Or does it not use the state as a means to pursue social and economic equality? — Tzeentch

Some political movements considered left-leaning have. Some political movements considered right-leaning have used the state toward their ends as well.

There are intersections of both the left and right with statism, but neither is subsumed entirely within it.

So has the left moved to the right, or the right moved to the left? — Tzeentch

Neither. The original left-right axis, which recognized that you can't get rid of authority without getting rid of hierarchy, that you can't attain liberty without equality, fractured into a two-dimensional spectrum: first when capitalists appropriated liberty as an excuse for hierarchy, and then when some socialists turned to state authority as a weapon against them.

The world was polarized between the US and USSR along those lines for half a century, and seemingly forgot what the original axis was by the time that was through. But those of us who study history, politics, and philosophy remember.

Both the state-socialists and libertarian-capitalists later turned back to state capitalism, as is inevitable, because you can't have authority without creating hierarchy or vice versa. Meanwhile, the original opposition to that, the libertarian socialists, are lost to history or else dismissed as an impossible contradiction nowadays.

It's not enough that discussion be seen as a battle but that we must now have a jeering crowd egging each combatant on? — Isaac

I would prefer that it not be seen at a battle at all, but if it's going to seem like some people are attacking you, instead of us all just cooperatively working on a puzzle together, then it's nice to have other people comforting and supporting you too. Someone to affirm that you're not completely crazy, that there's some worth and merit to your thoughts, even if there is also room for refinement.

If I , for example, were to chime in to one of your discussions to say I agree, would that have the same effect on your well-being as if [insert some well-respected poster here]? — Isaac

It would have a more positive effect on me for you to say something supportive than for someone I already know agrees with me to say the same thing.

(Saying this is the only reason I've bothered to respond to you here, as I have too much shit going on in real life to risk being drawn into another interminable fight with you, so I'm trying to just ignore you generally).

An anecdote for illustration: I recently redesigned an old website that I originally ran about two decades ago, and attempted then aborted a redesign of about a decade ago. During that aborted redesign a decade ago, one of the people I had worked on the site with two decades ago gave me some pretty negative feedback that made me feel very bad about my competency in that field in which I was trying to forge a career. In the midst of this recent design, I had to ask him for some advice on a complex part of the site that he had originally built, and when talking to him he said some very brief but positive comments about my new redesign. Having someone who had once seemed to pose themselves as an opponent instead say something supportive was a surprisingly enormous relief.

Additionally, I don't even know how to gauge who the generally well-respected posters here are, besides the mods. For all I can tell you're one of the in-crowd. If it was clear to me that everyone else disregarded your opinions as worthless, I would feel more comfortable doing so myself. Not that I would automatically do so; if I agreed with you I would stand against the popular crowd with you. But when so far as I can tell you're not just some crazy person I can safely ignore, it makes me feel obliged to address your responses, at whatever length necessary, no matter how obviously wrong I think you are.

Are we just so divided that certain people crack from the stress of knowing people out there disagree with them so so much? — DingoJones

For my part, the thing that I tend to find stressful is the perception that nobody agrees with me. Even if I know better, if I'm well aware of prominent thinkers who agree with me... they're not here, or anywhere else that I am.

I'm fine having discussions with people who disagree, so long as there's a mix of agreement and disagreement. It's when a thread turns into a long interminable repetition of me vs everyone else participating that I feel discouraged.

For that reason I try to give signs of encouragement to others I agree with in other threads, even if I'm not going to go to the effort of really engaging in their battle against their opponents. Just so they know that someone is on their side, and they're not alone.

I think the forum would be a much more pleasant place if people generally would do things like that more often.

this puts will as a reflective positioned perspective as the wanting is no longer simply the spontaneous drive to acquire, but it reviewed at a higher order: I reflect on the wanting — Constance

Yes, exactly. Much as belief differs from perception in the same way. You see something in the distance on a hot day that looks like a pool of water. But from other knowledge, such as of the local geography and climate and of the refraction of light in air of different temperatures, you do not believe there is a pool of water there, even though you perceive one. You believe there is a mirage, the false appearance of what looks like water, but isn't.

On my account, willing is thereby also equivalent to what might otherwise be called "moral belief". It's not just having a want, but judging a want as the correct thing to want, the thing you ought to want; just as belief is not just perception but the judgement of perception.

(Both perception and desire, on my account, factor into judgements of either kind: you must perceive your mental states and desire them either to remain as they are or to change. The difference between a willing, or an intention as I prefer to term it, and a belief, is which kinds of mental states you are judging: the first-order perceptions, or the first-order desires).

will something. What does this come to outside wanting it, and doing what is required to get it, the driveness of the whole affair no more than this? Will seems superfluous, reified out of bad metaphysics: a will? Is this a noun? To will is just to want, desire. — Constance

To will is not just to want, but to want to want. Weakness of will is when you want to want X (you will X), but nevertheless you do Y. Strength of will, also freedom of will, is when wanting to want something causes you to actually want (and so try to do) something.

Some ideas shouldn't be tolerated. Fascism is one. Tolerating it leads to, well, you've seen what just happened. — Baden

I’d say even that should be “tolerated” to the extent that that means taking it as an idea about which we can discuss the pros and cons. It’s just one with very obvious cons — like, for example, what just happened.

