I refer again to Graham Greene. Yours is the question he addressed in The Human Factor. How can a British government end up killing spies on its own territory, with all the risks involved that you list? Answer: miscommunication, poor accountability, class prejudice, cock-up - usual British stuff, in other words. Brilliant. Of course that doesn't mean our lot did it. It just means that if Greene were still alive and had not already written the novel he would be inspired to do so.

Oh yes. From the Shoutbox 2 days ago, by Hanover: "So what I've been doing is I hold the victim's nose, offer three quick thrusts, remove my hand and allow her a quick gasp, and I continue repeating through to conclusion. Once concluded, I carefully tip the head back with my right hand and say, "Night night Punkin."

While it has been entirely ineffective for cardiac arrest, I have found it effective for curing hiccups"

'Hanoverture', 'Hanoverkill' - also not on wiktionary. https://thephilosophyforum.com/profile/15/hanover

wonderful word and brilliant object

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00st9z8

Christians, eh? Don't they consume human blood and flesh in their ceremonies and refuse to recognise the emperor as a god?

Democracy is not desirable in and of itself; there is nothing worthwhile in the idea of "one person, one vote" besides the pragmatism behind it.

One worthwhile aspect of 'one person, one vote' is that it is the political expression of the ethical viewpoint that every person counts and no person counts for any less than any other. "I'm backward, I know little and still I'm as good as you." Every person is of worth in him or herself and not merely of value in relation to ends pursued by others or by the State. It is the kingdom of ends argument.

Another argument is that the vote symbolises a social contract. "You want to govern me - first let me give you consent." So one non-consequentialist argument is that my vote is a right contracted in exchange for rights that the State has over me. Degrading my vote will erode the State's authority. Why should I obey when I have no say?

There have been 'natural experiments' of epistocracy in which those who are better informed and better educated have more votes than others. For example, boys used to get a much better education than girls in the UK and as a result men ended up with more votes than women in adulthood. It was easiest just to give the women no votes at all. Some women appeared content with this situation and unobtrusively ceded political power to those with supposedly better minds and a clearer view of world affairs. So that is one experiment that has been tried. I am not sure that the results were very encouraging for epistocracy in the long term.

Chany: "I'm sorry, but if a group of people are learning how to do basic addition and subtraction, then they don't deserve to vote on how our society is set up."

Tit for tat. If a group of people wish to deprive another group of people of a basic civil right - the vote - then they don't deserve to vote on how our society is set up. We can all think of excuses to deprive each other of votes. The point of a democracy is that millions of people can live together in peace despite these reasons. So in a democracy I will allow epistocrats to vote (fools that they are) and you will allow the illiterate and innumerate to do so. But you are right that I don't have a good reason to exclude minors from voting, although it leads to absurdities - it's a weakness in my position.

"The barrier can be so low that practically no one fails to meet the requirements."

Yep, that suits me. A barrier so low that everyone gets over it is not a barrier. So let's have no barrier. Practically no-one is exactly no-one, because everyone is practically someone. One person, therefore, one vote and no less or more.

I agree that as you say Brennan thinks the non-consequentialist arguments fail. The idea behind this thread is to test that view. As for the consequentialist arguments - one of the outcomes that the mere proposal of epistocracy has is the prospect of protests from people like me who are threatened with exclusion from the democratic process to which we have a right. Not a good start for a consequentialist project, I submit.

Erik: "But who knows, maybe he's doing democracy a service by questioning some of our most cherished democratic assumptions in the hopes of reinvigorating it."

So it's a masterly work of devil's advocacy? That's a cheering thought, but I'm afraid it's all too sincere and dismal a thesis to be ironical.

I think the democratic instinct is so strong because everybody counts and nobody is of lesser account than anybody else.

Also: cui bono?

Ten days after Skripal, £48m magically appeared for a new facility to combat chemical weapons.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-russia-williamson/uk-to-invest-48-million-pounds-in-new-chemical-weapons-defence-centre-idUKKCN1GR1ID

Only a conspiracy theorist would suggest that the British secret service would poison a Russian ex-spy in order to scare the government into producing money for their jobs . Or Graham Greene, perhaps. How I miss him. I need him precisely for this turn of events.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/graham-greene/human-factor/

I'm more inclined to go with Pseudonym and deny the premiss that it's right to exclude minors from voting whilst hanging on to the view that everyone should have a vote regardless of their achievement in tests of knowledge or intelligence or maturity. But it's a weakness in my position on this thread, I have to admit.

