The question, NOS4A2?

The answer?

Try to avoid them! Use more precise definitions. Remember to mention if either the present or the past is in focus and understand the differences between eras. Avoid using generalizations or universals if you don't precisely tell what you are thinking of. And never use political ideologies as adverbs if you don't exactly mean (or understand) the ideology. Just how common is it to use the term fascist in nearly everything.

You have to plenty believe in universals and abstracts to follow up something like socialism. It is a political basis that only exists in abstraction of ideas, but it has never been applied practically. Even those nations which considered themselves as socialists hardly maintained the praxis with the pass of the years. Something like "common ownership" cannot be applied to subjects, because it is absorbed by the collective itself and disappears into the mass. So no, their politics are not concerned with something apart from their ideas and dreams.

I think the question isn't discerned in Platonic nor conceptualist, but over socialization. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning part of that society. Even though he doesn't understand the conceptualisation. The collective tells you what to think and how to be a good neighbour, easy. They generalise the behaviour and the basic values of society. Generally speaking, the goals of today’s socialists are not in conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses mainstream society of violating that principle. More fundamentally, the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty of society to take care of the individual.

I agree with unabomber when he explained in his manifesto: One of the most important means by which our society socializes children is by making them feel ashamed of behavior or speech that is contrary to society’s expectations. If this is overdone, or if a particular child is especially susceptible to such feelings, he ends by feeling ashamed of himself.

My intention is not to go off the topic of your post, but I fully recommend a look on Unabomber's manifesto: Industrial society and its future, You may find some related points to your arguments, and maybe you will consider them useful.

If a couple is married and owns a house, does the nominalist say "no one owns the house" because ownership is jointly owned by two members of the set?

I don't think so. I think the nominalist would say something like the couple is arranged marriage-wise, that it reduces to a relationship between them -- but the relationship is still real for all that, it's just not the set that's real. They both own the house would be the answer, just not in virtue of being a real set.

But you also say

In applying this subject to objects and entities outside another’s conceptual space, one would be hard-pressed to find and/or point to anything of the kind, and it would be difficult to discern what it is in the world he is actually talking about. — NOS4A2

So it would be more apt to say that if a couple is married and owns a house, and they talk to nominalist aliens about what they own then it wouldn't make sense to the aliens until they spell out that the couple is in a relationship arranged marriage-wise.

I agree that careful language is a solution, but it could be painstaking to speak in such a way. I think it's better to wrestle with the metaphysical questions first before adopting any particular politics.

I have a bad habit of breaking down an “ism” to its component parts (despite its prevailing definition) to get at the root of the belief. If the suffix “ism” implies a belief, practice, or philosophy, a consideration of its root word is paramount to understanding its basic focus. I guess we can thank the French for that.

For “fascism”, for example, the notion of the “fasces” is its guiding metaphor, a bundle of sticks around an ax, which Mussolini described as a “symbol of unity, of force and of justice”. I know you know this. But what thing or things in the world these are these words and metaphors supposed to represent? I’m not sure, but I suspect that the fascist imagines a political environment that may one day arise, where a multitude of objects and functions combine to form a recognizable pattern to which he can one day point and say “Behold, fascism”. His motivation and his actions must one day lead to this preferred pattern of political organization, the objects themselves be damned. The actual objects themselves, having been erased of their own significance and dignity, serve only as the pawns and play-pieces to this imaginative end. I do believe that, should one express a combination of these ideals, motivations, and methodology, he might rightly be called fascist, at least in some general sense.

Metaphysically speaking I am unable to reduce a marriage to anything between two people, especially when it appears there is nothing between them, connecting them, and bonding one to the other. It also appears they are not “in” anything of the sort. I would say each of them relate to one another, or at least I would recognize that one is speaking figuratively when using such language. That isn’t to say one should never use the word “marriage” or “relationship”—abstractions, generalizations, universals are necessary to speak and think about the world—it’s just that one ought not to include them in his ontology, metaphysically speaking. As such he should not apply his politics to them.

But you raise some good questions in regards to political subjects (the people, the nation, the workers, the race, society). What sort of bond or relationship can we infer between the aggregate parts of these sets? Are these bonds actual? Or are they assumed and imposed? If they are not there, is it the goal of the politician to create them?

Extraordinary, that there are folk who believe in incorporation but not in society.

I have read his essay, and I’m weary of the unibomber’s holistic methodology. I don’t think “leftism”, for example, is any sort of ideology that anyone actually holds, and the use of it as a subject of opprobrium risks painting with the same brush a myriad of competing beliefs and individuals, most of whom are without any common political goal. It also leaves out the very similar beliefs and behaviors of the so-called right. On top of that, I do not think the left/right spectrum is worth a damn.

But beware how collectivist the unibomber is. Does society really socialize children? What are society’s expectations? Upon who or what should we place our blame? I can only speak for myself but I have never felt the pressure of one, or have been the coerced to meet the expectations of other.

It's weird to believe in social entities as defined by imagination but refuse social entities as defined by contract and common goal.

So we agree that people can get together and form social organisations?

Of course.

Then it's hard to see what the complaint in your OP is.

Some like to speak of the common good and society. These are the political subjects towards which political institutions should be mobilized. But the political subject is without a particular referent. So what thing or things in the world should these institutions work for?