People actually practicing fascism, inasmuch as that’s taken to mean a species of intolerance itself, of course cannot be tolerated, per the paradox of tolerance.

leftism, and indeed most forms of statism — Tzeentch

“Leftism” is not a form of statism. Both left and right have abused the state, but the original left-right divide had the state on the side of the right.

The original left were liberals, classical liberals, in the sense that in the modern US gets called "libertarians". The original group to actually call themselves "libertarians" were libertarian socialists. Who were also the original socialists, well before Stalin or Lenin or even Marx.

US-style "libertarian" capitalists and Soviet-style state "socialists" are both aberrations from the natural association of the left with liberty and equality, and the right with authority and hierarchy.

Republicans are totalitarian populists, or because they fear the mob are acting as totalitarian populists — ssu

It's funny (or it would be if it weren't so tragic) that right-wing anti-democratic rhetoric so often employs the notion of "the mob", the hoi polloi, the unwashed masses -- y'know, the bad people who aren't like you, that you don't want making decisions that affect you just because there's more of them than you -- and now, they are exactly such a mob themselves.

But of course, everything the right every complains about is projection, so I should have seen this coming.

Tangentially from that:

I watch a number of markets (stocks, bonds, gold) daily just in the course of updating my daily financial records (my retirement account is invested in index funds of all three of those), and an interesting thing that I've noticed during the course of this year, where I've also been watching political news more closely than usual, is that the markets respond positively whenever there is news of financial relief or other generally good news for common people, and negatively when there is bad news about the same topics (e.g. stimulus bill talks fall through again).

It's almost as if the people with their actual money on the line, on average at least, realize that a healthy flourishing society is good for business.

See also: insurance companies raising rates in low-lying coastal areas as evidence for the reality of climate change. Just follow the money, because smart money isn't ideological, and ideologues and their money are (eventually, not soon enough) parted. (We just have to be careful that they're not allowed to take the rest of us down with them).

Oh baby my lie is the biggest. Most girls say it’s too big for them to even take it all. Think you’re up for the challenge? :eggplant: :peach:

in a constructivist metaethics you can have different societies construct different values, whereas in moral realism values would be the same over different societies. — ChatteringMonkey

Beware to differentiate between descrfiptive and metaethical moral relativism here. Moral realists (or more broadly moral universalists, not all of whom are robustly realists) don't deny that different societies come up with different value systems, they just don't say "...therefore no value system is any more correct or incorrect than any other". It's possible for there both to be disagreement, and for the participants in that disagreement to be more or less correct or incorrect than each other because there is such a thing as universally correct despite disagreement about what it is.

I think there are plenty of decent Republicans, but the lunatic fringe seems to have taken over. — Wayfarer

Only because the "decent" ones stand firmly with them, which seriously questions their decency.

why middle-aged neckbeards pose as young ladies — The Opposite

Who wouldn't prefer to be a young lady over a middle-aged neckbeard? I know I would.

So after about a week of collecting results, with a sample size of 35, it looks like the forum leans:

- pretty strongly libertarian
- moderately egalitarian, and
- slightly progressive;

and slightly more than half of respondents identify as "left", while both/neither options (most neither) come in second, and only a minority identify as "right".

are we looking at Parler refugees?

@counterpunch
@synthesis

Both joined in the last week, no interest in general philosophy, only posting to the political threads. — Banno

Sounding more plausible to me.

Maybe add @Rafaella Leon to the list too.

For an epistemic approach like yours to work in some meaningful way, people would need to at least temporarily be willing to put down their hierarchical roles and their expectation of deference, and work together for the greater good. — baker

Yeah, the problem at hand is "how do we figure out what's good?" If someone doesn't care about what's good, then they will be unpersuaded by means of figuring that out.

I think there are in principle reasons -- even self-interested reasons, so long as they care about anything at all -- for every person to care, in the long term, and the big picture, what is good. But people are often stupid and will do things that are against even their self-interest just because they couldn't be bothered to think about it.

Yes I would also like to know.

For example, the Democrat party in the U.S. essentially supporting BLM's agenda. — synthesis

The agenda to reduce the amount that black people get needlessly murdered by police?

...do we have an attempted insurgency of ex- Parler enthusiasts? — Banno

That isn't the first time I've seen this suggested (though the other times may have been you as well), but I haven't seen anything to suggest it. Point me at suggestive evidence?

In a forum discussion long ago, someone proposed to have solved this problem by pointing out that ethics was originally a part of aesthetics, and that it was aesthetics that dictates what is ethical.
How do you feel about this? — baker

I think aesthetics and ethics have the same relationship to each other as logic and metaphysics.

Despite those relationships, "descriptive" things still factor into aesthetic things (verisimilitude, "truthiness", is a factor in the aesthetic evaluation of things), and logic still applies to "prescriptive" things (deontic logic is a thing).

But logic naturally has connections to the philosophy of mathematics which naturally has connections to ontology, and likewise aesthetics just like ethics is evaluative. The concrete-abstract distinction relevant to ontology and philosophy of mathematics is analogous to a "good at" vs "good" distinction in ethics and aesthetics.

