Zeleny and Homosexuality
CHRISTIAN S MORLEY
Homosexual intercourse between two males who are both sterile
(obviously not through "self-immolation, these men were born this way)?
By your argument this would seem morally fine. On the flip side, how about
two women who are both past menopause engaging in sex with one another?
Thank you for your time.
-----Christian Morley
csmo...@student.umass.edu
Mikhail Zeleny
csmo...@titan.ucs.umass.edu (CHRISTIAN S MORLEY) writes:
>One question regarding your doctrine, Mr. Zeleny. How do you feel
>about Homosexual intercourse between two males who are both sterile
>(obviously not through "self-immolation, these men were born this
>way)? By your argument this would seem morally fine. On the flip
>side, how about two women who are both past menopause engaging in sex
>with one another? Thank you for your time.
By all means; but let us commence with a few quibbles. Lacking a
body of believers or adherents to my principles, I would prefer not
to have them misleadingly characterized as a doctrine. Moreover, my
feelings on the subject range between amusement, indifference, pity,
boredom, and contempt; however I submit that they have no bearing on
the moral facts of the amtter. As regards your question, my stated
moral criteria imply that the only form of sterility possessed of a
significant force of biological necessity, would be the extremely
rare kind that is caused by the participants' genotypes. Since in
such exceptional cases the issues of biological sex (as determined,
say, by the male genotype XY conflicting with the female phenotype
caused by a hormonal disorder incurred during fetal development) and
gender (as determined by the aspects of cultural self-identification)
tend to become exceedingly complicated, I see no way to give an easy
and clear-cut answer, except by noting that medical sex reassignment
would be surely warranted, if and only if it were performed in order
to make the patient's phenotype conform to his or her genotype.
> -----Christian Morley
> csmo...@student.umass.edu
>
cordially,
mikhail zel...@gevalt.mit.edu -- a man in transition
"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."
Scott Cudmore
Please correct me if I'm wrong (as I'm sure you will) Mr. Zeleny. Here is
your argument as I see it:
1) The purpose of sexual intercourse between male and female is
reproduction.
2) Reproduction is moral because it allows a species to continue.
Allowing a species to continue is good for the species, survival is the
goal of all life, etc. etc. etc.
3) Any other 'use' of sexual intercourse is morally blameworthy because it
contradicts 1) and 2) above.
Just an innocent bystander,
Mikhail Zeleny
cssc...@atlas.cs.upei.ca (Scott Cudmore) writes:
>Please correct me if I'm wrong (as I'm sure you will) Mr. Zeleny. Here is
>your argument as I see it:
>1) The purpose of sexual intercourse between male and female is
> reproduction.
That would be the moral purpose. There are many other purposes, as
you ought to realize by now.
>2) Reproduction is moral because it allows a species to continue.
> Allowing a species to continue is good for the species, survival
> is the goal of all life, etc. etc. etc.
Reproduction is a moral duty because it allows the self to continue.
Neither the continuation of the species nor personal survival enter
into the equation. Care for the self ought to precede care for the
neighbor, as both Locke and Freud will readily tell you. And personal
survival is both impossible, and frequently undesirable.
>3) Any other 'use' of sexual intercourse is morally blameworthy
> because it contradicts 1) and 2) above.
Certainly not! Not even such notoriously anhedonic cranks as Immanuel
Kant or John-Paul II would claim anything as silly as that. But since
the reasoning is somewhat subtle, it warrants elucidation. Any free
choice of the fundamental aspects of sexual intercourse, that renders
it necessarily sterile, is _ipso facto_ a bad choice. In other words,
given that the most fundamental choice involved in human sexuality, is
arguably the choice of one's partner, choosing a partner whose sexual
identity is inherently incompatible with the reproductive possibility,
is morally blameworthy.
>Just an innocent bystander,
>
cordially, | Why is it that all those who have become eminent
mikhail "el desdichado" | in philosophy or politics or poetry or art
zel...@gevalt.mit.edu | are clearly of an atrabilious temperament?
jw...@key.amdahl.com
John Williams
gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu
> to have them misleadingly characterized as a doctrine. Moreover, my
> feelings on the subject range between amusement, indifference, pity,
> boredom, and contempt
In that case, might I humbly suggest that you shut the fuck up?
That way you could spare the rest of us the boredom, indifference,
pity, contempt, and nausea your postings generally engender.
Mikhail Zeleny
cssc...@atlas.cs.upei.ca (Scott Cudmore) writes:
|||Please correct me if I'm wrong (as I'm sure you will) Mr. Zeleny.
|||Here is your argument as I see it:
|||1) The purpose of sexual intercourse between male and female is
||| reproduction.
||That would be the moral purpose. There are many other purposes, as
||you ought to realize by now.
|After three children, I'm beginning to wonder...
They say that doubt is the _sine qua non_ of the philosophical method.
|||2) Reproduction is moral because it allows a species to continue.
||| Allowing a species to continue is good for the species, survival
||| is the goal of all life, etc. etc. etc.
||Reproduction is a moral duty because it allows the self to continue.
||Neither the continuation of the species nor personal survival enter
||into the equation. Care for the self ought to precede care for the
||neighbor, as both Locke and Freud will readily tell you. And personal
||survival is both impossible, and frequently undesirable.
|Thank you for the clarification. But I will be the first to admit I'm
|still confused. I will tax your charity one more time...
No problem.
|I think I'm having trouble with your use of the word 'self'. Physical
|self? (genetics) psychological self? (ego) philosophical self? (spirit)
|mythological self? (rebirth)
Why not all of the above?
|Do we have a definitive argument for the existance of any 'self' or
|must we take it as axiomatic?
For the physical self, empirical observation furnishes sufficient
support of persistence of the organism, interpreted as a certain
material structure. (Indeed, good arguments to the effect that the
identity of living organisms, construed along the Aristotelian lines,
furnishes the grounds for our best accounts of the identity of *all*
material beings, can be found in the recent books by Montgomery Furth
and Peter van Inwagen.) For the personal identity, introspection
yields adequate testimony, as based on the continuity of memory and
the experience of volition. (The main arguments are to be found in
the Aristotelian theory of material substance, and Locke's views on
personal identity, as elaborated by Reid in view of Hume's critique.)
|Yours,
Ted B Samsel
Se#or Z may well change his tune when he spawns and has a passe
(passel) of brats to feed and water. He'll also use words of
fewer syllables.
(Only hypothetical)
--
Ted....
Angus H Rodgers
zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>Moreover, my
>feelings on the subject range between amusement, indifference, pity,
>boredom, and contempt
That is impossible, because no-one who only had those feelings on the
matter would spend so much energy on promulgating his views about it --
especially in the face of so much hostility (not to mention amusement,
indifference, pity, boredom, and contempt)!
Seriously, I thought you were more honest than this; I'm disappointed.
But perhaps it was dishonest of me, in the first place, to have hoped
to learn something by enquiring into, not my own strong and confusing
feelings on the vexed topics of homosexuality and absolute morality,
but the strong opinions and unknown feelings of someone else who just
happens to be more willing than I am to expose himself to the world. :)
I'm sorry that I only treated your response to my recent enquiry (in the
"encyclical" thread) as a joke. I shall try to find the time and energy
to take it seriously; but I can't promise that I will be able to so so.
>however I submit that [his feelings] have no bearing on
>the moral facts of the amtter.
That is true. However, your feelings may have some bearing on the feelings
of other "antihomosexuals" [to coin a term]; and you, unlike most of your
kind, apparently believe that you are able (and obliged?) to account for
your disappoval of homosexuality in a manner which will persuade at least
some intelligent and moral people to agree with you [and if that is not
your motive, you are engaging in a tacit deception]; and it seems clear to
me that those beliefs which are taken to be "axiomatic", so to speak, in
such an account could reasonably be expected to give the attentive reader
an idea of the feelings which fuel your opinions [please note carefully
that this is not an _ad hominem_ attempt on my part to use "psychological
interpretation" to deprive your argument of whatever validity and/or moral
authority it may possess]; and that is why I, for one, have some (limited)
interest in understanding your position.
>mikhail zel...@gevalt.mit.edu -- a man in transition
Good luck with the operation. :)
--
Gus Rodgers, Dept. of Computer Science, Queen Mary & Westfield College,
Mile End Road, London, England +44 71 975 5241 arod...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk
Angus H Rodgers
zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>In article <1993Sep13.2...@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca>
>cssc...@atlas.cs.upei.ca (Scott Cudmore) writes:
>>Please correct me if I'm wrong (as I'm sure you will) Mr. Zeleny. Here is
>>your argument as I see it:
>>1) The purpose of sexual intercourse between male and female is
>> reproduction.
>That would be the moral purpose. There are many other purposes, as
>you ought to realize by now.
What is a "moral purpose"? Please explain, as the phrase is not part
of common speech, nor am I familiar with any philosophical system to
which it might belong. (I can only guess that you mean an obligation.
But this does seem to be confirmed by the text that follows.)
>>2) Reproduction is moral because it allows a species to continue.
>> Allowing a species to continue is good for the species, survival
>> is the goal of all life, etc. etc. etc.
>Reproduction is a moral duty because it allows the self to continue.
>Neither the continuation of the species nor personal survival enter
>into the equation. Care for the self ought to precede care for the
>neighbor, as both Locke and Freud will readily tell you. And personal
>survival is both impossible, and frequently undesirable.
Your argument is beginning to make some sense to me now. (Scott has
obviously found the right key!) "Homosexuality is bad because it is
a form of soul-suicide": would that an accurate (albeit intolerably
brief and informal) summary of your argument?
>>3) Any other 'use' of sexual intercourse is morally blameworthy
>> because it contradicts 1) and 2) above.
>Certainly not! Not even such notoriously anhedonic cranks as Immanuel
>Kant or John-Paul II would claim anything as silly as that. But since
>the reasoning is somewhat subtle, it warrants elucidation. Any free
>choice of the fundamental aspects of sexual intercourse, that renders
>it necessarily sterile, is _ipso facto_ a bad choice. In other words,
>given that the most fundamental choice involved in human sexuality, is
>arguably the choice of one's partner, choosing a partner whose sexual
>identity is inherently incompatible with the reproductive possibility,
>is morally blameworthy.
That's simple enough. (No need here for three axes of possible worlds
and seven accessibility relations, methinks, any more than they would
be needed to explain how to tie your shoelaces or suck an egg.)
The argument is that a person's choice to take only homosexual partners
frustrates that same person's [possibly unconscious] need for [some kind
of] personal survival beyond bodily death; that this need is intrinsic to
human nature (as is presumably proved by our possession of organs fitted
primarily for heterosexual intercourse), which is to say, it must really
be present in all of us, even if some of us are not [willing to be] aware
of it; and that this frustration of a [possibly repressed] part of the
self is in itself a moral wrong [analogous, perhaps, to the killing of a
foetus in the womb], irrespective of all other factors in the situation
(including the question whether it is a conscious or unconscious choice).
Is that correct? (Please don't rush to formalise it, or to criticise it
merely for its informality: I prefer piecemeal clarification of disputed
points, and I see no reason why you shouldn't be content with the same.)
May I call it a "Freudian-Catholic" position? (I've often been struck by
this kind of parallel between those two great authoritarian ideologies.)
You also appear to be taking it as a premise that exclusively homosexual
orientation is a "free choice": is that correct? If so, have you reasons
to support this premise?
Mikhail Zeleny
|In <272rq2$b...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
|zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
||Moreover, my
||feelings on the subject range between amusement, indifference, pity,
||boredom, and contempt
|That is impossible, because no-one who only had those feelings on the
|matter would spend so much energy on promulgating his views about it --
|especially in the face of so much hostility (not to mention amusement,
|indifference, pity, boredom, and contempt)!
|Seriously, I thought you were more honest than this; I'm disappointed.
You are mistaking the order of my motivation. I have no urge to
censure my neighbor for his gall in choosing a lifestyle in
opposition to *my* moral principles. What gets me going, is the
climate where one can stand accused of any number of intellectual
transgressions, merely for his audacity in airing out a considered
moral judgment of such a lifestyle. It's like that: Robert Stone,
in a generally sympathetic article on gays in the military, in the
current issue of the NYRB, cites the testimony of a homosexual GI,
advocating the banishment of the last vestiges of "Judaeo-Christian
morality", which stands in the way of his military career. Now, I
have no brief for religious dogma of any sort; but it really gets
my goat to see this inanely oblivious clamoring for automatic moral
entitlement, which to me is as repugnant as any clarion call to
exterminate kikes, commies, faggots, or niggers. Thus I derive no
small amount of pleasure from crushing the creatures who are prone
to such presumption, regardless of the ideology they espouse, or
the orifice they prefer.
|But perhaps it was dishonest of me, in the first place, to have hoped
|to learn something by enquiring into, not my own strong and confusing
|feelings on the vexed topics of homosexuality and absolute morality,
|but the strong opinions and unknown feelings of someone else who just
|happens to be more willing than I am to expose himself to the world. :)
What's the difference? Socrates addressed his own "strong and
confusing feelings" by enquiring into the feelings of others.
|I'm sorry that I only treated your response to my recent enquiry (in the
|"encyclical" thread) as a joke. I shall try to find the time and energy
|to take it seriously; but I can't promise that I will be able to so so.
