It seems quite possible to me that China will eclipse the USA as the dominant world hegemon in the near future but that gives me no joy. — Wayfarer

I have the same feeling. China may eventually produce more GDP than the USA since it has a larger population. China, however, suffers from problems such as corruption, no freedom of speech, etc., so it will produce less GDP per capita.

I think the US will contract into a Western Hemisphere alliance (including Greenland) and leave the rest of the world to themselves except for the occasional nuclear war.

It will eventually, but probably not in our lifetime. — frank

I'm not confident that I will be dead before things spiral out of control, and I'm an old man.

2) My claim is this should not be interpreted as backsliding but rather as an overestimation of the percentage of the world population who embraced liberalism to begin with. — Joshs

I don't know much about the over-estimation of the world's liberalism, but that is certainly the case for the United States.

It might seem like liberals had super-majorities in congress during the Roosevelt administrations, and in some other decades, but only if one mistakenly equates "Democrat" with "Liberal". Democratic majorities were possible because the illiberal solid-south Democrats had pretty much complete control over southern state politics. It became more difficult for Democrats to control congress after the illiberal Democrats switched and became illiberal Republicans. That's one thing.

States in the midwest and west coast have always held strong conservative constituencies along side liberal districts (usually urban). Minnesota illustrates this well, sending a mixed conservative and liberal representation to Congress. Minnesota was a consistently religious place, with strong "family values". It less religious now, less traditionally family oriented, but still has about the same mix of conservative and liberal. California, the home of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan et al, has had some remarkably illiberal episodes.

If you take a random sample of Americans, I would expect the majority to express a mix of values which can't be taken as resoundingly Liberal. That doesn't mean that the majority are on the edge of fascism, but far right leanings make up substantial group (the "MAGA base").

Pundits are saying the Democrats don't know what to do to win elections. I don't think that is true -- they know how as well as the Republicans. The problem with the presumably liberal Democrats is that their liberalism isn't deep or strong enough to motivate them, to the same extent that the far right Republicans are motivated. They seem to be having difficulty clearly articulating the liberal cause.

The failure to articulate and hold the liberal center allows for growing encroachment on the political center by far right wing thinking and 'left of liberal' thinking on the left side. MAGA and some of the so-called Democratic Socialists both pose problems for central liberalism, whether rounding up 10 million illegal immigrants or abolishing the police.

I'm not confident that I will be dead before things spiral out of control, and I'm an old man. — BC

Have you ever known a time when things weren't on the verge of spiralling out of control?

I agree, excluding the occasional nuclear war.

I agree, excluding the occasional nuclear war. — MoK

People absolutely have to provoke one another to see if nuclear warheads will show up. They can't just sit there and act like they have some sense.

People absolutely have to provoke one another to see if nuclear warheads will show up. They can't just sit there and act like they have some sense. — frank

Einstein said that there is no end to human stupidity! I hope he is wrong.

Realism is great, but it isn't democracy or liberalism (per se) that gets you there. If one wants to use democracy or liberalism to achieve realism, then they need a particular flavor of democracy or liberalism. The flavor of liberalism has to do with a focus on the individual and inalienable rights. The flavor of democracy has to do with a relatively autonomous demos (which is probably no longer possible in our internet age). — Leontiskos

So you don’t see realism assumed as a foundation of the social package but rather an optional flavour? Institutions such as independent courts and a free press aren’t envisaged as basic?

I would say it is more correct that it is realism that gets you to democracy and liberalism. A public concern for the real facts, the real truth, is the precondition.

Of course we can have our sophisticated debates about the epistemic reality of realism given we are socially-constructed creatures. But that too rather proves the point.

Einstein also said the Fourth World War would be fought with rocks, there being nothing else left to fight with after the Third World War.

The failure to articulate and hold the liberal center allows for growing encroachment on the political center by far right wing thinking and 'left of liberal' thinking on the left side. MAGA and some of the so-called Democratic Socialists both pose problems for central liberalism, whether rounding up 10 million illegal immigrants or abolishing the police — BC

I agree with your overall analysis. I would say that in order for liberals to gain the ascendancy again in the U.S., what is needed isnt so much an articulation and holding of a liberal center but its creation. That is, a movement needs a critical mass in order to deserve the label of ‘center’. There simply isn’t a large enough percentage of the country identifying with liberal values right now to produce such a critical mass. Achieving this will rely less on the strategies of political leaders than on the slow process of social evolution.

He is correct if any form of life is possible, shortly after the Third World War.

