I don't see that the principle of autonomy implies that of moral truth. — David Mo

It's not the autonomy that's in question. It's what is 'moral'. The references to Wittgenstein are - for me - suffused through the whole thing. The way she looks to the use, embedded in a culture, of the terms she's examining is exactly like the later Wittgenstein looking at language use.

Kant's moral truth is of another order than empirical truth. — David Mo

Maybe - for Kant. The point Anscombe is making here is that it doesn't matter a fig what Kant wants to call 'moral'. It's what the people who use it call it that matters. People who use 'ought' are (whether they admit it or not) referring to some external law - on pain of incoherence. People who refer to 'bilking' are referring to the customary rules of transaction. People referring to 'justice' are referring to the customary rules of justice, etc...

You can’t handle exploration of uncomfortable ideas. — Brett

It's not an 'exploration/ though, is it? It's a manifesto. An exploration takes evidence and reason from both sides to try and draw conclusions. You're ignoring all the evidence that doesn't support what you've decided to promote.

If you’re really open minded you might consider the idea that though traditional tribal societies were collectives and socialist they still had a chief who called the shots. Try and balance that in your over heated mind. — Brett

What evidence do you have to support that conclusion? Could you cite some enthongraphies which detail the extent to which chiefs in nomadic hunter-gatherer communities ignored consensus to dictate what would happen. Or is 'evidence' just another one of those things which gets in the way of 'progress'?

Hopefully I’ll never see any grumbling or dissatisfaction from you about the state of things in the world because you’re happy with the results and decisions made by governments, the progress. — Brett

On the contrary. I just don't try to blame governments for the faults of the people who put them in power.

Just out of interest, where does Fidel Castro fit into your position? — Brett

He doesn't. In the grand scheme of things, it is the masses who hold the power, not the individuals Castro maintained power whilst he had mass support. When mass support wanes, dictators get toppled. That's not to say that there isn't loads to be done in the interim, removing and fighting against dictators and unpopular leaders who are clinging on to power despite popular opinion. Such situations can last many years and people suffer needlessly under it. But the trend overall (which is what we're interested in here) is that what the populace wants, the populace gets.

If you’re happy with the state of politics, the quality of life for people, then of course you won’t accept any of my evidence to the contrary. — Brett

I wasn't asking for evidence that politics and life were not in a good state. I was asking for evidence that watered-down policies make no 'progress'. If what you actually mean is that watered-down policies are one which you don't like, then just say so. What you're trying to argue is that watered down policies are actually stalling 'progress'. that's a different claim to them just not being your preferred policy.

Power is the subject. You were the one that focused on consensus because you disagreed with me. — Brett

The issue is whether pampering to consensus stifles progress. To establish that you have to establish that progress could be made if the consensus were ignored. Since we live in a democracy, to establish this you'd have to establish that leaders who ignored consensus would be likely to remain in power. To establish this you need to know something about the likely voting behaviour of the electorate. I talked about some of the leading theories regarding what this voting behaviour might be, and what causes it. You decided that since it didn't fit with your preconceptions you'd ignore it.

This is all moot, however, as I now realise that this is just another boring right-wing moan. You guys are always trying to dress up your basic unexamined conservatism in some higher sounding philosophical rhetoric - "it's all about liberty", "it's about free speech", "there's a good logical basis for private property, but I'm just not going to tell you at the moment", "consensus stifles progress", "some rights are meaningful, others aren't (they just so happen to be the ones that help me offend minorities and make lots of money, but that's just coincidence, they're logical really)"

It's such a transparent tactic.

You just don't like left-wing concessions and you're trying to present that as some kind of philosophical insight.

If we had a strong leader who, in defiance of consensus, banned heterosexual relationships, forced us all to use the pronoun "xhe" and abolished all heavy industry in favour of local "healing gardens" would you be happy with that?

So, what role does she leave to dissidents? — David Mo

I'm pretty sure it doesn't say. I agree with what @Banno has already hinted at, that Anscombe assumed a good deal of Wittgenstein in the paper without specifically referencing him (I think the publication dates of this paper and Philosophical Investigations are pretty close - both early fifties, but perhaps some experts here could confirm that). Either way the importance of culture and tradition in determining meaning, and the absence of any transcendent determinant is taken as read.

So no, no place for dissidents speaking the 'truth' about what is just. If it's not what the word is used for, they're not dissidents, they just haven't learnt to read properly.