Take it seriously, and take it as a joke, -- the possibilities are
not mutually exclusive.
||however I submit that [his feelings] have no bearing on
||the moral facts of the amtter.
|That is true. However, your feelings may have some bearing on the feelings
|of other "antihomosexuals" [to coin a term]; and you, unlike most of your
|kind, apparently believe that you are able (and obliged?) to account for
|your disappoval of homosexuality in a manner which will persuade at least
|some intelligent and moral people to agree with you [and if that is not
|your motive, you are engaging in a tacit deception]; and it seems clear to
|me that those beliefs which are taken to be "axiomatic", so to speak, in
|such an account could reasonably be expected to give the attentive reader
|an idea of the feelings which fuel your opinions [please note carefully
|that this is not an _ad hominem_ attempt on my part to use "psychological
|interpretation" to deprive your argument of whatever validity and/or moral
|authority it may possess]; and that is why I, for one, have some (limited)
|interest in understanding your position.
Agreed; but I suspect that my strongest feelings have to do with
the freedom of thought, rather than the ends of sexuality.
||mikhail zel...@gevalt.mit.edu -- a man in transition
|Good luck with the operation. :)
Thanks; I'll need it.
|--
|Gus Rodgers, Dept. of Computer Science, Queen Mary & Westfield College,
|Mile End Road, London, England +44 71 975 5241 arod...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk
cordially, | Why is it that all those who have become eminent
Scott Cudmore
||| reproduction.
||That would be the moral purpose. There are many other purposes, as
||you ought to realize by now.
They say that doubt is the _sine qua non_ of the philosophical method.
|||2) Reproduction is moral because it allows a species to continue.
||| Allowing a species to continue is good for the species, survival
||| is the goal of all life, etc. etc. etc.
||Reproduction is a moral duty because it allows the self to continue.
||Neither the continuation of the species nor personal survival enter
||into the equation. Care for the self ought to precede care for the
||neighbor, as both Locke and Freud will readily tell you. And personal
||survival is both impossible, and frequently undesirable.
I am told I have an extremely open mind, and that is why things keep falling
through it and bouncing once or twice on the floor.
Let me play Socrates for a moment, if you will.
Why is reproduction the only moral purpose of sexual intercourse?
Through the process of artificial insemination I can reproduce without
sexual intercourse. Therefore, sexual intercourse is irrelavent to
reproduction. There is no moral issue in the purpose for which an individual
uses sexual intercourse since it is irrelavent.
question: is the only moral purpose of a test-tube reproduction?
Yours,
Scott
Mikhail Zeleny
|In <272v9p$c...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
|zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
||In article <1993Sep13.2...@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca>
||cssc...@atlas.cs.upei.ca (Scott Cudmore) writes:
|||Please correct me if I'm wrong (as I'm sure you will) Mr. Zeleny.
|||Here is your argument as I see it:
|||1) The purpose of sexual intercourse between male and female is
||| reproduction.
||That would be the moral purpose. There are many other purposes, as
||you ought to realize by now.
|What is a "moral purpose"? Please explain, as the phrase is not part
|of common speech, nor am I familiar with any philosophical system to
|which it might belong. (I can only guess that you mean an obligation.
|But this does seem to be confirmed by the text that follows.)
An obligation is something that must be done, in the sense that
failing to do it is morally blameworthy. By contrast, a moral
purpose is an action or event, the performance or bringing about
of which is morally praiseworthy. Thus failure to accomplish
one's moral purpose is not necessarily blameworthy; but willful
obstruction thereof is always blameworthy. I think that the
basic distinction is Kantian, between Rights and ends; but the
interpretation and deployment thereof are all mine.
|||2) Reproduction is moral because it allows a species to continue.
||| Allowing a species to continue is good for the species, survival
||| is the goal of all life, etc. etc. etc.
||Reproduction is a moral duty because it allows the self to continue.
||Neither the continuation of the species nor personal survival enter
||into the equation. Care for the self ought to precede care for the
||neighbor, as both Locke and Freud will readily tell you. And personal
||survival is both impossible, and frequently undesirable.
|Your argument is beginning to make some sense to me now. (Scott has
|obviously found the right key!) "Homosexuality is bad because it is
|a form of soul-suicide": would that an accurate (albeit intolerably
|brief and informal) summary of your argument?
I am uncomfortable with slogans, particularly when they introduce
loaded terminology not appearing in the full-length account. Souls
are very much a matter of speculative conjecture, whereas bodies,
along with the means of their continuation, are a tangible given.
It seems more appropriate to choose the mundane, corporeal reality
as the basis of one's moral calculation.
|||3) Any other 'use' of sexual intercourse is morally blameworthy
||| because it contradicts 1) and 2) above.
||Certainly not! Not even such notoriously anhedonic cranks as Immanuel
||Kant or John-Paul II would claim anything as silly as that. But since
||the reasoning is somewhat subtle, it warrants elucidation. Any free
||choice of the fundamental aspects of sexual intercourse, that renders
||it necessarily sterile, is _ipso facto_ a bad choice. In other words,
||given that the most fundamental choice involved in human sexuality, is
||arguably the choice of one's partner, choosing a partner whose sexual
||identity is inherently incompatible with the reproductive possibility,
||is morally blameworthy.
|That's simple enough. (No need here for three axes of possible worlds
|and seven accessibility relations, methinks, any more than they would
|be needed to explain how to tie your shoelaces or suck an egg.)
Note however, that the multifarious possibilia are still there,
lurking at the tricky points of fundamental choices, necessary
sterility, and inherent incompatibility.
|The argument is that a person's choice to take only homosexual partners
|frustrates that same person's [possibly unconscious] need for [some kind
|of] personal survival beyond bodily death; that this need is intrinsic to
|human nature (as is presumably proved by our possession of organs fitted
|primarily for heterosexual intercourse), which is to say, it must really
|be present in all of us, even if some of us are not [willing to be] aware
|of it; and that this frustration of a [possibly repressed] part of the
|self is in itself a moral wrong [analogous, perhaps, to the killing of a
|foetus in the womb], irrespective of all other factors in the situation
|(including the question whether it is a conscious or unconscious choice).
Given my Platonistic prejudices, I am not fully comfortable with
your psychological terminology. I doubt that morality is a form
of unconscious inclination. On the contrary, I suspect that our
moral need is, in some sense, profoundly at odds with our urges
and inclinations. There is something within me, goading me to
kill one half of mankind and fuck the other half, and it is never
clear how the halves are to be separated; there is yet something
else, urging me to submit my impulses to the scrutiny of reason.
I think that morality consists in arbitration between the claims
of instinct and the restraints of reason, or vice versa. I also
think that its scope pertains to each individual choice, rather
than to a projected or completed sequence of such choices, which
constitutes the entirety of each human life. For we have neither
the means to control the circumstances of our future, nor the
metric to account for the merits and demerits of our past. Thus
each moral choice must be judged without regard for potentially
alleviating eventualities of the agent's future, or allegedly
extenuating circumstances of his past.
|Is that correct? (Please don't rush to formalise it, or to criticise it
|merely for its informality: I prefer piecemeal clarification of disputed
|points, and I see no reason why you shouldn't be content with the same.)
So be it.
|May I call it a "Freudian-Catholic" position? (I've often been struck by
|this kind of parallel between those two great authoritarian ideologies.)
I would think that Freudian reasoning is inimical to the spirit
of the Catholic dogma, though not necessarily to the venerable
Thomistic rationale that supported it at one time. In any event,
I am not too thrilled about labels, even when they are cunningly
fashioned from flattering allusions to my exalted body parts.
But I certainly would not want to dictate your use of convenient
catchwords.
|You also appear to be taking it as a premise that exclusively homosexual
|orientation is a "free choice": is that correct? If so, have you reasons
|to support this premise?
I think that, while orientation or inclination may well be subject
to innate constraints, actual preference, as determined by the
manifest exercising of one's inclination, or deliberate pursuit of
his orientation, must be chosen freely. Were it not so, we could
never judge any action that accords with our inclination.
|--
|Gus Rodgers, Dept. of Computer Science, Queen Mary & Westfield College,
|Mile End Road, London, England +44 71 975 5241 arod...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk
Angus H Rodgers
zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>[...] Robert Stone,
>in a generally sympathetic article on gays in the military, in the
>current issue of the NYRB, cites the testimony of a homosexual GI,
>advocating the banishment of the last vestiges of "Judaeo-Christian
>morality", which stands in the way of his military career. Now, I
>have no brief for religious dogma of any sort; but it really gets
>my goat to see this inanely oblivious clamoring for automatic moral
>entitlement, which to me is as repugnant as any clarion call to
>exterminate kikes, commies, faggots, or niggers. [...]
But doesn't it occur to you that, even though the GI may only be able
to articulate his moral position in relativistic terms which are as
repugnant to you as they are to me, he may be mutely appealing to --
even if he might never be able to argue for -- an absolute morality,
which differs from the Judaeo-Christian absolutism, and in differing
from it, judges it to be absolutely at fault?
The man is, after all, "morally disenfranchised". [I've just made that
phrase up. Do you think I could get it accepted as official PC-speak?]
To expect him not only to struggle for his own civil rights, but also
to articulate an entire moral philosophy, before you will judge him to
be worthy of support in his struggle, betrays what one might well call
an "inverted" scale of moral values.
Unless, that is, you judge there to be something so *uniquely* awful
about homosexuality, that those who practise it do deserve to be (as
they are) singled out for special persecution, from amongst all those
who -- in one way or another -- you would consider to be putting their
immortal souls in danger, so to speak. In that case (which does seem
to be what you believe), your position would be quite reasonable, as
you simply would not judge this man's struggle to be worthy of support
at all.
But where is your argument for this uniqueness? In its absence, I have
to take you to be saying that anyone who [on the basis of questionable
theory] can be inferred [by some unspecified authority] to be damaging
their own spiritual welfare should be discriminated against by society's
powerful institutions (not to mention gangs of thugs, malicious gossips,
blackmailers, bigoted private employers, etc. etc.). So, can I expect to
see you calling next for all celibates to be banned from the military?
And in any case, to describe the call for equal rights for homosexuals
as a call for "automatic moral entitlement" [by which phrase, I assume
you mean what others call "special rights"] is to make what I'm afraid
I can only describe as a stupid mistake -- and one which gets *my* goat.
(I shall try to avoid flames any worse than this one.)
Judaeo-Christian morality may have a lot to teach (I must have learned
a lot from it, if "learned" is a strong enough word for the experience
of something so formative), but it also has a lot to learn. And where
it has failed to learn, it continues to impose a crippling burden of
unjustified guilt on huge numbers of innocent people: a burden to which
(for reasons I cannot even plausibly guess at) you appear to delight in
adding. (I say this because, from your evident relish in mounting this
campaign -- as well as from the number of careful rebuttals you already
seem to have received from intelligent and decent people -- I cannot see
your behaviour as being the result of simple obliviousness to the fact
that much unnecessary suffering is caused by the continuing prevalence
of absolutist -- but absolutely false -- moral values.)
(I'll also try to avoid preaching any sermons worse than this one.) :)
>Thus I derive no
>small amount of pleasure from crushing the creatures who are prone
>to such presumption, regardless of the ideology they espouse, or
>the orifice they prefer.
I doubt if you really know the source of this pleasure. (No, neither do I.)
>|I'm sorry that I only treated your response to my recent enquiry (in the
>|"encyclical" thread) as a joke. I shall try to find the time and energy
>|to take it seriously; but I can't promise that I will be able to so so.
>Take it seriously, and take it as a joke, -- the possibilities are
>not mutually exclusive.
I know; and that's why I wrote "only".
(And I certainly couldn't *only* treat it seriously: it would have been
immoral not to allow myself to laugh out loud at it, first.) :)
>[...] I suspect that my strongest feelings have to do with
>the freedom of thought, rather than the ends of sexuality.
I doubt if the two can be separated as much as you imagine.
Mysterious, huh? Mystified, more like. The existence of a connection
between people's sexual and intellectual lives becomes more and more
obvious to me, the older (and sadder and wiser) I get; but the exact
nature of this connection still escapes me almost completely. So I'm
still waiting for some maverick psychoanalyst to write a book on the
topic of "Reason and its vicissitudes".
Oh damn, there goes my credibility again. :)
jw...@key.amdahl.com
> Agreed; but I suspect that my strongest feelings have to do with
> the freedom of thought, rather than the ends of sexuality.
Freedom "of" thought? I do not think you've thought very carefully about this.
If you wanted freedom of thought, you would not be arguing here, you would
simply be thinking about whatever popped into your head. In fact, what I believe
you want is not the freedom itself, but the kernal of freedom that allows
creativity simply through the mutation of thought. You then want to test
how your thoughts hold up. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, and
there is little I can do to change that, however I can not validate your
morality by consenting to it.
