I think the only way a consequentialist can consistently go is to deny that it is immoral to kill an innocent human being: they would have to say that sometimes that is true, and sometimes false. — Bob Ross

Are you saying the switch operator is guilty of murder no matter what she does?

Even if a society doesn't have ownership between members of the society, it would still declare ownership against other societies. — LuckyR

This occurred to me as well. A society without the concept of ownership would have to be stranded and alone (like the original Berbers) or a global entity (or galactic as the case may be.)

Trollies don't kill people. Switching attendants kill people.

Millions of imaginary people have been severely injured due to this problem.

Trying — Fire Ologist

That's cool. If you can't conceive of it, I imagine it's because you're investing the idea with essential features of thought or the nature of animals. If someone can conceive it, they must be limiting the concept to... what? I guess the ways we deal with selfishness and conflict, so if you imagine a world with a strong emphasis on the group identity over individuality, ownership might become an alien idea.

For example, in Russia after the fall of the USSR, there was a factory where the owners wanted to lay off part of the labor force. Laying people off is an exercise of property rights, and the workers weren't up to speed on how that works. They thought the factory was a feature of the community and so they refused to leave it. This is how a society that emphasizes sharing is.

Problem solved. — Fire Ologist

Yea, I was just pondering the origin of the concept of ownership. I suppose it's somewhere in mammal evolution. Not sure where.

OK :up:

Aren’t they then still owned, now personally, after the sharing? — Fire Ologist

1. Imagine a possible world W where there is no concept of ownership.
2. Let's say that in this world there's no way to say "my wife," but there is a word-whisker you can add to indicate that a certain woman is special to you (apparently there is a Native American language that is like this.)
3. So outside this possible world, you might claim that the word-whisker indicates ownership, but inside the world, they wouldn't know what you're talking about.

Is world W possible?

I think this is possible with groups small enough to everyone, on average, is aware of everyone else, in some either direct or minimally indirect way. Say groups up to 5000 or so.

You could, pursuant to another thread here this morning, elicit 'good faith' and collectively deal with 'bad faith' essentially as it arises. THe distribution of 'goods' wouldn't matter much until everyone was bored. — AmadeusD

But what about some science fiction future where there is no shortage of goods. Would boredom intrude there as well?

n other words, the debate between communism and capitalism isn’t a debate about ownership, it’s a debate about who are the owners. — Fire Ologist

I knew that if this thread went long enough, someone would comment on that. :grin: I wasn't proposing a debate between communism and capitalism. History already settled that debate.

In my experience with children, you have to teach them to share and the definately know what "Mine!" means. — Hanover

Then what's the origin of sharing? Is that also innate, or is it an adaptation to circumstances?

Exactly, and I strongly suspect people felt that way about the shit they worked for, for as long as people have been working for shit. I don't think there's any point in homo sapiens history where someone is happy to lose their days work to a stranger for nothing. — flannel jesus

It's true though.. Communism came first. Free markets came much later, when the old system was dying. I think property, as we know the concept has to do with chaotic conditions and a profound lack of trust. In other words, I think private property is an adaptation. Makes sense doesn't it?

Joined at the hip.

I spent all day fishing and put my haul down for a moment to take a slash, I'm gonna be pretty upset to find my fish missing when I'm done. — flannel jesus

I suppose that's because you think the fish are yours, and not public property.

Even apes have a sense of ownership. — flannel jesus

What about chipmunks?

And there's no murder until someone invents a law that defines murder and says it's disallowed. Before that, people weren't murdering, stabbing someone was just an "uninvited metallic guest". — flannel jesus

It's not the same. You can kill someone whether there's a law against it or not. You literally can't be a thief if there's no such thing as private property. The concept of theft becomes meaningless.

The way you worded it makes it sound almost like ownership makes someone taking it MORE likely. — flannel jesus

I didn't mean that, but that's the point of Augustine's City of God. He was saying that when cities pile up riches, they're practically asking to be raided. I guess another way to put his point is that there is no theft until there is ownership. Ownership makes thieves. Something like that.