"Someone does not automatically get more votes under an epistocracy."

I'm attacking Brennan and Estlund who argue for that exact policy. "Brennan suggests that since voters in an epistocracy would be more enlightened about crime and policing, “excluding the bottom 80 percent of white voters from voting might be just what poor blacks need."" https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/07/the-case-against-democracy

Precisely so. I was giving a not too charitable summary of the position I am attacking. The epistocratic assumption is that the uneducated lack the wisdom and good judgement to vote responsibly and it is false.

OK let's give it a whirl. Before we go ahead, how do I explain to my next door neighbour that he gets only one vote and I get three when he is as good as me and as much a citizen as I am, only without the honors degree? I suppose I could persuade him that I know best. But I'd like some back-up. He's a gentle guy and I'll need the rational debating kind of back-up. But there are others, more prone to frustration, who will see the degrading of the value of their votes as a provocation. And, in the absence of an effective ballot, they may make their feeling known by less gentle means. Heck, even without that worry, I'm with them, no matter how many votes Brennan allows me. I'm not putting up with this divisive and patronising nonsense for a minute.

"So, I don't really see the objection." - as above.

"We treat democracy as if it is above reproach."

I agree with Churchill that democracy is the worst imaginable system of government aside from every other system that has ever been tried.

Nozick's ok if you can agree a starting position in the past. But since we all derive our means from a sequence of transfers that probably started with someone blipping someone else on the head and grabbing whatever they could then the basis of our entitlement is not at all clear. Hence the debates about slavery compensation.

Certainly not a hi-jack as far as I'm concerned. Curiously, yesterday BBC Radio 4 broadcast a couple of interviews with 10 - 11 year olds about Brexit. Their views were not original or particularly insightful but they seemed to be sincerely held and they expressed them more cogently than average. The arguments against votes-for-children that I can think of are echoes of the same arguments used against votes for women, Black people in South Africa etc - that is, they are not fully independent thinkers, too liable to manipulation and to voting in order to please those in power over them such as their parents. Because of those echoes I am not very inclined to put such arguments forward with any great enthusiasm.

"If the majority of uneducated people are voting in favor of racists and those who would intentionally harm certain populations, then their individual rights may be at odds with the rights of others."

That's an argument for taking the vote away from racists - not from people who happen to belong to a group the majority of whom are (let's grant for sake of argument) racists. There is a big difference. Suppose I'm uneducated and as well as being uneducated I go on anti-racist marches and throw myself in front of racist demonstrators who are attacking black people. Suppose I am an uneducated black person doing those things. And you'd take away my vote because there are other, equally uneducated people, who are racist and attacking me? Does not seem just to me.

That leaves aside whether we should take the vote away from racists. I'm rather against it, as it happens because of the implications of how such a policy would be implemented. To get your vote you have to take an anti-racist test. What's in the test? People would disagree about what was racist and what was not, what was just and what was not. And to settle the matter we'd have to have a vote on it. Back to where we started. Very tricky.

Yes, that's a good point, Pseudonym. Why am I not in favour of 8 year olds having a vote? Their interests matter as much as anyone's and a bright and well-adjusted 8 year old is as likely (by my own argument) to make a good choice of candidate as any adult. But I'm not in favour of it. It would be absurd. Over to me to say exactly why and it's definitely a weakness in my position on this thread.

Freud, I guess. https://www.communicationtheory.org/psychoanalytic-theory-of-communication/

"Regarding argument one: while knowledge does not necessarily make you wiser, it does make it more likely that you are."

To test this hypothesis - "Higher levels of wisdom amongst educated than uneducated" - you would have to know (a) levels of education and (b) levels of wisdom. Measuring (a) is easy. But how do you measure (b)? Let's suppose that a person who votes Democrat is stupider than a person who votes Republican just because (as anyone but a fool can judge) the Republicans are wiser and better than the Democrats. Or it may be the other way round. I'm saying that your claim begs the question. If we already knew what was wisest and best then we wouldn't need votes for anyone at all because we would all agree.

"In most cases knowledge will also make the innately wise person even wiser. A group of more educated people may not be 100% free of people voting for the wrong things and for the wrong reasons, but it significantly reduces the total number thereof."

Education is a great thing. I'm arguing against degrading the civil rights of those who don't have it. I think your point is a good argument for giving everyone at least a basic level of education.

