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. — NOS4A2

But if a family is a real collective, then is not also an extended family a real collective? And a clan? And a tribe? A village? A town? A city?

Once we grant that a marriage or a family is a real collective or a real relation, then it only becomes a question of where to draw the line.

I think that’s a great point. The larger the aggregate, the more difficult it is to discern the extent to which its members relate. A prerequisite of a “real relation” might be that people know each other or interact with each other.

One can be confident that when someone speaks of “common ownership” or “public control” of this or that, the political subject in his mind is invariably some kind of association or group, maybe society writ large, but in every case an idea without any particular referent. — NOS4A2

By this measure, do you object to the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court whereby corporations came to have the same rights as individual persons?

Yes, my objection is that corporations are not individual people.

If trees could talk there would be one in the forest claiming that there is no forest: "When I look around all I see are trees. No where does this fictitious entity a "forest" exist."

Brilliant. Little did he realize he was in a thicket.

What he didn't realize is that he was in a forest. There is a difference, but for the same reasons he would deny he was in a thicket.

What’s the difference? More individual trees?

The difference is that a forest is not just a bunch of individual trees, it is a self-sustaining ecosystem.

I thought that was a jungle.

What jungle? There is only a bunch of different individuals in the same place.

I think that’s a great point. The larger the aggregate, the more difficult it is to discern the extent to which its members relate. A prerequisite of a “real relation” might be that people know each other or interact with each other. — NOS4A2

A family interacts with the world around them. Presumably their house is on a land in a jurisdiction with water, gas, electricity, and amenities often provided by the government. They have to interact with roads by driving on them which are often contracted out by government transportation agencies. People go to businesses which are legally defined entities, using money, which is government produced. All this is to say that the interactions are "real" in the sense that people use them.

Do you believe that an entity such as government exists? You are under the jurisdiction of a government that creates laws and enforces those laws. Being in that jurisdiction, generally, the "legitimacy" of the ruling power is that it follows various principles taken to invest it with its power. These would be things like "rights", "consent of the governed" through "fair and transparent" elections, etc.

If a government has legitimacy and is ruling over a jurisdiction, then everyone in that jurisdiction has a "real relation" with the rules, procedures, and enactments of the decisions made by that duly elected body. That is to say, if you drive your car, there is probably a law about which side of the street you can drive on, how to follow traffic norms, and the violations of not following those norms. And it goes on and on. You can't just start a restaurant in a residential zone, for example, unless the law stipulates you can. These are all examples where you are daily interacting with the rules and laws of the governing body politic. So you do have concrete relations with these. You need not know your representative, or even your local city councilman. However, they affect you nonetheless.

There is a dynamic interaction between people, government, laws, norms, etc. that means something like a "society" has "real relations" and it doesn't mean it has to be people you "know". The relations are implicit and explicit.

That being said, I sympathize with your idea about individuals being the locus. However, where I differ is that I think in ethical relations, ethics obtains at the individual. For example, I don't believe people should be born because "it helps humanity", that is using the individual for an abstracted cause. That is to say, our ethical obligations are to individuals, and not abstractions. However, once born, the parent has obligations towards the child. The parent lives in a community that has various obligations towards each other in terms of at least not violating another's rights, these can only be dealt with at the level of institutions whereby parties agree to mediate these kind of interactions. Otherwise, anything can go, including vandettas and mob rule.

To me the government is a gang of rogues and scoundrels, a criminal cartel made respectable through centuries of propaganda and bribery, bound together by specious writings and custom. Historically they are little different than others who have invented rules punishable by violence, robbery, and kidnapping, like kings, slavers, and warlords.

As such my relation with the government is as a serf to his landlord, or as a slave to his master. There is no mutual, voluntary coordination going on here. In fact I avoid officials like I would the plague. The reason I follow their rules is because they are allowed to kidnap me or kill me if I do not. They are allowed to take my money, my property, and there are no shortage of goons to support that kind of activity. The reasons I drive on their roads and use their amenities is because it’s funded with the stolen money of mine and my fellow serfs, and because of their monopoly I am unable to find similar amenities, let alone coordinate with others to build our own.

It’s like saying a prisoner has a “real relation” to the prison because he is forced to use their toilet. If your idea of “society” resembles a prison or plantation, I don’t want any part of it. To me the activity and relations you defend are anti-social, anti-society, even anti-human nature.

