Likewise Ican see people avoiding pork, going to church, praying, doing charity, all of which are detectable, measurable effects of God. Therefore, god exists — TheMadFool

If these are God's effects, whose effect is this?

I take a stone, weigh it and measure its dimensions or throw it at a window. There is an effect - the scale moves, the window shatters. — TheMadFool

It's quite clear that he considers systems of property or political rights to be 'institutions.' And I think it would be very hard to argue that the plantation/slave system of the south wasn't a system of property or political rights — csalisbury

Hi! I think I agree with your general criticism but as I understand what the author says when he's talking about slavery etc, he's not treating it as a basic institution, he sees it as less basic, which is subject to change through more basic institutions. It's more a matter of policy change rather than basic institution change. Not that this makes your criticism invalid. When such policies are far reaching and integral to basic institutions, even if they are not basic institutions themselves, the difference is not that great and probably the same argument could be be used as justification for not changing them. Also, what do you think about the criticism I provided earlier? I think that we are close, but I'm not sure!!

Hi all, thank you for the welcome :D

In the present, people have ambiguous and ambivalent views about property relationships. To the extent they view themselves as exploited workers, they feel like they are getting the shaft. Negative view. To the extent that they view themselves as "working hard to et ahead" and will some day be rich, they feel like the pot of gold is just around the corner. positive view. They may entertain both views in rapidly alternating sequence. — Bitter Crank

Yes, I think I see your point and I also think that the author's argument is mostly theoretical because he seems to take for granted things that in practice do not work that way, or so it seems to me!! For example, he says that the first criterion that must be met when we want to make radical changes in basic institutions is "showing that some outcome is intolerable even if the population regulated by the institution does not think so" and later he says that this would be done in such a way... "might be that some institutionalized practices have the epistemic prerequisites (information, abilities, and epistemic division of labor) to show that some outcomes are normatively intolerable and ought to be avoided, regardless of whether or not they are properly recognized by the population regulated by the institution". So more or less by argument. But this takes for granted that the population responds to rational arguments. But that does not seem possible in the example he gives because he writes "a proponent of wholesale change might argue that we have substantial evidence that many basic institutions do produce such normatively intolerable outcomes, even if many people are unable to see this because of, e.g., ideologically produced false consciousness, and hence that these institutions should be radically altered". Certainly though, an ideologically brainwashed population, as a rule, does not respond in rational arguments. If it did it would probably have recognized the intolerable nature of the practice. So even if evidence is provided and the first criterion is met, in practice it would probably not help. And the author says that among the three, this first criterion is the easiest to meet. But I think that's only in theory! What do you think?

Underlying slavery, and a good deal else, is the institution of "property", one that has endured for a very long time. Slavery was a subset of property relationships. — Bitter Crank

Hi! The author says that we might want to get rid of institutions that produce results that may seem evil to us (slavery, poverty etc), but he gives some criteria that should be met if we want to make that decision.

showing that some outcome is intolerable even if the population regulated by the institution does not think so, showing that no change within the existing institutional framework addresses the
problem, and finally showing that some alternative institution exists that can avoid the intolerable outcome in question while still solving the same set of problems as the original institution.

If we take for granted that it is property relations that produced slavery, then I think the author would argue that we could fix that specific part of these relations, as you said "What is counted as property will change from time to time (humans can't be "owned)"". This seems to be included in the author's argument. He claims that...

This argument need not imply policy immobility; basic institutions are constantly creating,
reforming, or destroying other institutions to address specific problems in their domain of
regulation. And it does not apply to less basic institutions, since the epistemic challenges that we
must surmount to change them may be much smaller.