- Excellent OP. :up:

- Great post. :up:

- Yes, I think that's right. :up:

I think it would be art. The addition of salt, and the quantity added, is an aesthetic choice designed to modify mental state, in this case taste perception. Our "artist" may have chosen pepper instead, or, to really go all out, both.

But note, I agree with P and Q, and so I acknowledge that some art is more artistic than others. This meal would be a minimal example of art, barely belonging to the category at all, probably not enough to identify as art in an everyday context. Compare with a 5 star Michelin meal, much more artistic (but not better) , and which most everyone would call art. — hypericin

Hmm, okay.

No, and here you are again conflating identification vs evaluation of art. My definition is only for identification, evaluation is an orthogonal problem. — hypericin

But isn't it curious that in R I said "better (or more artistic)," and in your own posts you recognize that some art is more artistic? Usually if something is more artistic then we would say that it is better qualified to be art, so I don't see how you can so neatly separate identification vs. evaluation. Usually the definition of art is going to determine what is more or less artistic. What else could do the job? Or do we disagree on this?

Yet, I easily acknowledge that all the Michelin meals are more artistic than all the basic meals. — hypericin

To be clear, I think you are saying that the Michelin meal is not necessarily preferable to a basic meal, but it is more artistic.

I have the same question: Why? Why is the Michelin meal more artistic than the basic meal? Why is the Rembrandt better than the frowny face?

(A notable point of agreement here may be this: That which barely qualifies as art at all is much more likely to be mistaken for non-art than something which readily qualifies as art, and the person who makes a mistake with regard to the former is much less mistaken than the person who makes a mistake with regard to the latter.)

Control, though, is tricky for one reason only: The enforcement of gun control requires gun use. I'm unsure I need to explain why that's tricky. — AmadeusD

I think that hones in on the political sophistry or equivocation involved, which I pointed to in my . It is this: when one talks about "gun control," what they think they are talking about is controlling the availability of guns. By "gun control" they think they mean, "making guns scarce." But if you ask how guns are to be made scarce, it quickly becomes apparent that scarcity is achieved by giving all the guns to one set of people and having those people use the guns to coercively prevent others from obtaining guns. The parallel of nuclear disarmament is not even theoretically possible in the case of guns.

So by, "Making guns scarce," one actually means, "Making guns scarce for one group while making them readily available for another group."

If we ignore this political sophistry then the arguments look pretty good. Indeed, even if we confront the sophistry one might still think that it is preferable to give all the guns to one group of people (along with everything that entails). But once one spots the political sophistry the arguments in favor of "gun control" are no longer as strong or as easy to make.

The deeper point here is that this is a complex issue that does not have a simple, bumper sticker answer. We can't just cite a stat and foreclose the whole debate. For example, the prevalence of mental illness within a society is going to have a measurable effect on opinions about gun control. Feminist arguments are going to play a role. Disenfranchisement (vis-a-vis arms) is going to play a role. Gross homicide statistics are going to play a role. Trust or distrust towards the government and also one's fellow citizens is going to play a role. Still, I think the biggest blind spot in modern liberal democracies is the political sophistry noted above.

(NB: Aristotle held that in a truly democratic order, everyone would not only have a right to arms, but would also own arms and be trained in the use of arms. For the poor this would have to be provided, given their limited resources. Indeed, Aristotle held that an arrangement where the lower classes (i.e. the majority) either did not have access to arms or were not trained in the use of arms was not a democracy in any true sense. Even if the lower classes were able to vote they would still ultimately be powerless to maintain the democratic order if they did not possess the means of coercion that the upper classes possessed.)

No. By "experience" I mean, experience by the five senses. The effect of a benzo is not in the taste, but requires absorption into the blood stream. Drugs are human creations designed to alter physical state (and this alteration in turn, may or may not alter mental state). I exclude this, the alteration must arise from the experience of the purported art, in the above sense of "experience". — hypericin

Okay, that's a reasonable answer.

Similar for food. Food allays hunger by altering physical state. But, most food is also designed to alter mental state by the experience of it's taste, appearance, and smell, and so most (prepared) food is also art. — hypericin

Would it then follow that if we have a prepared food that is not art, and then someone adds salt to make it taste better, it has become art? I am not convinced that such a thing is correctly identified as art.

Why is this helpful to the question of "what is art"? To be sure, I think a frowny face scrawled on printer paper with feces is worse than a Rembrandt, by any reasonable definition of "worse" here, so I also believe R. — hypericin

Okay, fair. But how is one to judge better or worse according to your definition? The only characteristic on your definition is, "designed to modify the mental state of the experiencer." If that is the only characteristic in your definition of art, then it seems like better/worse could only be derived from the degree of modification intended or else achieved.