Nothing and no one can prevent the moral subject from evaluating the decisions of the majority. — David Mo

True. But absolutely anyone can prevent the moral subject from calling that evaluation 'justice'. Their prevention goes like this - "eh!"

Does anyone have a better PDF? Uncopyable and unsearchable, it's like I was an undergrad again... — Banno

Yeah, seconded. It's really annoying - I though it was just me.

I don't think that this counts as further analysis; because the criteria are not listable — Banno

She says (and I would quote if I wasn't too lazy to write it out), that the list is not completable. That's different and doesn't in any way preclude a attempt to describe some of it.

Anscombe avoids talking about Kant. — David Mo

Page two paragraph four (sorry, can't cut and paste at the moment).

many if not all of the millennium development goals can be achieved by controlling and/or eliminating some of what may be described as our "negative" natural tendencies e.g greed in re environmental destruction, gender bias which is an age-old problem with respect to women empowerment — TheMadFool

You've just introduced the word 'natural' there without any warrant at all. Show me the evidence that the tendencies the millennium development goals are controlling are 'natural'. All you've got is your idle speculation on the matter. Other things that the countries affected by the millennium development goals have in common (other than being populated by humans);

They're all agricultural societies
They're all to some extent urbanised
They've all at one time been colonised
They're all part of a capitalist global economic system
They all have industrial economies
They're all settled communities (not nomadic)
They all have an institutional education system
They all have (or have had) a formal religion

I could go on.

Any one of these common factors could be the cause of any one of our common behaviours (good or bad). You have absolutely no justification for insisting that its 'in our nature' other than your own dogmatic refusal to entertain any other viewpoint.

You've missed/dodged the actual issue. If you're claiming we have free-will, then something within us must cause us to choose to act according to 'evil' desires or according to 'good' ones. That thing itself cannot be 'evil' because otherwise it would not sometimes choose to act according to 'good' desires. So that thing must either me amoral or outside of us, hence it is impossible that we are 'naturally inclined to evil'. Your suggestion was that we needed policing. That implies that some force outside of us is required to persuade us to act morally. If that's the case, then we don;t really have free-will do we? Put policing in place and the effect is that we act more morally. Our actions have been dictated by the environment. If we really had free-will, then policing would make no difference at all. So that rules out the 'choosing' mechanism being entirely within us.

So what we're left with is that humans sometimes act in a way which other humans think is 'good', sometimes they act in a way which other humans think is 'bad' and the balance of these actions is determined by the environment they're in. It therefore cannot be true that we're always prone to evil. It has to be the case that our environment causes such tendencies.

it’s a risky move to take a clear position on issues, better to talk around it, seek out some “consensus” and never actually take a chance on what you believe is the right and necessary thing to do. As a result you get ” a watered down policy which makes no real progress — Brett

OK, so the first thing you'd need is some evidence of this. What is the 'progress' you'd like to see (what is the real-world measure of it) and why are other measures of change (because the world certainly is changing) not counted as 'progress' for you?

Something’s behind it and I don’t think it’s because “a small number of groups for whom it is in their best interests to strongly declare the extent to which they are opposed to the other groups”. It’s the response that’s the problem. — Brett

So what exactly are you wanting to discuss here? Are you just going to repeat your theory until someone says "yes, you're right". If you're just going to dismiss any contrary theory on the grounds that you don't 'reckon' it's right then what's the point in writing what you think on a public forum?

But things are not true or false because they are justified or unjustified... — Banno

I didn't say they were, I'm only asking how you would justify such a theory of truth. You said a proposition is 'true' IIF {that proposition}, "A" is true IFF A. So you've provided me with a proposition about what truth is, "T". In orer for it to be true then T has to be the case. How do we go about finding out is T is the case. With "the cat is on the mat" we look at the mat and see if there's a cat on . If the there is, the the cat is on the mat so "the cat is on the mat " is true.

You said (note the additional quotation marks) ""the cat is on the mat" is true IFF the cat is on the mat", now what do I look at to see if {"the cat is on the mat" is true IFF the cat is on the mat}?

So... one never asserts a proposition that is false? — Banno

I never said anything about "one" asserting it. I said "we" assert it. We collectively never assert a proposition which is false, how could we? I suppose we could have some kind of global agreement to all lie at the same time about something - on the stroke of midnight we're all going to say that the earth is flat - something like that. But we'd all know we were lying.