Why would owning something mean someone was likely to take it from them? — flannel jesus

Isn't that what private property is about? What does it mean for it to be "mine" other than that you can't take it from me? Or have control over it? I'm asking.

The first agricultural societies were what we would think of as communist. The people brought their produce to the temple and the priests divided it up. That doesn't mean there was no idea of ownership, but it wasn't private property. The preceding tribes were nomadic. "Home" was wherever they were. Again, that doesn't mean there was no ownership. They say Lakota women built and "owned" their portable dwellings. I don't think that means someone was likely to take it from them. I think it just means it was the women's domain?

I think at least by September, the Fed will lower rates.

I think property, not "ownership" (mine-ness), is optional – a venn diagram from the least artificial and essential social arrangement to the most artificial and inessential: personal property (one's own mindbody (re: responsibilities), clothes, tools / labor, leisure), communal property (commons), public property ('republic', city / town, roads / waterways), and private property ('codified' scarcity-re/production, ergo class-caste conflicts) – [personal [communal [public [ private ]]]]. — 180 Proof

Maybe there's a spectrum.

Respect for personal property is not enshrined in nature, it is established cooperatively in human societies. In an emergency, the government will requisition whatever it deems to be required for the protection of the people, and that limitation to ownership will also be cooperatively established. It seems hard for some to understand that one cannot have ownership unless others recognise and respect that relation. — unenlightened

Why do some societies enshrine private property? I think it may have to do with a lack of trust. Maybe it first started in chaotic times. Then once the order is reestablished, the property owners really want only one thing from a chieftain: protect their property rights. Whereas the chieftain was once the hub of the world, he or she has been reduced to constable. Property owners are now the hub.

So the US GDP is down and initial jobless claims are up. Wall St celebrates. Isn't that weird? The reason Wall St is happy is that it means Powell may lower interest rates a little sooner. Lower interest rates means investment becomes easier. The moral to the story is that if Wall St and Main St have diverging agendas, Wall St is going to win because it has the federal government backing it. The other moral to the story is that while the government is backing the well-being of Wall St, you should invest in it.

As such, any criticism of LD based on our current knowledge of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics is flawed because our current knowledge of these things is incomplete so it is possible that reality is different than the way we describe it using terms like "physical". By definition, LD would have access to all dimensions and all space and time. — Harry Hindu

I think it's because LaPlace lived during the advent of mechanistic thinking, and contributed heavily to it, so his universe was kind of like a pool table.

That, I believe, is the point if LD. Maybe? If all is deterministic, then numbers and information, and consciousness and intent, are irrelevant. It can all be reduced to particle physics, just as thermodynamics can. I suppose it would know why brain states also feel like mental states to us. But if "feel like" is all there is, but they have no casual power, and are, themselves, determined by the physical events, then it doesn't matter. Itt doesn't interfere with the calculations. — Patterner

I agree. I guess where I was headed is that an idealist can also be a determinist. LD can be revised to know everything about a universe that is essentially mind.

:up:

This is what I was asking about before, is the randomness we observe really a product of our own ignorance, the state of our minds and the information we have access to at any given moment, or is the randomness something inherent to reality outside of our minds? If the former then LD will know how to solve the problem of integrating quantum mechanics with classical/macro physics. If the latter then LD is invalid. — Harry Hindu

I really have no idea. All I know is that quantum mechanics is supposed to be an argument against the LD. I don't know if that argument prevails or not, but not knowing would be an argument against LD, wouldn't it?