Government should buy up all the poor quality housing stock, demolish it - and build more and better housing on the same site, and then have a government backed rental/ownership scheme - where the money is ploughed back in to fund the purchase of poor quality housing stock, and the building of more and better housing. Self financing solution to the housing crisis! — counterpunch

I could get behind that. It's not a solution to the problem but it's palliative of the symptoms, and harm reduction is priority #1.

in many Third World countries, the end result is too few housing is built and that what is built is likely built only for the richest buyers. Others live in cramped housing and on rent. And when large segment of the population are forced to rent, then in the end of their lives they have nothing to give to the next generation. — ssu

So I guess the United States (or at least California) really is a third world country now? Because living this end result first-hand is the origin of my complaints.

the ability for even ordinary people to save by investing in a flat or two — ssu

It is mathematically impossible for it to be ordinary for people to own more housing than they use themselves in order to rent it out to others. If everybody ordinarily owned their own housing, then nobody would be renting someone else's excess housing, so there would be no takers if you had excess housing you wanted to rent out. There can only be a rental market when there are some who own more than they need to use, and others who need to use more than they own.

They won't invest, if there's the possibility of very punitive legislation to "help" those who rent. — ssu

Good. Stop buying up all the fucking housing for an "investment" at the expense of people who actually need housing to live in.

I've seen those studies often quoted that rent control reduces the availability of housing, and the catch is that it only reduces the availability of rental housing -- because the houses that had been rented out are instead sold off. The reduction in rental housing stock is counteracted by an increase in purchase housing stock. More people buy, fewer people rent. That's a good thing, not a bad thing.

In order to do this you'd have to plop down a significant amount of cash and likely cash out investments. — BitconnectCarlos

Only in the housing market as it is today. Changing that is the entire point of this exercise. Most people don't have investments to cash out of to put toward housing in the first place. The people who do aren't the ones who are suffering under the current system, and I agree that within the current system it's smarter to keep your money somewhere it grows faster in order to pay down lower service on debts. (It being stupid to do otherwise is precisely why I don't have some super expensive mortgage right now, but instead live in a tiny trailer and am investing elsewhere at least until my investment can put enough down on a house that the mortgage isn't so expensive anymore). My proposal is that there shouldn't be "service on debts" and a huge up-front pile of cash required to begin with: that owning should be as affordable as renting in the short term, and actually result in ownership of housing in the long term.

You’re proposing an inaccessible objectivity — khaled

But an approachable one. All we need is some notion of what makes something closer to or further from correct in order to comparatively evaluate opinions and show that some are less correct than others. That doesn’t require we know what the completely correct one is, but it implies that there is such a thing as completely correct in principle, at the limit of less and less incorrect.

My answer is "What's the difference?" Or, in more detail: Why propose an objective reality that you can be wrong about? What advantage does that give you that a lack of an objective reality lacks? What does it allow you to say that the no objective reality model doesn't? Same question with objective moralities. — khaled

Two people who agree that there is an objective answer and disagree about what it is have reason to try to sort out which if either of them is right. If they think there is no such thing as objective answers at all then there’s no point trying to figure out what it is... so if there actually is one, they’ll never figure it out, simply from lack of trying. That’s why that’s an impractical way to go about things for anyone interested in figuring out what if anything is the correct answer to their question.

But it does make a huge difference in the case of God. — khaled

Then it is in principle possible to judge whether or not God exists between these on the basis of that difference, and you’re not appealing to things beyond all phenomenal experience after all.

Well you have to pay for maintenance, so if something major breaks just after you bought, you might then not be able to easily afford the repairs. Which is worse if, say, you were only planning to stay for a few months and need to sell the property afterwards, which will not recoup the expenses for the repair. — Echarmion

Someone will be happy to sell you an insurance product to cover that. It could even be the same person who would otherwise have been your landlord, if they really were adding the value of spreading around that risk and would like to keep doing so.

In addition, selling a property does itself require time and money, so depending on how long you stay, this might not be worth it. — Echarmion

Just walking away and taking a total loss like you would if renting doesn’t cost anything, though.

Because if the rental market died as a consequence of certain actions I was wondering how renters would fit in. — Brett

Would-be renters would be able to be owners instead, and just like owners now could, they could always walk away from their purchase if they don't mind losing all the money they've spent like a renter would. (But why would they want to if they could possibly avoid it?)

That’s what I’m comparing to — khaled

Then you're talking past me, because I'm not criticizing the way ordinary people usually think, I'm criticizing a bad philosophical argument.

Sure but if you’re going to suggest an objective morality then that’s more in line with the former not the latter.

Saying “there is objective morality” while also holding that we can be wrong about it, is in absolutely no way different from saying there is no objective morality. — khaled

So if you admit that we might be wrong about what is objectively real, is that the same thing as saying there is no objective reality? I suspect your answer to that is "no", so why the double standard when it comes to morality?

Punching people you disagree with feels good to everyone all the time. — khaled

Not the people being punched. (Not to mention, even if you only consider the punchers, that's dubious. If you were within punching range right now I'd be pretty hesitant to punch you, despite our disagreement).

I don’t think it’s very difficult to come up with things that feel good but are wrong. — khaled

There are things that feel good to some people in some circumstances that are still wrong, but they're wrong on account of them feeling bad in other circumstances or to other people. Just like there are things that look true (to empirical observation) to some people sometimes but then look false in other circumstances. It's by those other contrary experiences that we assess something that looked true or felt good as actually false or bad.

Claiming that there's something that's good or bad in a way that has no bearing whatsoever on what hurts or pleases anybody anywhere ever is as absurd as claiming that there are facts about reality that have no observational implications. (And the reason that's absurd is another practical concern, namely that it leaves you with no possible way of evaluating those claims).