The unbolded seems authorized by the text; the bolded seems far more extrapolative and ambigious in its textual warrant. The very question of induction is nowhere raised for instance, — StreetlightX

Yeah, I should have made that more clear. The bolded bit is my opinion on what follows from Anscombe and constitutes pretty much a wild guess as to why she's mentioning psychology, which I agree, is not spelled out in the text at all. I just think it follows because the 'normal circumstances' she refers to under which these 'moral' type of brute facts come about are an empirical matter, I mean, they either are or are not the case, and yet they are crucial to those facts. A is not resultant fro xyz as a matter of logic. It results fro xyz "in normal circumstances". The actual sociological circumstances dictate the possibility (if not the actual means) by which A results from xyz.

if one admits to receiving the spuds after having asked for them, one has misunderstood the nature of the transaction if one then insists that one is not in dept to the grocer. — Banno

Yes, but the 'nature of the transaction' is a sociological fact, not a logical one.

understanding and agreeing to join in the group enterprise of creating the institution of paying for one's spuds, and just understanding a simple transaction from the point of view of the grocer - he thought you would pay for the spuds. — Banno

The first part is a sociological fact, the second a psychological one.

the meaning of the transaction was that if the grocer provides the spuds then you will pay for them; that there is no further analysis needed. — Banno

But there is. In 'Brute Facts' Anscombe is quite clear that this meaning is not an absolute one. There is an uncountable (un-listable) set of circumstances under which that is not the meaning of the transaction - the spuds were provided as part of a film, the spuds were a gift, the spuds were given out under charity...etc.

Without an understanding of the actual sociological and psychological circumstances we do not have the 'meaning' of the transaction at all.

It bypasses a part of ethics that seems - well - almost autistic; lacking in a theory of mind. — Banno

You massively overestimate the quality of data that theory of mind provides us. There's bags of evidence on this, but I won't go into it now if it's too off-topic. Suffice to say your faith in the ability of theory of mind to provide us with mutual understanding of intent is misplaced.

Yes, ethics and morals are entirely matters of tradition/ consensus, and it is not possible to examine those from some "higher" perspective in order to judge whether they are "justified" or not. So forget psychology; it will only ever tell us what people do, not what they ought to do. — Janus

I think that's what Anscombe is saying here though. 'Ought' doesn't make any sense without laws. Something just is 'unjust' because of the definition of 'just' which is provided by society's use of the word. Something simply is 'bilking' because tradition means you 'owe' the grocer as a result of his having delivered some potatoes. There is no 'ought' in that sense. Hence the sociological investigation is all there is (apart from our own group, of course, which we already know about, being language-users within it ourselves).

So you want a revival to lend some 'appeal to authority' weight behind 'stuff you reckon' against those pesky scientists with their 'falsifiable theories' and their 'evidence'. Damn those scientists, how dare they undermine what we very strongly reckon is the case!

I've had a glance at a couple of societies so I must know how they work! I've had a 'bit of think' about people's voting habits so obviously I'm right about that too! The brazen nerve of those damned scientists to actually do stratified samples and test them against control groups to examine the variables affecting how people vote and then running the results through statistical analysis to remove bias. How dare they! What we need is the return of someone who just looks out of their window and 'reckons' some stuff.

It’s the politicians who are swayed by polling. But I don’t see the connection between this and business anyway. — Brett

Ah, I misunderstood what you were saying, you're looking at this the other way round. I think you're missing a couple of steps in your thinking. Politicians are swayed by polling because we live in a democracy and so what most people appear to want is what gets them elected, right? so your connection between that and watered down policies which don't make any real progress is only valid if {what most people want} results in a watered down policy which makes no real progress. After all, if everyone stood up and with one voice declared that we should try to get to Mars above all else, you can guarantee we'd be working on little else but trying to get to Mars.

So the politicians doing what they do is not really the point, they're just the photographer, they take a snapshot of the way society is at the time of the election (minus all the bribery, vote-rigging and gerrymandering which actually does sway things a bit). So, by and large, it's the views of society to blame for whatever lack of progress you're identifying. the politicians are just reflecting it, they can do no else, otherwise they would simply be removed from office next election.

So if we're to follow your 'consensus waters down progress' theory - lets' presume you're right for the minute - then the question you need to ask is why society is divided into such opposing groups that the consensus between them ends up nothing. Why do one group pull left, the other right so that we end up going nowhere?