I don't know how LD would deal with quantum events. I suppose it's possible that it would understand why things happen randomly, uncertainly, and, to it, the events would not be random and uncertain. If half the atoms of plutonium are going to decay in 81 million years, maybe it knows which half, and maybe even which one at which moment. I have no idea. But I am certainly willing to stipulate that for the sake of argument. — Patterner

Yea, I guess the revision is that however it works, LD knows how it works.

however, if consciousness is not the result of, or at least not entirely the result of, physical events, of which LD has absolute knowledge, then it would not have absolute understanding of consciousness. LD only knows what it knows knows. — Patterner

That's if you limit LD to so-called physical events, which automatically excludes non-physical things like numbers and mental states. We could imagine an LD that has knowledge of the non-physical stuff, right?

frank
LD is defined as knowing everything about everything, which I would assume would include the solution to the hard problem. — Harry Hindu

I think that's kind of what Chalmers was doing. That would make the LD irrelevant to the issue of free will, right?

For huge corporation it's hard to pick up innovations. Apart from warfare, states and public sectors aren't very apt at looking from totally new ideas. Small companies and the self employed do have a historically important role here. As they have in ordinary stuff too. — ssu

Huge corporations can be innovative, though. Apple, AT&T, IBM etc. But they were all in a social setting that fostered innovation because of growth.

Right. if there is free will. If everything we think, feel, and do is not determined solely by progressions of arrangements of all the constituent parts of our brains, which change from one arrangement to the next because of the ways the laws of physics act upon them. — Patterner

Chalmers adapted LD to accommodate quantum physics by just making it open ended. In other words, the demon knows how events unfold, however that may be (I think that's what he meant anyway). So couldn't we have an LD that know mental states and however it is they evolve?

Or would it say, "I don't know, because there is something going on in conscious beings that is not determined in the same ways everything that is not conscious can be determined." — Patterner

Not determined in the same way?

11/6/60 - Lincoln wins the election
1/5/61 - The South fires upon the North when it attempts to resupply Ft. Sumter, so the North abandons that effort.
3/1/61 - Jefferson Davis reinforces the defenses around Ft. Sumter.
3/4/61 - Lincoln is inaugurated.
4/4/61 - Lincoln sends reinforcements to Ft. Sumter
4/12/61 - The South fires upon the northern reinforcements and the Civil War officially begins. — Hanover

Right. The South succeeded when Lincoln was elected. SC then took Ft Sumter. Many predicted that Lincoln wouldn't start a war, but would just let the South go. The prominent politicians around Lincoln had begged him to give a speech advocating a constitutional amendment that would permanently protect slavery in the South. He did give a speech, but left out the amendment and said that in sentiment he was with the abolitionists. The war was a result of Lincoln's actions, and his alone. Weird, I know, but the whole war was weird.

My point remains that the reason for these hostilities leading up to the Civil War was that the Lincoln election spelled an eventual end to slavery and the only way to stop it was to fully remove the South from northern control, which was to remove those votes from influencing southern policies. — Hanover

That's not true. All the South had to do was wait for the SCOTUS to hand them victory. The back story:

The reason Lincoln was elected was that the Democratic party fell apart prior to the election when the southern delegates walked out of the national convention. The Democrats were running two guys for president, the Republicans were running only one: Lincoln. This was a reversal from the way things had been for decades previously. The pro-slavery forces were always united, while there were 5 different anti-slavery parties splitting the anti-slavery vote (note that anti-slavery is not the same as abolitionist) One side effect of pro-slavery's unification was that the SCOTUS was leaning heavily pro-slavery, and this resulted in the Dred Scott "decision."

The Dred Scott case led the SCOTUS to declare that outlawing slavery is an infringement of the federal govt's jurisdiction over property rights. In other words, as soon as a case came questioning the constitutionality of free states, the SCOTUS was going to do away with them. Slavery would be legal everywhere. This was a shock to the anti-slavery forces in the North. They were now facing the result of years of division and apathy. It was believed that once this happened, the chances of ever uprooting slavery from the US would be slim to none. There was nothing anyone could do, though. Congress was so divided that representatives were beating each other up. There's nothing a president could do, even if the anti-slavery people could get into the White House.

And on to the scene walked one guy. John Brown. For real. It's a crazy story.