But the political subject is without a particular referent. — NOS4A2

So you claim, yet "Common ownership" and "public control" are clear enough in the associations listed on the ASX.

Extraordinary, that there are folk who believe in incorporation but not in society. — Banno

:smirk: :up:

It's like being a gardener who also denies that nature exists.

So what thing or things in the world should these institutions work for? — NOS4A2

To start, nonviolent coexistence (i.e. sustainable eusociality) ...

So you claim, yet "Common ownership" and "public control" are clear enough in the associations listed on the ASX.

So you claim. But it would be clear only if you knew which investors owned how many shares. By then your notion of “public” wouldn’t fit the reality of it.

To start, nonviolent coexistence (i.e. sustainable eusociality) ...

Nonviolent coexistence is not a thing, I’m afraid. And I do not think any political institution should serve only your ideas.

But it would be clear only if you knew which investors owned how many shares. — NOS4A2

Meh. Of course anyone can purchase shares, and even if the numbers are not public, the process is.

What you call "collectivist politics" is a commonplace. Socialism could be as simple as having those who work for the corporate body, own the body corporate.

All that stands out here is your ongoing inability to see more than individuals in the social interactions around you, and the contradiction in rejecting socialism while accepting incorporation.

Nonviolent coexistence is not a thing, I’m afraid. — NOS4A2

Yeah, evidently veraphobia. :mask:

I do admit my inability. I can neither see nor know the subject to which you aim your politics. That’s why I think it is mistaken or purely self-concerned.

Incorporation in the general sense is voluntary, and involves the input and voluntary efforts of its particular members. Socialism isn’t. If I am forced to consider what it means to be social or a society, it applies only to the former and not the latter.

Do you believe that two parents and adopted children living in a household and subject to the parent's authority are considered a "family", or are they just autonomous beings that happen to share space?

I would consider them a family.

Isn't what? your point remains obscure.

Incorporation in the general sense is voluntary... Socialism isn’t. — NOS4A2

So if you inherit your shares, having them forced on you involuntarily, then... what?

Again, you appear to argue that there is no such thing as society, while making use of the very thing you deny.

There's nowt queer as folk.

I would consider them a family. — NOS4A2

Ok, and do you believe that laws are meant for a particular individual or set of individuals? If a set, can we label this set, society? If not why?

It isn’t a voluntary association like people getting together to form a club or company. It is imposed. Socialism and fascism are anti-social and anti-society in this regard.

Laws ought to apply to each and every particular individual, not a set of individuals.

It isn’t a voluntary association like people getting together to form a club or company. — NOS4A2

Worker cooperatives need not be imposed. Your' engaging in the fallacy of composition. You've also moved from the claimt hat there isno society to a claim something like that social norms ought not be imposed.

Laws ought to apply to each and every particular individual, not a set of individuals. — NOS4A2

Presumably you would count incorporated companies as individuals?

Or are you against incorporation?

Laws ought to apply to each and every particular individual, not a set of individuals. — NOS4A2

But what I mean is, the law was not tailored for you specifically. Was it not made for more than one person? In fact, what happened if it pertained to all the people in its jurisdiction? Can I label the set rather than every individual and call that set society?

Once you answer that.

"Who" is making these laws? When a law is passed by a government, is the individual congressman or parliamentarians or is it an entity collectively called "government"? If that is not the case, then how would the two children living with parents not just be individuals sharing the same space rather than being termed "a family"?

Worker cooperatives need not be imposed. You’re' engaging in the fallacy of composition. You've also moved from the claimt hat there isno society to a claim something like that social norms ought not be imposed.

I didn’t say they need not be imposed. In fact I just wrote that those who get together to form clubs or company’s do so voluntarily. But you’ll note that the OP is concerned with politics, not with getting together with like-minded people to form companies. I was never trying to write about voluntary associations.

I claimed that society is without a particular referent, so in order to discern what association (a political subject) he is referring to, one must understand another’s metaphysics. Are you a platonist, conceptual realist, immanent realist, or nominalist when it comes to abstractions and universals?
.

Presumably you would count incorporated companies as individuals?

I do not count companies or any other association as individuals.

I am not against people working together voluntarily, whether they incorporate or not.

I said it ought to apply to each and every individual, which implies more than one individual. You can label the set whatever you like—to abandon such abstractions and generalizations would render language too laborious. But I’m fully aware that in order to refer to this set you are unable to refer to anything particular in the world (unlike a family, you cannot point to, name, nor understand a vast majority of the particulars involved), and are referring to your idea of a society more than any actual flesh-and-blood human beings and the innumerable interactions between them.

Laws are passed by particular legislators, often opposed by other particular legislators.

Unlike loose aggregates of individuals sharing a roof, families are raised by one another, play with one another, work together, love one another, and so on. The dynamics of their relationship are different. They are not only nominally or proximally bonded, but have a history together.

Laws ought to apply to each and every particular individual, not a set of individuals. — NOS4A2

yet

I do not count companies or any other association as individuals. — NOS4A2

No corporate law then. That's a rather extreme form of laissez-faire!

Honestly, what you are setting out here is too incomprehensible, too incoherent, to be addressable.

Might leave you to it.

You’d be surprised to hear I don’t believe in law either.

Your responses are a series of out of context quotes, evasions, and goal-post widenings. Thanks for your contributions.