To answer this you'd have to follow the trend of increasing polarization and identity signalling in group dynamics. There's loads of really good work been done in this area (some of it by me! But I'm not about to break the beauty of anonymity by making any recommendations), but I suspect academic texts aren't really what you're after anyway.

Generally, increasing globalisation makes groups more fluid, people don't like fluid groups because their place in the social hierarchy is important to them and it's difficult to identify in a group with fluid identity boundaries. There's a niche there which advertisers and media companies make use of to draw artificial boundaries around groups, thus satisfying an urge people had. Profits, however, are made on economies of scale, so it doesn't pay to create more groups than are strictly necessary to satisfy this urge.

There's a massive amount of complexity (and disagreement) in there which I've not said, but the upshot is a small number of groups for whom it is in their best interests to strongly declare the extent to which they are opposed to the other groups.

here in Australia Prime Ministers can lose their position as a result of poor polling — Brett

Why do you think that is?Is it a complete coincidence that people are so easily swayed by something as rhetorical as polling and this just happens to make extremely profitable consumer base? What would happen in the opposite case to modern manufacturing companies. If people actually spent time investigating the qualities of things and critically examining their claims. How many people would buy the razor that 'shaves even closer still' if they actually critically examined claims which are made in the media?

The reason why we have middle of the road policies at all is because it's easier to sell things to people in distinct ideological groups (though preferably as few of these as possible, two is ideal) than it is to sell to an amorphous mass whose ideas cannot easily be predicted.

What else might you suggest is behind what I’m calling a watered down version of people’s expectations. — Brett

In my view people's expectations have been watered down by advertising and the media. As I said, no-one really wants a speaking toaster, or a razor that shaves 'even closer still'. You'd have to be stupid to think that the fridge you buy nowadays, that lasts a few years is better than the one you just replaced that was 25 years old. The door broke on my oven the other day, I complained about it and they said they'd send me a new oven, but that the "mechanisms can't be expected to last for ever". It was four years old. My Rayburn door was made in 1969, it's still going strong.

High expectations among your customers is just not good business. Its cheaper to manipulate the customer base to expect less than it is to actually provide more.

The consequences of this process just leach over into politics.

It's also not very good economics to have your customer base look after each other, be frugal, be charitable, intelligently analyse things... All these effects leach over into other areas of life.

...and that would be wrong, wouldn't it; because we can be wrong about the things we might say. — Banno

I don't see how. The moment we are wrong about a proposition, it is no longer likely that we would say that proposition was 'true'.

But for me it’s morals that act as the policing agent in societies, but we still have to chose to act on those morals. — Brett

So what motivates that choice? Why do we choose sometimes to act according to morals and other times not?

I’m not against doing things (or intending to do them) without any reason, just because you felt like it; I’m against telling people they should or shouldn’t (intend to) do things differently, without giving them any reason why. — Pfhorrest

Isn't <telling people they should or shouldn’t (intend to) do things differently, without giving them any reason why> a thing people do? You just said you weren't against people doing things without any reason, so they wouldn't need a reason to tell people they should or shouldn’t (intend to) do things differently, without giving them any reason why. If they don't need a reason to do that thing, then why are you using reason to dispute their doing so?

it seems to me that what emerged out of the past, railways, cities, industries, even government, was driven and built by those who took power and wielded it. Through their own individual desires and the power held by them they created the foundations of the world today. — Brett

This is potentially just historicism. You've no alternative history of consensus-run groups during the same era to compare with. You could equally say that the greatest growth in industry was during the era when everyone wore hats, so we should bring back hat-wearing. Unless you have a control group of non-hat- wearing industrialists who didn't do so well, you can't draw any conclusions.

I can’t help thinking that we’re not getting much out of consensus, that we’re not growing. It seems to me that collective power is compromised by consensus. More get what they want but everything is a watered down version of their objectives. All around the world governments appear to be ineffective in dealing with their nation’s problems. What we get are watered down policies that add up to nothing more than stop gaps or feel good messages. — Brett

Again, it's a real stretch to link this to consensus. The industrial revolution - which drove the original stage of growth - was always unsustainable. People really wanted cars, washing machines, trainlines etc. Those were really useful things. But we have them now. Not quite so many people really want a toaster that turns on when you speak to it, or a toothbrush that plays the Marseilles while you brush. We're running out of stuff people need, we're having to make the stuff people do need deliberately badly so that it needs replacing sooner. Then there's raw materials, environmental degradation...I won't go into all that and derail your thread. The point is there's a lot more going on than increases in consensus politics. Singling out one aspect to blame when others are much closer in the causal chain is mistaken.

we actually need free will to resist our natural tendencies rather than give them free reign over us. — TheMadFool

And from where did anyone learn which of our tendencies are 'natural ones' and which aren't? I've studied fMRI scans and EEG. I didn't notice any labels.