When the dog barks up the unoccupied tree where it saw a squirrel run yesterday I imagine that it's thinking about squirrels. I can tell you that I imagine what it's thinking but of course the dog can't confirm my imaginings. Sometimes I say to the dog 'Squirrel' when there is no squirrel and the dog looks confused. I explain to the dog that this is just the same as barking up the tree that has no squirrel in it. The dog looks more confused. Animal welfare dept has been informed but so far no case to answer.

Ok, point granted, if we agree to turn a blind eye to harvesting organs from the Falun Gong and believe all the Chinese say and all that we would like to believe of them. Once we take away people's civil rights, e.g. by degrading their rights to vote, then it's so much easier to act as if they don't count for as much and from thence we can proceed to act as if they don't exist. Compare South Africa - and contrast, of course, there's a lot to learn from China as you say.

Is there a difference between epistocracy and voter qualification by a test of intellectual capacity? I thought they were the same thing. The more you score, the more votes you get.

The difficulty of distinguishing truth from lies is an old one as you say. But even when you can distinguish them it will only get you part of the way to sound judgement. I can get my PhD in international politics and still believe that capitalism is a great system for benefiting everyone (lie or truth?) or that socialism is a great way of freeing the oppressed from their shackles (truth or lie?). Knowledge will not help me all the way in these matters.

Yes, and I'm anti-Plato 101. I think Plato held that wisdom was a higher kind of knowledge. When you truly know what are goodness and justice then you will be good and just and capable of governing yourself and potentially others. When we do wrong it is because we have not yet grasped the true nature of goodness and are still in thrall to the ever-changing illusions presented by our desires and our everyday lives. Democracy is the political expression of these illusions, the following of whims and desires without real knowledge. I don't agree with him. Aristotle struggled with the Platonic legacy, having observed that people can know all kinds of things about the right way of behaving and still behave the wrong way. Knowledge is not the same as good judgement and wrong-doing is not a species of forgetting.

I'm not arguing that we should tolerate ill-informed people in executive branches of government. Only that the ill-informed should have the same rights to vote.

The suffragettes - like the serfs in Russia and Black people in South Africa - used undemocratic means simply because they had no access to democratic means. I'm talking about violence, law-breaking, street protests, civil insurrection, revolution. These things are excusable, even justifiable and sometimes praiseworthy, when you have a good cause and are excluded from any other way of promoting it. Of course, if you don't have a good cause then they are not. You could argue temperance either way in the circumstances of the time.

The views I mean are just those we express by voting - 'Yes' to this candidate and 'No' to the others. Yes, it matters whether views are justified. And just as you are justified in voting for A so I am equally justified in voting for B. The fact that I vote for B and you think that only stupid people do that is not a justification for giving you more votes. Yes, Governments can be corrupt. That is why we have constitutions that are not voted upon but are fixed regardless of the Government. Yes, elected governments can also lead to revolution and fail to represent the views of masses of the people. But epistocratically elected governments, although they may not lead to revolution, are guaranteed not to represent the views of the less educated, because that is the voting system in question.

Yes, assuming the masses cannot decide for themselves what are their sincere beliefs and what is mere brainwashing of people who are easily misled. But that is the very assumption that I am questioning. Perhaps people, even uneducated ones, may have some notion of the interests of themselves and their communities. And even educated people can be misled. Knowledge is distinct from wisdom.

The practised and trained surgeon, of course, Socrates. And if I need a government I'd prefer one that has the consent (at least) of the population rather than one that is risking revolution by ignoring the views of large numbers of its people, whatever their level of education. Now what?

I see that. Now, when we ask ourselves - 'What are those undoubtable statements - specifically?' - and we find that one by one we can reject plausible candidates in particular imaginable circumstances - then we have just embarked on Descartes' project. Shortly we end up with Descartes' rather too short list of one undoubtable statement, or we open ourselves to having to defend the undoutableness of statements such as 'There are physical objects' or 'Here is a hand'. And one good way of defending the undoubtableness of these statements is to show, for example, that we know we have hands even though we cannot prove it and so any doubts can be allayed, as Moore did. But I think W is inviting us to put the Cartesian project out of our minds altogether, because he holds that such a project is fundamentally incoherent and that there is no such thing as 'entertaining doubts' in such cases and therefore no such thing as 'knowing' either.

Statements which cannot coherently be doubted in one world view can come to be doubted in another. There is no absolute 'beyond doubt' set of statements. For example, 'the earth does not move' is beyond doubt in a world view that holds terra to be firma, fixedness being part of the very concept of solid God-given earth. It makes no more sense to say the earth can move as to say that the number five is green. I'm thinking of Kuhn. Of course it's a barn and you can tell it's a barn just because it looks like a barn in the place where you'd expect to find a barn - until we enter fake barn country. And so skepticism oozes back.

