janw@inmet.UUCP (09/08/86)
[Oded Feingold: oaf@mit-vax.UUCP] >With the human population burgeoning beyond all reasonable bounds, and >pushing the rest of creation into extinction, maybe what we really >need is freely available euthanasia, which people can and will (enthu- >siastically) self-administer. The premise is wrong: human population does not loom as large vis-a-vis the rest of creation as some of its members believe. If all the 5 billion of us were drowned in the Great Lakes, how much would the water level rise? A fraction of an inch. However, given the premise - and many people accept it - the conclusion is by far the best that can be made. Some people are so scared of babies they propose coercive population control - a conception police. Oded's proposal is non-coercive. But it is morally preferable even compared to encouraging volun- tary population control. What are the malthusians afraid of? That people may be brought into the world whose life will be not worth living? Well, let *them* be the judges of that. If it's not worth it, they can quit. If they are never born, they get no chance and no choice. The oaf plan makes the population problem completely self-regu- lating. Once it is implemented - cyanide over the counter or a suicide booth at the corner, and once the customs adapt to accept it - the world is guaranteed a population the *worst-off* part of which thinks life worth living. But these would be at the tail of the happiness distribution curve - which means, in any reasonable distribution, that the ma- jority would be well above that level. So let us adopt the plan. At any rate all population control advocates should embrace it, *unless* what really interests them is not overpopulation, but control for control's sake. If they won't let people be born *or* die without permission, then they simply want total control over you - or, in equivalent words - they want to *own* you. Jan Wasilewsky /* End of text from inmet:net.politics */
bsmith@uiucdcsp.CS.UIUC.EDU (09/12/86)
This is wonderful! Mr. Carnes argues well. His points are reasonably rational and his logic is exceptional. Please take note of this. Mr. Carnes is one of the few people on this net who argues his points accurately and powerfully, yet doesn't resort to ad hominems when pushed hard. This is great! I think I'll go now and tell my mother about this.
radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal) (09/15/86)
In article <559@gargoyle.UUCP>, carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) writes: > [Jan Wasilewsky] > >Oded's proposal [ easy euthenasia] is non-coercive. But it is morally > >preferable even > >compared to encouraging voluntary population control. What are the > >malthusians afraid of? That people may be brought into the world > >whose life will be not worth living? Well, let *them* be the judges > >of that. > > Your view, evidently, is that a possible person is better off if he > exists, so long as he is not so miserable as to take his own life, > than if this possible person never comes to exist. Well, I can quote > Sophocles as a distinguished authority against this view. But it is > a very dubious one in any case. A possible person is not a real > person who can be better or worse off. There is in fact no person > until the moment the person comes into existence. There was no > actual Jan before Jan came into existence, there were only > possibilities. > > ... > > >At any rate all population control advocates should embrace it, > >*unless* what really interests them is not overpopulation, but > >control for control's sake. If they won't let people be born *or* die > >without permission, then they simply want total control over you - > >or, in equivalent words - they want to *own* you. > > Even if my motives are to enslave the world and become dictator for > life, that would be irrelevant to the philosophical and scientific > issues we have been discussing.... > > Richard Carnes My guess is that Jan meant this as a satire on Carnes' utilitarian philosophy of the greatest good for the greatest number. He points out that any person who doesn't commit suicide must in some sense have a positive quantity of happiness, so the utilitarian philosophy has difficulty in saying he shouldn't have been born. For those who don't believe Jan meant this as satire, I will point out that effective means of suicide have never been hard to come by, so this isn't much of a "proposal". I also note that the title of the posting, "A Modest Proposal", was first used by Jonathan Swift in advocating that Irish babies be eaten. Radford Neal
carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (09/24/86)