John Williams
jw...@key.amdahl.com
> I think that morality consists in arbitration between the claims
> of instinct and the restraints of reason, or vice versa. I also
> think that its scope pertains to each individual choice, rather
> than to a projected or completed sequence of such choices, which
> constitutes the entirety of each human life. For we have neither
> the means to control the circumstances of our future, nor the
> metric to account for the merits and demerits of our past. Thus
> each moral choice must be judged without regard for potentially
> alleviating eventualities of the agent's future, or allegedly
> extenuating circumstances of his past.
I can't believe what I just read. I would assert exactly the opposite,
that will is the ability to project some goal on the future and then
make it so. Because there are so many other agents operating in the
world, the outcome can not be deterministic, but one can certainly
demonstrate how the future can be constrained. In addition to the
above objection, if the past does not provide the material needed
to develop the will, what does?
In response to your objection that my system provides no grounds for
morality given that I don't get caught, I would assert that my concern
would then turn towards the environment, that is, I would act in a manner
consistent with the environment I willed to live in.
If man does not use his past to control his future, then will can not
exist, and his life is reduced to pure instinct. Discussions about rational
control over instinct become nonsense because his rational control is also
instinct.
John Williams
Mikhail Zeleny
||I think that morality consists in arbitration between the claims
||of instinct and the restraints of reason, or vice versa. I also
||think that its scope pertains to each individual choice, rather
||than to a projected or completed sequence of such choices, which
||constitutes the entirety of each human life. For we have neither
||the means to control the circumstances of our future, nor the
||metric to account for the merits and demerits of our past. Thus
||each moral choice must be judged without regard for potentially
||alleviating eventualities of the agent's future, or allegedly
||extenuating circumstances of his past.
|I can't believe what I just read. I would assert exactly the
|opposite, that will is the ability to project some goal on the
|future and then make it so. Because there are so many other agents
|operating in the world, the outcome can not be deterministic, but
|one can certainly demonstrate how the future can be constrained.
|In addition to the above objection, if the past does not provide
|the material needed to develop the will, what does?
Believe it, baby. To take your blithe assertions in order, you are
confusing will (striving) with power (ability). For instance,
paralysis combines the loss of the latter with the retention of the
former. And the agent's ability to accomplish his set goals can be
frustrated by any number of random factors. So, if the ends were
taken to justify the means, a submicroscopic virus could change the
bottom line of your life by putting an abrupt end to your laudable
ends. But there is no bottom line to human life. Nor is there any
reason to suppose that your mental calisthenics will develop your
will, any more than they have helped G Gordon Liddy to develop his.
|In response to your objection that my system provides no grounds
|for morality given that I don't get caught, I would assert that my
|concern would then turn towards the environment, that is, I would
|act in a manner consistent with the environment I willed to live in.
I wish (note the proper English verb) to live in an environment
where I can kill, rob, maim, rape, and steal, with utter impunity.
It follows that my moral imperative is to strive towards perfecting
my skills of stealth and evasion, while engaging in my favorite
pursuits. Sounds like fun.
|If man does not use his past to control his future, then will can
|not exist, and his life is reduced to pure instinct. Discussions
|about rational control over instinct become nonsense because his
|rational control is also instinct.
Does the phrase "circumstances beyond your control" mean anything
to Your Autocratic Majesty?
| John Williams
Mikhail Zeleny
|In <274lrj$r...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
|zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
|| [...] Robert Stone,
||in a generally sympathetic article on gays in the military, in the
||current issue of the NYRB, cites the testimony of a homosexual GI,
||advocating the banishment of the last vestiges of "Judaeo-Christian
||morality", which stands in the way of his military career. Now, I
||have no brief for religious dogma of any sort; but it really gets
||my goat to see this inanely oblivious clamoring for automatic moral
||entitlement, which to me is as repugnant as any clarion call to
||exterminate kikes, commies, faggots, or niggers. [...]
|But doesn't it occur to you that, even though the GI may only be able
|to articulate his moral position in relativistic terms which are as
|repugnant to you as they are to me, he may be mutely appealing to --
|even if he might never be able to argue for -- an absolute morality,
|which differs from the Judaeo-Christian absolutism, and in differing
|from it, judges it to be absolutely at fault?
He might well be doing that; but so what? Let us proceed _more
geometrico_. Which absolute moral system, would you say, is
capable of condemning the intolerance of "the Judaeo-Christian
absolutism", in view of its demonstrable numerical superiority,
both among the military personnel, and the American electorate?
|The man is, after all, "morally disenfranchised". [I've just made that
|phrase up. Do you think I could get it accepted as official PC-speak?]
|To expect him not only to struggle for his own civil rights, but also
|to articulate an entire moral philosophy, before you will judge him to
|be worthy of support in his struggle, betrays what one might well call
|an "inverted" scale of moral values.
The correct term is "morally different", the second cousin to
"ethically disoriented". The reason I would not care to support
the plight of the complainant in question, is the same as would
compel me to withhold my support from the early Christians facing
the lions in the Colosseum. You will recall that the Romans had
a genuinely multicultural tradition of adopting the barbarian
deities, as soon as their worshippers were incorporated into the
Roman Empire. All went well, until they ran into some backward,
recalcitrant Judaeo-Christians, who had a most parochial policy
of refusing to extend reciprocal worship to the images of the
Imperial power. So consider me a renegade to my people, but my
policy is this: if you want me to venerate your gods, you had
better extend the same courtesy to my fasces, or, as your people
would say, my faggots.
|Unless, that is, you judge there to be something so *uniquely* awful
|about homosexuality, that those who practise it do deserve to be (as
|they are) singled out for special persecution, from amongst all those
|who -- in one way or another -- you would consider to be putting their
|immortal souls in danger, so to speak. In that case (which does seem
|to be what you believe), your position would be quite reasonable, as
|you simply would not judge this man's struggle to be worthy of support
|at all.
There are several transitions I find quite objectionable in your
above argument. I do indeed find homosexuality to be singularly
reprehensible, being that it irremediably perverts a fundamentally
creative human faculty. But it certainly does not follow that I
would condone visiting thereupon any form of official persecution,
as distinct from public desapprobation or private opprobrium. The
dividing line is suggested by the right to privacy; and inasmuch
as it is an inalienable right, I would oppose making one's private
preferences a criterion of fitness for public service.
On the other hand, I see no reason to force any public or private
employer to disregard this, or any other public or private aspect
of any candidate for employment, at least until such time as the
right to work (remember 1848?) is recognized as a fundamental
human right. To put this a bit more forcefully and appositely,
being a dedicated _franc-tireur_, I regard myself as disqualified
from having any opinion on the composition of the military; and
furtermore, I consider the ongoing efforts of the proverbial
middle-aged bourgeois pantywaists clamoring to force _hoi polloi_
in arms to share their trenches with individuals whose behavior
they find repugnant, to be contemptible beyond all measure.
|But where is your argument for this uniqueness? In its absence, I have
|to take you to be saying that anyone who [on the basis of questionable
|theory] can be inferred [by some unspecified authority] to be damaging
|their own spiritual welfare should be discriminated against by society's
|powerful institutions (not to mention gangs of thugs, malicious gossips,
|blackmailers, bigoted private employers, etc. etc.). So, can I expect to
|see you calling next for all celibates to be banned from the military?
To elaborate, I insist on leaving it to the military to decide on
the composition of the military, until such time as the military
ceases to exist. I also insist on leaving it to the employers to
decide on the composition of their work force, until such time as
the property right is no longer recognized as valid. Personally,
my naive views on employing a homosexual would vary considerably,
depending on the position: while I would never hesitate to hire
one as an engineer, I would be very reluctant to one as a
bartender.
|And in any case, to describe the call for equal rights for homosexuals
|as a call for "automatic moral entitlement" [by which phrase, I assume
|you mean what others call "special rights"] is to make what I'm afraid
|I can only describe as a stupid mistake -- and one which gets *my* goat.
|(I shall try to avoid flames any worse than this one.)
Please think again, -- "equal rights for homosexuals" is a blatant
and noxious oxymoron. Equal rights have no specific beneficiaries;
otherwise they are decidedly unequal. Whenever a right exists, it
applies to everyone, regardless of their race, creed, gender, or
private predilections. Whenever a right does not exist, -- and
note that I am certainly not denying the existence of the right to
work, but merely its legal and social recognition, -- there is no
justification for conferring it upon any particular group, or
introducing it in a selective manner.
|Judaeo-Christian morality may have a lot to teach (I must have learned
|a lot from it, if "learned" is a strong enough word for the experience
|of something so formative), but it also has a lot to learn. And where
|it has failed to learn, it continues to impose a crippling burden of
|unjustified guilt on huge numbers of innocent people: a burden to which
|(for reasons I cannot even plausibly guess at) you appear to delight in
|adding. (I say this because, from your evident relish in mounting this
|campaign -- as well as from the number of careful rebuttals you already
|seem to have received from intelligent and decent people -- I cannot see
|your behaviour as being the result of simple obliviousness to the fact
|that much unnecessary suffering is caused by the continuing prevalence
|of absolutist -- but absolutely false -- moral values.)
|
|(I'll also try to avoid preaching any sermons worse than this one.) :)
If my stated views are absolutely false, then they remain to be
refuted on the basis of deviating from the facts; if they are
merely incoherent, their inconsistency remains to be shown.
Contrary to what you say, I do not recall receiving any "careful
rebuttals", as opposed to bombastic denunciations and groundless
obloquy; and if any of that verbiage came from "intelligent and
decent people", their alleged intelligence and decency sooner or
later gave way to a torrent of inarticulate, spiteful mumblings.
Even the otherwise unexceptionable liberal Mr Mike cannot find the
guts to withdraw his erstwhile characterization of my theses as
illogical and immoral. But the fact of the matter is, there exist
any number of unimpeachably valid denunciations of "alternative
sexualities", whether based in revelation (Leviticus, the Pauline
epistles), fideistic reasoning (Augustine, Aquinas), or purely
secular considerations (Kant, Sartre); and no _bona fide_ advocate
of pluralism has any right to impugn these demonstrably consistent
moral conceptions. On the other hand, to reject liberal pluralism
would be tantamount to denying the "alternative lifestyles" any
chance for thriving, beyond bare survival.
||Thus I derive no
||small amount of pleasure from crushing the creatures who are prone
||to such presumption, regardless of the ideology they espouse, or
||the orifice they prefer.
|I doubt if you really know the source of this pleasure. (No, neither do I.)
On the contrary, I know it well enough. It is by far the least
objectionable way to cater to my overweening sociopathic urges.
Ever since I stopped hanging in the circles that offered regular
opportunities for smashing people's faces against brick walls, I
started feeling the need to compensate by indulging in the quaint
form of ritual humiliation that passes for public debate around
these parts. Besides, most American walls are far too flimsy for
a proper face-smashin'.
|||I'm sorry that I only treated your response to my recent enquiry (in the
|||"encyclical" thread) as a joke. I shall try to find the time and energy
|||to take it seriously; but I can't promise that I will be able to so so.
||Take it seriously, and take it as a joke, -- the possibilities are
||not mutually exclusive.
|I know; and that's why I wrote "only".
|
|(And I certainly couldn't *only* treat it seriously: it would have been
|immoral not to allow myself to laugh out loud at it, first.) :)
I aim to please.
||[...] I suspect that my strongest feelings have to do with
||the freedom of thought, rather than the ends of sexuality.
|I doubt if the two can be separated as much as you imagine.
|
|Mysterious, huh? Mystified, more like. The existence of a connection
|between people's sexual and intellectual lives becomes more and more
|obvious to me, the older (and sadder and wiser) I get; but the exact
|nature of this connection still escapes me almost completely. So I'm
|still waiting for some maverick psychoanalyst to write a book on the
|topic of "Reason and its vicissitudes".
Sounds good. Too bad Jeffrey Masson is all tied up in that libel
lawsuit. Would you accept Andrea Dworkin, as the world-renowned
expert on the insidious connections between men's two heads? Do
you think it is a mere coincidence that she and Jacques Derrida
are never seen together?
|Oh damn, there goes my credibility again. :)
Join the club.
|--
|Gus Rodgers, Dept. of Computer Science, Queen Mary & Westfield College,
|Mile End Road, London, England +44 71 975 5241 arod...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk
cordially, | Why is it that all those who have become eminent
gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu
>>Reproduction is a moral duty because it allows the self to continue.
>>Neither the continuation of the species nor personal survival enter
>>into the equation. Care for the self ought to precede care for the
>>neighbor, as both Locke and Freud will readily tell you. And personal
>>survival is both impossible, and frequently undesirable.
> Your argument is beginning to make some sense to me now. (Scott has
> obviously found the right key!) "Homosexuality is bad because it is
> a form of soul-suicide": would that an accurate (albeit intolerably
> brief and informal) summary of your argument?
This won't work, because Zeleny does not think that a sexual act
engaged in with reproduction in mind is either a necessary or
sufficient condition for classifying it as moral.
What I want to know is when Zeleny is going to start his large
family.