More concretely, is the frowny face drawing worse than a Rembrandt because it does not modify the mental state of the experiencer as effectively? Given that you used feces, isn't it possible that the frowny face would modify mental state more? On the view that I set out quality can be identified by looking at .

You will no doubt feel that mine is vastly too permissive, just as yours is vastly too restrictive to me. Yet we both believe P, Q. — hypericin

Okay, well it is promising that we both at least hold to P and Q. :up:

Art is a human creation (in the loosest, most permissive sense) whose experience is designed to modify the mental state of the experiencer. — hypericin

I worry that this isn't a real attempt at a definition, on account of the possibility that "art" is being presupposed rather than described.

For example, if we offered a description, "A human creation (in the loosest, most permissive sense) the experience of which is designed to modify the mental state of the experiencer," would we arrive at the definiendum "art"?

The first difficulty is semantic. The clause, "whose experience is designed," or, "the experience of which is designed," are both semantically problematic, because both presuppose that experience is itself somehow designed. Probably what you mean is that art is a human creation designed to modify the mental state of the person who experiences it, and that's clear enough.

First I will say that your idea does capture something that I find in many artists I know, so that's promising. But if this is the definition of art then anything designed to modify the mental state of the experiencer is art. Keeping with my example, this would mean that benzodiazepines are art. And if hunger is a mental state then every prepared food is art. This seems unlikely. Do you hold that benzodiazepines are art?

It may be helpful to introduce R beside P and Q, which includes a more specific genus:

• R: "Some art is better (or more artistic) than other art."
• ~R: "No art is better (or more artistic) than any other art."
• 1b. R v ~R

Would you prefer R or ~R? And is this where my understanding becomes "too restrictive"? Because I definitely think that some art is better than other art, at least on any reasonable definition of 'art'.

I definitely agree. It's also worth thinking about the way in which "morality from on high" is doomed from the start. For example, suppose the beliefs and activities of the affluent helped rather than hurt the lower classes. That's the best case scenario, but it is also quite limited given the way in which it inevitably becomes class patronization.

To be very concise, morality cannot be coerced, and this is what the woke movement seems to most misunderstand. If you coerce rather than persuade someone to act "good" you end up subjugating them in a way that will be inimical to truly moral outcomes. Furthermore, the people who are aided by the coercion inevitably feel inadequate and patronized, such as those who are haunted by the possibility that DEI quotas are the only reason they have their job. As an example, Martin Luther King Jr. was remarkably prescient in understanding that coercion and enmity are dead ends if the goal is the long-term improvement of race relations.

Yes, in the most general sense, "cause" and "reason" can be used interchangeably, and Aristotle's four causes are better understood as a classification of the types of explanations. Nowadays, when we use 'cause' in a more specific sense, we usually mean something like Aristotle's efficient cause.

But whether you are asking in a more general or more specific sense, the question still requires context to be meaningful. "Why a duck?" asked out of the blue, makes about as much sense as "What's the difference between a duck?" You can ask for the reason of a duck being in this place at this time (if that seems surprising), or perhaps you want to know about its plumage color or its evolutionary history or why it was served for dinner - all potentially sensible questions that can be answered in causal terms (i.e., by reference to how we understand the world to be hanging together). But to ask what accounts for the duck's existence doesn't seem sensible, because there is no way to answer such a question. — SophistiCat

But aren't Aristotle's four causes attempting to answer questions such as, "Why a duck?" The explanation for a duck will presumably include why it is in this locale, why its plumage is of a certain color, and what its evolutionary history (and genesis) is.

The crucial question asks whether such causal questions are disparate or interrelated. For example, whether Aristotle's efficient cause and material cause can both be named by the same name (i.e. "cause"). To take a simplistic example, someone might say, "We can't ask what causes ice. We can ask whether ice requires H2O and we can ask whether ice requires low temperatures, but those are two different questions." The answer is that they are two interrelated questions, and that to give the cause of ice we will need to answer both questions (and others as well). One cause/reason for ice is H2O and another cause/reason for ice is low temperatures, and yet they are both causes and they will both be needed to explain, "What accounts for the ice's existence." Surely someone who understands these two things about ice understands what accounts for ice's existence more than someone who does not understand these two things (ceteris paribus).

But to ask what accounts for the duck's existence doesn't seem sensible, because there is no way to answer such a question. — SophistiCat

I think that's the question that Aristotle and Darwin were attempting to answer, if in different ways. I don't see why it isn't a sensible question, nor why there would be no way to answer it. After all, the answers of Aristotle and Darwin both go a long way towards answering that very question.