[janw] >An elementary principle like "coercion is bad" is not the end of >wisdom - but a beginning of it. *If* it is true - then refusing to >accept it (and I have never seen you accept it) undermines the >sophisticated superstructures you build. I don't perceive an obligation to affirm, in my postings, what is noncontroversial on the net. I assume that everyone, or virtually everyone, reading this believes that noncoercion is desirable, a value; ceteris paribus, we prefer to minimize coercion. But there are other commonly held values as well, and it is when values conflict that the interesting and fruitful questions arise. Dogmatists, with their canned answers to all questions, need not trouble themselves with these issues. They can simply state, for example, that everyone possesses an absolute and inviolable right to dispose of his or her own body, without investigating what the implications and potential consequences of this principle would be in the real world, and whether there might be potential conflicts with other important values/principles. Philosophy is easy when you know the answers a priori. And from this great height, dogmatists can look down on those depraved enough to disagree with them and impute to them bad faith, bad character, base motives, or moral insensitivity -- much easier than coming to grips with moral and political questions that thoughtful persons regard as very tough. Richard Carnes
janw@inmet.UUCP (09/29/86)
[carnes@gargoyle.UUCP ] /* ---------- "Re: A Modest Proposal" ---------- */ >[janw] >>An elementary principle like "coercion is bad" is not the end of >>wisdom - but a beginning of it. *If* it is true - then refusing to >>accept it (and I have never seen you accept it) undermines the >>sophisticated superstructures you build. >I don't perceive an obligation to affirm, in my postings, what is >noncontroversial on the net. I assume that everyone, or virtually >everyone, reading this believes that noncoercion is desirable, a >value; ceteris paribus, we prefer to minimize coercion. Good. A point of agreement. To give you an example where you have ignored it: you once argued in favor of redistribution of wealth in the following (approximately) way: assume a rich uncle and a poor nephew. If $10K is transferred from the former to the latter, the sum of human happiness increases, because the money is more important to the nephew. I asked you then (and was never answered) if you made a distinction between *voluntary* and *involuntary* transfer. The act of coercion in itself would increase the sum of misery. It would also introduce an uncertainty into everyone's possession of whatever they still possess - more direct misery, and also less wealth created; it would open the door to further coercive measures, etc. You ignored all this kind of problem. I think this error of omission is systematic with those who argue for state intervention, redistribution, regulation and taxation. They ignore the *overhead* involved in enforcing their pet meas- ures, on the one side, and resisting them - or submitting to them - on the other. The IRS alone has about 100,000 employees - who are soldiers on *one* side of a war. It is better not to have a war. >But there are other commonly held values as well, and it is when >values conflict that the interesting and fruitful questions ar- >ise. Very true. >Dogmatists, with their canned answers to all questions, need not >trouble themselves with these issues. They can simply state, for >example, that everyone possesses an absolute and inviolable right >to dispose of his or her own body, without investigating what the >implications and potential consequences of this principle would >be in the real world, and whether there might be potential con- >flicts with other important values/principles. I cannot speak for dogmatists - but *I* argued an inviolable right like this - and I have been more than willing to investigate all the real-world ramifications ! More than that: I have been willing to meet you on the completely utilitarian grounds and justify the basic principle itself on these grounds. I wonder if my postings reach you? > Philosophy is easy when you know the answers a priori. A strawman, Richard, a strawman. But political philosophy *is* deceptively easy if one reacts to each perceived problem by invoking authority's magic wand. "There ought to be a law" - how tempting and simple to say that, whatever irks one. This simplistic attitude ignores the fact that authority and law have their own dynamic, not limited to removing the initial irritant. It shifts all the hard decisions of reconciling or balancing con- flicting values onto future decisions by a reinforced authority. Will it know better? But even if it did, it is not at all likely to balance the values in the way people who created it would hope. It has its own values and interests. The carte blanche of "take all rights into account but hold none absolute" merely makes the authority's own will absolute. As the frogs learnt too well after they invited King Stork... Long live King Log, and let some rights be inviolate! Jan Wasilewsky P.S. BTW, Richard, another question you never answered (you've developed preterition into a fine art) is this: do *you* draw the line anywhere, and if so, where? In other words, in your moral philosophy, are *some* rights or principles inviolable, whatever the cost? To use Dostoyevsky's example, would you sanction tor- turing a child to establish an earthly paradise?
carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (10/05/86)
[Jan Wasilewsky] >P.S. BTW, Richard, another question you never answered (you've >developed preterition into a fine art) ... This is rather silly. Given the ten minutes or so per week I have available to spend on the netnews, I have to be highly selective in my responses. We're not conducting formal debates here. Let's bear in mind THE FIRST LAW OF NETNEWS DEBATE: It generally takes longer to refute fallacies and nonsense than it took to write them in the first place. THE SECOND LAW: People who write drivel like to post net-articles because it gives their thoughts an importance they otherwise lack, while those who are capable of refuting the balderdash generally have more rewarding things to do with their time. COROLLARY: A large proportion of the net's balderdash goes unrefuted. What is the point, really, of writing long net-articles to correct someone's errors and confusions, except perhaps to gratify one's ego or to amuse oneself on a rainy day? One can learn, certainly, from participating in net discussions, but there are more efficient ways of learning, particularly at a university. One thing I have learned from the net is that there are plenty of more-or-less educated people out there who have little understanding of what philosophy is and no notion of how to think carefully and rigorously about difficult philosophical questions. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with this state of affairs but there is little point in trying to engage such persons in genuinely philosophical discussion -- they don't understand what you are saying. I could try to teach them what I understand about philosophy to the extent that I possess such understanding but other people are paid to do this and I am not. Given the choice, I usually prefer spending my time studying the philosophy of (say) Aristotle or John Rawls, from whom I can learn a great deal, to pointing out some netter's confusions and fallacies concerning moral and political philosophy. This seems a more worthwhile endeavor than trying to confound the heretics and rout the Philistines. >... do *you* draw the >line anywhere, and if so, where? In other words, in your moral >philosophy, are *some* rights or principles inviolable, whatever the >cost? To use Dostoyevsky's example, would you sanction torturing a >child to establish an earthly paradise? After you, Alphonse. Let's see your answers to these questions, together with your reasons for your answers. The latter will distinguish you from the dogmatists. Richard Carnes
janw@inmet.UUCP (10/07/86)
[carnes@gargoyle.UUCP ] [/* ---- "Re: A Modest Proposal" ---- */] >>P.S. BTW, Richard, another question you never answered (you've >>developed preterition into a fine art) ... >This is rather silly. Given the ten minutes or so per week I have >available to spend on the netnews, I have to be highly selective in >my responses. We're not conducting formal debates here. Quite correct. And let me congratulate you on what you manage to do in 10 minutes. Given the need for selectivity, criteria of selection are the problem. It has been my impression (perhaps subjective), and that of some of your other opponents, that you often pass by in dignified silence what the other side considers its main point and the strongest argument, and fasten on some parenthetical remark instead ( as now); and that you don't even answer direct questions. This is the meaning of my parenthetical remark on preterition. It in no way obliges you to change your debating style - which has its virtues - or to defend it - but is merely an observation, and of no great importance. >What is the point, really, of writing long net-articles to correct >someone's errors and confusions, except perhaps to gratify one's ego >or to amuse oneself on a rainy day? There are some: clarifying your own ideas; testing them against objections; same with another's ideas; spreading some truth you consider important; engaging in a social experiment... some oth- ers, too... But surely an old distinguished netter like you must have some good reasons. >>... do *you* draw the >>line anywhere, and if so, where? In other words, in your moral >>philosophy, are *some* rights or principles inviolable, whatever the >>cost? To use Dostoyevsky's example, would you sanction torturing a >>child to establish an earthly paradise? >After you, Alphonse. Let's see your answers to these questions, >together with your reasons for your answers. The latter will >distinguish you from the dogmatists. O.K., answer last question first, as Marx used to say (Groucho, not Karl). Utilitarianism does not pass its own test. Case by case optimiza- tion is not optimal - for at least two reasons: the overhead is too high, and human weakness distorts judgement, exposing one to the temptations of the moment - cumulative temptations of many moments. This leads to what I call the Principle Principle - or the Rule Rule - which is that one needs inflexible rules. In legal sphere, this justifies written law - and as laws are changeable too, constitutions. (The first great achievement of the Roman plebs was not making any law - but forcing the patricians to write down theirs.) The same applies to rules of debate, to rules of experiment etc. - sticking to the rule may be sub- optimal in particular cases, but ad hoc decisions are worse in the long run. The same applies to moral shalt's and shalt-not's. Followed in- flexibly, and reinforced by habit, they become the moral skeleton of a person. Principles *can* be modified - as the Constitution can be changed - but only gradually, on the basis of the sum total of experi- ence, and not ad hoc. When faced with a particular