My objective here isn't to argue that the right's position is accurate, only that it is much more principled than the left wants to recognize. — Hanover

I realize that you are only giving an exposition of certain conservative views and the putative basis of said views, which doesn't imply that you yourself endorse them. However, you do self-identify as a conservative, do you not? Indeed, I almost always enjoy reading your posts on politics, as they bring a reasonable con perspective to this forum (and the other one).

I don't doubt that the right's beliefs stand on "principles," only that many of said principles are ill-founded, and not as unified as you seem to think.

The right's skepticism of environmental regulations is based upon the proposition that our planet is neither fragile nor realistically knowable on a macro level.

This doesn't seem to make sense. I understand that there is skepticism in some quarters about climatologists' ability to predict climate or to reconstruct past climates, but I don't think anyone disputes that we can make widespread, modern-day measurements of climate, and hence that the climate is "knowable on a macro level." We do, after all, have weather satellites, weather stations, and myriad other data streams on the current state of Earth's climate.

They do not believe that humans are destroying the planet by simply living on what God gave them to live on.

Objection to the reality of global warming has more than just religious motivations. George Will, for instance, is both an atheist and a climate "skeptic." There are also strong nationalistic and economic/ideological factors blinding their judgment (and possibly making them lie outright in some cases). For some, there is probably a mix of economic and religious factors.

They also believe it is hubris to suggest that we really know what is causing our weather patterns. Your comment that environmental regulations were created to protect humans is simply not what the right believes to be the case. If they did believe that, then only then would their position be inconsistent, but they don't.

So, for instance, the Clean Air Act and regulations governing mercury levels in drinking water are not meant to protect humans? Who or what are they meant to protect?

No one wants to put the wrong guy to death. That is not in dispute. The general view of the right is that the guilty should be punished because they are responsible for what they've done.

An anti death penalty advocate who believes that murderers ought to be imprisoned for life without parole rather than executed also believe the murderer to be "responsible." If they didn't so believe, they likely wouldn't be advocating for him to get life without parole rather than walking free.

The resistance to criminal justice reform isn't rooted in a desire to continue to punish the wrong people, but it's a distrustful reaction to the left's efforts. What the right really thinks the left is trying to do is to make it impossible to convict the guilty by affording unreasonable restrictions to prosecution (and the death penalty in particular) under the guise of fairness. The left is seen as trying to find excuses for improper conduct (like poverty, upbringing, psychological issues), where the right sees the issue as very black and white. You have free will and, regardless of what your past was, and you therefore have the ability to avoid improper conduct.

But for a brief, SCOTUS-imposed interregnum, the death penalty has been part and parcel of American criminal punishment since the beginning (though you correctly point out that the procedural barriers to actually executing people who have been sentenced to death can be high). So, if anything, the right has held more sway over criminal justice than the left, with candidates running on "law and order" platforms, elected judges needing to prove how they're "tough on crime," etc.

And even if the death penalty is desirable in principle, in practice it is riven by so many problems, both institutional, legal, and epistemological, that I don't believe that any reasonable person can defend its use. The spate of death row prisoners set free by DNA testing alone, for instance (the use of which, incredibly, some jurisdictions still resist) should give one pause.

I don't think the right really cares if the death penalty deters future crime, nor do I think religious based morality is at all consequentialist. You mischaracterize the right here as a bunch of Utilitarians. They are far more Kantian in the outlook.

Deterrence has been cited many times as one reason for having a death penalty. And appealing to the consequences of the death penalty (i.e. deterrence, in this case) is definitely a consequentialist argument.

[snip]

You seem to want to point out how stupid the right's position is, which isn't really part of this discussion. The question is whether there is a way to extrapolate what the right's position would be in a novel situation. If there is, then there must be an underlying principle at play. If not, it's just a bunch of ad hoc positions cobbled together. My belief is that it is the former, even if you think the conclusions they reach are stupid.

I've pointed out how there is at least some tension, if not outright inconsistency in the list of conservative principles which you offered, and nothing in your above post rebuts my point on that matter. As I said, conservatives will trust their government to prosecute a trillion-dollar war, but then turns around and claim that, for instance, the government is incapable of managing education on a national scale.