This makes objectivity no more than a popularity contest. — khaled

Intersubjectivity is not majoritarianian. We don't do natural science by asking people to vote on whether or not things look true to them, do we? No, we strive to build models that account for all observations.

And what are these “pragmatic reasons not to do that either”? If someone believes in God then it becomes very pragmatic to consider things entirely beyond the realms of phenomenal experience. — khaled

Believing in God is already an appeal to things entirely beyond the realm of phenomenal experience, which is a reason not to believe in God. (You're not going to tell me you're a theist now, are you?)

Anyway, as I said just above, the reason is that it leaves you with no possible way of evaluating those claims. If it makes no noticeable difference whether it's true or not, how are you to assess its truth? (Which means if you care at all about what is or isn't true, that's an impractical thing to do; and if you don't care at all about what is or isn't true, you've just bowed out of any argument about that subject and everyone else can just ignore you while they try to sort out the truth).

So no enforceable contracts on paying rent for leasing a place. Consequently there would squatters, which defeats the purpose of owning and renting properties and therefore kills off the rental market. Is that it? — Brett

Yeah, and then in the absence of the rental market the purchase market re-adjusts to its natural state, and nothing of value is lost. Anyone who wants something functionally equivalent to rent as we have it now can have that (you pay money every month, and when you leave you leave all that money behind), and anyone who doesn't want that has a better alternative (you pay the same money every month, and when you leave you have options to recoup the money you've been spending on housing to put toward your new housing elsewhere).

What exactly is the negative consequence of owning rather than renting that you're trying to avoid? I have my suspicions but rather than just give my answers to all of them at once I'd like to know what in particular you're concerned about.

BTW sorry about the "fuck" earlier, had a stressful evening.

Nobody would be forbidden from living in a place or letting someone live at their place or giving or receiving money, but contracts whereby someone owes money in exchange for being let use something would be unenforceable.

Consequently nobody would engage in the business of renting out for profit, and would consequently sell off their would-have-been-rental properties to the only people still buying, the would-have-been-renters, on the kinds of terms they can afford, i.e. terms comparable to renting.

So you could pay someone money to live somewhere just like you could now renting a place, but you would have means you of recouping some of that money when you move.

And new housing would continue to be built because new people would still need new housing and be willing to pay for it. They would just skip the middle man who neither built the house nor paid for it yet gets to keep the money and the house in the end.

That’s a pretty bold claim. And “stop paying”? How does that work? — Brett

Stop paying the way I don’t have to keep paying to use my desk because I own it already. Who would rather have to pay in perpetuity to have a desk if they could afford to pay once and then just have the desk “for free” (besides paying to buy it) forever?

I swear it’s like people are brainwashing into simply not comprehending the idea of not having to pay someone else just for the right to exist somewhere.

That sort of commitment just didn’t appeal. — Brett

What commitment? If you want to treat a purchased home like a rental and just walk away from it leaving behind all the money you spent, you can do that. But why would you want to if you could get
a lot of the money you’ve spent on housing back out? With rent you don’t have that option: your money went down a black hole, it’s not coming back.

Just picture a world where when you leave a “rental” you can get a bunch of your “rent” money back, if you want to go through that effort; or you can walk away and leave it all behind if you really have to bail in a rush. That’s what a world without rent looks like.

Just saying it is not doing much new. — khaled

compared to how real people normally think no. compared to the false standards raised for the sake of philosophical argument it is.

There is no difference between what you're proposing and dogma-justificationalism. — khaled

there is a very important difference. the dogmatic justificationist (foundationalist) says that the premises they find self-evident constitute a reason why someone shouldn’t believe differently than they do. the critical rationalist admits of multiple unfalsified possibilites, and will say only that particular sets of possibilities have been eliminated, not which of the remaining set is definitely the right answer.

I'm not. But I am committed to not elevating any belief to the status of being undoubtable. — khaled

Then you are not a justificationist, you are a critical rationalist. Welcome to the club, I’m not arguing against you... unless you actually are doing what you say you’re not, and don’t realize it.

Not sure what you mean by "better or worse" though. — khaled

The same thing I mean for claims about reality, just involving a different facet of experience: hedonic rather than empirical.

But if you mean that there is some objective metric by which to measure them then no, since we don't share these goals. — khaled

The objective just is the unbiased, so what is objectively good is what is good in an unbiased sense, in other words a shared sense. Just like what is objectively real is what (empirically) looks true and not false to everyone in every circumstance (but regardless of who does or doesn’t believe it), what is objectively moral is whatever feels good and not bad to everyone in every circumstance (but regardless of who does or doesn’t want it).

What constitutes "most comprehensive and efficient" is just as subjective as what constitutes "moral". — khaled

I substituted that phrase for “best” be sure I thought you would cry “subjectivity!” at that. Sigh.

Most comprehensive means actually account for all of the experiences of the type we’re trying to account for. For claims about reality, that means empirical observations (things “looking true”); for claims about morality, it’s hedonic experiences (things “feeling good”).

Most efficient means in the way that requires the least effort. For claims about reality this means basically parsimony, simpler is easier and so better if you get the same output either way. For claims about morality this means more straightforward efficiency, like if you can do the same good with less work.