> The argument is that a person's choice to take only homosexual partners
> frustrates that same person's [possibly unconscious] need for [some kind
> of] personal survival beyond bodily death;
This "argument" is gibberish. Reproduction is not personal survival.
Arguing that one ought not to do something because one "really" wants to
do something different supposes that there is a real nature that
everyone has, and that Zeleny knows what it is. Do you buy this?
Moreover, homosexual intercourse can lead in causal sequence to
reproduction. Zeleny rejects it anyway. He accepts acts which cannot
lead to reproduction, so long as they are not homosexual. So this
is all rubbish.
gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu
> opposition to *my* moral principles. What gets me going, is the
> climate where one can stand accused of any number of intellectual
> transgressions, merely for his audacity in airing out a considered
> moral judgment of such a lifestyle.
You have never aired a considered moral judgment. I am not sure
you are capable of making one. Moreover, you are not talking
about a 'lifestyle'.
> Agreed; but I suspect that my strongest feelings have to do with
> the freedom of thought, rather than the ends of sexuality.
To have freedom of thought you must first have thought. Learn to
think, and you will have the starting point for freedom of thought.
This means *really* think, not just ventilate your infantile
prejudices in a garb of phony reason.
Mikhail Zeleny
adol...@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson) writes:
|In article <276ckd$e...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
|zel...@gevalt.mit.edu writes:
||Please think again, -- "equal rights for homosexuals" is a blatant
||and noxious oxymoron. Equal rights have no specific beneficiaries;
||otherwise they are decidedly unequal.
|You're just begging the question, moron. Heterosexuals
|are allowed -- have the right -- to do many things that
|are not allowed to homosexuals. The right to marry is
|the most obvious.
You are simply confused, buttercup. Being allowed does not
amount to having a natural right. To the extent that marriage,
when regarded by the state, is no more and no less than a civil
contract, everyone should be able to enter into one. (I believe
that the proper term here is "domestic partnership".) Note that
this is an issue of *civil* rights, and not one of "equal rights
for homosexuals".
||Whenever a right exists, it
||applies to everyone, regardless of their race, creed, gender, or
||private predilections.
|Look at the statutes concerning marriage, inheritance,
|adoption, and sexual acts conducted in private with
|consenting adult partners.
Nothing I have said should be taking as a tacit approval of any
current statute. Some of your concerns would be adequately
addressed by fully recognizing a right to privacy. Others, --
like marriage and adoption, insofar as they transcend the nature
of civil contracts, -- may not be rights at all, natural or
otherwise.
||Whenever a right does not exist, -- and
||note that I am certainly not denying the existence of the right to
||work, but merely its legal and social recognition, -- there is no
||justification for conferring it upon any particular group, or
||introducing it in a selective manner.
|Then I take it that you aren't against enshrining such
|a principle in the law books?
You had best start by working out the minutiae. "Enshrining in
the law books" the right to work, would radically change the
society as we know it. (Think 1848 and the National Workshops.)
Not that it would be a bad thing to change it.
|--
|Arne Adolphson "I think we're finished with that 'Hey! Look at me!'
|adol...@mizar.usc.edu makeup. We want to be feminine and very touchable,
| or and have people say, 'You've come a long way, baby!'"
|ar...@ursa-major.spdcc.com -- Joan Crawford
cordially,
mikhail zel...@gevalt.mit.edu -- a man in transition
Angus H Rodgers
gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu writes:
>In article <CDCJ8...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk>,
arod...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Angus H Rodgers) writes:
>What I want to know is when Zeleny is going to start his large
>family.
I was wondering the same thing, but was too polite to ask.
>> The argument is that a person's choice to take only homosexual partners
>> frustrates that same person's [possibly unconscious] need for [some kind
>> of] personal survival beyond bodily death;
>This "argument" is gibberish.
Did I say it wasn't?
I was doing something which we rational people call "suspending judgement".
(You should try it some time.)
>Arguing that one ought not to do something because one "really" wants to
>do something different supposes that there is a real nature that
>everyone has, and that Zeleny knows what it is. Do you buy this?
I buy the first part, but not the second. That is, I believe that the
argument which you mention has the first, but not the second, of the
two presuppositions which you mention. I cannot tell whether you think
I have "bought": the argument; the fact that the argument presupposes
one thing; the non-fact that it presupposes something else; or either
or both of the presuppositions in question.
(If you could just be a bit more like Zeleny, without tipping over the
edge into formalisation of everything, it would help me to understand
what you are getting at.)
I don't buy the argument. I do buy the first presupposition. I don't
buy the second. And I guess that one of these statements must be the
answer you want. :)
>[...] So this is all rubbish.
I fear that you have lost the baby along with the bathwater.
Angus H Rodgers
zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>Which absolute moral system, would you say, is
>capable of condemning the intolerance of "the Judaeo-Christian
>absolutism", in view of its demonstrable numerical superiority,
>both among the military personnel, and the American electorate?
If by "which system", you mean some already articulated philosophy,
which can stand against the (partially articulate) Judaeo-Christian
one, in support of greater tolerance in sexual matters, then I know
of none. (Freud let us down, by pretending to be a scientist instead
of a prophet.)
The relevance of numerical superiority in this context escapes me.
(You may have a more military mind than mine.) :)
>The reason I would not care to support
>the plight of the complainant in question, is the same as would
>compel me to withhold my support from the early Christians facing
>the lions in the Colosseum.
That sounds interesting; but I haven't understood what your reason is.
>So consider me a renegade to my people, but my
>policy is this: if you want me to venerate your gods, you had
>better extend the same courtesy to my fasces, or, as your people
>would say, my faggots. ^^^^^^
(You didn't mean "faeces", by any chance?) :)
You've completely lost me here. Feel free to adopt a Nietzschean tone,
if you like (I don't mind at all); but do recognise the constraint of
having to write for mere net.wits like me, not supermen (or sheep).
>I do indeed find homosexuality to be singularly
>reprehensible, being that it irremediably perverts a fundamentally
>creative human faculty.
"Perverts"? "Creative"? Have you explained the role of these concepts
in your argument?
>But it certainly does not follow that I
>would condone visiting thereupon any form of official persecution,
>as distinct from public desapprobation or private opprobrium. The
>dividing line is suggested by the right to privacy; and inasmuch
>as it is an inalienable right, I would oppose making one's private
>preferences a criterion of fitness for public service.
I am glad to note this (with reservations, of course).
>On the other hand,
Of course I knew there would be another hand.
>I see no reason to force any public or private
>employer to disregard this, or any other public or private aspect
>of any candidate for employment, at least until such time as the
>right to work (remember 1848?) is recognized as a fundamental
>human right.
You've put your finger on it here. -- I'm also getting out of my depth,
but that's no bad news: we had to get to the serious point eventually.
>To put this a bit more forcefully and appositely,
>being a dedicated _franc-tireur_, I regard myself as disqualified
>from having any opinion on the composition of the military; and
>furtermore, I consider the ongoing efforts of the proverbial
>middle-aged bourgeois pantywaists clamoring to force _hoi polloi_
>in arms to share their trenches with individuals whose behavior
>they find repugnant, to be contemptible beyond all measure.
Would you extend this argument to a white military refusing to take on
black soldiers?
Do you ever take a stand against powerful prejudice, or do you always
lie down for it?
Do you simply imitate the mannerisms of prejudice over the Net, in the
hope (so often gratified, that you just can't leave it alone) of inducing
suggestible readers to remind you (by their own outraged reactions) of the
moral duty of enlightened dissent which you wish to evade?
(I cannot lecture you on this; I am as much a coward as I take you to
be; and I would even decline your offer to fight a duel at this point.) :)
>To elaborate, I insist on leaving it to the military to decide on
>the composition of the military, until such time as the military
>ceases to exist. I also insist on leaving it to the employers to
>decide on the composition of their work force, until such time as
>the property right is no longer recognized as valid.
This is where I am out of my depth. I did not get on very well when
trying to argue against a bunch of Libertarians about the Colorado
amendment; and I doubt if I will do any better against you. I call
for reinforcements at this point. :)
>Personally,
>my naive views on employing a homosexual would vary considerably,
>depending on the position: while I would never hesitate to hire
>one as an engineer, I would be very reluctant to one as a
>bartender.
Fair enough: there's no reason why Chez Mikhail should have to be a
gay bar, when so many straight men might want to exchange banter, or
wallow in self-pity, with a fellow-sufferer, and convivial host, who
can keep a friendly eye on those safe personal limits to intoxication
which they are so busy ignoring. :)
>Please think again, -- "equal rights for homosexuals" is a blatant
>and noxious oxymoron. Equal rights have no specific beneficiaries;
>otherwise they are decidedly unequal. Whenever a right exists, it
>applies to everyone, regardless of their race, creed, gender, or
>private predilections. Whenever a right does not exist, -- and
>note that I am certainly not denying the existence of the right to
>work, but merely its legal and social recognition, -- there is no
>justification for conferring it upon any particular group, or
>introducing it in a selective manner.
I really think it is possible to educate you on this, since the point
is so simple. [In essence, in essence! There is still plenty of room
for us both to be as prolix, or indeed prolific, as we like.] :)
First off, I agree with you that rights, where they exist at all, belong
in like manner to everybody [in some vaguely Kantian sense -- which, no
doubt, you can make more precise than I can].
Second, the right(s) in question [I would be, as I have already admitted,
on an insecure footing if I tried to go into too much detail as to what
exactly the rights would be, in respect of employment, and particularly
military employment; but I hope that not much detail is germane to the
argument] need not, in their formulation, single out any particular group
of "beneficiaries" (as you put it).
No more than you am I a fan of rigid quota-based selection procedures.
[My wife, who is black, and who is also a public sector worker, and who
therefore has experienced these sort of mechanical interview procedures
several times, and may also have benefitted materially from them, sees
them as absurd and inhuman; and her vivid descriptions have convinced
me that that is just what they are.]
If you can convince me that the only way to eliminate unjust prejudice
from public employment [and I hope you are not going to go on and on
about a "free market", because I would have trouble arguing with you,
and would need help to demonstrate where you are wrong] is to adopt
blindly mechanical, "Politically Correct" procedures which themselves
offend against natural justice and reason, you will have convinced me
that the concept of "equal rights" for [category X] is just what you
say it is.
I hope we can agree, anyway, that the denial of the necessities of life
to homosexuals is (or would be) injust; and that the possibly mistaken
tactics of the Left (and the clever tactics of the richly-funded Right)
[is that a fair description?] in Colorado do not constitute proof that
homosexuals cannot justly receive legal protection from such deprivation
(should it be threatened).
Our argument, then, need only concentrate on: (1) the question of the
existence of something like a "right to work" [here is where I shall
possibly need help, as I have little idea of how to argue this point,
should any argument occur -- although, fortunately for me, it appears,
from Zeleny's words quoted above, that it won't]; and (2) whether the
entrenched unjust discrimination against homosexuals (whose existence
you do seem to admit) can be formulated in sufficiently general terms
for the Categorical Imperative [or whatever -- I bow to your greater
erudition] to apply to it, so that legislation which offends neither
you nor me *might* be formulated in such a way as to lessen its force.
On (2), then, I would try to argue that the focus should be on the
arbitrary and irrelevant personal prejudices of the individual who,
on behalf of an effectively monopolistic employer, is in a position
to grant or refuse employment to a candidate [a gay man, a lesbian,
a black man or woman, or some other member of some "Category X" --
favoured by the Politically Correct, just because it is in disfavour
with the Right]; and not with the free [if not "freely chosen"], and
equally irrelevant, personal life of the candidate.
Rather than try to complete the argument, at this point, I shall try to
establish this change of focus; and be content, meanwhile, with a slogan:
"Refusal of employment, on grounds which are irrelevant to the job to be
done, in cases where no reasonable alternative employment is available,
should be illegal." -- Something like that. (Obviously the law needs to
be drafted a little more carefully than this; but the more general moral
laws tend to be like that.) :)
Your move.
Incidentally, I notice that I do seem (in spite of myself) to be tackling
point (1) at the same time as point (2): because my view (even as little
as it has been articulated so far) is already clearly incompatible with
any thoroughgoing "free market" ideology.
>Contrary to what you say, I do not recall receiving any "careful
>rebuttals", as opposed to bombastic denunciations and groundless
>obloquy; and if any of that verbiage came from "intelligent and
>decent people", their alleged intelligence and decency sooner or
>later gave way to a torrent of inarticulate, spiteful mumblings.
You memory appears to be at fault: which leads me to wonder (with
curiosity and even some dread) how you will recall my contribution. :)
>Even the otherwise unexceptionable liberal Mr Mike cannot find the
>guts to withdraw his erstwhile characterization of my theses as
>illogical and immoral.
Scarcely a "bombastic denunciation", or a "groundless obloquy", or
an "inarticulate, spiteful mumbling".
But let's get back to the facts of the matter. (Perhaps the diversion
was mine in the first place; I can't remember.)