If we hold to anything remotely like the PSR then I think causality is inevitable, because it is what accounts for phenomena (whether in your general or specific sense). Now it is true that giving a full account of an event or substance would be an ambitious project, but I want to say that the notion of cause/reason (aitia) is fairly clear, even if it is subtle.

Doesn't causation just explain the "why" of some event or substance? We usually think in terms of efficient causation, in which one is identifying the (moving) cause that brought about some effect.

Asking, "What caused it?," seems to be asking what accounts for its existence. Thus in the most general sense you have Aristotle's four causes, which are meant to explain the being of substances.

Good points, and I think that if we want to look at the foundations of what is happening with wokeness we will find that it stems from a morally robust culture combined with increased leisure. Or in other words, you have a morally conscious population of busybodies.

Whenever a group of people find more leisure time, they tend to become more involved in cultural and political issues. They wish to extend their influence into these areas. When such people are morally charged, and morally charged in the particular direction of identity politics, you get wokeness.

I think the increasing leisure is going to produce all sorts of similar phenomena going forward, even though the particular determination of wokeness will not be the inevitable outcome.

Egalitarian-relativism is actually somewhat common on TPF. @J often promotes it in the field of epistemology, and recently gave an unanswered argument against it .

So let's revamp @Count Timothy von Icarus' first premise for our new context:

1. Either some human act/creation is more artistic than some other human act/creation, or else no human act/creation is more artistic than any other human act/creation.

This is the same as saying:

• P: "Some human act/creation is more artistic than some other human act/creation."
• 1. P v ~P

So what do you think? Do you prefer P or ~P?


Another way to put it, closer to Count's initial phrasing:

1a. Either some thing is more artistic than some other thing, or else no thing is more artistic than any other thing.

This is the same as saying:

• Q: "Some thing is more artistic than some other thing."
• 1a. Q v ~Q

A similar question: Do you prefer Q or ~Q?

If we accept P and Q does that make us elitist? Note that ~P equates to the idea that every human act/creation is equally artistic, and ~Q equates to the idea that every thing is equally artistic, hence the egalitarian-relativism. I suspect that like @J and @Banno you will object every time someone offers an example of P/Q and yet at the same time you will avoid any explicit embrace of ~P/~Q.*


* In that other thread the pejorative which was applied to anyone who offered an example of P/Q was "authoritarian" rather than "elitist," but the parallel is clear.

Some of the uses of art I have in mind: mental stimulation. modulating mood. Experiencing intense emotions safely. Education. Passing the time. Having novel experiences.

Which of these is in accord with "the fundamental telos of art", and which is not? — hypericin

If art is meant for aesthetic experience or aesthetic encounter, then the modulation of one's mood is beside the telos of art. So if someone says, "I need to modulate my mood. I'm fresh out of benzos so I'll try looking at a painting instead," they are not interacting with art in the way that is primarily intended by the artist.

When craftsmen create art for money, when painting was funded by patronage, when novelists and musicians aim to earn a living and even get rich, when entire industries are oriented around the production of art.. telos, or not the telos? — hypericin

You seem to want black and white categories, but I'm afraid its more complicated than that. The act of selling art is not art. An "artist" who just wants to get rich and is only attempting to gratify the desires of the largest demographic is not much of an artist. An artist who wants to create something which has legitimate artistic value and expects remuneration for such a creation is doing art while expecting to be supported financially. But all artists are well aware of the temptation to "sell out," subordinating their art to the bottom line.

Aristotle would point out that the true artist wishes to create something that will be appreciated by the best artists, and they will not be preoccupied with the opinion of those who do not have an eye for artistic excellence. For example, a jazz musician will highly value the opinion of other jazz musicians who they deem to be highly talented, and insofar as their work is meant to be artistic it will be meant to resonate with that caliber of excellence. The excellence of art has to do with that form of appreciation, and money may or may not track that form of excellence. Still, the artist who is primarily striving after excellence is more of an artist than the artist who is primarily striving after money. This is why some of the greatest artists died poor and were never appreciated in their own lifetime.

What are the stakes of abiding the telos, or of violating it? Where is the telos, who has defined it? Could it be... you?