That is, in order for the tyranny to continue over the slaves, the vote had to be suppressed and manipulated so that the only votes that would count would be the ones supporting the current system. And that was my main point, which is that American slavery is not an example of how democracy fails, but it is an example of why democracy should not be suppressed. — Hanover

I think you're saying the war was a result of voter suppression. If the slaves had been citizens, then they would have been freed. I see what you're saying. What didn't fail was the constitution. It allows a president to become a temporary dictator during wartime. The civil war was the first test of that, and it turned out well.

I guess if I had to sum up I'd say the issue is that describing organisms traits seems to require speaking to an additional sort of potency over and above the potency that exists in "all matter." I would tend to trace this to form not just because Aristotle does, but because form seems to explain how it is that matter within an ecosystem can be transformed into different organisms. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Potential is a concept that's long fascinated me. If you hold a penny above a vat of oil, then drop it, it will proceed at a relatively slow speed down through the oil to the bottom. If you hold the penny above an empty tank, then drop it, it will drop more quickly. In each case, the potential was the same. In other words, we conceive potential as a product of resistance and kinetic manifestation. So it's not something that exists in matter, per se. At the very least, it's a component of how we analyze events, so yes, form is definitely the basis, but more the whole form of a situation. Any given situation can give rise to many events depending on the resistance that's supplied.

So an acorn has the potential to grow into a tree. It also has the potential to become a squirrel's lunch, or a bead on a necklace. If it sprouts, there are many trees it could become, depending on the weather, and such. So potential connects one moment in time to a multitude of possibilities, each shaped by circumstances. Sorry, I did say I was fascinated by it. :razz:

The war started when Lincoln sent supply ships to Fort Sumter, which had been a federal fort, now seized by SC. SC fired on the supply ships and Lincoln declared rebellion.

So anyhow, I think Locke's arguments fail, even though I am not big on "innate" or "a priori" ideas myself. But in particular, I think they fail in a way that demonstrates how telos is still mighty helpful for any sort of anthropology, or even biology. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Leibniz envisioned innate concepts as latent, being brought into being through a developmental path. The kneecap is an example of that. A baby is born with the seed of it, but it won't develop until the stress of walking activates it to grow. Subsequently, the adult won't be able to walk without it.

Two other arguments for innateness are Chomsky's assessment of the timing of language acquisition and Quine's argument about the innateness of the ability to apply rules to new situations.

Consider donuts. Who gets the last donut? If by common decree no one gets the last donut, then who gets the next-to-last donut? — tim wood

What they do is slice the donut into as many pieces as there are people present. If there are 300 people in attendance at the conference, they have to make 300 slices. They might need some kind of laser slicer outfitted with a scanning electron microscope, and a robot to put the slices on individual napkins so there's absolutely no cheating.

A society with no property might give unreasonably high rewards to the sociopaths, psychopaths and parasites. You can take anything without giving anything. Have what you want, give back nothing at all. Such a society would be stripped of its resources by leeches faster than you can say "maybe this wasn't such a great idea after all". — flannel jesus

That's another reason a collective would need a chieftain or monarch. So maybe private property is a requirement for democracy. Ownership laws are taking the place of the chieftain when it comes to people who stray from the ideals.

That's an interesting passage. It would stand as an argument against slavery. About 25% of the people in Aristotle's world were enslaved. He's saying that nature is being defied since they can't own property.

But apparently he would say a collective won't last because of quarreling. I think it's true that there would have to be a strong central authority to act as the backbone of the collective. That would eliminate the quarreling. A democratic collective will probably never happen (for long.) So maybe we're never without the concept of ownership, but it's a matter of who actually has possession. In a collective, the owner is everyone, and so it's really the central authority.

The co-creation thing doesn't belong to any particular system. It shows up in a lot of the cool ones, though

If you ask Antony questions, he's more than happy to engage and isn't at all dogmatic. Not much of a gatekeeper.