>But the fact of the matter is,
Thank you. :)
>there exist
>any number of unimpeachably valid
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Gosh! This is news. :)
>denunciations of "alternative
>sexualities", whether based in revelation
^^^^^^^^^^
Ah, that's right, you did only say "valid".
>(Leviticus, the Pauline
>epistles), fideistic reasoning (Augustine, Aquinas),
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Lost me again, I'm afraid. But I once had some instruction from a priest
(belonging to Opus Dei); and I was impressed by his intelligence, and by
the philosophical resources upon which he seemed to be able to draw; so I
can imagine the sort of thing you probably mean.
>or purely
>secular considerations (Kant, Sartre);
In my opinion, Sartre was an extremely clever and interesting twerp,
and no authority on sexual or moral matters. But I shall look at his
reasoning, if you want me to. I can't promise to do the same with
Kant, even though I have much more respect for him. [I didn't sense
him spinning in his grave at my limerick -- whereas one of the other
ones I wrote, about Sartre, did seem to cause some annoyance to the
latter, in his private intellectual Hell.]
Secular, you say: that's extremely interesting, to me, because I
always did feel that I had something very important to learn from
Kant, about morality -- some lesson which my wife, in spite of her
degree in theology and philosophy, never seems to have been at all
interested in trying to get across to me. [I think it's because I'm
cleverer than she is; whereas she probably thinks it's because I am
a hopeless atheistic pervert.] So do go ahead. This might get even
more interesting. I just hope it doesn't get too difficult for me.
>and no _bona fide_ advocate
>of pluralism has any right to impugn these demonstrably consistent
>moral conceptions.
No problem for me, as I am not any kind of relativist.
>On the other hand, to reject liberal pluralism
>would be tantamount to denying the "alternative lifestyles" any
>chance for thriving, beyond bare survival.
BOING! Dammit, you went and (mis)used the word "liberal"! Don't you
know that that's one of my flame buttons? I'll let you off this time,
but be more careful in future. (No penalty for a first offence; and
ignorance of my laws does count as an excuse.) :)
I admit it is, theoretically, just possible that I am the only person
in history who is both a political liberal and a moral realist; perhaps
I am just too ill-educated and politically and socially inexperienced
to have discovered this alarming fact. But it is far more likely that
there are many other people out there who also feel like going beserk,
every time they hear this simple misunderstanding being repeated -- on
both their Left and their Right. (You appear to be on the Right, from
my absolutely central perspective.) :)
>||Thus I derive no
>||small amount of pleasure from crushing the creatures who are prone
>||to such presumption, regardless of the ideology they espouse, or
>||the orifice they prefer.
>|I doubt if you really know the source of this pleasure. (No, neither do I.)
>On the contrary, I know it well enough. It is by far the least
>objectionable way to cater to my overweening sociopathic urges.
I honestly, sincerely, think that -- for once, just once -- you
underestimate yourself here. (But then, I'm just a naive, tired,
old liberal who never even got to be a Hippy; so what do I know?) :)
>Ever since I stopped hanging in the circles that offered regular
>opportunities for smashing people's faces against brick walls, I
(You can imagine that I'm looking nervous, at this point.)
>started feeling the need to compensate by indulging in the quaint
>form of ritual humiliation that passes for public debate around
>these parts.
I'm always game for a bit of consensual (pseudo)intellectual sadomasochism
(even a one-night stand).
Anyway, it's neither immoral or illegal. (It's just a bit expensive in
terms of time, when you've got academic work to do.) :)
>I aim to please.
You do, you really do.
>|[...] The existence of a connection
>|between people's sexual and intellectual lives becomes more and more
>|obvious to me, the older (and sadder and wiser) I get; but the exact
>|nature of this connection still escapes me almost completely. So I'm
>|still waiting for some maverick psychoanalyst to write a book on the
>|topic of "Reason and its vicissitudes".
>Sounds good. Too bad Jeffrey Masson is all tied up in that libel
>lawsuit.
Does he still believe in the existence of psychological [as
contrasted with political) repression? If he does, why does
he see no good use for any kind of psychotherapy? (I haven't
read _The Last Analysis_ yet, so the answer may be there.)
It occurs to me to ask if the intellectual decline of Western society in
this century is (a) more than just a figment of my diseased imagination,
and (b) due to homosexual guilt, which may be blamed on Freud's idiotic
reductionism, and his unforgiveable use of psychological interpretation
as mere character assassination. (Kraus, Szasz.)
We've all gone scuttling to take cover in separate relativistic shells,
so that we can't be accused of touching each other's minds.
You are a remarkable exception! Let me shake your ... no, your hand. :)
My inescapably [Excuse me, but may I borrow this big signifier of yours?
There's a signified I'd like to attach it to. Don't worry, you can have
it back when I've finished.] "phallogocentric" [That's it.] perspective
prevents me from seeing the whole picture; so I think that this part of
the thread could profitably be continued in soc.feminism -- although I
doubt if they would let me in there, if I'm seen in your company! :)
>Would you accept Andrea Dworkin, as the world-renowned
>expert on the insidious connections between men's two heads?
Only if there's a good solid brick wall nearby.
Or any boneheaded, dickbrained conservative would do. :)
>Do
>you think it is a mere coincidence that she and Jacques Derrida
>are never seen together?
Or him. :)
>|Oh damn, there goes my credibility again. :)
>Join the club.
I'm honoured.
[Who needs a life, when there's the Net?] :)
Angus H Rodgers
zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>In article <276hlq$k...@mizar.usc.edu>
>adol...@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson) writes:
>|You're just begging the question, moron.
>You are simply confused, buttercup.
Toots. He likes "toots"! It sweetens him up no end.
Try it, and he'll eat out of your hand, you'll see. :)
Mike Godwin
<gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu> wrote:
>In that case, might I humbly suggest that you shut the fuck up?
>
>That way you could spare the rest of us the boredom, indifference,
>pity, contempt, and nausea your postings generally engender.
He probably finds comfort in the fact that at least he is engendering
*something*.
--Mikr
--
Mike Godwin, (202) 347-5400 |"If the doors of perception were cleansed
mnem...@well.sf.ca.us | every thing would appear to man as it is,
Electronic Frontier | infinite."
Foundation | --Blake
Mikhail Zeleny
|In article <1993Sep13....@uoft02.utoledo.edu>,
|<gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu> wrote:
||In that case, might I humbly suggest that you shut the fuck up?
Avec plaisir, mon vieux. Get your fuck within my range, and I
will shut it up once and for all.
||That way you could spare the rest of us the boredom, indifference,
||pity, contempt, and nausea your postings generally engender.
|He probably finds comfort in the fact that at least he is
|engendering *something*.
Very good, Mr Mikr! but while we are so amusingly conjecturing
about our generative potential, did you require a mirror to
locate your organ underneath the perspiring heaps of adipose
tissue, before impregnating your lovely spouse?
|--Mikr
|
|--
|Mike Godwin, (202) 347-5400 |"If the doors of perception were cleansed
|mnem...@well.sf.ca.us | every thing would appear to man as it is,
|Electronic Frontier | infinite."
|Foundation | --Blake
cordially,
INFIDEL
>Mysterious, huh? Mystified, more like. The existence of a connection
>between people's sexual and intellectual lives becomes more and more
>obvious to me, the older (and sadder and wiser) I get; but the exact
>nature of this connection still escapes me almost completely. So I'm
>still waiting for some maverick psychoanalyst to write a book on the
>topic of "Reason and its vicissitudes".
The causal nature of the connection is unimportant; what is important is
that one has the ability to _will_ it. Why ought one will it?
You experience thousands of contradictory impulses every day; why will
yourself to refuse some of them?
The kind of investigation that Misha is doing here is interesting
because it probes the limitations of free will. When Collier, last
week, threw his arms up in disgust and left the discussion, he still had
not refuted the view inherent in his position that free will does not
exist.
>Oh damn, there goes my credibility again. :)
Not really. It's a natural question to ask, especially these days.
>--
>Gus Rodgers, Dept. of Computer Science, Queen Mary & Westfield College,
>Mile End Road, London, England +44 71 975 5241 arod...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk
jw
Mikhail Zeleny
|In <276ckd$e...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
|zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
||Which absolute moral system, would you say, is
||capable of condemning the intolerance of "the Judaeo-Christian
||absolutism", in view of its demonstrable numerical superiority,
||both among the military personnel, and the American electorate?
|If by "which system", you mean some already articulated philosophy,
|which can stand against the (partially articulate) Judaeo-Christian
|one, in support of greater tolerance in sexual matters, then I know
|of none. (Freud let us down, by pretending to be a scientist instead
|of a prophet.)
Then I would suggest that it is unconscionable to wage war for
any cause without being aware of its predictable consequences.
In other words, before you fire the first shot, you should learn
the trajectory of your missile, as well as the nature of all
things that lie in its way.
|The relevance of numerical superiority in this context escapes me.
|(You may have a more military mind than mine.) :)
Does the phrase "the tyranny of the majority" ring a bell?
||The reason I would not care to support
||the plight of the complainant in question, is the same as would
||compel me to withhold my support from the early Christians facing
||the lions in the Colosseum.
|That sounds interesting; but I haven't understood what your reason is.
I am not so keen on tolerance in the first place; so why should I
show any tolerance for the intolerant?
||So consider me a renegade to my people, but my
||policy is this: if you want me to venerate your gods, you had
||better extend the same courtesy to my fasces, or, as your people
||would say, my faggots. ^^^^^^
|(You didn't mean "faeces", by any chance?) :)
Are you perchance trying to offend my faggots?
|You've completely lost me here. Feel free to adopt a Nietzschean tone,
|if you like (I don't mind at all); but do recognise the constraint of
|having to write for mere net.wits like me, not supermen (or sheep).
I thought the meaning of my parable was fairly transparent.
There is no multiculturalism for the differently tolerant.
||I do indeed find homosexuality to be singularly
||reprehensible, being that it irremediably perverts a fundamentally
||creative human faculty.
|"Perverts"? "Creative"? Have you explained the role of these concepts
|in your argument?
Yes, many times over.
||But it certainly does not follow that I
||would condone visiting thereupon any form of official persecution,
||as distinct from public desapprobation or private opprobrium. The
||dividing line is suggested by the right to privacy; and inasmuch
||as it is an inalienable right, I would oppose making one's private
||preferences a criterion of fitness for public service.
|I am glad to note this (with reservations, of course).
Not so fast.
||On the other hand,
|Of course I knew there would be another hand.
How could there not be another hand, from a liberal, -- or, for
that matter, philosophical, -- standpoint?
||I see no reason to force any public or private
||employer to disregard this, or any other public or private aspect
||of any candidate for employment, at least until such time as the
||right to work (remember 1848?) is recognized as a fundamental
||human right.
|You've put your finger on it here. -- I'm also getting out of my depth,
|but that's no bad news: we had to get to the serious point eventually.
Stop complaining and keep on digging.
||To put this a bit more forcefully and appositely,
||being a dedicated _franc-tireur_, I regard myself as disqualified
||from having any opinion on the composition of the military; and
||furtermore, I consider the ongoing efforts of the proverbial
||middle-aged bourgeois pantywaists clamoring to force _hoi polloi_
||in arms to share their trenches with individuals whose behavior
||they find repugnant, to be contemptible beyond all measure.
|Would you extend this argument to a white military refusing to take on
|black soldiers?
Why not? Coercion is coercion. Why should the employer's rights
be valued any less than those of the employee? If you would force
the former to enter into a contractual relation they may wish to
avoid, why not do likewise for the latter?
|Do you ever take a stand against powerful prejudice, or do you always
|lie down for it?
I have scars on my face and on my knuckles, as a vivid reminder of
having taken a stand against powerful prejudice. But I am equally
appalled by those who clamor to force the public to participate in
their personal fights.
|Do you simply imitate the mannerisms of prejudice over the Net, in the
|hope (so often gratified, that you just can't leave it alone) of inducing
|suggestible readers to remind you (by their own outraged reactions) of the
|moral duty of enlightened dissent which you wish to evade?