What jungle? There is only a bunch of different individuals in the same place.

It's true, but there are too many individuals and factors to name and account for, so, since myself and my language are limited, I just say "jungle".

Are you just playing at being obtuse or do you really not understand what is at issue?

Are you just playing at being obtuse or do you really not understand what is at issue?

I thought the issue was the metaphysics of it all, specifically the problem of universals and abstract objects. Perhaps you can enlighten me.

Perhaps you can enlighten me. — NOS4A2

I have tried, repeatedly over many threads. More often than not I don't bother though.

As such my relation with the government is as a serf to his landlord, or as a slave to his master. — NOS4A2

It's funny how we agree but in completely different realms. I would apply this to cases like starting a life for someone. Creating the conditions for others to be burdened has no justification. The problem is beyond government, it's existence itself. You had no say in being here, you had no say in whether you wanted to be in a position to make a decision to not be here (suicide). Thus, your life is always in a way a serf. Your very procreation means that you must comply (with the game of life) or die.

I just think that once there is a game one has to comply with, it has various interrelations that happen when more than a few people work together. Some of those are vesting power in institutions which then feedback to the community of members.

I think that’s a great point. The larger the aggregate, the more difficult it is to discern the extent to which its members relate. — NOS4A2

Right, and they also relate in a much more diffuse and indirect way.

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That is to say, our ethical obligations are to individuals, and not abstractions. — schopenhauer1

Yes, and I think the first thing to do is to specify the level of abstraction. Apparently everyone agrees that a mere abstraction has no dues (nothing that it is owed), but there is disagreement over whether, say, the object of socialism is a mere abstraction (or a mere aggregate).

A family is not simply an abstraction, although it is a collective-relation (a relation between a number of individuals in which their ends or goals become unified). So it makes sense to make a sacrifice for the sake of the family, because the family is a real thing even though it is also a collective or a relation. The sacrifice is not made for the individuals qua individuals, but it is also not made for a mere abstraction. It is hard to identify this notion of a common good for which the sacrifice is legitimate, but it is something like the good of a unitary organism, an organism which is composed by the members of the family. Then if this analysis makes sense, we can approximate the real-ness of a collective—the degree to which it is not a mere abstraction—in terms of the extent to which it is a unitary organism.

I don’t think that’s true at all and we fundamentally disagree. There is no similarity. There is no person to seek consent from. There is no prior realm of freedom from which we are plucked and placed in a prison-like condition, against our wishes. Existence is all there is. No compliance is necessary, only being. More often than not parents relieve their children from burden, feeding them, carrying them, housing them, protecting them from all manner of danger. If you wish you were never born it is because you regret your life, yourself, maybe your family, not because you were better off before you were conceived.

I have tried, repeatedly over many threads. More often than not I don't bother though.

If I understand what you think the issue is, I can address it and give you my arguments. Are you a platonist?

The reason I follow their rules is because they are allowed to kidnap me or kill me if I do not. — NOS4A2

Peter L. P. Simpson has often drawn attention to the fact that the state has a monopoly on coercion (and violence) in the modern world, and that this is different from any time in the past.

Thus, your life is always in a way a serf. Your very procreation means that you must comply (with the game of life) or die. — schopenhauer1

I think the difference is that nature is not a feudal lord. Nature has no will and therefore does not coerce. Neither is it capable of injustice.

Peter L. P. Simpson has often drawn attention to the fact that the state has a monopoly on coercion (and violence) in the modern world, and that this is different from any time in the past.

Sigmund Freud notes they also have the monopoly on crime.

"The individual citizen can prove with dismay in this war what occasionally thrust itself upon him already in times of peace, namely, that the state forbids him to do wrong not because it wishes to do away with wrongdoing but because it wishes to monopolize it, like salt and tobacco."

- Reflections on War and Death

I don’t think that’s true at all and we fundamentally disagree. There is no similarity. There is no person to seek consent from. There is no prior realm of freedom from which we are plucked and placed in a prison-like condition, against our wishes. Existence is all there is. — NOS4A2

That is because you are conveniently overlooking how we use language, and what language confers. Modalities of possibilities exist. Some things can never exist (hobbits for example). They may "subsist" or "absist" in some way, but not actually exist (I shouldn't have to say that I hope). Yet, some possibilities do exist, and some are high likelihoods based on causes. Thus, we can certainly talk about a future person who will exist, and whose dignity will be violated, or consent will be violated, or who will have been caused to be in conditions for inevitable suffering for that individual. So it's just misunderstanding of how modality works. But of course, this "misunderstanding" is conveniently only had for this particular topic which just makes it seem to be bad faith argumentation. I am sure you use conditionals for all sorts of things. A gun doesn't exist unless someone makes it first. The possibility exists. That someone has a intent and a 3D printer, now all of a sudden that possibility is more likely, and so on.

