspect of what we view as intelligent should be further examined.

Beyond these issues is the fact that we don't know what the side effects, long term, might be from the use of these drugs, and, if history is a guide, they will come into broad use before this issue is resolved. Poor people might in fact be protected from mental health and neurological breakdown as a result of not being able to afford these drugs. I am reminded of my friend from Poland telling me that all their farming was organic, because they couldn't afford to do it otherwise. One must remember that much of these "advances" are only such given the current context, and that context is subject to radical change.

To bring about change in the world you have to do more than just think about it.
-Sally Haslanger

My behavior in class. How I talk to a teacher. How I talk to a woman. How I expect others to treat me. All these things are affected by ideals and norms which our society lives by; these things are, at least partially, a response to the categories in which society places me and those with whom I interact. Ideologies, religions, hierarchy, government and language, all these are meaningless without a social context. The existence of all these things is dependent on society. This is what it means for a thing to be socially constructed, that it is dependent upon a society for its current form of existence. What is the nature of things that are socially constructed? In the social context in which I exist these are fundamental questions. I have given myself a number of personal titles, anarchist, anti-racist and feminist, chosen from those available, which put me on a path which requires me asking what is innate of a person, persons or society and what is something which can be changed to create a society which includes the least possible amount of suffering and the most possible amount of fulfillment for every person.

Given this it is vital for me to understand what social constructions are both thick and changeable. Thick meaning that there is a wide disconnect between what society thinks is innate to a person and what is actually a part of a role expected of that person. One clear example of this is the roles which females are expected to play in our society. If we define a female as someone who possesses a certain set of organs, breasts, a vagina, ovaries and others, then we see that this role is minor; they only exist insofar as they possess these organs. However, female are not simply their physiological make-up, for in our society there are gender role that we ascribe to them that they must also live up to so as to been seen as women. This is true of males as well as females. I, as a male, have certain organs which make me a male. What, then, does it mean for something to be socially constructed?

In her paper “Ontology and Social Construction”[pdf] Haslanger posits a number of possible conceptions of social construction. The first type is generic social construction which she defines as “something is a social construction in the generic sense just in case it is an intended or unintended product of a social practice.” This is by far the broadest category of social constructions, to the point that it is trivial in the sense that it can help us to describe the world only in a limited sense. Yes, chess and houses are social constructions, but to say they are means that they have been created by a society. It is the more abstract of social constructions which interests me. But those things also fit in this category; gender, politics, class and others which are dependent on the existence of society for not only their creation but also their existence. To this end Haslanger breaks down social constructions in two sub groups causal construction and constitutive construction.
Causal construction is defined as: “Something is causally constructed iff social factors play a causal role in bringing it into existence or, to some substantial extent, in its being the way it is.” This type of social construction is the house or the car or even the computer on which I am writing this paper. They exist as a result of their being a society to create them but once they exist they exist independently. This, again, is a fairly limited concept in terms of utility. What use does saying that a house is socially created, it is obvious. Constitutive construction is defined by Haslanger as “Something is constitutively constructed iff in defining it we must make reference to social factors.” This is the category which includes the more abstract constructions. It includes roles that we take on such as man, woman, student, Democrat and even such roles as brother or sister. If we take the role of brother as an example we see that while one can narrowly define a brother as being a male born of the same parents as another, which is more of a causal construction, in our society it takes on other aspects. There are certain actions which are expected of a brother. Familial love for one. Because we expect these actions of a brother the role is more than just causally constructed.

Now we arrive at a more complicated form of social construction, discursive construction. Haslanger defines discursive construction thusly: “Something is discursively constructed just in case it is the way it is, to some substantial extent, because of what is attributed (and/or self attributed) to it.”

We see then that while the role of a brother is constitutively constructed, an actual brother is discursively constructed. I have a sister and am thus a brother, and because this is attributed to me I take different actions than I otherwise would. I call people I would not otherwise, I buy presents I would not otherwise. I also attribute to myself or have been attributed other roles which make me discursively constructed: anarchist, student, man and white. Each of these roles is a constitutive construction, they exist in how they interact within society, but I will look at the role of my being a man. In acting as a man I have certain behavior and certain dress which is expected of me by society but the reason these behaviors are expected of me is not completely clear. Gender and sex are separate, sex being a definition by physiological make-up and gender being a set of expected actions and dress imposed by society, a pragmatic construction. Haslanger defines a pragmatic construction as: “A classificatory apparatus (be it a full blown classification scheme or just conceptual distinction or descriptive term) is socially constructed just in case its use is determined, at least in part, by social factors.” Masculinity and femininity are socially constructed in a way similar to Haslanger's hypothetical “cool dudes” because there is no person whom prior to socialization fits these molds, in fact very few fit the molds of masculinity and femininity even after socialization. The social determining of gender is a binary which is a discursive and pragmatic social construct. If gender were not socially constructed then it would need not be separate from sex, one could say that someone was either male or female and not need to say that they are man or woman.