I find it difficult to imagine any society that would not have some form of policing, even if it came in the form of myths and stories passed on down about behaviour and consequences and instilled in members as they grew up. — Brett

But the limits to your imagination aren't evidence of anything, are they? Let's say people do need policing, let's say they're motivated to act badly. Why would anyone consider policing? Why write the stories, make the rules, support the law?

If the argument is that policing toward a better society has always existed, then it cannot simultaneously be the case that we are all motivated by evil as our default moral stance, otherwise from where did the universal motive to police behaviour towards better ends come from?

If, as some kind of compromise, you say "sometimes we're motivated by good, sometimes by evil", then you're stuck explaining the switching mechanism. If it's us who do the switching, then what motivates us to switch to being motivated by evil? If its something outside of us, then you're back to my proposition - remove that thing from society and you'll have one entirely motivated by good.

Either good or bad is natural tendency. If good is a natural tendency then there's no need for free will. On the other hand, if evil is a natural tendency we'd need free will to be good, not bad. So, either there's no need for free will or we need free will to be good, not bad. — TheMadFool

Free-will, used in this sense, is a completely incoherent concept, so there's no traction with it here. If the desire to act in a 'good' way somehow drives our actions, then that is part of (not opposed to) free-will because it is us acting according to our desires, not according to someone else's. Thus we are free, in any meaningful sense of the term.

Can you give us some examples of these other societies? — Brett

I think nomadic hunter-gatherer societies provide an interesting example, but I wasn't really thinking about it empirically (as in 'every society that's ever been'), I was more thinking about it modally, as in 'every society that ever might be'.

Who said that it was useful? All I am claiming is that it is right! — Banno

So by 'right' you mean 'true'? How do you go about justifying a claim that a theory of truth is true? Isn't that where we started?

...which is to say that when someone else and I say "the cat is on the mat", we mean the same thing. — Banno

This, quite nicely, ties in with what Anscombe is saying in Modern Moral Philosophy (or at least, what I think she's saying). When someone else and I say "the cat is on the mat", we mean the same thing, in normal circumstances. There are exceptions, and the full list is not countable (not infinite, just non-countable). It is psychological state, historical conventions around language use that make it the case that you both mean the same thing (in normal circumstances).

So. A more encompassing definition of 'true' is perhaps - statements which are true are those which we are likely to say they are true in normal circumstances.

But in that sense, it is like 'blue' after all. Those things which are blue are exactly those of which we are likely to say they are 'blue' in normal circumstances.

Where this gets us into trouble is it makes it sound like what is 'true' changes as the likely response does, which intuitively seems wrong. "The earth is flat" was never true. But here I think we mistake what it is we're saying. The only two options we can talk about (according to the above) are;

a) what would they at the time be likely to say of such a proposition? Or
b) what would we be likely to say of such a proposition?

To presume the truth has anything to do with (a) is simply to mistake what 'truth' means. 'Slut' used to mean a maid, it doesn't anymore.

Just for the sake of argument, suppose that evil isn't our default moral stance. That would imply that the law and the police are redundant but they're not. Ergo, as I said, evil is a natural tendency. — TheMadFool

Nonsense. Engines don't naturally kill people. Put one in a lifeboat and it contributes to saving thousands of lives. Put one in a tank and it contributes to death and destruction. It's not about the engine, it's about where you put it.

Just because humans in a modern agri-industrial mass society need policing, doesn't mean humans in every society ever need the same treatment.

This is rarely the case. It is certainly not the norm. — alcontali

Are you an expert on range of problems requiring solutions? Are you an expert on how long each verification algorithm would be? No. So I shall take your advice and not trust your absurd suggestion that you have the measure of all the worlds problems and the complexity of their proposed solutions.

The cat is on the mat.

"The cat is on the mat" contains six words.