You talk about intention as if there were only one of them, and we all agree on it. Art has one intention, to be appreciated for itself. Sex has one intention, pleasure. Why imagine this? It bears no resemblance to reality I can see. — hypericin

I think you're just being stubborn. Do you have an alternative understanding of art to offer? Or are you just going to criticize my understanding without offering anything of your own? You somehow think that if we admit that 'art' means anything at all then we must be snobs, because if it means something then it doesn't mean other things. If art has to do with aesthetic excellence, then it doesn't have to do with large scale money-making, and this flies in the face of your dogma which holds that art is whatever we want it to be (and that art effectively means nothing at all). Being so averse to elitism that one runs to the opposite extreme does no good. It's not snobbery to hold that art means something. It is unanimously held among artists that art and money-making are not the same thing.

Kind of like how food is useful for sustaining life, but we don't use it, we eat it? — hypericin

"Use" generally implies perdurance, and therefore we do not generally speak about using food because food is consumed and does not perdure afterwards. Thus we will talk about using something like salt, where the stock perdures for a long time.

If you don't believe me then go to a museum and use the verb "use" to describe interaction with art. You will receive a lot of odd looks. Or find a gathering of artists and make the claim that someone who produces art only for the sake of money is no less of an artist than someone who is not primarily concerned with money. You won't be taken seriously. Art is something which is higher than use; higher than need/necessity. It is gratuitous in a way that overlooks those notions. We use a hamburger to satisfy our hunger. Someone who uses art when they are out of benzos doesn't understand what art is. It is not primarily a means of acquisition (or of anything else - to subordinate it as a means is already to have lost it).

The egalitarian dogma says that all art is equal, no one can be excluded from the circle of artists, and that art can mean anything at all, even "money-making." Reality says otherwise.

Just noticed that this article was published the same day as your OP:

Teleology: What Is It Good For?, by John O'Callaghan

As we become increasingly conditioned by digital infrastructures, our dependence on affective patterns within society only deepens. — Number2018

Okay, good. That is the sort of claim I was wondering about, and it relates to my "caveat" above. I can definitely see merit in such a claim, and if this is right then I would surmise that wokeness is but one possible determination of a culture which is becoming increasingly dependent on affective patterns.

Certainly, the Kavanaugh hearings exemplify the extent to which public life often is structured by affective discursive formations of contemporary woke culture. — Number2018

Sure, and that seems uncontroversial. But is that which is structured by affective realities durable? Are affectively grounded systems ever more than transitory? I want to say that in the past they have not been, and that movements which do not rise above the affective tend to implode or simply lose momentum with time. So based on such precedent I would expect wokeness to go by the same road. If this is right then in 7-12 years it will have transformed into something rather unrecognizable. In a lot of the responses I am seeing this same idea, namely the idea that wokeness is a kind of tremor that is primarily a symptom of deeper tectonic shifts. So I don't mean to make light of it, but I guess I am wondering how it is best situated among other cultural movements, some of which have been very long-lasting.

Of course the caveat is that our age of social media may be different, and may be capable of sustaining affective phenomena far beyond what would have been possible in the past.

- Yes, that's fair. Government subsidies and large scale "agribusiness" have changed things a bit.

- I agree in large part, but note that 's whole argument revolves around a homicide chart, and 's whole argument revolves around a statistic about death.

So although they may not be viscerally afraid of death, their own arguments are based on an intellectual or statistical fear of death.

however they are very quick to adopt new technologies for tractors and whatever other machinery — unimportant

Do you know many farmers? In my experience I don't think that they are quick to adopt new technologies. They are open to the idea, but tend to move slow. For example, I recently spoke with a highly successful farmer about the use of drones for pesticides. He outlined some of the pros and cons, but claimed that the technology is still a long ways off and will not be usable on a large scale anytime soon.

Žižek’s post-Marxist critique of wokeness is compelling in many respects. However, he falls short of fully disclosing the nature of wokeness or accounting for its emotional appeal and social power. His framework remains confined to traditional ideological critique and thus may overlook a crucial dimension: wokeness is not purely ideological—it is affective. It is about the desire to feel seen, safe, included, or conversely, excluded. Through wokeness, underlying structures of power can engage with and regulate deeply human emotions of shame, guilt, pride, vulnerability, and anger. It operates without the mediation of ideology, class struggle, or systems of political representation. — Number2018

Instead, I attempt to diagnose a shift in discursive practices, particularly in the domains of identity politics and online activism, where affective expressions of marginalization have begun to function as sufficient sources of epistemic and moral authority. My argument is not a metaphysical claim about truth; it is rather a phenomenological observation about a shift in rhetorical argumentation in public discourse. You rightly point out that for thinkers like Foucault, Deleuze, and Heidegger, knowledge is always situated in structures of power, affect, or ontological attunement. However, those thinkers are engaged in an epistemic inquiry, rather than describing contemporary discursive practices. What we are witnessing today is not the philosophical deconstruction of rationalism, but a normative inversion in the public sphere. Thus, emotional experience and perceived marginality are not retained within rigorous ontological framing. Instead, they assert themselves as affective self-reference of truth and moral authority, becoming resistant to questioning, nuance, or deliberate reflection. Therefore, one needs to differentiate the rigorous epistemic critiques of the mentioned thinkers from the description of today’s affective politics of visibility and recognition.. — Number2018

Great posts and thoughts. What would you say to the objection which says that wokeness is a transitory phenomenon? That given its affective character it will never be more than a bridge between more stable and rational cultural epochs?