situation, one doesn't argue with one's principle, but obeys. In some ex- traordinary case, one *may* lose more by it than all one gains by ever adhering to the principle. When one accepts the principle, one accepts that chance: fiat justitia, ruat caelum. Returning to Dostoyevsky's problem - he explored it extensively in his books. He ran thought experiments which showed - rather prophetically - that people who forego all moral restrictions where heaven on earth is at stake, tend to create hell on earth instead. That it has to be so, can be inferred - not infallibly - from general philosophical and psychological considerations. That it *does* work that way, is an empirical fact. In the ab- sence of rigid principles, people are too gullible (Milgram's ex- periment comes to mind), and too corruptible - morally and intel- lectually - by power, fear, vanity, and immediate self-interest. In an absolutely ruling *group* both factors are combined to make its absolute corruption, and general disaster, a certainty. The world is safer in the hands of people who neither *will* nor *can* sacrifice everything for its sake. Justifying a *particular* set of rules as against another is a different problem; if you accept the general principle (or metaprinciple), we can move on to it. I hope my answer to my own question is clear enough. Jan Wasilewsky
janw@inmet.UUCP (10/10/86)
[carnes@gargoyle.UUCP ] [Richard Carnes answers my assorted points ] >>I asked you then (and was never answered) ... >You assume that all your questions and points are worth replying to. >Here are some that aren't, but I will reply anyway to make you happy: I never said you *had* to answer. Unlike boxing, here one can both run and hide... >>You wouldn't like a *zero* birth rate, would you? Whom would it >>affect adversely? Generations that wouldn't exist? >It would affect the present generation adversely. More important, >why does it have to affect someone adversely to be a bad moral >choice, as you seem to imply? That was *your* position: that someone isn't hurt by never being born, so the fact is morally indifferent. I just took that to the extreme. All that can be said, on your assumptions, about re- duced birth rate, can be said about zero birth rate, and vice versa. >The modest proposal was to make suicide pills freely available. How >does this assure (1), that only not-unhappy people live? Do people >always commit suicide when they become unhappy if they have the >means to do so? First you talked about lives' being worth living, >now you're talking about happiness. I am not: "not-unhappy" isn't "happy". "Worth living" is about the same as "not unhappy", give or take a little. The exact de- gree does not affect the argument. >Re the bell-shaped curve: why should we expect the distribution of >happiness to be normal in the statistical sense, rather than, say, >pyramidal, with the greatest number at the bottom of the happiness >scale? On the other hand, it could be an inverted pyramid... A good point. A quasi-normal distribution seems reasonable to me, but it can be challenged. Are you then *conditionally* accept- ing the "modest proposal" - provided the curve is bell-shaped? >>... the world is guaranteed a population the *worst-off* part of >>which thinks life worth living. >Apparently you believe that there is no morally significant >difference between a life that is barely worth living and one which >is extremely happy and satisfying -- that one is no better than the >other, because they are both "worth living". Apparently? From the above paragraph?? Absurd. Why then did I emphasize *worst-off*?! >Your reasoning implies the following: > For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with > a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger > imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, > would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely > worth living. It does not, without additional mathematical assumptions which I find too strong. > Parfit calls this "The Repugnant Conclusion". Do you accept it? No. If, out of this larger number, none are unhappy and at least 10 billion are happier than the original 10 billion, then yes. Mind you, I am still arguing in a Benthamite mode. The above fol- lows from the following 3 axioms for estimating the happiness of a set of people: (a) addition of a not-unhappy individual does not reduce it; (b) equally happy individuals contribute equally; and (c) increasing someone's happiness increases the to- tal. You can't derive your Repugnant Conclusion from a, b, c. >>you once argued in favor of redistribution of wealth in >>the following (approximately) way: assume a rich uncle and a poor >>nephew. If $10K is transferred from the former to the latter, the sum >>of human happiness increases, because the money is more important to >>the nephew. >> >>I asked you then (and was never answered) if you made a distinction >>between *voluntary* and *involuntary* transfer. The act of coercion >>in itself would increase the sum of misery. >How do you know that coercion would increase the sum of misery >(or decrease total utility)? The ones doing the coercing might >get a big buzz out of it, How true! (Until they, too, are sucked in by the meat-grinder). >and so might the bystanders or beneficiaries, who might be glad >to see justice done or see the envied rich get soaked. That, too. Until their turn to be soaked comes... >If we are going to add in the effects of the *process* of redis- >tribution on utility, we have to include *all* the effects, and >these additional effects are difficult to figure. Isn't >benevolence a common human motive? It is (though some of the motives you listed are its opposite). >You overlook the