See the difference? — Banno

No. The first statement you just wrote also has six words, the second has six words. They both have six words.

I'm being facetious, I know what you're trying to say really, but I disagree with the fact that it makes any useful claim about truth. As you write it, the two propositions are different, but as soon as it is in the public domain, your unquoted proposition becomes a quote, and it's pointless outside of the public domain, as we both know.

So all you're left with is the proposition - when someone else says "the cat is on the mat" it is true IFF I would say "the cat is on the mat" in the same circumstances.

ie, something is true if I think it is.

Yep. Is your criticism that she wrote an article instead of a book? — Banno

It's not a criticism.

I'm pointing out the sense in which this piece is more than just a technical criticism of the current state of moral philosophy. It's a dismissal of the very practice of moral philosophy thus far. These people are not merely wrong on technical ground. If that were the case then Anscombe is either an unrivalled genius or she's missed responding technically to the thousands and thousands of pages which have been written about each of these theories, each of which clearly disagrees with her in more complex ways that she addresses. No, she's dismissing the entire endeavour. No need to get into the technicality. Like dismissing the need for a Window 7 handbook, it doesn't matter about it's technicalities, Windows 7 has gone so the handbook's no longer needed.

Hm, which passages do you have in mind that give warrant to this reading? — StreetlightX

She says at the beginning that we need a more adequate philosophy of psychology, but it's not really that, it's her treatment of how we get 'owes' to be a fact. Her explanation here is confusing to me so I could easily have this wrong, but all I get out of it (both here and in 'Brute Facts') is that 'owes' refers just to a circumstance which most people would use 'owes' to identify. What criteria they are using is not yet fixed, but simply held by tradition. I owe the grocer for the potatoes (after he has delivered them) simply because that it the state of affairs most people would consider had arisen as a result of that prior fact. Even though some instances where we would use some label 'owes' can have their history/tradition elucidated by reference to other more brute facts/institutions (justifying that A is done by reference to xyz) but such a relationship between A and xyz is held in normal circumstances by tradition.

Also, we only have a speculative, pragmatic description of 'owes', fringe cases are up for debate and (local) consensus wins.

Investigating what this tradition/consensus is is a matter of induction, either from experience or scientific investigation (samples, statistical analysis etc). Investigating what traditions hold and in what circumstances is a matter of psychology.

"The cat is on the mat" is true IFF the cat is on the mat.
...

All else is sophistry. — Banno

And it's not sophistry to try and claim that "the cat is on the mat" is something epistemically different from the cat is on the mat, simply because of the quotation marks?

Yes, but this isn't how houses get built in a free society. If you're putting a gun to someone's head or threatening construction crews with jail time you're pretty screwed as a society. — BitconnectCarlos

The gun was an example. It could be nicer motives like duty. Notwithstanding, what makes you think we live in a free society. The builder is already being forced to build, someone stole the common land he could have used to fend for himself and so he is forced to work. Someone speculates on property, driving the prices up of his basic needs and he is forced to work longer and harder. In what way is that any more free than legally forcing someone to work for the common good?

In reality - and I know you're not to listen because this man's existence constitutes an immediate emergency that must be solved by whatever means necessary - the issue is much, much complex. — BitconnectCarlos

And this gets to the heart of where you're coming from. Yes it's complex, yet all of your complexities err on the side of not housing the man. Are you seriously presenting that list as an unbiased summary of the complexities? What about;

The effect free market national/globalising has on the local communities which might have supported the man.
The extent to which lack of government investment in youth and welfare services increase the chances of him being a drug addict and decrease the chances of his getting any long-term support to kick his habit.
The fact that government cuts to mental health services make it vastly more likely that he has an untreated mental health condition.
The way in which erosion of worker's rights mean fewer people have any pride or dignity in their work and this leaches out into their home lives.

I know you're intention might be good, but presuming everyone who disagrees with you must be young and idealistic, whilst you alone have the wise world-weary answer is condescending and a poor argument. I'm 54 and I know plenty of intelligent academics who are (some of them) even more left-wing than I am about these things. They are both old, and experts in their field, so let's leave the condescention out of this shall we?

Psychologists pin all mental illnesses on mental malfunctioning. — Qwex

No we don't.