Where does objectivity come into this? As opposed to just inter-subjectivity mind you (where everyone happens to share the same starting premises) — khaled

There is nothing more to objectivity than the limit of ever more comprehensive intersubjectivity, unless you want to appeal to things entirely beyond the realm of phenomenal experience, but there’s pragmatic reasons not to do that either.

not everyone wants to own a property — Brett

the fuck they dont. why would you want to keep paying for something when you could instead just have it and stop paying? you can keep paying someone else to do maintenance of that’s what you want. your landlord does anyway.

and landlords dont invest in shit. houses would still be built for purchase even if nobody was buying them to rent out.

Let me draw an analogy. Everybody has a tendency to go towards death. But what people do in their lifetimes can greatly affect the quality as well as the quantity of time they remain their present form. — synthesis

Right, and those things people do are fighting against death. Mitigating death.

Capitalism certainly tends towards accumulation, no doubt about it, but there are things that can be done to attenuate this tendency — synthesis

And those things are fighting against capitalism, mitigating it.

Then how would folks acquire property or any business tools when first starting off? — synthesis

They would pay for them, just like they currently pay to rent them. The only difference being that in exchange for those payments they accrue ownership.

And in the long run, as this leads to the widespread distribution of capital, everybody would be starting off as what we would consider rich today, being born into families that have enough capital left from the most recently dead generation to pass on to the most recently grown generation.

There is already excess capital that someone else has lying around for you to borrow to get started. Imagine a world where instead of asking someone else to borrow their excess capital, you just had that excess capital lying around yourself, because you were born into a family that just had it lying around, because every family has a share of the unused wealth of society, instead of just a tiny fraction of them.

Most of the problems that have to do with housing are caused by [...] banking — synthesis

Yes, which is why I pointed out that interest is a kind of rent.

For those who are unable to purchase a house, a rental market makes a great deal of sense — synthesis

Why should anyone be unable to purchase a house, yet able to rent? You're paying money either way, you just don't get anything to your name for that money in the latter case.

Which raises the obvious question: why does anyone rent? Because owning is priced out of their range, because owning is not just a place to live, it's a way to get free money from other people who need a place to live, so people who have more money than they need for their immediate expenses are incentivized to buy housing just to rent it out, which makes owning more expensive, making more people stuck renting, which makes owning even more valuable to those who can afford it, raising the price of ownership, etc in a vicious cycle.

Imagine a world where you start "renting" a house and eventually, you get to stop paying rent and just live there forever, and your great-grandkids can live there after you die, because in exchange for all that money you paid for housing, you actually got a house!

Apparently you've never received one of those letters from a bankruptcy court telling you that the money owed to you has gone up in smoke. — synthesis

That's a necessary mitigation of the problems that lending at interest would otherwise cause.

In a world where rent and thus interest wasn't a thing, borrowing and not returning something could just be treated as the theft that it is. Of course that would make people a lot more hesitant to borrow, and the lack of interest would make people a lot more hesitant to lend anyway... so instead of lending at interest, investors could buy equity in the ventures they're investing in, and then either win or lose together with the people running those ventures.

You're only going into to business with them if you own a huge block of stock. — synthesis

A quantitative different doesn't amount to a qualitative difference.

Otherwise, I see little difference between the two besides agreeing on a return up-front. — synthesis

That is the all-important difference.

Regardless, the ultimate human fantasy of making it possible to get "something for nothing" is (IMO) the greatest impediment to capitalism being accepted by a larger percentage of the population. Any something for nothing scheme stinks and people can smell it a mile away. — synthesis

I don't follow this. Getting something for nothing (nothing of their own at least) is exactly what capitalists do capitalism for. Being able to generate profit just from owning things that other people have to pay you to use is the core of capitalism. That's "something for nothing" as far as the capitalist is concerned; because the suffering of the borrowers at whose expense that something really comes is hidden from them behind a Just World Fallacy that says they deserve that free ride because they're the good people, while the poor whose backs they're riding on must deserve that burden because of something they did wrong. And the only reason so many of the poor at the bottom actively support the perpetuation of this system is because they have aspirations of some day being the one getting something "for nothing" (at someone else's expense) instead.

Hopefully the next system (another fantasy) will reward its participants proportionally for the their labor-value added while cutting all parasites out of the deal. — synthesis

That would be socialism.

This could be taken as a justificationalist’s dogma is my point. — khaled

"Could be" isn't "has to be".

I arrived at critical rationalism (the rejection of justificationism) not via justificationist means, not by appealing to some deeper principle that entails it, but rather via critical rationalist means themselves, by finding a reason to reject justificationism and so being left with its negation the remaining possibility, adhering to that remaining possibility requiring no justification in itself.

You need to believe that there is no reason for you to reject your opinion that you’re not considering right now — khaled

No, I only need to not believe that there is reason to reject it. There might be reasons to reject any of the things I believe, reasons that I'm not aware of yet. I don't have to actively believe that there are no such reasons in order to be warranted to hold those beliefs. I just need to be unaware of them. Holding a belief in the face of evidence to the contrary is irrational. Holding a belief without evidence for or against it is not. And the latter does not imply a belief that there is no evidence to the contrary, only that one is not aware of any such evidence, and so of any reason to reject a belief.

If you committed to rejecting every belief against which there might be contrary evidence of which you are unaware, then you would be forced to reject all beliefs, forever, because absolute certainty is not possible. That is the very problem with justificationism, and a reason to reject it.