Lemme fill you godless heathens in on the reasons behind conservative ideology:

The death penalty -- just desserts, reaping what you have sowed
Opposition to drugs -- sanctity of human body, work ethic, personal responsibility
Anti-abortion -- sanctity of human life
Strict law and order -- absolute right and wrong
Critical of unemployed -- idle hands, personal responsibility
Critical of government -- rights are inherent (endowed by the Creator), not given by, but only protected by, the government.
Guns -- self reliance, anti-government (as noted above)
Critical of environmental regulation -- human's right to dominion and control over the universe

The reasons can be summarized as being (if not directly religious) based upon absolute notions of right and wrong, the placement of humans as the central and dominant feature of the universe, and the demand that each infinitely sacred person contribute his fair share to the world and accept responsibility for his actions. Little sympathy is offered for those who fall short, largely because most failures are thought to arise from bad choices and the poor exercise of one's free will.

It is not at all coincidental that the right tends toward religion. It is also not coincidental that the right is referred to as conservative, as those holding firm to tradition and to the rules that have brought our society to where it is. The left is seen as dismantling the sacred traditions and casting society into ruin. — Hanover

I don't think that those conservative precepts hang together without at least some tension. For instance, it is hard to maintain that one adheres to the "sanctity of human life" while also disregarding environmental regulations which, in part, are meant to protect human well-being, and while supporting an utterly dysfunctional justice system's ability to separate the sheep from the goats and execute only for-realz murderers, and not just poor blokes who have been railroaded by the system. I can only say that God moves in mysterious ways in granting us memories and perceptual faculties which so often fail us, and yet allow us to be full-to-bursting with certitude when "I know what I saw." Conservatives also cling to the quaint notion that the death penalty is a "deterrence," seemingly oblivious to the fact that the evidence for this notion is murky at best, and steps into a hornet's nest of consequentialist-oriented ethical conundrums.

Speaking of the death penalty, it is also somewhat odd that government can supposedly do nothing right ("critical of government", as you say), and yet conservatives still trust it to mete out the ultimate punishment, giving just deserts (not desserts, especially now that last meals are no longer a thing in some venues) to murderers (recall Dubya's claim that Texas has never executed an innocent man). Of course, conservatives also trust the gubmint to prosecute trillion-dollar wars when certain Middle East despots have imaginary WMD's, which they will surely unleash upon Olathe, Kansas in the imminent future. So, government can't be trusted to hand out food stamps, but it can manage trillion-dollar foreign adventures? Just a bit of tension in those beliefs, I would say.

I could go on...but I won't.

Far away from being ‘le snob” I am definitely ‘le slob’ when it comes to my wardrobe. Daily wear is low fashion Lee denim jeans, sweatshirts, and underwear from Marshalls discount store. — Bitter Crank

Cripes, what kind of gay man are you? I suppose I shouldn't stereotype, but I always thought you folks were supposed to be snappy dressers. I know you live in the Midwest, so perhaps you still set the bar rather high compared to some of your neighbors...

The worse injuries were neurological -- from the "pig brain blaster" that was used to extract brains from pig skulls for use in Korean stir fry — Bitter Crank

Mmm, stir-fried pig brains.

Excellent post.

As it seems a propos of the topic of this thread, below is a link to a video of a Munk debate on whether humanity's best days are ahead of it. On the pro side are Matt Ridley and Steven Pinker. On the con side are Malcolm Gladwell and Alain de Botton.

I had never heard of de Botton, but I must admit that his performance in this debate doesn't inspire me to seek out any of his works. I had some mild respect for Gladwell (if only as a writer, if not a thinker), but that respect dipped a couple of notches after this mess. The most I can say for the con side is that Gladwell is right to be skeptical of Pinker's claim that global warming is solely an economic problem (there are also scientific, political, cultural, and even religious aspects to addressing and solving the problem).

I find it interesting that, in certain intellectual quarters, cries of "scientism" form a shrill, unbroken, klaxon, but here de Botton (a humanities scholar) is only too happy to disregard data in what is clearly a data-driven topic, instead making pointless, repeated references to fictional characters as part of his nonsensical arguments against the pro side (at one point, he accuses Pinker and Ridley of being unable to cure the depression of the fictional Anna Karenina, and so fooey for their side). Can I therefore accuse de Botton's ilk of "humanitiesism", i.e. the humanities sticking its nose into scientific (i.e. data-driven) questions? In de Botton's defense, he is coming from the humanities, and not the social or natural sciences, and so was relying on what he knew. Be that as it may, he didn't have to be quite such a dick about it.

http://munkdebates.com/livestream

Yup. Here's another near-armageddon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

I'm also reluctant to see the pessimist as having negative evolutionary value. — Soylent

I recall reading somewhere that depressed people may actually be more in touch with reality than their non-depressed counterparts. Perhaps ignorance is bliss, after all...