So what if some people don't want to die, but don't want the dealing with either?... I was looking for some interesting conversation on the conundrum rather than disdain for the idea itself — schopenhauer1

You haven't explained what you're asking for. That's why you're being met with disdain. There's not even a question there because you've rejected phrasing it as "what does one do if one doesn't like the premises of life...?" because you're not prepared to do anything about it.

So all you're left with is making a statement. "You have to either accept the premises of life or die".

Yes. That's right. That is correct. You have correctly identified the nature of life. Well done. You can write that down in your book of 'things that are the case'. Honestly, what more is there to discuss. It's a brute fact. You're not prepared to entertain any suggestions of anything you can actually do about it, or even think about it, so what else is there other than agree that it is indeed the case?

why would anybody feel the need to accept such solution? — alcontali

I've said this like 10 times already. I even bolded it for you in my last post, yet you seem to have some pathological inability to read it. We might accept a solution which cannot be verified because;

We do not have the time or the data required to carry out the verification procedure.

Or

None of the solutions on offer can be verified and yet we need to act.

We do not just have to throw our hands up and say "we might as well toss a coin then" because whether a solution is verifiable or not is not the only criteria we have on which to judge it. We also have;

Whether a solution would be likely to be verified if we had the time or data to carry out the verification process (we can judge this by induction based on things like the expert's track record of getting it right, whether we think they're honest, whether the solution fits with other solutions we know have worked etc.)

Or

Whether a solution has other benefits/advantages given that we have no other criteria to go on.

Or

Gut feeling (either about the solution or the expert). Again, given that we have nothing else to go on.

Possibly. I've just noticed that @Banno gave a link to Anscombe's paper on brute facts which I must have missed when scanning through the thread so far. I'll give that a read first and see if it explains things any better.

Believing someone else only makes sense if it is possible to verify that his solution is indeed the solution. If it is not possible to verify that it is, then this person could tell you whatever, regardless of whether he is a doctor or a candy store clerk. — alcontali

I'm not going to get into another discussion with you be because you just end up avoiding the issue, but I raise this here for others. You have given absolutely no support for your assumption that solutions are either verifiable or not.

Solutions, in the real world, are generally more or less likely to work none can be verified, very few can be dismissed as impossible, everything else exists on a spectrum in between. We draw evidence, based on our experience, to judge the liklihood that a solution will work. We act, in the face of uncertainty, by making experience-informed guesses. How much experience/education the person proposing the solution has in the field is a perfectly rational factor to take into account (among others) when making our guesses. We have neither the data nor the time to actually calculate the veracity of any real-world solution.

I would reject the modus tollens reading... — Banno

Reject as being right, or reject as being reflective of Anscombe's intent? I'd agree on the former, but not the latter.

It's always intrigued me that there was ever any debate about the matter. I mean, didn't anyone just ask her? "Did you mean to revive Catholic moral authority or did you mean to initiate a revival of virtue ethics?" - seems like the sort of thing that should have cropped up in conversation since, but apparently not.

Another surprising thing in this article is the brevity with which each previous moral theory is dismissed. Barely a paragraph each. This would be less surprising if each were dismissed for the same reason, but, apart from the overall theme - lacking an external law - each is given its own tailored P45. Not something that's generally acceptable at any level, and yet this paper started modern virtue ethics. It's as if she pointed out that fairies don't exist and half the world's folklorists simply hang up their gloves and say "we never thought of that".

So. My problem with the detail starts at 'brute facts'. It seems to me from the opening that Anscombe is looking to a more psychological understanding of morality. So we could see what is 'unjust as a fact about the psychological state of justice (rather than the legal one). But if that's the case, then we just have morality brought into Naturalism, which I'm fine with - but then this weird argument about brute facts, as if there were something further to say, other than the standard argument for Naturalism, and I just don't get what she's trying to do with it. Is it her personal defense of naturalism, or some other point which I've missed completely?

I was trying to answer your questions in good faith — NOS4A2

My question - why do you think that the list of government services you want provided (and those you do not) amounts to more than just your personal preferences?

So far you've given me;
a) A difference exists between the types of service you prefer and the types you don't.
b) Academics have made arguments that the types of service you prefer should be the only ones provided.

(a) is insufficient on its own as an answer because the mere existence of a difference in type does not exclude items from the list. There is nothing preventing the government from providing more than one type of service.
(b) is also insufficient on its own to answer the question because academics have also provided arguments to the contrary. This makes the choice of which argument to go with just your personal preference, unless you can show why your preferred argument is more persuasive.