Illiberal leaders in previously liberal countries do not justify their authoritarianism or interventions in opposition to liberalism. In general, they position themselves as saviors of liberalism

Likewise, dictators across the world still feel the need to have rump legislatures, to hold votes on reforms, etc. They still feel the need to hold sham elections. Even Assad did this during the civil war. They still go by "president" or "prime minister" instead of "king," "emperor," "emyr" or "shah." When they attack the West, they normally do so while tacitly accepting the values of liberalism. They deride the West as not being truly democratic, as having become an oligarchy, or just as often, as having fallen into a sort of technocratic socialism. Such criticisms accept liberal values however. When they attack "Western values" such a LGBT issues, they do so using the same language used by conservative liberals within the West, speaking to "freedom to differ" and "freedom of religion" or "freedom for traditions."

Yet they decidedly do not recommend some sort of alternative ideology the way the Soviet Union did. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I prefer ‘philosophical perspective’ to ‘ideology’. Ideologies lend themselves to empty slogans abstracted away from how people actually understand themselves in their pragmatic relations with others politically, economically and ethically. Positioning oneself as a ‘savior of liberalism’ or calling one’s party ‘National Socialism’ are examples of marketing slogans that mask the profound philosophical differences that separate, say, adherents of MAGA from social liberals. What’s important is not whether two competing groups use the same language, but how far apart the meaning those concepts is in their actual use by those groups.

I am not sure whether the existing liberal center should be likened too an avocado (no), a peach (maybe), or several little apple seeds (I hope we're better than that). A really big solid avocado core would be nice. A peach pit might be all we can get in the near future. Or, maybe we are stuck with little apple seeds?

We need more energetic and articulate people like Elizabeth Warren. Bernie Sanders may consider himself a Democratic Socialist, but he is also energetic and articulate (but aging). I don't want to see Harris or a Clinton or the like taking the lead.

I have a history of further-to-the-left-than-Democratic-Socialist, and I know from experience that it is very difficult to arrest the attention of the ordinary man in the street, let alone build their interest, enthusiasm, and commitment into action (like voting). "Liberal democracy" should be a significantly easier sell than socialism. After all, liberal democracy, free enterprise, and all that are not asking anyone to lay their life on the line, give up their career, sell their property, or forgo a new iPhone. Nobody is even asking gun owners to repent and turn in their guns.

I mean, the core values of liberal democracy are not strange:

The core values of liberalism are individualism, liberty, equality, and the rule of law, emphasizing the rights of the individual and the consent of the governed. Other essential principles include private property, freedom of speech and religion, and a representative democracy supported by a mixed or market economy. I would add "the truth of science", given Secretary of Health Robert Kennedy, Jr. shitting on the truth of medical science and the administration's denial of climate warming.

However, the dichotomy between "developed countries" and "developing countries" seems quite accurate to me. — Astorre

I disagree with the vise versa part. X is defined as Western values and Western narrative, and then Y is defined as not-X. The vise versa doesn't work, because then you would be defining X as not-Y, and there would be nothing to establish the relationship to Western values. So there is no vise versa in the definitions, there is X which is Western values, and there is Y which is not-X. X cannot be defined as not-Y or you lose reference to Western values.

However, the dichotomy between "developed countries" and "developing countries" seems quite accurate to me. — Astorre

This is not the dichotomy you have defined though. You have defined Western and non-Western. The dichotomy of Western and developing, is very outdated. That is because many non-Western societies are fully developed, but simply do not have the same values as the Western. We ought not class developed non-Western together with developing non-Western, and name them all together as "developing countries. That would be a mistake.

So, you have proposed a dichotomy of "Western" and "non-Western". In no way does this equate to developed and developing. It appears like you want to include non-Western, yet developed countries, in your category of "developing". Or you just want ambiguity. Why?

I wasn’t thinking of the the American voter particularly, as this is a global problem (I’m in the U.K.). I agree about the complacency of the American voter and that there is a deep political crisis playing out there.

So you don’t see realism assumed as a foundation of the social package but rather an optional flavour? Institutions such as independent courts and a free press aren’t envisaged as basic? — apokrisis

I don't see why independent courts or a free press lead ineluctably to realism. There are different ways to conceive of liberalism, but are any of them inherently bound up with realism?

I would say it is more correct that it is realism that gets you to democracy and liberalism. A public concern for the real facts, the real truth, is the precondition. — apokrisis

I am not convinced of that either. Part of the difficulty is that trying to entangle realism with democracy or liberalism presupposes moral realism (which in this case is a moral-political realism), and the democratic sentiment of the West now generally opposes moral-political realism—where the general opposition to moral-political realism is a large part of what liberalism has come to mean.

So even if the is-ought distinction is false, the fact that a large percentage of Westerners believe it to be true itself militates against the thesis that realism and democracy go together.

There are different ways to conceive of liberalism, but are any of them inherently bound up with realism? — Leontiskos

You seem to be understanding “realism” as “political realism” here. And I mean realism as in knowing the rational truth of the matter. Pragmatic realism.