You haven’t actually answered what constitutes a reason for rejecting an opinion — khaled

In the first post of mine that you responded to, the bit you quoted said that logical contradiction is a reason to reject something. My argument above against justificationism implies that impracticality is a reason to reject that, which is contradiction with your goals ("to do X, don't do Y, because Y prevents X").

Elsewhere I'd say that contradiction with phenomenal experience (of either an empirical or hedonic nature, depending on whether you're talking about descriptive truth or prescriptive goodness) is also a reason to reject (the respective kinds of) claims, but that ultimately boils down to impracticality as well (in that a notion of reality unconnected to what looks true is useless, as is a notion of morality unconnected to what feels good).

The first statement is not the second. I never said “reject all morality”. And it doesn’t even follow hat we should from that it’s baseless. — khaled

To "reject as baseless" is a compound verb phrase, that means to deny its objectivity. It's not the simple verb "reject" and then baselessness as a reason for that.

If you're saying there is no objective morality, you're saying that all moral claims are mere baseless opinion and so none are binding on anyone ("binding" in the sense that it'd be as wrong to deny them as they would be to deny an objectively correct claim about reality). That nothing is actually right or wrong, people just have opinions about it and none of those opinions are any better or worse than anyone else's.

If your argument that there is no objective morality is "prove even one moral claim conclusively objectively correct", you're using justificationism to argue for moral relativism. The same thing could be turned around and used to "prove" metaphysical relativism too: "prove even one factual claim conclusively objectively correct".

The best you can do is show that a factual claim is the most comprehensive and efficien) of the explanations thus far proposed for satisfying some aspect of the sum of all empirical experiences thus far had. And that's plenty enough for us to talk about what's objectively real or not.

You can do just as well for moral claims, showing that something is the most comprehensive and efficient of the plans thus far proposed for satisfying some aspect of the sum of all hedonic experiences thus far had. That should likewise be plenty enough for us to talk about what's objectively moral or not.

That’s fine, but how do you apply them throughout the day with issues bugging you at the time? — Brett

It was struggling with how to overcome practical real-life problems that lead me to find a foundation to the more abstract philosophy I was already building:

"It may be hopeless but I'm trying anyway".

I use this all the time, and advise other people in ways that amounts to it, and it shows results. Trying is scary hard work: much easier to either assume you will succeed without trying or assume you will fail even if you try, so in either case no use in trying. But only by trying is success possible, even though it's still not guaranteed. So may as well just give it a try. If you fail anyway... well that's the same outcome as if you didn't try.

Applies to finding a job, a romantic partner, getting better customer service at a business, etc etc etc. Just ask. Just check. Just try.

If you do that with regards to the search for wisdom -- philosophy -- that gives you the core principles of my abstract philosophical system -- universalism and criticism -- and the rest of my philosophy builds from there.

you have to answer for why you believe there is no good reason to reject the thing — khaled

No, you don’t. That there is no good reason to reject anything is the default state of affairs. The onus is on those who want to change your mind to show that there is good reason to reject your current opinion. (“Good reason” doesn’t mean anything more than just “reason” here, the “good” isn’t doing any work, it’s just emphasizing that the reason is genuine and not a faulty non-reason in some way, which again doesn’t need to be proven, it’s the default state of affairs).

I don’t think so. As I understand it, it would only make it impossible to insist on any opinion or other. It makes knowledge and certainty impossible. But most of us hold opinions we are not certain about anyways.

I don’t think your position is any different from justificationalism, it just sounds different. It’s hiding the uncertainty behind an extra layer that makes us not think about it all the time. That’s all. — khaled

Justificationism is precisely the view that less than certainly is unacceptably and so we should be thinking about justification all the time. It’s a “put up or shut up” principle: prove your opinion or discard it. That leads inexorably to rejecting everything, or else abandoning that principle for some articles of faith.

Being comfortable with uncertainty is the normal way of holding opinions though, because doing otherwise would logically require holding no opinions. I’m arguing against a bad philosophical standard, not against common practice.

Back to the topic: People are commonly of the opinion that this or that is morally right or wrong. It’s justificationism to say “nothing is objectively right or wrong because you can’t prove that anything is”.

“Show me moral certainty or reject all morality as baseless opinion” is bad philosophy: it’s just giving up, or worse, insisting that everyone else do so.

I have always viewed these types of arguments as, "Too hard for me to solve, so I guess they can't be objective or real. — Philosophim

Exactly.

In the strictest sense, I agree that there might not be anything real or moral at all. But all we could do in that case is one of two things. We could either baselessly assume that there is nothing real or moral at all, and stop there, simply giving up any hope of ever finding out if we were wrong in that baseless assumption. Or else, instead, we could baselessly assume that there is something real and something moral – as there certainly inevitably seems to be, since even if you deny their universality some things will still look true or false to you and feel good or bad to you – and then proceed with the long hard work of figuring out what seems most likely to be real and moral, by attending closely and thoroughly to those seemings, those experiences.

Usually it’s not “too hard” it’s “outright impossible”. Because we can’t fix a starting point. — khaled

Thinking you need a starting point is what makes it seem impossible.

Any reason put forth in support of some opinion is itself another opinion, for which the justificationist must then, if consistent with this principle, demand yet another reason. But that in turn will be some other opinion, for which the same demand for justification must be made. And so forth ad infinitum. This can only lead to one of three outcomes:

The most typical one is foundationalism. This abandons the principle of justification at some point by declaring some step of the regress of demands for justification to be self-evident, beyond question, without need of further support. That is transparently tantamount to dogmatism. Nevertheless, as I will soon explain, I have sympathy for the need to hold some opinions without them being rigorously supported from the ground up. I simply reject holding them to thus be unquestionable.