Yes. you're right, he does. I meant to go exploring the reasons one might have for choosing a performative utterance rather than a mere statement or proposition in tackling scepticism. But my points don't work as a gloss on Moore and probably not on W either. I think Moore is concerned to establish that we can know things without proving them and I was straying. Hope I'm not distracting from the main topic; really useful commentary, Sam, thank you.

Yes, some propositions are true and some are false. Moore does not answer the skeptic and does not claim to. He puts the skeptic on the back foot, however, by using performative utterances (here is the hand) rather than abstract modalities (this table might be an hallucination). Here we are, in this place, having this conversation and here is one hand - or, if we are not, then we cannot begin even to argue about skepticism or its contradictory.

Yes, I agree with that. But I think Moore's use of performative utterances in the argument - not 'I know this is my hand' but 'Here is a hand', i.e. he makes a demonstration and is not merely stating a proposition - could be used to support W's views about meaning and truth embedded in our actions and way of life. To contradict Moore's premiss it is not enough to say 'No, you don't know that that is your hand.' The contradiction has to be: 'You produce a hand - so you say. But it isn't a hand.' I don't want to distract from the main topic, commentary on W and not on Moore, but for what it's worth that's my footnote on Moore.

Thank you, Sam. I think your interpretation of W is spot on. But I don't think W's interpretation of Moore is quite on target.

The chess bishop is a bishop just because we say it is. We can stipulate rules for a game such as chess. The question 'How do you know it's a bishop' is akin to 'How do you know your cat's name is really 'Puss'?' The cat's name is Puss because that's what I call it. But that is different from Moore's hand example. I can't put myself in possession of a hand by stipulation. The answer to 'how do you know you've got hands?' is not 'because I've decided that's just how it is.' Expunging propositions from our thinking is not always the same as solving the problems that they raise.

You mean the people who control the way information goes round the internet have come to an agreement not to promote an initiative called Sw***ika G**ls? I'm astonished. I didn't think there was that degree of consensus. But I'm very pleased. It shows that there is very little encouragement to indulge such things. Of course, anyone who wants can simply set up their own internet and publish it on there. It's a free world.

___

Oh, Robert Fripp. Ok. I always thought Toyah Willcox could have done better.

If you can doubt whether you are thinking, then you are thinking. Doubt is a kind of thinking. That's why the argument is said to be based on 'Cartesian doubt'.

If you can doubt whether you are doubting, then you are again thinking.

Even if you're neither thinking nor doubting, to the extent that (let's suppose) your thoughts and doubts are controlled by an outside force, then Descartes' main argument applies. "My thoughts are controlled by an outside force, therefore I exist."

Gassendi pointed out to Descartes that 'I walk, therefore I am' is an equally valid argument.

There is a PhD waiting to be written about moral panic and snow. Every time it snows in winter in the UK there is a minor moral panic in the press involving outrage that we are unable to cope - our degraded race, not as robust as our forefathers - and further outrage at safety warnings - our presumed inability to take sensible care of ourselves - and yet more outrage at the lack of foresight for transport and road systems - the lazy public workers, the fat cat incompetent managers - and at the silliness of drivers and the absurd demands placed on emergency services - our inability to understand the words 'necessary' or 'urgent'. Of course a minor moral panic can be generated by almost anything in the UK press. But I think snow has some special place, with the panic repeated afresh annually, each year as if this is the first time we have ever been saddened and affronted by the failings of other people in relation to snow. It's a particular snow thing. It doesn't apply to flooding or heat waves.

Only problem being that one of us would have to assassinate the other. Hmm. Perhaps there's something to be said for one-person-one-vote after all.

Oops, my mistake..! Irony blindness is only one step short of a sense of humour bypass and I don't want one of those.

But since the Government governs us all then it is presumed we each and all care about it for ourselves, even if not for others. If you still can't be bothered, abstention is an option in at least some countries, because voting is a right not an obligation. And if a grasp of the theory and justification of democracy were a criterion for voting rights then I would have at least three times as many votes as anyone who has posted so far on this thread. So meh.

"But whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others." Jefferson. That is, equality of political rights is not contingent upon equality of ability. In the same way, people who are more competent than Dachsund or Cuthbert do not have proportionately more votes for the Government that governs us all. We are inferior to them. But we do not owe them any allegiance or priority.