So that is not moral realism either. :roll:

You seem to be understanding “realism” as “political realism” here. And I mean realism as in knowing the rational truth of the matter. Pragmatic realism. — apokrisis

So what does pragmatic realism have to do with democracy or liberalism? Democracy and liberalism are moral/political positions.

But no, I am not understanding "realism" as "political (or moral) realism." For example:

Part of the difficulty is that trying to entangle realism with democracy or liberalism presupposes moral realism — Leontiskos

In that sentence the bolded "realism" does not mean "moral realism."

Democracy and liberalism are moral/political positions. — Leontiskos

…based on asserting that social order should follow from the reality of human interactions rather than claims about divine will.

So what does pragmatic realism have to do with democracy or liberalism? — Leontiskos

You need to set out your position rather than expecting me to guess why you can’t see that folk need some method by which to agree on the facts. And that was what the Enlightenment was about.

I'm asking if you have any reasons for your claim here:

I would say it is more correct that it is realism that gets you to democracy and liberalism. — apokrisis

How does realism get you to democracy and liberalism?

How does realism get you to democracy and liberalism? — Leontiskos

Via pragmatism. :roll:

As I have said any number of times, my metaphysics is naturalistic. I understand society as a biosemiotic organism. An organism is a dissipative structure that persists by constructing a model of itself in its world. An Umwelt. And so “humanity” can be best understood by accepting this is really what is going on and thus the metaphysics we might apply to any question of how best to order our collective affairs.

So even if the facts of reality are socially constructed, they are structured under the constraints of pragmatic habit. If we must inhabit an Umwelt, best that we all share one which is similar enough in the aspects that matter the most.

Traditional society was generally theistic and even animistic. Which worked out well enough for societies at that low level of complexity and change.

Then first the ancient Greeks and then the European enlightenment began to explore a more naturalistic basis to organising their societies. One not ruled by gods and spirits and fate and ancestral tradition but instead founded in pragmatic inquiry. The collective truth seeking of public reasoning.

This didn’t really go anywhere much with the Greeks, just somewhat better agricultural empires with more organised militaries, economies and bureaucracies. But in Enlightenment Europe, it caught fire as the focus on naturalistic accounts drove science and technology. Britain in particular discovered it was sitting atop a limitless store of coal and you had the Industrial Revolution as the entropic bonanza which forced itself on humanity as its new reality. And an eager society restructured itself in response.

Agriculture was largely a steady-state regime. Fossil fuels tipped global society into runaway growth as its embedded goal.

So our ideologies are neither God-given nor freely chosen. They are just the structural habits that do the best job of adapting our collective behaviour to the opportunities that nature presents. And that’s the pragmatic reality.

If we recognise that fact, then we can start to think in larger terms of how we do perceive the world and what then we can do to make a better job of properly seeing its reality.

So as a small example, we place a lot of store in measuring society’s GDP. But we could instead shift our goals to measuring Society’s happiness index or whatever other measure of social capital growth seems to make sense in terms of the deep goals we ought to have.

The concern with the real is what drives naturalism. We already know the world well enough to reject the supernatural when it comes to the basic business of causal accounts. We can see why knowledge is built around the semiotic relation of hypothesis and test.

Then liberalism and democracy were a pragmatic exercise in setting out the general rules of human social interaction and a way to measure collective opinion about the outcome. A feedback loop was created so that social order could start to evolve at a speed suited to an industrialising world.

And given the whole model was about this process of pragmatic inquiry - being open to discovering what works best - it is no surprise that truth seeking public institutions were given a special place. The fourth estate, parliamentary process, open markets, an independent judiciary, and all the rest.

So again, if you want to dispute my account, please explain on what basis.

As I have said any number of times, my metaphysics is naturalistic. I understand society as a biosemiotic organism. An organism is a dissipative structure that persists by constructing a model of itself in its world. An Umwelt. And so “humanity” can be best understood by accepting this is really what is going on... — apokrisis

So let me ask you a preliminary question: do you think that realism gets one to democracy and liberalism, or do you think that your specific variety of realism (society-as-a-biosemiotic-organism) gets one to democracy and liberalism? Because realism and what you are setting out here are not the same thing. Lots of people are realists who do not believe that society is a biosemiotic organism. Do those realists still arrive at democracy and liberalism?

You haven’t answered my question yet. What are you saying is some other convincing story of how the path would have been followed? And how is that in some sense a better answer than I have provided?

