trc@houca.UUCP (10/12/83)
Response to Paul Torek: "Twist-o-flex: a new variant" Look, Paul, I like discussing philosophy, but I am getting tired of personal attacks like your "instead of twisting his positions, Tom is twisting mine". The obvious implication of this statement, and I cannot believe you intended it otherwise, is that I practice an evasive form of argument, rather than trying to address the issues. In fact, what I often try to do is show you logical conclusions of what you say that you have overlooked. Occasionally I may miss some point you present, but I do *NOT* intentionally evade an argument that I cannot answer. I agree that you "never said that Bud doesnt suspect that he is hurting them" - but you cannot accuse me of twisting what you say if I put a reasonable interpretation upon something that you have left open. I had just stated (and you ignored - should I count that as "twisting"? Or perhaps it is only "twisting" to go on the assumption that you had paid attention to my *stated* assumptions?) in the prior note that, if Bud knows that he is wrongly hurting someone (badly enough that they would complain), then he should cease hurting them. Note that it is not the damage, but the *wrongful* damage that is important. If someone jumps in front of my car as I travel down the highway, their injury is not my fault. Bud's buying pollution rights from others is not circular - I have clearly stated that "pollution property rights" can be taken from nature in the lack of any prior claim that the new property would trespass upon. Even you agreed that it is possible (though impractical, in your opinion) to buy the rights from area residents. Now *you* seem to be twisting what I stated, or even what *you* agreed with. My argument on the "world ownership" issue is *not* a caricature - even leaving out the "inaction" part, where do you draw the line? (In fact, by concentrating on that small aspect of what I said, I might claim that you are twisting what I said.) If you can stop Bud from polluting, why cant you stop me from breathing out carbon dioxide (another pollutant)? I agree that this case is more direct, but it is ethically in the same category - in one case, you would prevent Bud from supporting his life by running a factory, in the other you would simply demand that I suffocate. Note that I am *not* stating that "polluting is a right" [no context], any more than I am stating "breathing out carbon dioxide is a right" [no context]. There are contexts that require that one wear a mask that collects one's carbon dioxide or water vapor, just as there are certainly contexts that require that a manufacturer control his air pollution. The former are rarer, probably because there are more people that breath than there are that run factories. Even if I accept your "only condemn actions that *cause* others to be able to do less", problems arise. What this really means is that, once I have created something, it immediately becomes "world property" - since I no longer have the right to destroy it (which would cause others to be able to do less). And suppose that I put some tool I have created to use - that restricts everyone else's ability to use that tool. Taking this statement to its logical conclusion, there can be no such thing as private property - it is all owned by everyone, and no one can do anything without consent by everyone. The desire to have "world ownership to prevent liberty restrictions" is thus a desire to steal values created by others. And I dont think that you can exclude inaction as a "liberty restricting action". After all, it make no difference to your "liberty" whether I fail to build a bridge, or dismantle a bridge I have previously constructed - you still are not able to cross the river on that bridge. If this contradictory idea were to become a basis for societal actions, no man could be inactive, so long as there were anything that he could be doing to increase the *potential* liberty of everyone. (Why is potential liberty more important than actual liberty?) This should be called what it is - slavery. How do you respond to my statement that your implicit definition of "liberty" is flawed by making it equivalent to "ability to do things"? I'm sure you wouldnt want to be accused of twisting what I said, just because you totally ignored this critical point in your response. If you wish to continue supporting the "restrict liberties to support liberty" idea, you had better state the exact principle that you want to support - I wouldnt want to be accused of twisting what you say just because you "never said" some assumption about it. So far as I can see, there is little about my solution to the PD problem that could not be applied to any direct extension of the problem to different pay offs, etc. The important aspect is the assumption, in the problem, that the two parties had no way of knowing the other's choice, nor any personal basis for preferring one of the choices (as in a just man refusing to accuse another man that he doesnt know is guilty). The altruistic interpretation violated these both these assumptions. (I have added the "no personal basis, here - my original statement concentrated only on the lack of knowledge; that argument is independent of the "no personal basis" argument.) And say, Paul, arent you twisting the problem? - after all, you did not ask for a solution to more than "the one standard case". Twistedly, Tom Craver houca!trc