On the one hand I do not think it will go away quickly. On the other hand I do not think it has the wherewithal that is traditionally needed for durable staying power. I suppose the question is then whether the new social media technologies have altered the landscape to such an extent that affective movements will become more permanent.

I think there is an even simpler explanation available. It is that agricultural work is inherently conservative. It relies on stability, predictable patterns and yields, and only incremental improvements. The farmer has a tried and true method of sustaining life, and he will not jeopardize that method with newfangled progressive ideas. He has a strong and realistic sense of what is possible given the tangible constraints of nature that he is so familiar with. He is not going to shoot for the moon and thereby risk losing what has taken so long to carefully develop. In general he is less ideational and more concrete, whereas progressives are the opposite.

I think you are placing too much faith in contextless statistics and relying on implausible premises such as this:

Life is about reducing risks. — Hanover

On an individualistic and historically contingent assessment, owning a gun may well increase your risk of death. It doesn't follow from this that it is societally beneficial to place all of the guns into the hands of one set of people. Looking only at what affects you in the short term is a form of selfishness, is it not?

---

Speaking now more generally, I think the anti-gun crowd in this thread has been consistently myopic. They consistently mention one thing, or cite one stat, hope that ends the whole debate, and then ice the cake with unsupported, apodictic statements (and one of them even provides psychiatric diagnoses for anyone who dares to disagree with him). Hanover is doing that a fair bit less than the others, but he still wants to limit the scope of the discussion and draw conclusions from that limited scope.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does have a "give me liberty or give me death" ring to it. Folks who are deeply afraid of death and value their own life far above all else obviously fear a right to arms. Their motto is, "Do whatever you want to me, so long as you don't kill me." I think that's actually where the disagreement lies. Security vs. freedom.

The one liberal democracy that is under real threat from its own government is the US, and no amount of gun ownership is going to change that. — Wayfarer

Spoken like someone who is adamantly opposed to argument. I.e., like Banno.

That's my point. You're not safer owning a gun all things considered. — Hanover

At least in our very contingent historical moment. But when an argument is based in a very contingent historical moment, it tends to lack depth. After all, if everyone took your advice then we would have a whole society of people who are at the whim of gun-wielders, the allure of guns would increase due to their burgeoning coercive force, and then more people would buy guns to defend themselves (or else hire people with guns to protect them, either in a private capacity or else with taxes in a public capacity). Australia has merely outsourced their gun-protection to the government. When things go south the Australian calls the people with guns: same as anyone else. It just so happens that the people with guns in Australia are most often the military.

So the advice to not own a gun has a lot in common with the advice to sell this or that stock. It is highly time-dependent advice. The advice will become outdated once a few contingencies change.

Life is about reducing risks. — Hanover

Is it, though? Or is this another part/whole conflation?

But I think "end unto itself" is about as vague as "family resemblance" -- so in either analysis, be it ends-means or family resemblance, there's still the question of "What makes a painting a work of art, in this analysis?" — Moliere

It may be worth pointing out that recognizing that art is an end in itself does answer this current question of "use", but it does not provide the essence of art. After all, plenty of other things are ends in themselves, such as for example pleasure and friendship. By learning that aesthetic appreciation is not a means to an end, we have a better understanding of the phenomenon, but we have nevertheless not honed in on it in a truly singular way.

The other relevant question seems to be this:

Art is not meant to be used (although it can be used, and this is part of the confusion, namely that it is incorrect to attempt to prescind from intention when we speak about art). — Leontiskos

We can talk about an object apart from human intentions, and we can also talk about an object in a way that includes human intentions. In this thread there has been a great deal of equivocation between these two different ways of talking about an object. For example:

We have sex for all sorts of reasons beyond "feeling good"... — hypericin

If we talk about sex apart from intention then one can have sex for the sake of pleasure, or for the sake of procreation, or for the sake of bonding, or for some other reason, or for all of the above. And so sex can be used instrumentally, or it can be enjoyed as an end in itself, or it can even be both at the same time.

