Inner Questions

Well, I guess I’ll put down the Sudoku app for a few minutes and give this another shot. I’ve been paying $60/year for the last three-and-a-half years since my last post to keep this domain name and webpage, so I might as well get some use out of it! I’m still not sure what exactly I’ll wind up talking about or who my audience really is, but maybe it will start to click if I just force myself to sit down and write something/anything.

In that spirit, some things are finally coming together anyway. It’s been close to six years since I moved to the DC area, which is about the longest I’ve ever been in one place. That time has been split between an apartment, a condo, and now my new townhouse, but at least it’s been in the same general area. More stability in that regard has been a nice change of pace. And it’s definitely a lot quieter now. Maybe that will help me focus on this a little more!

Well, only one week has passed since my last post, so I guess that’s progress!  Previously, I’ve waited until a subject came to me before I sat down to type.  This time, I’m going to give it a few minutes and see where my mind takes me…

Maybe this will be the first time my blog actually lives up to its title.  In one of my previous posts, I mentioned the idea that what is fundamentally valuable will vary from person to person.  When I say “fundamentally,” I mean something that is valued for its own sake rather than as a means to some other end.  I value money for the flexibility it gives me, not because my ultimate goal is to see how much I can accumulate over the years.

The most fundamental goal is a life worth living, but that is too vague to act as a guide.  What I mean by “fundamental” in this context is the list of a life’s characteristics that make it worth living  without being subordinate to other characteristics/goals, which brings me (in the third paragraph, finally) to the question I can’t answer with a degree of justification that I find satisfactory:  How should I identify those fundamental goals?  Put another way, what kind of explanation for their existence should I find acceptable?

To some extent, for example, the explanation is certainly evolutionary in nature.  I want X because my ancestors wouldn’t have survived and reproduced if they hadn’t wanted it.  In a similar vein, I might want X because I found it pleasurable in the past or because I was socialized to want it.  In each case, we are back to the is-ought gap.  How can my neurological wiring justify a particular choice?  If the goal is simply to avoid pain, why should that take precedence?

The only explanation that I can generate at the moment is that our emotions are the fundamental building blocks of the system.  Beyond a certain point, if someone asks why they should want X, the only answer seems to be that I want it because I want it.  That doesn’t sound like a very good response to me, but I don’t see a way around it at this point.

Given that this is a blog, this topic seemed like a logical starting point.  I stated in my last post that the proper use of force by the government must be restricted to the protection of, primarily negative, individual rights when threatened or violated by force/violence or fraud.  This in turn begs the question of what (if anything) constitutes violence beyond the obvious case of physical aggression.  Some have taken the position that speech alone inflicts damage and therefore constitutes violence that should be met with violence in turn.  There are a number of problems with this position that I will outline below.

First, in order for something to constitute a right, its exercise cannot violate the rights of others.  This creates a fundamental conflict between rights claims that cannot be avoided.  Granting that the traditional restrictions (fire in a crowded theater, slander, etc.) are generally appropriate, the question becomes what those restrictions have in common.  The answer is that those categories of speech consist of specific, factually (as opposed to normatively) incorrect claims that will predictably result in injuries.  That is, obvious physical damage from the stampede in the theater and the inability to enter into relationships with individuals who believe the slanderous claims.  Note, however, that in the case of slander, simply making a false claim is not sufficient to trigger liability (and the bar is much higher when dealing with public figures).  As with the next objection below, the result of making all false claims actionable would be to suppress speech across the board due to the desire to avoid liability in an environment in which perfect information is never available.  All of this is to say that declaring all upsetting speech to be violence would suppress speech in the absence of a rights violation.  To that extent, the use of actual violence to silence it is not justified.

Second, if all beliefs expressed in speech are deemed violence so long as someone is sufficiently upset, virtually no speech would be permitted in short order.  Such a standard would obviously be unworkable in practice, so it would only beg the question of which statements/groups are to be protected.  For example, if someone objects to same sex marriage on the grounds that it is unnatural according to his or her religious beliefs, a supporter could assert that this claim is bigoted and that the objector should be punished for expressing this view.  The objector in turn, however, could assert that the claim of bigotry itself is a form of violence to the extent that it attacks the objector for his or her religious beliefs.  The only way out of an impasse like this would be to declare that some forms of identity are more equal than others.  If the objective of the supporters of the claim that speech is equivalent to violence is the protection of vulnerable minorities, they should think long and hard about whether such a standard is counterproductive.

Lastly, the suppression of speech only encourages violence in turn from the speakers who have been silenced.  If even the possibility of convincing others by their speech that they are right has been taken away, that only leaves two alternatives:  surrender or violence.  If the issue in question is important and fundamental enough, violence will appear to be the only honorable choice.  Making matters worse, declaring their speech unlawful will only drive them underground rather than changing their minds.  This will have two negative consequences.  First, it will create an echo chamber because they will never have an opportunity to openly engage with those who disagree with them.  Not only will their beliefs go unchallenged, but the more radical elements will be likely to take the rest of the group to an even greater extreme.  Second, it will make it much more difficult to identify real threats before they have passed the point of no return.

Once again, this has taken much longer to write than I anticipated, so I will end my post here (as incomplete as it may be).  I could stare at my monitor for another hour or two, but I suspect that I have reached the point of diminishing returns for now.

Well, I guess a delay of three weeks beats the months I took off between the last two posts… Progress!  This should be the last of the introductory posts before I start going off in different directions and seeing where that takes me.  (And I’m only giving myself about 15 minutes to write this, since I need a self-imposed deadline to avoid staring at my computer monitor for half the night.)