No compliance is necessary, only being. — NOS4A2

Compliance is necessary for survival. Even hermits were socialized to some extent, and even their existence presupposes a culture which allowed for them to be individuals who can (try and probably fail) to subsist by themselves). But usually we must live in some sort of.. wait for it... society!

More often than not parents relieve their children from burden, feeding them, carrying them, housing them, protecting them from all manner of danger. — NOS4A2

It's a burden they are obligated to relieve (in early stages), but more importantly, that they created (which usually knowingly that they can relieve the burden). One shouldn't cause burdens, unnecessarily (meaning when there was no need in the first place for there to be a burden created) so that they can be overcome on someone else's behalf, but there we are.

If you wish you were never born it is because you regret your life, yourself, maybe your family, not because you were better off before you were conceived. — NOS4A2

That's a straw man of the argument. No person exists to suffer is one state of affairs and a person exists to suffer in another. That second state of affairs is the problematic one. No one said "better off", just that one state of affairs is problematic, so don't cause that state of affairs.

I get @Fooloso4's frustration. Fooloso4, is there a term for when someone willfully pretends like an argument was never made and you start over and over and over again from scratch? I believe it's just called ThePhilosophyForum effect :smile:. If we have to keep arguing the same point, as if we never did previously, I believe that is tangential to the definition of insanity.

Oh @Leontiskos might be interested in this.

Thus, your life is always in a way a serf. Your very procreation means that you must comply (with the game of life) or die.
— schopenhauer1

I think the difference is that nature is not a feudal lord. Nature has no will and therefore does not coerce. Neither is it capable of injustice. — Leontiskos

Well, this goes back to word games and sense and reference. I was playing with words here a bit. We are a "serf" to the burdens and overcoming of harms that life offers. There is no getting around this taskmaster (metaphor obviously). This is why I have always maintained that life provides "de facto" dictates that we must follow. Procreation puts a person in the unjust situation of complying with those dictates or killing themselves. An indignant proposal indeed.

Are you a platonist? — NOS4A2

No, I'm a vegetarian. (Not really).

This is just an attempt to repackage your same old argument. In your attempt to defend your desire to benefit from society without taking any responsibility you introduce a "metaphysics" which is nothing more than an abuse of terminology that is already problematic enough.

This is just an attempt to repackage your same old argument. In your attempt to defend your desire to benefit from society without taking any responsibility you introduce a "metaphysics" which is nothing more than an abuse of terminology that is already problematic enough. — Fooloso4

:up:

Fooloso4, is there a term for when someone willfully pretends like an argument was never made and you start over and over and over again from scratch? — schopenhauer1

A few come to mind, but ...

In Kripkean fashion, I hereby dub the word TPF Effect for this phenomena:

a term for when someone willfully pretends like an argument was never made and you start over and over and over again from scratch — schopenhauer1

But that's the inherent problem with these forums, there is a sort of "forgetfulness" whereby one cannot continue a previous thread. Often times a lesser version of the thread is rehashed but it would have been better to return to the previous version and point to what was already debated.

In order for good faith argumentation, there at least has to be the possibility for progression in the argument, even if not agreement or agree to disagree and more importantly, an acknowledgement of the arguments that have already been made from both sides.

Well, this goes back to word games and sense and reference. I was playing with words here a bit. We are a "serf" to the burdens and overcoming of harms that life offers. There is no getting around this taskmaster (metaphor obviously). This is why I have always maintained that life provides "de facto" dictates that we must follow. — schopenhauer1

Sure, but I think this will all depend on the original objection. One could object that government is unjust, or one could object that government gives rise to compulsion. The point about nature applies to the second objection but not the first, because nature does give rise to compulsion and yet it is not unjust.

(Granted, the notion of the injustice of nature does seem to arise at times via theism, but I am leaving this to the side.)