Another possible outcome is coherentism. This appeals at some point to an earlier step in that regress as support for a later one, establishing a circular chain of reasons that together can then support other reasons. I am sympathetic to the coherency criterion employed here, as surely all of one's opinions must be consistent with each other, and finding inconsistencies is a good reason to rule out some opinions.

But while that is a necessary feature, I think it is not a sufficient one: mere consistency is not enough to justify opinions in the sense demanded by justificationism, without again falling to dogmatism. For as that whole circular chain of reasons is then collectively unsupported and held as needing no further support besides itself, it is then, as a whole, tantamount to one big foundational, and therefore dogmatist, opinion.

The last possible outcome, and the most honest application of justificationism (in that it never breaks from the demand for reasons, to hide instead in dogmatism), is infinitism. This accepts the infinite regress of demands for justification, leaving the initial opinion, any and every initial opinion looking to be supported, forever insufficiently supported. That leaves one unwarranted in holding any opinion, and so is transparently tantamount to relativism.

Self-avowed infinitists do at least nominally hold that knowledge is still possible, and therefore conclude that it must somehow be possible to have an infinite chain of justification, even while acknowledging that it would be impossible for anyone to ever complete one in practice. While I am again sympathetic to this unending search for deeper and deeper principles to underlie our opinions, as I will soon elaborate, this infinitist position seems to me simply incoherent when framed as a form of justificationism: if you cannot ever complete the chain of justification, and you must have justification to have knowledge, then you cannot ever have knowledge.

Most theories of knowledge are either foundationalist or coherentist, and most of those who reject both of those conclude that therefore knowledge is impossible, seeing infinitism to be as incoherent as I do. But a few philosophers, including Immanuel Kant and Karl Popper, have instead rejected the justificationist principle tacitly underlying all of those positions, and instead say, as do I, that it is not necessary to reject every opinion until you can find reasons to justify it; it is only necessary to reject an opinion if you find reasons to reject it, and it is acceptable to hold any opinion, for no reason at all, until such reasons to reject it are found.

Like with coherentism, contradictions between different opinions are good reasons to reject some or all of them; and like with infinitism, this process of whittling away incorrect opinions is unending. But because both coherentism and infinitism tacitly accept the justificationist principle, neither of them quite adequately escapes the dilemma of either following it into relativism, or else abandoning it for dogmatism.

When considering reasons to intend something rather than reasons to believe something, this anti-justificationism seems largely uncontroversial. Most people will accept that it is acceptable to do something simply because you want to do it, for no particular reason, so long as there is not a good reason not to do it. We don't demand that everybody stop doing anything at all until they can show that what they want to do is justified by the need to do something that is justified by the need to do something that is justified by the need to do something... ad infinitum. We instead just accept that they're free to do whatever there's no reason not to do.

My rejection of justificationism includes that kind of freedom of intention, and to deny such freedom of intention, as in to insist that nobody does anything until it can be shown that there is a good reason to do so, would also qualify as a form cynicism in the sense that I am against here. But my rejection of cynicism also extends equally to a freedom of belief like that put forth by philosophers such as Kant and Popper. I say that it is not irrational to hold a belief or an intention simply because you are inclined to do so, for no reason; it is only irrational to continue to hold it in the face of reasons to the contrary.

But in rejecting justificationism, I am not at all rejecting rationality, or the importance of reasons. I am still against dogmatism, as I have previously argued; against irrationally holding opinions in the face of all reasons to the contrary of them, or asserting them to others with no reasons to back them. I only hold, for the reasons I have shown, that such an anti-justificationist position is the only practicable form of rationality, the only one that leaves us with reasons from which to reason.

Justificationism, if true, would make it impossible to ever rationally hold an opinion, instead insisting either that we hold no opinions, or else hold some core opinions to be, quite irrationally, beyond question. In rejecting justificationism, we make room to hold some opinions, still open to question, that can nevertheless serve as reasons to hold or reject other opinions.

We do lose any hope of ever having absolute certainty in any of those opinions, as they all remain constantly open to question and revision. But justificationism never offered any hope of rational certainty anyway, only the irrational false certainty of dogmatism (or else none at all). And with justificationism out of the way we can at least begin to compare our tentatively held opinions against each other and progress towards sets of opinions that gradually make better models of both reality and morality.

Not necessarily. For example, anti-trust laws and other methods of preventing monopolization — synthesis

“Not necessarily” what?

Anti-trust laws are a check against capitalism.

It seems as if almost every industry is dominated by two or three players (at most) anymore. — synthesis

As is the natural consequence of capitalism.

many people are not in a position to own (just starting-out or whatever) so there must a supplier of all things that rent involves — synthesis

People not being in a position to own is precisely the problem, and the existence of rent exploits and exacerbates that problem.

If rent was not a legally enforceable arrangement, everyone who owns properties to rent out would have no better use for them than to sell them, and nobody to sell them too but the people who would otherwise have been renting (since nobody else is going to buy just as an investment when they in turn can’t rent it out either). This creates incentive for landlords, banks, etc, to sell off properties on terms that are as affordable as renting.