Attributions of masculinity have an effect on how individuals interact. Men are discursively constructed. But on the analysis I've been proposing, this happens as a result of a false and importantly misleading representation of the facts. I am suggesting that in contexts where "masculinity" functions as a serious form of evaluation, there is general complicity in the belief that masculine behavior is a result of a character trait (the person being a man) that is the real basis for the evaluation. They want their masculinity, so to speak, to "shine through" in their behavior, dress, etc., so that they will win approval by society; and society acknowledges a distinction between being a man and just acting like a man. Masculine things (objects, dress, actions) are the things men approve of (or would approve of). To debunk the belief that there is a special quality of "masculinity" that warrants the designation of "man," we show that there is no such property as "masculinity" (so understood) and, in fact, that the application of the term "man" is determined wholly by the interests and concerns of society.

Above I've taken a quote from Sally Haslanger and replaced the reference to coolness and cool with manliness and man. We can see that when so altered, the paragraph still makes sense, that gender is a pragmatic social construction. To be a so called “real man” I must act in a certain way, dress in a certain way and possess, or not possess, the correct objects. I, even as a male, clearly am not innately a real man if I must do all of these thing besides being male to be a real man. I must interact with others in a certain way, I must have or not have certain emotion and I must disdain all thing feminine in terms of actions and dress. The inverse is, of course, also true; one who wishes to be a woman need not look to their genitals to tell them what to do, for femininity is just as much a pragmatic social construct as masculinity.

Clearly there is an interaction between gender and sex, to claim otherwise would be absurd; but the connection is somewhat weaker than popular opinion would have it. In fact, the connection is popular opinion, specifically the popular opinion that those with a certain sex should be a certain gender. What we find now is that the actions we expect of a given gender has changed, as has happened before, but the ideals of the genders has changed much less than it appears given that the change in behavior is is often radical. More recently we see the rise of new conceptions of manliness, that a real man is not afraid to show emotion, that a real man can wear pink or some other form of womens clothing; and while this is not especially wide spread, except perhaps here in San Francisco, it is an example of changes which a pragmatic construct can go through. We do however note that most of these changes are expressed in such a way that it retains the core values of masculinity. “A real man is not afraid to cry.” for example does not say that it is manly to cry, but that a real man is so very brave that he can do things which society has deemed unmanly.

These attempts to change what it means to be a man have other flaws as well. The most glaring of these is the failure to recognize that gender is a tool used in society for the oppression of women and other non-male people. Because gender is a pragmatic which according to society should always be attached to the corresponding sex, then it become a tool for oppression, the oppression of non-males in our society, but it could certain be used to oppress different groups were sex roles changed around. What society should be asking is not what it means to be a man or a woman, but exactly how much our biological sex affects our behavior.

Karl Popper is the original solver of the problem of induction.

Well, I certainly don't believe that. Popper certainly did a lot for Philosophy of Science, but he didn't solve the Problem of Induction.

The problem of induction isn't a practical problem. It isn't me saying "I shouldn't act as if the sun is going to rise tomorrow," it's me saying "I have no logical justification for assuming the sun will rise tomorrow." Popper never justifies induction, he justifies the scientific method, which is different than induction.

I feel like it is quite unlikely that *anyone* will figure out a justification for induction, it may be that induction is justifiable, but we will simply never be able to do it. This is a bit of an odd argument, I know, but lets just say that I find humankind in general, and philosophers more specifically, to be incredibly naive, or perhaps arrogant, when they have ideas on the ability of humans to make achievements towards better, more complete knowledge. Truth, as far as I'm concerned, is a social construct, and so we are terribly limited in regards of our ability to understand the world.

The one thing that English lacks, well, one of the many things, is a second person plural seperate from the second person singular. At least, this is the cae in most places. The south, despite how much of the country holds it in contempt, has resolved this pressing linguistic deficiency.

Y'all

Yes, that wonderful contraction. I'd be so apt as to write it without the apostrophe, yall. I mean, tomorrow used to have a hyphen between to and morrow, but we got rid of that superfluous grammatical mark.

So the next time you need to use the second person plural pronoun, just use "Yall."

Goodbye Yall!

This post is a test of the Arabic posting system.

بيييييييييييييييب



خوبز

If this had been a real post, some of that might have made sense.

I just finished a great little book; or, more of a pamphlet. The Devil's Deception (Talbees Iblees).

Hoo boy, those religious type know how to tear into people. This one is a translation of a twelfth century text that is a attack on Shi'a, specifically, and Sufi beliefs. Man does he talk some smack. It's interesting to read these responses from the time periods about all these things I have read that are so academic. Responses that consistently refer to people being misled by the devil or what ever great evil there is.

This one manages to tie all of its criticism up in the end with the Assassins. Yes those wonderful boogey men of yore. "They did drugs", "They killed wantonly". Pretty much everything bad that could be said about them has been. But really, what do we know?

Well, first off, they didn't smoke hash, at least not in any large way or as some sort of indoctrination. They got their name from being Assassiyun, followers of the assass, the base or foundation. strangely similar to todays al Qaida in nomenclature. Really there are a lot of similarities between the time of the crusades and now. A major one of these is the Sunni-Shi'a internecine warfare.

The Big Question!! this year is "what are you optimistic about?"

As my great aunt Sis is fond of saying: Well, shit guys (imagine it with a great souther accent.) what can I be optimistic about?