And here I thought that I was exercising my moral duty of
enlightened dissent. As says Fido, orthodoxy is your doxy,
heterodoxy is my doxy.
|(I cannot lecture you on this; I am as much a coward as I take you to
|be; and I would even decline your offer to fight a duel at this point.) :)
You want it both ways: judge me at fault by my rules, while
playing the game by your rules. Not too sporting, old chap.
||To elaborate, I insist on leaving it to the military to decide on
||the composition of the military, until such time as the military
||ceases to exist. I also insist on leaving it to the employers to
||decide on the composition of their work force, until such time as
||the property right is no longer recognized as valid.
|This is where I am out of my depth. I did not get on very well when
|trying to argue against a bunch of Libertarians about the Colorado
|amendment; and I doubt if I will do any better against you. I call
|for reinforcements at this point. :)
Do not mistake me for any sort of libertarian.
||Personally,
||my naive views on employing a homosexual would vary considerably,
||depending on the position: while I would never hesitate to hire
||one as an engineer, I would be very reluctant to one as a
||bartender.
|Fair enough: there's no reason why Chez Mikhail should have to be a
|gay bar, when so many straight men might want to exchange banter, or
|wallow in self-pity, with a fellow-sufferer, and convivial host, who
|can keep a friendly eye on those safe personal limits to intoxication
|which they are so busy ignoring. :)
Never did much pub-crawling, did you? Speaking from abundant
experience, as a friend and freeloader of several barkeeps, and
an afficionado of numerous bar wenches, the sure-fire way to
achieve success as a publician, is by hiring a charismatic and
gregarious heterosexual male bartender. For in doing so, one
ensures a steady flow of horny heterosexual women, who in turn
attract a crowd of profligate heterosexual men. By contrast, a
homosexual bartender will at best attract a bevy of fag hags,
whereas an attractive female at the helm will, for some reasons
known only to Bacchus and Boadicea, draw in nought but a host of
lugubrious, pasty-faced Englishmen. I kid you not.
||Please think again, -- "equal rights for homosexuals" is a blatant
||and noxious oxymoron. Equal rights have no specific beneficiaries;
||otherwise they are decidedly unequal. Whenever a right exists, it
||applies to everyone, regardless of their race, creed, gender, or
||private predilections. Whenever a right does not exist, -- and
||note that I am certainly not denying the existence of the right to
||work, but merely its legal and social recognition, -- there is no
||justification for conferring it upon any particular group, or
||introducing it in a selective manner.
|I really think it is possible to educate you on this, since the point
|is so simple. [In essence, in essence! There is still plenty of room
|for us both to be as prolix, or indeed prolific, as we like.] :)
Prolongable prolocution would be more like it. My own preference
is to speak for myself, and observe the right of way: each thrust
must be followed by a parry.
|First off, I agree with you that rights, where they exist at all, belong
|in like manner to everybody [in some vaguely Kantian sense -- which, no
|doubt, you can make more precise than I can].
If I can, so can you, with a few leading questions.
|Second, the right(s) in question [I would be, as I have already admitted,
|on an insecure footing if I tried to go into too much detail as to what
|exactly the rights would be, in respect of employment, and particularly
|military employment; but I hope that not much detail is germane to the
|argument] need not, in their formulation, single out any particular group
|of "beneficiaries" (as you put it).
Quite so. Just make sure that you do not favor the employees
over the employers. The employment contract is in principle a
matter of symmetrical trade of goods for services. What public
rationale can you offer for constraining one party more than you
constrain the other?
|No more than you am I a fan of rigid quota-based selection procedures.
|[My wife, who is black, and who is also a public sector worker, and who
|therefore has experienced these sort of mechanical interview procedures
|several times, and may also have benefitted materially from them, sees
|them as absurd and inhuman; and her vivid descriptions have convinced
|me that that is just what they are.]
So be it.
|If you can convince me that the only way to eliminate unjust prejudice
|from public employment [and I hope you are not going to go on and on
|about a "free market", because I would have trouble arguing with you,
|and would need help to demonstrate where you are wrong] is to adopt
|blindly mechanical, "Politically Correct" procedures which themselves
|offend against natural justice and reason, you will have convinced me
|that the concept of "equal rights" for [category X] is just what you
|say it is.
Whose injustice?
|I hope we can agree, anyway, that the denial of the necessities of life
|to homosexuals is (or would be) injust; and that the possibly mistaken
|tactics of the Left (and the clever tactics of the richly-funded Right)
|[is that a fair description?] in Colorado do not constitute proof that
|homosexuals cannot justly receive legal protection from such deprivation
|(should it be threatened).
Denial presupposes access. Until and unless the right to access
and acquire "the necessities of life" is fully guaranteed by the
public sector, your talk of denial will make no sense whatsoever.
As an employer, I am under no obligation to provide for anyone not
enjoying a contractual relation with me for that purpose. What
you call deprivation, cannot be qualified as such in the absence
of a fully guaranteed supply of the commodity in question, namely
employment opportunity. But no such guaranteed supply exists in
our society; and hence your proposal to regulate it in a negative
fashion, amounts to no more and no less than a unilateral social
infringement of one party's freedom of association.
|Our argument, then, need only concentrate on: (1) the question of the
|existence of something like a "right to work" [here is where I shall
|possibly need help, as I have little idea of how to argue this point,
|should any argument occur -- although, fortunately for me, it appears,
|from Zeleny's words quoted above, that it won't]; and (2) whether the
|entrenched unjust discrimination against homosexuals (whose existence
|you do seem to admit) can be formulated in sufficiently general terms
|for the Categorical Imperative [or whatever -- I bow to your greater
|erudition] to apply to it, so that legislation which offends neither
|you nor me *might* be formulated in such a way as to lessen its force.
Ah yes, the fabled Categorical Imperative: "So act that the maxim
of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle
establishing universal law." Translation: the validation of any
homosexual act by the Categorical Imperative is tantamount to
establishing the desirability of the universal extinction of all
mankind. In my circles, they call it a _reductio ad absurdum_.
As regards the right to work, my recommendation is to read William
Sewell's, _Work & Revolution in France_, CUP, 1980. Concerning
discrimination, I submit that it may be called unjust only if the
fundamental discriminating principle is wholly bereft of moral
relevance. Thus discrimination against an innate characteristic
is inherently unjust; but the legitimacy of discrimination against
a behavior pattern, regardless of whether or not it is motivated
by an innate characteristic, depends on the moral merits thereof.
Thus in order to deem discrimination against homosexuality unjust,
you would have to begin by delegitimizing all comprehensive moral
conceptions that judge it as morally deficient. Note that it
would not do to take the matters in the reverse order, proclaiming
such discrimination unjust on _a priori_ grounds; for that would
beg the question of morality altogether. So the ball is in your
court.
|On (2), then, I would try to argue that the focus should be on the
|arbitrary and irrelevant personal prejudices of the individual who,
|on behalf of an effectively monopolistic employer, is in a position
|to grant or refuse employment to a candidate [a gay man, a lesbian,
|a black man or woman, or some other member of some "Category X" --
|favoured by the Politically Correct, just because it is in disfavour
|with the Right]; and not with the free [if not "freely chosen"], and
|equally irrelevant, personal life of the candidate.
Huh? why can't the (kindly cut the "effectively monopolistic"
demagoguery) employer's personal desire to avoid association with
anyone whatsoever, for any reason of his choosing, be relevant to
the issue of setting the social constraints on such association?
If the liberal society should presume to stipulate the criteria of
relevance governing the individual's freedom to enter into a
contractual agreement, why can't it do the same for his freedom to
choose his marriage partner, his religion, his forms of expression
and sources of information, his dwelling, his educators, or even
his form of sexuality? Where do you propose to draw the line in
this allegedly benign paternalistic intervention? It seems that
you have already pronounced the relevant moral tenets of the
majority of Abrahamite religions to be contrary to your _raison
d'Etat_; and as I have shown above, you would have to do the same
for the Categorical Imperative. So how do you propose to
reconcile this extremist position with the familiar liberal
disclaimer of taking a stand on any comprehensive moral or
political doctrine?
|Rather than try to complete the argument, at this point, I shall try to
|establish this change of focus; and be content, meanwhile, with a slogan:
|"Refusal of employment, on grounds which are irrelevant to the job to be
|done, in cases where no reasonable alternative employment is available,
|should be illegal." -- Something like that. (Obviously the law needs to
|be drafted a little more carefully than this; but the more general moral
|laws tend to be like that.) :)
|
|Your move.
So how does a variant strike you: "Refusal of sexual intercourse,
on grounds which are irrelevant to the job to be done, in cases
where no reasonable alternative partner is available, should be
illegal." (I cannot presume to speak for all mankind, but I would
rather get by without a regular job, than without a regular trim!)
What? how dare that wench refuse my amorous advances! What does
she mean, saying that I smell like a billy-goat and look like a
sack of lard? None of that shit in any way affects my ability to
perform the job! (You may substitute any other kind of, umm...
optional association, into your proposed statute.)
|Incidentally, I notice that I do seem (in spite of myself) to be tackling
|point (1) at the same time as point (2): because my view (even as little
|as it has been articulated so far) is already clearly incompatible with
|any thoroughgoing "free market" ideology.
Nor is mine; but I make up for that shortcoming by not identifying
myself as any kind of liberal.
||Contrary to what you say, I do not recall receiving any "careful
||rebuttals", as opposed to bombastic denunciations and groundless
||obloquy; and if any of that verbiage came from "intelligent and
||decent people", their alleged intelligence and decency sooner or
||later gave way to a torrent of inarticulate, spiteful mumblings.
|You memory appears to be at fault: which leads me to wonder (with
|curiosity and even some dread) how you will recall my contribution. :)
Please remind me of one specific occasion that fits your description.
||Even the otherwise unexceptionable liberal Mr Mike cannot find the
||guts to withdraw his erstwhile characterization of my theses as
||illogical and immoral.
|Scarcely a "bombastic denunciation", or a "groundless obloquy", or
|an "inarticulate, spiteful mumbling".
Like I said, Mr Mike is an exception among my critics. But even
in his case, the attempt to promulgate a careful rebuttal of my
views, ended in abject failure.
|But let's get back to the facts of the matter. (Perhaps the diversion
|was mine in the first place; I can't remember.)
Whatever.
||But the fact of the matter is,
|Thank you. :)
You are welcome.
||there exist
||any number of unimpeachably valid
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|Gosh! This is news. :)
Hardly.
||denunciations of "alternative
||sexualities", whether based in revelation
| ^^^^^^^^^^
|Ah, that's right, you did only say "valid".
What else do you want? Validity both confers and certifies
legitimacy in a liberal society.
||(Leviticus, the Pauline
||epistles), fideistic reasoning (Augustine, Aquinas),
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|Lost me again, I'm afraid. But I once had some instruction from a priest
|(belonging to Opus Dei); and I was impressed by his intelligence, and by
|the philosophical resources upon which he seemed to be able to draw; so I
|can imagine the sort of thing you probably mean.
You might as well take it on faith.
||or purely
||secular considerations (Kant, Sartre);
|In my opinion, Sartre was an extremely clever and interesting twerp,
|and no authority on sexual or moral matters. But I shall look at his
|reasoning, if you want me to. I can't promise to do the same with
|Kant, even though I have much more respect for him. [I didn't sense
|him spinning in his grave at my limerick -- whereas one of the other
|ones I wrote, about Sartre, did seem to cause some annoyance to the
|latter, in his private intellectual Hell.]
Let me make this crystal clear: as a moral realist, you may well
feel yourself justified in dismissing incorrect moral conceptions;
but as a liberal, you are required to allot equal opportunity to
each coherent system of moral beliefs. So validity is all I have
to establish; the truth of the premisses need not concern me in
the least, as long as they are not self-contradictory. As regards
Sartre, his perspective on homosexuality as a willful perversion
of desire, is to be found in _Being and Nothingness_. For the
rest, see above.
|Secular, you say: that's extremely interesting, to me, because I
|always did feel that I had something very important to learn from
|Kant, about morality -- some lesson which my wife, in spite of her
|degree in theology and philosophy, never seems to have been at all
|interested in trying to get across to me. [I think it's because I'm
|cleverer than she is; whereas she probably thinks it's because I am
|a hopeless atheistic pervert.] So do go ahead. This might get even
|more interesting. I just hope it doesn't get too difficult for me.
The Kantian position is simple: from an act-deontological
standpoint, which recognizes the Categorical Imperative, the
morality of any choice is (a) wholly independent from one's
desires in the matter, and (b) must be universalizable to all
human beings in a similar situation. Another formulation of the
same principle, which is said to be equivalent to the above ("Act
so as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of
another, always as an end and never as means only."), appears to
rule out any possibility of sex outside of an enduring contractual
arrangement including total mutual alienation of the participants'
to each other. And so it goes.
||and no _bona fide_ advocate
||of pluralism has any right to impugn these demonstrably consistent
||moral conceptions.
|No problem for me, as I am not any kind of relativist.
Then you are bound to lack the tolerance required for maintaining
the liberal outlook.
||On the other hand, to reject liberal pluralism
||would be tantamount to denying the "alternative lifestyles" any
||chance for thriving, beyond bare survival.
|BOING! Dammit, you went and (mis)used the word "liberal"! Don't you
|know that that's one of my flame buttons? I'll let you off this time,
|but be more careful in future. (No penalty for a first offence; and
|ignorance of my laws does count as an excuse.) :)
|
|I admit it is, theoretically, just possible that I am the only person
|in history who is both a political liberal and a moral realist; perhaps
|I am just too ill-educated and politically and socially inexperienced
|to have discovered this alarming fact. But it is far more likely that
|there are many other people out there who also feel like going beserk,
|every time they hear this simple misunderstanding being repeated -- on
|both their Left and their Right. (You appear to be on the Right, from
|my absolutely central perspective.) :)
I think that your position is logically incoherent. But to show
it will require some doing. As for your perspective, I am at a
loss trying to surmise the criteria that warrant your attribution
of that particular position to my humble person.
||||Thus I derive no
||||small amount of pleasure from crushing the creatures who are prone
||||to such presumption, regardless of the ideology they espouse, or
||||the orifice they prefer.
|||I doubt if you really know the source of this pleasure. (No, neither do I.)
||On the contrary, I know it well enough. It is by far the least
||objectionable way to cater to my overweening sociopathic urges.
|I honestly, sincerely, think that -- for once, just once -- you
|underestimate yourself here. (But then, I'm just a naive, tired,
|old liberal who never even got to be a Hippy; so what do I know?) :)
Pray tell.
||Ever since I stopped hanging in the circles that offered regular
||opportunities for smashing people's faces against brick walls, I
|(You can imagine that I'm looking nervous, at this point.)