Conversely, compared to that kind of market, the existence of rent creates an incentive for the rich to own more property than they need for their own use, and gives them a means of accruing more and more, which raises prices, and leaves everyone else unable to afford to buy.

My own pet peeve is the stock market where people "earn" money passively (rent, again). Getting paid for doing nothing is perhaps the greatest con of all-time! — synthesis

Stocks are actually qualitatively differently from rent and interest and I have no objection to them. That is the legitimate way to invest, rather than lending at interest.

With a loan, you give someone money and in return they owe you back more money, regardless of whether the loan actually benefits them or not: if they borrow and fail they still owe you even more than they borrowed. That’s really money for nothing.

With stock, you’re literally going into business with them, becoming a co-owner of their business in exchange for funding it, and only if their business succeeds do you succeed. For smart stock owners with diverse holdings, like with index funds, your success is tied to the overall success of the market, so the good of the whole economy is in your best interest.

The dark shadow hanging over Marxism is his stages of history analysis which is complete bunk. — Garth

An authoritarian, hierarchical state will survive longer against the threat of revolution if it asks its subjects what they want of it, and gives them a cut of its takings, naturally inclining such authoritarian, hierarchical states to evolve a layer of social democracy as a means of effectively buying the loyalty of its subjects, or else eventually fall to popular revolution.

Such a social democracy can then most easily appease the most people if it simply lets them make their own lifestyle choices instead of telling them how to live, and lets them provide each other with services instead of trying to do so itself, adding a layer of liberty and a free market.

Thus, the lazy selfish authority, acting in its own self-interest, naturally devolves power toward a social democracy; and a lazy selfish social democracy, acting in its own self-interest, naturally devolves power toward more anarchic ideals.

Capitalism is the ownership of industry is held in private hands — ssu

"In private hands" as opposed to "in public hands" means precisely "in few hands" rather than "in everyone's hands".

For example, land ownership hasn't concentrated into relatively few hands, there are lot of small landowners in every country — ssu

Not relative to the population size; at least not if you're accounting for outstanding debts on land (e.g. mortgages). Most people don't own their own homes free and clear. Most people own no land at all free and clear. The ownership of land is concentrated in the hands of a small fraction of the population. That may be a large number, but that's irrelevant. "The 1%" is still millions of people, but that fact doesn't help the 99% any.

Perhaps here one should make a difference between capitalism and market economy. — ssu

That's precisely what I'm doing. One can in principle have a propertarian free market economy without having capitalism, if one can somehow prevent the ownership of capital from concentrating in a small portion of the population instead of staying widely distributed across the whole population.

And how do you explain absolute monarchies then? — ssu

Explain what about them? In an absolute monarchy the monarch effectively owns everything. That's perfectly consistent the principles I'm talking about here, and why I kept saying "democratic state" and such to be clear that the legitimacy of taxation only implies partial public ownership if the state doing that taxation is of, by, and for the public. In an absolute monarchy it implies the monarch has (at least partial) ownership of everything, instead of the public.

I don't think that industry being owned privately means this "complete and sacrosanct" libertarianism you talk of. — ssu

It can be partially private without that kind of completeness, sure. I'm not saying that the only options are Randian capitalism or uniformly distributed social ownership. I'm saying that the less total the privacy of ownership is, the greater the public ownership in proportion: that granting the legitimacy of a public interest in something, like the right to tax it, is granting a limit to its private ownership.

Ownership of something is just is having rights in it, and vice versa. If the public has rights to the profits of industry, e.g. if taxation is legitimate, then that is in effect (even if not in name) at least partial public ownership.

I'm not saying anything at all here about whether that's good or bad, just that it is what it is. If someone doesn't have completely exclusive rights over something, it isn't completely private property of theirs. They can have partially exclusive rights and so it can be partially private, sure, but the exclusivity of their rights and the privacy of their property are the same thing.

The kind of Ayn Randian libertarianism in the US isn't any kind of natural consequence or end result of capitalism, it is just one result that has happened in one specific country — ssu

It's not a consequence of capitalism, it's a cause of it. Capitalism is the concentration of ownership of capital in relatively few hands. Randianism supports and leads to that; not vice versa. So yes, you can have some capitalism without that. But to the extent that there are limits on the privacy of property, that is also a limit on the possibility of capitalism. (But not vice versa; it is possible to have socialism with completely private property, so long as it remains distributed in many hands).

It's simply called taxation.

And people are and have been perfectly OK with taxation for millennia to fund the state. And that state can be a monarchy, an Empire, a theocracy or whatever. People have understood that if you are going to have something like armed forces to defend the society, that obviously costs something. That libertarian individualism you refer to is a quite recent idea in the history of nations and them taxing their people. — ssu

The notion that taxation is legitimate is the same notion as the state having a stake in the property being taxed. That is an old idea, yes: in feudal systems all capital (that being only land at the time) was technically owned by the state and only leased to other holders, and that lease was what legitimated the taxation of it: it's the Crown's land, and you can pay the tax on it or get the fuck off. That system technically persists to this day: "ownership" of a plot of land even in the United States is usually "fee simple" tenancy on the state's land, with only the extremely rare "allodial title" being actually completely and legally landlord-free ownership.

Nowadays in a post-agricultural economy there is capital other than land, which is not subject to exactly those same old feudal laws. But if it is legitimate for the state to tax the proceeds from that capital, then the state in a practical sense owns an interest in it, regardless of the words used in statutes to describe that relation.