Sure, personally things are going good, but on the global scale, I got nothing. Perhaps I am optimistic that the Dems taking congress will have some positive effect on the environment, or at least slow down the damage. But really, I'm not optimistic. Recently my father had me over for dinner and asked me about the environment, sure that I would be able to explain what it would take for us to get out of the position in which we find ourselves. No such luck I must say. Him and my step-mother had been arguing over whether it was morally okay to create a false crisis to convince people to change their ways. When I explained that the real crisis would put any false crisis to shame, though they would likely not be around to see it, he was a bit taken aback. I always have been rather optimistic. These days, I just try for the best and expect the worst.

The transgender excitement over at Twisty's has inspired me a bit. I must say it came at the perfect time, as I just finished a paper on social constructs and gender. The blogosphere does quite a job traveling along with me, intellectually at the least.

So what the hell is gender? Well, it's a bunch of stuff. It's how we dress, how we react to others, what stuff we own, what we learn, and why we do all those things the way we do. Gender, in western society, is a function of sex traditionally speaking. Whatever sex you are born, you get the gender that goes along with it. All this stuff is of course completely made up. Gender doesn't exist in any sort of real way, it exists like race exists as a social construct. But the problem here seems to be that people either don't know or reject the idea of social constructs. So what is a social construct? Simply put it is something that exists as it is owing completely or mostly to society. That includes houses and race and cars and other stuff, so is probably overly broad so lets narrow it down.

Sally Haslanger, my new favorite philosopher, in her paper Ontology and Social Construction lays out a great breakdown of all the different types of social construction.

What is sex then? This one is harder. The way that we define people as certain sexes is definitely a social construct. There are people we would define as female even though they lack certain features we see as essential to being female, ovaries for example. The problem arises in the border areas. Some people seem happy to not worry about those areas, see Twisty's thread on lipstick for a few, but those are the areas which show us how any sort of essentialist view of sex breaks down.

The sun has risen more than a million times in recorded history, and yet, logically speaking, there is no apparent justification for us to assume it will rise tomorrow, as common sense would dictate. This is the predicament of the lack of justification for inductive logic. We can, however, consider this from a different perspective: If induction is truly unjustified, then either we have enjoyed an incredible streak of dumb luck up until now (just witness the general past success of inductive inferences) or something else explains our good fortune. (1) Induction has justification after all—we just haven’t found it, (2) We’ve enjoyed an incredible streak of dumb luck but have no reason to expect it to last, or (3) Some force or being has been ensuring that our unjustified inferences tend to pay off. Let us begin with the view that induction does have justification.
The idea that induction is not justified, and as such does not exist, simply because we have not yet found a method of justification strikes me as rather arrogant. The existence of a thing is not dependent upon man's ability to discover it. The problem here, of course, is that it is all well and good to say that, but the fact is that induction does not always work, e.g. black swans. It does however work most of the time. But if we appeal to the apparent past efficacy of inference then we do no more than to justify induction with itself, and this path of circular justification is one which must be avoided as shown by Salmon in his examples with counter-inference rules as justifying themselves and creating the paradox of giving the opposite likelihood of something happening as an inference rule would given that both are self justifying and given the same starting set of information. This paradox leads us away from those attempts at justifying induction but, again, to rule out the possibility of something simply because we lack the ability to account for it seems the hight of folly and arrogance.
Given that, perhaps it is true, we have merely enjoyed an incredible streak of dumb luck; we have flipped the coin a million times and it has nearly every time landed heads. But this is a highly unsatisfying answer. If true then we simply drift in a sea of chaos on an island of apparent order, viewing the world as a model for the rest of existence when in fact the only thing we can say about the universe is that we are damn lucky to even be here to see it. But if this is true then all knowledge we have about the world falls apart. We cannot say that we have not been created from nothing five minutes ago and merely have the
That leaves us with the idea that there is some force which has been ensuring our unjustified inferences pay off. This strikes me as even less likely than the idea that it has been all mere chance. That there could first be some force out there both powerful enough to know what our inductive inferences have been (though not all apparently, see again: black swans) and additionally willing to make sure that some of those inferences come to be seems highly outlandish. Although this view can be reconciled quite well with Berkeley's view of the world existing only insofar as it is perceived and that there must be a God to perceive things when there is no person. Then we have both an explanation for why we appear to live in a physical world, despite the lack of proof for said world actually existing, and why inductive logic works on a regular basis. The interesting aspect of this idea, that there is a force working to make our inferences come true, is that said force cannot be a force which enacts actual inductive logic, it must be a force which merely makes the world conform to our inferences. This again seems a bit more than absurd. If there were this force with the power to make all these things happen, then why would it not simply make inductive logic justified? Or perhaps we can say that the force would come from us, that we through sheer force of will can cause our inferences to come to be, but again with the arrogance.
Given all of these three options it seems that one of them must be true, that is to say, we can think of no other possibility. I suppose one could argue that there is some other possibility and that our inability to conceive of it does not rule it out, but we lean in that case away from philosophy and logic and more towards esoterica and mysticism. So it seems that we have here a good argument, one of these three must be true.