Art is similar, except that it is inherently ordered towards being enjoyed or appreciated as an end in itself. Thus when one instrumentalizes art they are no longer approaching it in the manner that it is meant to be approached. For example, in the film and book The Goldfinch, a rare painting is saved from a museum fire only to be used in various ways but never looked at or appreciated/enjoyed. A painting can be used as collateral in drug deals, but that is not the telos of art. It is not fundamentally what art is for. An artist does not sit down and say, "I am going to make something that will be ideal for collateral in a drug deal."

Now when we say the word "art" we are usually including the notion that it is to be approached aesthetically and as an end in itself. But a kind of reification can also occur where the word refers to the material object apart any such way of approaching it. So someone can say, "I am going to sell this piece of art and get rich," and thus use 'art' as an instrumental means to wealth. When someone uses art they are always doing something that falls away from the fundamental telos of art. This doesn't mean that it is necessarily bad or wrong - only that it is beside the real purpose of art, namely aesthetic appreciation. If we wanted to be very precise we would clearly distinguish art qua art from art qua use.

(And if @hypericin wonders what verb is properly applied to art rather than 'use', then I would recommend 'appreciate' or 'enjoy'. In the case of a painting we might say 'gaze' or 'contemplate'. It would be strange to walk up to someone viewing a painting at a museum and ask if they are done using the piece.)

Now psychosis is "a mental state where a person loses touch with reality, experiencing symptoms like hallucinations and delusions."

Madness. — Banno

but thanks for providing an example of the pathology I am pointing too — Banno

Psychosis? Madness? Pathology? I would appreciate it if the mods would consider the way that Banno consistently responds with unapologetic bigotry and trolling ad hominem. @Hanover? @Jamal?

From the site guidelines:

Types of posters who are welcome here:

Those with a genuine interest in/curiosity about philosophy and the ability to express this in an intelligent way, and those who are willing to give their interlocutors a fair reading and not make unwarranted assumptions about their intentions (i.e. intelligent, interested and charitable posters). — Baden

This means that solid protection against gun violence is not to own a gun. — Hanover

Yes, but this is a very individualistic assessment. It's a bit like saying, "The class which is most likely to die in gun-related incidents is police officers, and therefore solid protection against gun violence is not to become a police officer." But that leads to a world with no police officers, and a world with no police officers is ironically a world where guns are indispensable.

So I think that if one wants to minimize gun deaths then @Wayfarer's approach is better. In fact I am guessing that, at least on this score, you would rather live in Australia, where you give all the guns to the government and hope that the government never turns them on you.

I would say that in our modern-day world the idea that a first-world government would simply turn its guns on citizens is not overly plausible, but the rub is the manner in which that monopoly of coercion functions in the background, at the foundational level. @Outlander was right to mention the freedom of the press, which is a check on government overreach but which is also shaped by the powers of the government, including those latent powers that are not immediately focused on.

No, I wouldn’t. But let’s say I did: is your argument that if it is immoral to kill or leave the infant, then the lesser of the two evils (that should be picked) is to kill it? I do accept the principle that if one has to do evil that they should do the lesser of the evils; but wouldn’t this argument require that God had to do evil? — Bob Ross

No, I was thinking of offering a reductio ad absurdum against the argument, but it looks as though you agree that killing with indirect intention is not necessarily unjust.

2. Omissions and commissions are evaluated morally differently, such that if one can only do immoral acts then letting something bad happen is always the permissible and obligatory option. If I can only murder someone else to stop the train to save the five or let the five die, then letting the five die is morally permissible and obligatory; however, all else being letting the five die would be immoral. If you either have to let the children starve or murder them, then letting them starve is bad but morally obligatory and permissible.

I think you would have to, at the very least, deny the principle in 2 that <if one can only do immoral acts to prevent something bad, then it is obligatory that they do nothing>. — Bob Ross

Okay, I think you are reasoning well in this. :up:

Well, this cannot be true. 1 Samual 15 makes it clear God is commanding Saul to directly intentionally kill them all. It even goes so far to explicate that Saul did it but kept some of the animals and God was annoyed with Saul for keeping the animals BUT NOT for directly intentionally killing the people:

“He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. 9 But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.” — Bob Ross

Okay, good point.

Yes, this seems to be Aquinas’ answer; but then you are saying that murder is not the direct intentional killing of an innocent person OR that murder is not always unjust. Would you endorse one of those? — Bob Ross

That's a good question. I am not sure. Maybe I will try to dig up a place where Aquinas speaks to this.

One of the things I am asking you is this: What would you have decreed if you were instructing the Israelites? Kill the Amalekites, take as many children as you can support, and leave the other children to die?