possibility that a person's happiness may be in- >creased merely by seeing someone *else* made better off. Or, as you indicated, by seeing someone made worse off. On the other hand, a lot of innocent vicarious happiness flows from the contemplation of the supposedly glamorous lives of the jet set... >>I think this error of omission is systematic with those who argue for >>state intervention, redistribution, regulation and taxation. They >>ignore the *overhead* involved in enforcing their pet measures, on >>the one side, and resisting them - or submitting to them - on the >>other. The IRS alone has about 100,000 employees - who are soldiers >>on *one* side of a war. It is better not to have a war. >No doubt some people ignore these costs. I try not to overlook them. >And the IRS is not conducting a war, as heavy-handed as it often is. "War" is a metaphor. The IRS is in an adversarial relation to the majority of the population. >But you have your own sins of omission: the costs entailed by the >absence of redistribution, taxation, regulation, etc. We should not >ignore either side. By all means. This is the real center of the problem of redistribution: the structural changes it makes in society. Redistribution itself is mostly a pretext, and goes into unexpected directions... >I presented an ethical argument that laid down some stringent >conditions for coercive population control measures to be morally >acceptable. *Not true*. There was *your* argument for coercive control in general. Then a list of "stringent conditions" by a certain Daniel Callahan, but with no argument at all, either for the con- ditions or for their sufficiency. Just Callahan's declarations. Why should you now decide to appropriate it, is beyond me. It was poor stuff. The "stringent conditions" were all of the type: we will try to do only this much coercion - unless we prefer to do more. >Instead of addressing this ethical argument, you went >raving about hypocrisy and slavering tyrants. But this does not >score many points with thoughtful people. You are *not telling the truth*. I addressed your argument, and refuted it (it was based on a transparent sophism about a "right to conditions of good life" - a right to end all rights). The refutation style was quite flameless. You are not quoting or answering a single line of that refutation, and you've just denied it was there. Too bad. The lines you *are* speaking of were devoted to Callahan's "stringent conditions". In them, there was no argument to answer, just a proposal to evaluate. In context, he deserved all my epithets. Epithets aside, I showed (and even some of the lines you quote show) that the "stringent conditions" open the door to unlimited coercion, that they don't bind the future population czars at all - but only serve as a soporific to help make the program initial- ly acceptable to the unwary. E.g., *one* sufficient reason given for going to any length of coercion is a perceived threat to "distributive justice". Since most people believe such justice is lacking even now, the ready justification for total tyranny is built right into the "stringent conditions". >For example, you implied that I assumed that the state must be full >of good intentions. But I neither said nor implied anything about >the "intentions of the state", whatever that may mean. Instead, I >laid down conditions for certain government actions to be morally >acceptable. You also wrote of "the implication of an omnipotent >state being the sole judge of the `justified' limits of its own >control." But the principles I set forth are entirely compatible >with constitutionalism, in which governmental powers are >constitutionally limited. None of these principles limited them. (And *you* did not set them forth, Callahan did). None of them set a rigid bound, telling the state: thus far and no further. Instead, there was a lot of talk about preferring certain means to others, when possible. Prefer- ences *are* intentions. Instead of talking about what the govern- ment is to be *prevented* from doing (constitutionalism) Cal- lahan is talking about what it ought to *prefer* doing (benevolent despotism). Well, benevolent despotism *isn't*. >Actually, Jan asked precisely, "In the name of *what* principle may >the X's punish the Y's...?" To answer the literal question, I would >have to know what Jan means by "punish". The concept of punishment >generally implies moral wrongdoing on the part of the punishee. But >in my view having an "extra" child (from a demographic standpoint) >would rarely, if ever, be morally wrong. So I do not contemplate >"punishing" people for having "too many" children. Penalties or >sanctions are a different concept from punishment. They are? Why didn't the proponents of the capital punishment think of that? They should just call it "capital penalty" to make it perfectly acceptable to everyone! Some progressive people around the world do better than "penalty", though: they call tor- ture "re-education"... The AH dictionary: "punish 1. To subject (someone) to penalty for a crime, fault or misbehavior." "penalty: a punishment established by law or authority for a crime or offense." >>Are the X's to tell the Z's : the seal's right to have puppies is, >>under our political philosophy, greater than your right to have >>children? >> >>What political philosophy is that? >Clearly, a philosophy in which animal rights play a role. Not enough: they need to be greater than human rights. >I haven't said a thing about animal rights. No, but you talked of species preservation (a worthy goal, I agree) as being a reason for restricting existing human rights (which puts us into the X-Y-Z situation). > [silly personal remarks omitted] Jan Wasilewsky