So no, you haven't tried to answer my question in good faith at all, you've tried to avoid it. In order to answer it you do indeed need to show why you are persuaded by your position (as I specified) because without showing that you have not shown how it is anything more than your own personal preference.

It is my excess and I can do what I want with it because I produced it. Legal or not it’s still thievery and it’s still unjust. — NOS4A2

No, it is theivery if it is illegal. That is the definition of thievery. If you have some other means (other than law) of determining who owns what I'd be interested to hear it, but - very important - I'd need to know why such a system is anything more than your own personal preference. Otherwise you cannot support an argument that your position is anything other than 'wants'.

The smallest government possible would be one where anyone is allowed to do anything to anyone or anything, and nothing, not even mutual agreement, can create obligations that limit that liberty. — Pfhorrest

The trouble is that if anyone were allowed to do anything to anyone, then one of those things they'd be allowed to do is collect together, from an armed administrative group and use that force of arms to make people obey the rules they set. In other words big government is itself allowed by small government. This is the central flaw in the argument against any kind of consequence of collective bargaining power, you have to put in place, right at the heart of your 'oh so free liberty-state' one absolutely massive infringement on liberty - that you cannot use collective bargaining. Otherwise you end up with the exact type of government we currently have. If you're going to ban collective bargaining right at the outset, then you've not only caused a massive infringement on liberty without justification, but you've swung the balance of power massively in favour of individual wealth.

So, I agree with your overall analysis - trying to get at the objective justifications for certain rights (and not others) is what I've been doing in my comments. But the very first right that needs to be justified in 'small government' is the banning of collective bargaining.

Construction functions in regard to market conditions. Houses don't just spring up spontaneously they are built according to demand. — BitconnectCarlos

No they're not. If I held a gun to your head and said "build me a house" I suspect you would do so, regardless of whether the market demanded it. You're treating 'market forces' as if they were some kind of Law of Nature, they're just the result of the economic institutions we've set up. It's perfectly feasible to build houses for all sorts of reasons.

All of the land in the US has been claimed - it is owned by somebody, and very often but not always the owner of the land is the owner of the property. At the very least the land belongs to someone. — BitconnectCarlos

We're talking about government here though. The very same people who declare that these people are the 'owners'. Now you're mistaking our legal institutions for some kind of Law of Nature. If a person claims to own an excess and the government wishes to take that land back, they simply file a counter-claim. Claims are not physical laws.

Plenty of homeless are either rejected from the shelters due to drugs/mental health or just refuse to live there in the first place because they have to be around other homeless people who, surprise surprise, aren't the most pleasant crowd. What is your solution to these people? — BitconnectCarlos

As I said, I'm talking about housing, jobs, decent wages, healthcare, services... the whole package, the lack of which is largely responsible for the state of homeless people.

So you can't have an opinion on an issue unless you're an expert in it. Okay. — BitconnectCarlos

I didn't say you couldn't have an opinion. You've got to realise the gravity of what you're suggesting. There's a man on the street living under a cardboard box - no home, no job, no healthcare. He's starving hungry, probably ill (both physically and mentally) and ten times more likely to die than average. You're telling him that he can't have a little help from the man buying his second yacht because you 'reckon' in your completely lay interpretation of complex economics, that it would probably be a bad idea in the long run. This despite there existing perfectly well-educated experts who think it would be fine. You've decided to just let the man starve and side with the naysayers because you just 'reckon' they have it right. I'm trying to establish why - given that you're not sufficiently expert to decide, given that alternative , expert opinions are available, given the very high stakes, you've chosen the side you have.

I mean, if you're wrong (and we do nothing), people suffer miserably for no reason. If you're right, but we increase welfare nonetheless, the economy takes a dive (which is does periodically anyway). given that either could be the case, why err on the side of the wealthy?

Lets start with the duty/slavery idea I mentioned earlier. In the right to life, your duty is just not to kill others. In the right to housing and everything along with it, your duty is now to take care of everyone's home. What if you don't want to? — BitconnectCarlos

I don't understand your appeal to autonomy in this one area. We're obliged to do all sorts of things we don't want to do all the time. What if I don't want to drive on the left? What if I don't want to pay my taxes? What if I don't want to pay for the groceries I've just put in my trolley? Why is obliging people to help others suddenly an obligation too far when obliging people to uphold economic contracts occupies far more of their life?