My goal here is to quickly sketch the fundamental principles from which my later political posts will follow.  I will start from the premise that government (defined as some individual or group having an effective monopoly on the use of force in a given area) is inevitable.  Anarchy is possible, but it is unstable and unlikely to last for long.

Given that, the next issue becomes the identification of government’s proper objective.  What is the end towards which that monopoly on force should be directed?  The only proper goal can be the protection of the individual rights of the society’s members.  In turn, these rights will wind up being overwhelmingly negative.  In other words, the focus will be on the right to be secure in your person against assault and in your property against theft, etc., as opposed to a right to food, health care, and so on, which can only be realized by the confiscation of someone else’s property or their coerced labor.  The obvious exception to this would be the creation of police and military forces to prevent the unjustified use of force by domestic and foreign actors respectively and the establishment of a legal system to settle disputes.  To the extent that the government is going to prohibit self-help (which would otherwise be justified), it has a duty to provide an alternate form of protection.

In this model, the rule of law will take its place as a (very important) means to an end, but still only a means.  It will only (ethically) require obedience to the extent that it is in line with the principles just described.  When the law oversteps its bounds, the question of compliance will turn on the individual’s values and the specifics of the situation.  In some situations, it may be a simple utilitarian calculation.  If the punishment for jaywalking is the death penalty and I know I will be caught, I won’t do it.  On the other hand, there will be some situations that implicate values too important to surrender regardless of the consequences.

And with that I see I am already past my deadline, so that will have to be it for tonight!

Well, I guess you can call this a delayed New Year’s resolution…  I wasn’t sure if I had anything to say that was coherent enough to be worth posting.  Add my perfectionism to the mix, and that is why this thing came to a screeching halt after three posts last year.  After one or two more posts to finish laying some groundwork that began with the last two, I’m going to start off with more of a random, thought-of-the-day style and see if that will help with the writer’s block!

I do not believe there is a way to logically bridge this gap.  Any attempt at justification will ultimately devolve into an infinite regress, circular logic, or a fundamental choice/premise that cannot itself be justified.  Given these options, my position will start from the choice to live.  More specifically, it will start from that choice, assuming that certain other conditions (values) are satisfied. The specifics of those conditions will vary from person to person due to differences in personality, but the analysis following their selection should not.  In other words, the fundamental question that ethics must address is how to realize the selected values.  The answers are the virtues: rationality, courage, etc.

As applied to other people, this requires acknowledgment of the fact that it would be contradictory to treat others as a means to an end while at the same time expecting them to treat you as an end. They require the same freedom of action to realize their goals as you do.  Success for either of you is not guaranteed, however.  This leads to the distinction between negative and positive rights which I will address in my next post on politics.  For now, it is sufficient to note that there is generally no ethical duty to assist others.  Such a duty would have no logical limit and could only lead to self-destruction.  All of this applies to relationships with humanity at large.  To the extent that you value certain individuals, helping them does not constitute a sacrifice so long as your commitment is commensurate with their value to you.

The first issue that must be addressed concerns the proper method for answering the questions that will follow.  In short, what is the most reliable way of arriving at the truth? Note that, due to imperfect information, etc., I am starting from the premise that 100% reliability is impossible.  By the same token, however, requiring that degree of certainty (or its polar opposite, complete skepticism) will only lead to complete paralysis and death. Therefore, if the ultimate purpose of my system is to ensure a certain quality of life (to include the determination of when that is no longer achievable), some second-best alternative must be identified and accepted (subject to future revisions, as necessary).  With all that in mind, the candidates can be divided into three categories: a faith-based or otherwise irrational approach, pure reason divorced from experience, and reason guided by that same experience.

The faith-based option is unacceptable for a number of reasons.  The first objection is that this method permits the construction of multiple systems, each of which may be internally consistent while still fundamentally in conflict with the others.  In such a situation, there is no good way to choose between them.  For example, every religion claims some set of miracles as “evidence” for its truth while disregarding the equivalent claims of the others as frauds, misunderstanding, etc.  Of course, such an explanation could just as easily be turned against them.  Next, even within a particular system, any apparent contradictions may be shrugged off as a mystery understood  only by god.  Lastly, this approach also has a habit of shutting down further inquiry, either by making the claim that a particular text, story, etc. contains all the answers or by simply taking the position that if we don’t know what the answer is, the answer must be god.

The application of pure reason runs into some of the same problems.  Once again, mutually contradictory systems may coexist.  Once again, there is no means of assessing the validity of a particular system as applied to reality as we understand it.  As with the faith-based option, I’m sure this method could come up with all sorts of interesting answers to the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, none of which will settle the question of their existence in the first place.

This leaves reason applied to experience as the last remaining option.  Again, the results will not be infallible, and some kind of Matrix-style scenario is theoretically possible.  In that case, however, no other approach will fare better than this one, and this one has a better track record of producing useful results if we are not being fundamentally deceived in such a manner.  In this second-best world where absolute certainty is not possible, the best approach will be to tentatively construct our models of reality, ethics, etc., act accordingly, and adjust them as justified by new information and experience.

This has already gone on too long for a blog post, and I’m sure I’ll get back to all this at some point later on.  Therefore, I will avoid going over this with a fine-toothed comb 10 times, hit “Publish,” and sign off for now!

 

As the title implies, I’m not entirely sure where this blog will go or what the focus will be. I don’t anticipate a completely stream of consciousness style, but I can’t say I’m inclined to leave much out, either. I also expect, at least in the beginning, to generate more questions than answers (hence the title…). On the other hand, putting things into writing tends to be more productive than running around in circles in my head. And now that I’ve been staring at my monitor for the last 10 minutes, I will take that as a hint that it’s time to sign off for now. Maybe it will come to me tomorrow.

With that in mind, let’s get started!