The reason I don't personally find the critique overwhelming is because, faced with that situation, I have no clear alternative.* I guess I could say, "Assuming the children are not demonic, make sure to only intend to kill them indirectly." Yet such an approach would be incongruous in an ancient text and an ancient paradigm, and it would also somewhat undermine the whole "remove evil at its root" meaning of the text. I think the nub for you is that the text presupposes that a child can be deserving of death, and this is seen as incredible.

Similar to Akin's video, I think it is worth surveying the options for someone who accepts the Old Testament. Here are some, in no particular order:

• Interpret the text to be talking about indirect intention, and adjust one's interpretive hermeneutic (to deviate from the literal meaning).
• Hold that life and death are in God's hands, that for God to kill is not murder, and that God can temporarily delegate this power.
• Hold that the Amalekites were demons and demons can be justly killed (see Hanover's post).
• Hold to some form of group morality rather than a strict individual morality.
• Hold to a pedagogical approach on the part of God.

Perhaps, taken singly, none of those are satisfactory. It is worth noting that the last option, which alluded to, seems to be supported by later texts such as Ezekiel 18:20. This goes to the fact that, read literally, the Bible does contradict itself. For example, if God does not change, God killed the Amalekite children for the wickedness of their parents, the Amalekite children were human, and Ezekiel 18:20 holds, then we have a contradiction. Indeed the literary genres found in the Bible are not really meant to support that level of scrutiny. This does not dissolve the problem, but it does complicate it.


* Also, I am not willing to abandon Christianity on this basis. I would need a foundational alternative to Christianity to which to turn before I would be more comfortable with such a move. Even if I were to make that move, I would still see the Old Testament as preparatory and indispensable to any true morality that one discovers later.

I generally supported the Australian Governments Covid precautions. Despite similar populations, Florida experienced a significantly higher number of COVID-19 deaths than Australia during the main period of the pandemic. For instance, an early comparison in October 2020 showed Florida with 14,142 deaths compared to Australia's 882. While numbers increased for both jurisdictions over time, the disparity remained pronounced, while American libertarians spread all kinds of nonsense about facemasks being an infringement of civil liberties and vaccinations being a UN plot. As with gun rights, the consequence is a lot more deaths. — Wayfarer

But do you understand your own arguments here? Again and again you are saying, "The coercion is justified." You are free to make such arguments, but the whole topic here is whether there is a correlation between coercion and guns. Saying, "The coercion is justified on the basis of homicides," or, "The coercion was justified with Covid-19," is missing the whole point that what is at stake is coercion and freedom. One cannot dismiss questions of freedom while simultaneously justifying coercive measures, and it is no coincidence that the most coercive environments are those with the most potent monopolies of coercion.

Part of the difficulty in this thread is that people read "tyrant" as "bad guy," and they assume that they are always the good guy. But a tyrant is fundamentally just someone who forces others to do what they want them to do. It makes no difference whether they think the coercion is a good idea (and obviously they do!). That's really the whole crux: modern people think modern nation states—which are by definition tyrannical—are good because the coercion is justified. Upon considering moving away from the modern nation state, the modern person would basically say, "But how would we coerce everyone to do the good things we want them to do?" "Without a strong state we would not have national laws against gun ownership, and that would be bad; therefore we need a strong state to coerce citizens vis-a-vis gun ownership."

Rogan has nothing to fear from the head of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. And nobody here gets sued for criticizing the Prime Minister provided the criticism is fact-based. — Wayfarer

It's the simple fact that the head of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is doing stuff like that. Obviously Rogan has nothing to fear. "...provided the criticism is fact-based," is a rather large caveat, and another good example.

To take another example, one can easily assess a country's commitment to civil rights when stress is placed on the country, and the Covid-19 outbreak was the most recent precedent. Australia was rather notorious on that score.

It's what I said - there is a strong belief that guns=freedom. — Wayfarer

Actually, it's much harder to tell someone what to do when they have a gun. That's simple logic, and I'm afraid the prejudice lies with the one who denies such a straightforward fact, not the one who accepts it. Like it or not, arms really do help secure the freedoms of the bearer. They also increase homicides. Two things can be true at the same time.

In all those countries in that chart, I would think freedom of the press can generally be assumed, can't it? Got any counter-examples? — Wayfarer

Although it's hard to see the water you swim in, the freedom of the press in Australia is not great. For example, that Kim Williams, the chair of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, would publicly go after Joe Rogan and Rogan's speech speaks volumes, and would be unconscionable in a society which strongly values freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The Overton window in Australia is generally quite small, and there's a reason for that.