No need. As I said, I gave it up.
||started feeling the need to compensate by indulging in the quaint
||form of ritual humiliation that passes for public debate around
||these parts.
|I'm always game for a bit of consensual (pseudo)intellectual
|sadomasochism (even a one-night stand).
Happy to hear that.
|Anyway, it's neither immoral or illegal. (It's just a bit expensive
|in terms of time, when you've got academic work to do.) :)
You are sadly mistaken. It is impossible to give consent for assault.
||I aim to please.
|You do, you really do.
It is good to have found some measure of credibility.
|||[...] The existence of a connection
|||between people's sexual and intellectual lives becomes more and more
|||obvious to me, the older (and sadder and wiser) I get; but the exact
|||nature of this connection still escapes me almost completely. So I'm
|||still waiting for some maverick psychoanalyst to write a book on the
|||topic of "Reason and its vicissitudes".
||Sounds good. Too bad Jeffrey Masson is all tied up in that libel
||lawsuit.
|Does he still believe in the existence of psychological [as
|contrasted with political) repression? If he does, why does
|he see no good use for any kind of psychotherapy? (I haven't
|read _The Last Analysis_ yet, so the answer may be there.)
No idea. I am still awaiting the outcome of his collaboration
with Catherine McKinnon.
|It occurs to me to ask if the intellectual decline of Western society in
|this century is (a) more than just a figment of my diseased imagination,
|and (b) due to homosexual guilt, which may be blamed on Freud's idiotic
|reductionism, and his unforgiveable use of psychological interpretation
|as mere character assassination. (Kraus, Szasz.)
To talk of an intellectual decline, one must assume an antecedent
plateau. I see no evidence of radiant past.
|We've all gone scuttling to take cover in separate relativistic shells,
|so that we can't be accused of touching each other's minds.
Nothing new about that.
|You are a remarkable exception! Let me shake your ... no, your hand. :)
Come over to sci.logic, big boy. The Platonic realm is wide open
for your delectation.
|My inescapably [Excuse me, but may I borrow this big signifier of yours?
|There's a signified I'd like to attach it to. Don't worry, you can have
|it back when I've finished.] "phallogocentric" [That's it.] perspective
|prevents me from seeing the whole picture; so I think that this part of
|the thread could profitably be continued in soc.feminism -- although I
|doubt if they would let me in there, if I'm seen in your company! :)
How dare they! I am a big fan of the redoubtable Ms Dworkin!
||Would you accept Andrea Dworkin, as the world-renowned
||expert on the insidious connections between men's two heads?
|Only if there's a good solid brick wall nearby.
How cruel of you. Am I to assume that you are yet to master the
art of non-invasive sexual congress?
|Or any boneheaded, dickbrained conservative would do. :)
Not to impugn your relative standing, but the conservatives enjoy
the better grade of booze and Cuban cigars galore. Ever since the
lefties had lost their superiority in illicit substances, their
position remained without any intrinsic appeal. How ironic,
considering that in any meaningful sense, there is no extant
alternative to liberalism in the political culture of this
benighted country.
||Do
||you think it is a mere coincidence that she and Jacques Derrida
||are never seen together?
|Or him. :)
Bitter, aren't we? What about your political confederate, Dick Rorty?
|||Oh damn, there goes my credibility again. :)
||Join the club.
|I'm honoured.
The honor is all mine.
|[Who needs a life, when there's the Net?] :)
Erin keeps urging me otherwise.
|--
|Gus Rodgers, Dept. of Computer Science, Queen Mary & Westfield College,
|Mile End Road, London, England +44 71 975 5241 arod...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk
cordially, | Why is it that all those who have become eminent
jw...@key.amdahl.com
> Believe it, baby. To take your blithe assertions in order, you are
> confusing will (striving) with power (ability).
Perhaps we do not share the same definitions. Being the measurement
oriented type, I prefer to think of it as a kind of vector. Will determines
the direction of constraint, and power determines the amount of constraint.
I also want to emphasize that an individual can consciously recognize the
will exerted over the self, even if performed internally. In this case,
a second person would have no way of knowing, but that is irrelevent for
the primary observer. I can project a theory that other minds operate
similar to my own, as long as I don't demand verification ( although
falsifiability would seem a recommendable feature of any such theory ).
The fact of the matter is that it seems we have two different ways
of interpretting the perceived world around us. You start from some
definition of morality as a vague preservation of self and build to
a conclusion that homosexuality is morally wrong ( although I suspect
you actually mean ethically wrong ). I start with the definition of
the difference between ethics and morality being that of concensus. I
then build a case against the moral claims of your argument. Of course,
you've thrown every demon imaginable at me when I have openly admitted
that concensus is an ideal that can only be approximated through some
kind of political process ( the one that springs to mind is democracy ).
Now, I defy you to show any other purpose for the existence of logic
than to establish concensus. I also defy you to show any other purpose
for concensus than to enable the exercise of free will.
John Williams
Angus H Rodgers
>arod...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Angus H Rodgers) writes:
>>[...] The existence of a connection
>>between people's sexual and intellectual lives becomes more and more
>>obvious to me, the older (and sadder and wiser) I get; but the exact
>>nature of this connection still escapes me almost completely. [...]
>The causal nature of the connection is unimportant; what is important is
>that one has the ability to _will_ it. Why ought one will it?
Because it is there?
Because otherwise one must kill one of two Siamese twins?
>You experience thousands of contradictory impulses every day; why will
>yourself to refuse some of them?
(I don't see the connection between this question and the other one, but:)
Because of lack of time?
Because one must compose oneself from the materials available, which
means leaving most of them out of the picture (even a moving picture)?
Because you want question the orders before obeying them, because it's
not always clear where your impulses are coming from?
Or simply because choosing one of them logically implies rejecting others?
(You did say "contradictory".)
Because even if there is time, and even if harmonious composure is not
important, and even if the impulses are all one's own, and even if the
acceptance of one of them today does not preclude the acceptance of an
incompatible one tomorrow, some choices one must make in relationship
to other agents have the logical property of implying some consistency
between further choices contingent on these: for example, one may wish
to keep one's promises, because if one does not, then certain rewards
of relationship are unavailable. (I'll leave Zeleny to iron out all the
kinks in this "argument", and present it in formal deontic logic.) :)
(You've confused me, but it's interesting, all the same.)
Jim Kalb
>Concerning discrimination, I submit that it may be called unjust only if
>the fundamental discriminating principle is wholly bereft of moral
>relevance. Thus discrimination against an innate characteristic is
What does this mean? It sounds right if "discrimination" means
"imposition of punishment", but not if it includes employment
discrimination and so on. For example, stupidity and blindness are
often innate but are plainly relevant to some employment choices.
If the claim is that making employment and similar decisions on grounds
like sex and race is wrong because such characteristics are irrelevant
to the purposes at hand, that seems wrong as well. After all, people
who make decisions on such grounds thereby show that those grounds *are*
relevant to their purposes. One might claim that purposes that would be
legitimate in choosing the people with whom one socializes are
illegitimate in employment contexts, but the grounds for such a claim
are not clear. (Why isn't it a good thing to work with people you like
to be with? Why isn't it legitimate to confer benefits that you are not
obligated to confer on anyone preferentially on people who are to your
taste?)
--
Jim Kalb (j...@panix.com)
"If we only wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be
happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we
think them happier than they are." (Montesquieu)
Mikhail Zeleny
j...@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
|zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
||Concerning discrimination, I submit that it may be called unjust only if
||the fundamental discriminating principle is wholly bereft of moral
||relevance. Thus discrimination against an innate characteristic is
^^
The copula, of course, ought to be replaced by "may be".
||inherently unjust [ . . . ]
|What does this mean? It sounds right if "discrimination" means
|"imposition of punishment", but not if it includes employment
|discrimination and so on. For example, stupidity and blindness are
|often innate but are plainly relevant to some employment choices.
My conditional ("only if") may be strengthened to an equivalence
("if and only if") whenever discrimination involves an abridgment
of rights, and whenever the morally relevant difference warrants
doing so by falling within the legitimate purview of just social
censure. Thus self-abuse may be morally objectionable, but if
Mill is right, it should not be construed as a basis for imposing
punishment. The same argument will apply to consensual mutual
abuse, provided that the possibility of giving consent for abuse
has been recognized as legitimate. But of course, as many critics
of liberalism have noted, there exist perfectly acceptable reasons
to deny that Mill is right. (Robert Paul Wolff and Isaiah Berlin
furnish good reasons to deny or abridge the merits of his claims.)
|If the claim is that making employment and similar decisions on grounds
|like sex and race is wrong because such characteristics are irrelevant
|to the purposes at hand, that seems wrong as well. After all, people
|who make decisions on such grounds thereby show that those grounds *are*
|relevant to their purposes.
You are instantiating the naturalist fallacy here: the factual
need not coincide with the reasonable. Your decision-makers can
easily demonstrate the relevance of the said grounds to their
wishes in the matter; but the relevance to their purposes will
follow only if their wishes are rational, which is rarely the
case.
| One might claim that purposes that would be
|legitimate in choosing the people with whom one socializes are
|illegitimate in employment contexts, but the grounds for such a claim
|are not clear. (Why isn't it a good thing to work with people you like
|to be with? Why isn't it legitimate to confer benefits that you are not
|obligated to confer on anyone preferentially on people who are to your
|taste?)
These are all legitimate questions pertaining to the issue of
negative freedom; but it must be noted that freedom from social
interference in one's right of free association may be justly
abridged on the grounds of right. If the right to work exists,
it furnishes adequate grounds for justifying a negative answer
to your questions.
|--
|Jim Kalb (j...@panix.com)
|"If we only wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be
|happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we
|think them happier than they are." (Montesquieu)
cordially,
Angus H Rodgers
zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>There is no multiculturalism for the differently tolerant.
I think you misunderstand liberalism. (And because I also misunderstand
it, your misunderstanding interests me. More of this anon, no doubt.)
>|Of course I knew there would be another hand.
>How could there not be another hand, from a liberal, -- or, for
>that matter, philosophical, -- standpoint?
To be a liberal is not to be incapable of taking a stand.
>Stop complaining and keep on digging.
When you stop complaining, I will.
>I have scars on my face and on my knuckles, as a vivid reminder of
>having taken a stand against powerful prejudice.
Tell more (please).
>But I am equally
>appalled by those who clamor to force the public to participate in
>their personal fights.
This begs the question of whether they have some right on their side.
>Do not mistake me for any sort of libertarian.
I didn't, although I do see a family resemblance.
>Never did much pub-crawling, did you?
No.
>The employment contract is in principle a
>matter of symmetrical trade of goods for services.
Surely this is wrong, in point of fact, and in point of law.
[Can someone who actually knows something about the Law, as
I don't, help me out here?]
The two parties to the contract are not two individuals. There is only
the barest of formal symmetries here.
Where there is a real symmetry between two flesh-and-blood persons,
(and not only between two "persons" in law), I have no dispute with
you. Nor could you expect me, as a liberal, to object to the legal
right of any individual to be a bigot in pursuit of his or her own
legitimate private interests.
>What public
>rationale can you offer for constraining one party more than you
>constrain the other?
A difference in their essential natures. [Supply a more correct
philosophical term, if you know one, and know what I mean.]
>|If you can convince me that the only way to eliminate unjust prejudice
>|from public employment [and I hope you are not going to go on and on
>|about a "free market", because I would have trouble arguing with you,
>|and would need help to demonstrate where you are wrong] is to adopt
>|blindly mechanical, "Politically Correct" procedures which themselves
>|offend against natural justice and reason, you will have convinced me
>|that the concept of "equal rights" for [category X] is just what you
>|say it is.
>Whose injustice?
Objective injustice. (Or God's, if you like; but I imagine you don't.)
>Denial presupposes access. Until and unless the right to access
>and acquire "the necessities of life" is fully guaranteed by the
>public sector, your talk of denial will make no sense whatsoever.
I'm not so sure about the "fully". But more relevantly: the question
of whether talk makes sense or not cannot depend on the existence of
particular social arrangements (apart from those of language itself),
because otherwise how could one talk of changing those arrangements?
Natural rights can be denied in practice: what's so senseless about
that statement?