Here's what I've been saying from the beginning:

Whether realism has to do with opposition to "social media psychodramas" or the strangeness of intersectionality, either way there is nothing connecting democracy or liberalism to this realism, and therefore deviation from this realism is not a deviation from democracy or liberalism. — Leontiskos

You claimed a connection between realism and democracy & liberalism, and I have been asking how that is supposed to work. That's the discussion I've been having with you from my very first response to you.

I’m asking again how you think the notion of liberal democracy arose and took hold on human affairs.

You have neither refuted my account that is the structuralist one that as biology goes, so sociology follows, nor have you made any effort to provide some other better theory.

The ideas had to come from somewhere. If not natural circumstance, then from where?

You only seem to be leaving supernatural circumstance as your position. And I can only conclude you are too shy to try and support that in a public forum.

I’m asking again how you think the notion of liberal democracy arose and took hold on human affairs. — apokrisis

We're talking about the relation between realism and democracy & liberalism. Now you want to talk about the genesis of liberal democracy?

• Leontiskos: How does realism generate democracy or liberalism?
• Apokrisis: Give your alternative explanation.
• Leontiskos: Alternative explanation to what?

Are you saying, "If realism did not generate liberal democracy, then what did?" Or, "If society-as-a-biosemiotic-organism did not generate liberal democracy, then what did?"

Realism, democracy, and liberalism are three incredibly complex and plastic notions. It may be that society-as-a-biosemiotic-organism supports liberalism or democracy, but first we must recognize that realism and society-as-a-biosemiotic-organism are not the same thing even if the latter is an instance of the former, and the conflation between the two seems to miss this. Second, I don't see how your relatively novel notion of society-as-a-biosemiotic-organism caused "the notion of liberal democracy [to arise and take hold on human affairs]," given the anachronism.

Historically speaking, liberal democracy arose in the relative absence of realism,* and theories such as Peirce's draw on sources behind and outside of the nominalism that had become so prevalent at the time of its rise. Presumably you are conflating realism with Baconian science, which did in fact attend the rise of liberal democracy. Of course the fact that liberal democracy arose in a relatively anti-realist period does not mean that the two are incompatible or that some variety of realism such as society-as-a-biosemiotic-organism does not support liberalism or democracy.

More generally, the democratic moral principle is that everyone is equal and votes in public affairs. The liberal moral principle has to do with individual freedom. The form of realism that will actually support democracy is therefore one which holds that equality among the demos is real, and the form of realism that will actually support liberalism is one which holds that individual freedom is real. That is how the practical-speculative juncture must be laid for things like democracy or liberalism to flourish, and my earlier point was presupposing that the juncture between the speculative sphere and the moral sphere is itself moral (and also speculative). For example, the thesis that each member of the demos is equal vis-a-vis the act of voting in public affairs is both a speculative and a practical thesis. It means that there is in fact an equality and that a political program follows upon this equality.

You only seem to be leaving supernatural circumstance as your position. And I can only conclude you are too shy to try and support that in a public forum. — apokrisis

These strawmen and the ignorance underlying them are actually rather amusing. Apparently you think that everyone who disagrees with you is naively appealing to "divine will" (whatever that is supposed to mean). I'm not much interested in engaging the anti-religious chip on your shoulder, as it seems to be an excuse to avoid giving explanations for your claims (such as the claim that realism generates democracy or liberalism).


* Modern liberal democracies are positioned as a form of conflict-resolution, and therefore presuppose deep-seated disagreements. Thus it is no surprise that a large dose of nominalism attended their rise. I think a rather compelling argument could be made that realism goes hand in hand with intellectualism, whereas democracy and liberalism are bound up with voluntarism. This is a basic reason why we now see a constant clash of scientific auctoritas with liberal and democratic principles - there is an inherent tension. Yet Aristotle pointed out long ago that there are different forms of democracy.

Just to remind you what was actually said…

The West has lost authority because it is beginning to cannibalize itself.
— Leontiskos

Nope. What has changed is that liberal democracy has given up on its commitment to pragmatic realism. Citizens have been empowered to invent their own alternative facts. The essential institutions of fact checking have been undermined to the point that widespread illusion takes hold….

…The design is commonsense. Let everyone organise on any scale. But the total of the activity has to produce the surplus that gets parcelled out accordingly. And realism is about being able to tie the two sides of the social bargain together in an empirically determined way.

This realism about what the actual facts are – what people really want and the scale of the surplus that exists to be shared – is basic to liberal democracy working as a coherent system. And it is the realism that has fallen apart in a big way. Voters are now entrained to the various brands of cultural make-believe. — apokrisis

I'm not much interested in engaging the anti-religious chip on your shoulder, as it seems to be an excuse to avoid giving explanations for your claims (such as the claim that realism generates democracy or liberalism). — Leontiskos

You are not much interested in anything but misrepresenting my position and avoiding awkward questions about yours.