I'd rather say that the very fact that so many people decide to devote their whole lives to art's creation means that it's a human activity devoid of purpose outside of itself -- we do it because we like to. — Moliere

:up:

But separate and apart from that, in this OP, Bob is asking Christians and theologians, how they can reconcile a NT type conception of God with an OT type conception of God? — Fire Ologist

I think this is the conclusion of the arguments he is proposing:

5. Therefore, the God of the OT is unjust — Leontiskos

What is at stake in the arguments is justice, not the compatibility of canonical texts.

(See, all along I thought Bob was a Christian - no wonder my posts meant so little and were off target.) — Fire Ologist

Right. I think he is sympathetic to Christianity, but at the same time the OP represents qualms.

- You may have missed my edit to an earlier post:

Substitute guns with "nuclear weapons". — RogueAI

Everything I said also applies to nuclear weapons. I even mentioned nuclear weapons in my post. — Leontiskos

Thinking about nuclear weapons is helpful because it takes some of the emotion out of the word "tyranny."

A nuclear threat is a coercive instrument par excellence, and the whole disincentive to nuclear disarmament is the absence of nuclear deterrence. A country which yields up its nuclear arsenal forfeits its seat at the international table of coercion. Ukraine is a great example of a country which yielded up its nuclear arsenal and now inevitably regrets it. Furthermore, it is easy enough to see how a nation state which seeks a monopoly on nuclear weapons is at the same time seeking tyranny.

Not being killed is fundamental to liberty. — Wayfarer

Not-being-killed is part of civil liberty, but when that part is absolutized while other competing civil liberties are ignored then it becomes clear that conflating not-being-killed with civil liberty itself is a mistake.

For example, the right to self-defense is also part of natural law, as is the right to defend oneself in one's home. What follows is that one has a greater right to (relatively) heavy arms within one's home than outside one's home. The absolutizing of the societal value of minimizing homicide will tend to undermine the right to self-defense, especially within one's home.

More simply, if there is only one value, and that value is the minimization of homicide, then lethal weapons should be prohibited. The problem is that there is more than one value.

Has there ever been a tyranny that was not supported by the military? — RogueAI

Sure. The military is not the only possible monopoly of coercion, is it?

Has there ever been a tyranny which does not possess a monopoly of coercion?

Most other democratic countries managed it without. — Wayfarer

Civil liberty, or the minimization of gun-related homicides? You are equivocating given that the two are not at all the same thing. If a government wants to minimize gun-related homicides then obviously it should just confiscate all the guns. It's not at all clear why that amounts to greater civil liberty.

But do you think an armed populace is an impediment to tyranny? — RogueAI

Yes. Controlling who has access to weapons is one of the oldest tricks in the book. — Leontiskos

I just don't see this as plausible. If America becomes tyrannical, it will only be because the military and police forces support whatever tyrant there is. And if the military and police are involved, they're not going to be intimidated by American small arms in the hands of non-professionals. There will be very few gun owners willing to risk a drone strike on themselves or their families to take a potshot at a soldier or cop. — RogueAI

First, I am curious where you live?

Second, I am not seeing the plausibility of your argument for the conclusion, "An armed populace is not an impediment to tyranny." I think the key problem with your argument is the premise, "If America becomes tyrannical, it will only be because the military and police forces support whatever tyrant there is."

If I am right and—as has been claimed since at least Aristotle—tyranny and monopolies of coercion go hand in hand (and are perhaps even identical), then such a premise is not true. Therefore I would say that if America becomes tyrannical, it will in part be because the government has a monopoly of coercion, and that the more that monopoly is mitigated the less the probability that this will occur.

Note that when you distinguish "military and police" from the tyranny you are appealing to a distribution of coercive force, i.e. a distribution of arms. You are effectively saying, "If there is a population which possesses arms to oppose the tyranny, then the tyranny will be less likely to occur." That is precisely the point, and it is worth noting that a military or police officer who refuses orders from his superior is technically acting as a civilian. You are presupposing the point that I am at pains to make. Further, if the government is not monolithic then its distributed nature also militates against tyranny:

The second reason it is misleading is due to the fact that the government/civilian dichotomy is false, given that government and association exist at various levels of locality. Intermediating associations betwixt civilian and federal government—including non-federal governmental bodies—provide similar anti-tyrannical functions, even despite the fact that modern nation states are inherently bent towards tyranny due to their relatively monolithic nature. The age of nation states correlates to an absence of intermediating institutions possessing coercive force. — Leontiskos

- Yes. Controlling who has access to weapons is one of the oldest tricks in the book.

It doesn't. — Michael

So you can't see it. That doesn't surprise me.