Interestingly, I've hardly had to moderate anything at all here (or maybe someone else keeps getting there first). — Baden

Oh, don't worry: this is only the opening part of The Lord of the Flies, where everyone is still nice to each other. Man's primeval nature will emerge eventually, leaving you mods plenty to do. :D

To try to rephrase my thinking here: If we don't know we are correct (as in, we are not omniscient), then is it reasonable to hold a position as truth? — darthbarracuda

Unless you are speaking to an omniscient audience, then any negative answer to your question can only be self-defeating.

But "I don't believe X: I know X" means "I don't just believe X: I know X", and this is often how the colloquial use is put. It's very much in line with the JTB definition. When "just" is not used, I think it's implied. On the other hand the JTB definition looks like a clumsy attempt to encapsulate this colloquial use; in the latter, a belief that is true and justified is transformed into something more than a belief--not just a belief that happens to be true and justified but attaining another epistemic state entirely--and a literal understanding of JTB can lose sight of this. — jamalrob

Yes, I had the same thought: in saying that they don't "believe" P, a person is sometimes saying that they don't merely believe P (that is, their belief is justified and/or true, as well). However, this being a philosophy forum, one should probably be more careful in their terminology if they're going to say things along the lines of "I don't believe P: I know P."

Whether or not the JTB account of knowledge is "clumsy" is a subject for another discussion, I suppose...

I don't believe the sun will rise in the east. I know the sun MUST rise in the east, given the mechanics of celestial bodies. It's not a belief. The sun has no choice. — Bittercrank

The colloquial usage of "believing" something is often contrasted with "knowing" it ("I don't believe X: I know X"). But this doesn't really hold philosophical water, as many epistemologists believe knowledge to be "justified true belief" with perhaps some additional qualifiers thrown in to handle epistemic luck in Gettier cases. So, knowledge, far from being dichotomous with belief, entails it.

This is similar to that zingy argument against logical positivism that makes it self-refuting, you know, the whole "well is the statement: 'only empirical statements are meaningful', empirical?". But it's more of a guideline. — darthbarracuda

Then by that "guideline" your own argument ought to be disbelieved. Zingy or not, that's the breaks. X-)

Your argument is convincing, but there's a possibility that it may be false, so I'm going to disbelieve it.

Uh, ok. Does it follow that the NEH doesn't fund philosophy (again, I'm not certain that it does, but I thought that it, or similar funding agencies, provided grants to philosophers)?

Philosophical research involves a lot of thinking. Scientific research involves expensive equipment.

I thought academic philosophers did receive grants to fund their work (e.g. from the NEH or a similar funding agency).

There are many scientific fields and endeavors I would consider to be "pie in the sky" (which I would define as lacking immediate practical technological benefits, and which I don't mean pejoratively in this context), e.g. particle physics, cosmology, most of astronomy, paleontology, etc. No reasonable person could claim that "progress" hasn't been made in these fields unless they're employing a highly idiosyncratic sense of the term.

There are philosophers who deal with the "problems of men." Peter Singer, for instance, is an advocate for the global poor and for animal rights. Other philosophers, such as Martha Nussbaum and Christina Hoff Sommers grapple with issues surrounding contemporary feminism, the law, and related topics.

Other philosophers deal in more abstract problems, which are of less practical relevance. Why is this such a problem? We accept that some scientific work has immediate technological applications, and other is pure "pie in the sky" research. Why oughtn't it be the same for philosophy?

Thanks to all of those who extended an invitation to this new forum. I am curious: who is planning on severing ties altogether with "the old forum"? I am adopting a provisional, "wait and see" attitude with regard to the new owners. It looks like some fairly strong posters (e.g. AndrewK and Nagase) are still hanging around PF. I am thinking that I will probably divide my time between these 2 forums for a while.