>As an employer, I am under no obligation to provide for anyone not
>enjoying a contractual relation with me for that purpose. What
>you call deprivation, cannot be qualified as such in the absence
>of a fully guaranteed supply of the commodity in question, namely
>employment opportunity. But no such guaranteed supply exists in
>our society; and hence your proposal to regulate it in a negative
>fashion, amounts to no more and no less than a unilateral social
>infringement of one party's freedom of association.
I've already dealt with this point (however inadequately).
>Ah yes, the fabled Categorical Imperative: "So act that the maxim
>of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle
>establishing universal law." Translation: the validation of any
>homosexual act by the Categorical Imperative is tantamount to
>establishing the desirability of the universal extinction of all
>mankind. In my circles, they call it a _reductio ad absurdum_.
You seem to be getting confused (which is not like you, or so I thought).
You might as well have said that the validation of the right to smoke
cigarettes is tantamount to establishing the desirability of lung cancer.
(I'm now getting bored, by the way. Will this prove to have been only
a one-night stand, after all? That would be sad, as I had hoped that
your passion for reason would outweigh your loathing of homosexual
desire: a loathing which appears to spill over into a contempt for all
who defend its right to exist and to be expressed.) :)
>Concerning
>discrimination, I submit that it may be called unjust only if the
>fundamental discriminating principle is wholly bereft of moral
>relevance.
Agreed.
>Thus discrimination against an innate characteristic
>is inherently unjust; but the legitimacy of discrimination against
>a behavior pattern, regardless of whether or not it is motivated
>by an innate characteristic, depends on the moral merits thereof.
And its relevance, as you just said.
>Thus in order to deem discrimination against homosexuality unjust,
>you would have to begin by delegitimizing all comprehensive moral
>conceptions that judge it as morally deficient.
This does not follow. (What's happened to you? Have you lost track
of an accessibility relation or two?)
>Note that it
>would not do to take the matters in the reverse order, proclaiming
>such discrimination unjust on _a priori_ grounds; for that would
>beg the question of morality altogether.
I'm not sure what you mean here. If you could clear up the preceding
point, this one might clarify itself too. As it looks now, you appear
to be repeating the point already (not) made. But I may just be lost
in the labyrinth of your prose.
>So the ball is in your court.
Your lob went out of court, actually. (Serves you right for thinking
that you could go over my head -- which in fact you did, but not in
a legal way.) Love-fifteen.
>|On (2), then, I would try to argue that the focus should be on the
>|arbitrary and irrelevant personal prejudices of the individual who,
>|on behalf of an effectively monopolistic employer, is in a position
>|to grant or refuse employment to a candidate [a gay man, a lesbian,
>|a black man or woman, or some other member of some "Category X" --
>|favoured by the Politically Correct, just because it is in disfavour
>|with the Right]; and not with the free [if not "freely chosen"], and
>|equally irrelevant, personal life of the candidate.
>Huh? why can't the (kindly cut the "effectively monopolistic"
>demagoguery) employer's personal desire to avoid association with
>anyone whatsoever, for any reason of his choosing, be relevant to
>the issue of setting the social constraints on such association?
You seem unable to grasp my point. And I was indulging in no "demagoguery":
something which I thought was your strong suit, rather than mine. (Oh dear,
this really is degenerating into flames. I have done my best to avoid it,
but must now admit defeat. Let's stop while the flames are only Force One
on the Zeleny scale, shall we?)
>If the liberal society should presume to stipulate the criteria of
>relevance governing the individual's freedom to enter into a
>contractual agreement, why can't it do the same for his freedom to
>choose his marriage partner, his religion, his forms of expression
>and sources of information, his dwelling, his educators, or even
>his form of sexuality?
Point already dealt with, over and over. I was expecting you to point
up the inadequacies in my argument (because I'm only in this in order
to learn something from you), and not just to attempt to bypass it.
>Where do you propose to draw the line in
>this allegedly benign paternalistic intervention?
Already dealt with.
>It seems that
>you have already pronounced the relevant moral tenets of the
>majority of Abrahamite religions to be contrary to your _raison
>d'Etat_;
Already dealt with.
>and as I have shown above, you would have to do the same
>for the Categorical Imperative.
Your argument was invalid; or at best, merely allusive. Repair
it if you want -- but please don't try my patience any further,
if you have any interest in prolonging this (once tumescent, but
now sadly flagging) conversation. Believe it or not, if I have
simply misunderstood you, I am willing to admit it, for the sake
of the real pleasure of rational argument.
>So how do you propose to
>reconcile this extremist position with the familiar liberal
>disclaimer of taking a stand on any comprehensive moral or
>political doctrine?
I don't. I am an "extremist", and I am not a "liberal" -- in the senses
which you have just attached to these words. But I am no apologist for
anybody's _raison d'Etat_, either.
>|Rather than try to complete the argument, at this point, I shall try to
>|establish this change of focus; and be content, meanwhile, with a slogan:
>|"Refusal of employment, on grounds which are irrelevant to the job to be
>|done, in cases where no reasonable alternative employment is available,
>|should be illegal." -- Something like that. (Obviously the law needs to
>|be drafted a little more carefully than this; but the more general moral
>|laws tend to be like that.) :)
>|
>|Your move.
There is a real weakness in this argument of mine -- which, in your
eagerness to see other pet weaknesses of your own, you have missed.
How should the interviewer be called to account for their selection
of one from many qualified applicants, since this must be arbitrary?
See below for an attempt at repair.
>So how does a variant strike you: "Refusal of sexual intercourse,
>on grounds which are irrelevant to the job to be done, in cases
>where no reasonable alternative partner is available, should be
>illegal." (I cannot presume to speak for all mankind, but I would
>rather get by without a regular job, than without a regular trim!)
>What? how dare that wench refuse my amorous advances! What does
>she mean, saying that I smell like a billy-goat and look like a
>sack of lard? None of that shit in any way affects my ability to
>perform the job! (You may substitute any other kind of, umm...
>optional association, into your proposed statute.)
This analogy isn't as far off the mark as I thought at first, because
it does have the merit of exposing the location of its own failure to
prove your point: that failure lying in the fact that a "job" is an
objective social role to be performed, whereas the role of a "sexual
partner" is not a formal one (except possibly in just those sort of
promiscuous or mercenary encounters which you are apparently not
contemplating here).
That your mistake lies in mistaking the formal for the informal does
not, on reflection, surprise me.
Our disagreement, anyway, now seems to centre on this question of
whether employment is a private arrangement between two people.
(This also was a point at issue, never resolved, in my argument
with those Libertarians I mentioned.)
I say, no, it isn't, it is a "formal" and "objective" arrangement.
Its distinguishing characteristic seems to be the extent to which
actual or prospective employees are, to a significant extent,
*interchangeable* in respect of their capcity to perform the role.
And I would say that unjust discrimination consists in the choice
of an objectively less qualified candidate over a better qualified
one (for systematic reasons). That is, the injustice I refer to is
a form of corruption. Note *very* carefully, please, that this point
of mine tells equally against PC quota-based procedures as it does
against your free-market libertarian approach. [That's with a small
`l'. Let me know if the appellation still offends.]
In a case where, for example, a gay man is rejected in favour of an
equally qualified straight man, then I see no hope of redress -- much
though I would wish to see it, if the rejection was based on projection
of the interviewer's private sexual fantasies into the public situation
of the interview.
And I hope I have made it obvious that I do not advocate the mandatory
hiring (by any employer) of an exclusively lesbian, black, disabled,
working-class [...] workforce, in preference to a host of better-qualified
heterosexual, male, white, middle-aged, middle-class, able-bodied [...]
former South African secret policemen -- although, as a private employer,
I would reserve my right to do so, and to go broke in the process. :)
>|Incidentally, I notice that I do seem (in spite of myself) to be tackling
>|point (1) at the same time as point (2): because my view (even as little
>|as it has been articulated so far) is already clearly incompatible with
>|any thoroughgoing "free market" ideology.
>Nor is mine; but I make up for that shortcoming by not identifying
>myself as any kind of liberal.
I must have misunderstood you somewhere along the line.
>||Contrary to what you say, I do not recall receiving any "careful
>||rebuttals", as opposed to bombastic denunciations and groundless
>||obloquy; and if any of that verbiage came from "intelligent and
>||decent people", their alleged intelligence and decency sooner or
>||later gave way to a torrent of inarticulate, spiteful mumblings.
>|You memory appears to be at fault: which leads me to wonder (with
>|curiosity and even some dread) how you will recall my contribution. :)
>Please remind me of one specific occasion that fits your description.
I haven't kept archives of these threads, and I was relying on my own hazy
memory. If I was mistaken, and you have been subjected to endless torrents
of mindless abuse, and nothing else, then you have my deepest sympathy --
all the more, because you will have so much difficulty in proving to me that
this was the case, and your suffering will go unremarked. :)
>Like I said, Mr Mike is an exception among my critics.
Perhaps I just happened to run across the exceptional one.
>But even
>in his case, the attempt to promulgate a careful rebuttal of my
>views, ended in abject failure.
I think I can imagine why. :)
>||denunciations of "alternative
>||sexualities", whether based in revelation
>| ^^^^^^^^^^
>|Ah, that's right, you did only say "valid".
>What else do you want? Validity both confers and certifies
>legitimacy in a liberal society.
^^^^^^^
I did warn you. This is your second warning. After this, I either
withdraw or get nasty. In a battle of nastiness, you would probably
win, so I am likely to withdraw.
>Let me make this crystal clear: as a moral realist, you may well
>feel yourself justified in dismissing incorrect moral conceptions;
>but as a liberal, you are required to allot equal opportunity to
>each coherent system of moral beliefs.
It is perfectly possible that I have misunderstood the word "liberal"
all my life. It is more likely that you have misunderstood it. I don't
care which. I would be most interested to debate the meaning of the
term; and I am perfectly happy to apologise for any misunderstanding I
may have caused by my (mis)use of it. I just don't want its apparent
opacity to be a cause of a tiresome slanging match between us.
If your use of the term is correct, I am not a liberal. Does this
admission (if that is what it is) help to clear some of the smoke
out of the air?
>The Kantian position is simple: from an act-deontological
>standpoint, which recognizes the Categorical Imperative,
I'll ignore that bit.
>the morality of any choice is (a) wholly independent from one's
>desires in the matter, and (b) must be universalizable to all
>human beings in a similar situation. Another formulation of the
>same principle, which is said to be equivalent to the above ("Act
>so as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of
>another, always as an end and never as means only."), appears to
>rule out any possibility of sex outside of an enduring contractual
>arrangement including total mutual alienation of the participants'
>to each other. And so it goes.
Although I don't understand this, I don't think it's your fault.
I have some reading to do.
>|No problem for me, as I am not any kind of relativist.
>Then you are bound to lack the tolerance required for maintaining
>the liberal outlook.
There is little point in repeating this. (You are not bound to quote
and reply to everything I write.)
>|I admit it is, theoretically, just possible that I am the only person
>|in history who is both a political liberal and a moral realist; perhaps
>|I am just too ill-educated and politically and socially inexperienced
>|to have discovered this alarming fact. But it is far more likely that
>|there are many other people out there who also feel like going beserk,
>|every time they hear this simple misunderstanding being repeated -- on
>|both their Left and their Right. (You appear to be on the Right, from
>|my absolutely central perspective.) :)
>I think that your position is logically incoherent. But to show
>it will require some doing. As for your perspective, I am at a
>loss trying to surmise the criteria that warrant your attribution
>of that particular position to my humble person.
So am I, but I shall try to regularise my judgement. [Is that Kantian?
Say "universalise", if that's better.]
I am very confused about the meanings of the terms "Left" and "Right";
and for this very reason, they interest me profoundly.
In this case, I was referring to an objectively mistaken moral absolutism
as being a characteristic of the Right. (It's not an invariable one, or
the matter would be much easier than it is.) Those on the Left also tend
to be overbearing moralists; but they tend to conceal their moralism in
assertions of alleged facts, mixed (to a variable extent) with naked
assertions of power.
(This is probably completely wrong. I don't mind if you pull it all to
pieces, so long as the longer aim is constructive. It's not intended to
be the last word on the subject, or even my last word.)
>||||Thus I derive no
>||||small amount of pleasure from crushing the creatures who are prone
>||||to such presumption, regardless of the ideology they espouse, or
>||||the orifice they prefer.
>|||I doubt if you really know the source of this pleasure. (No, neither do I.)
>||On the contrary, I know it well enough. It is by far the least
>||objectionable way to cater to my overweening sociopathic urges.
>|I honestly, sincerely, think that -- for once, just once -- you
>|underestimate yourself here. (But then, I'm just a naive, tired,
>|old liberal who never even got to be a Hippy; so what do I know?) :)
>Pray tell.
Perhaps mistakenly, I imagined that what you call your "sociopathic
urges" may be the understandable responses of a mind driven to fury
by other people's stupidity. But I'm having second thoughts.
>|I'm always game for a bit of consensual (pseudo)intellectual
>|sadomasochism (even a one-night stand).
>Happy to hear that.
>|Anyway, it's neither immoral or illegal. (It's just a bit expensive
>|in terms of time, when you've got academic work to do.) :)
>You are sadly mistaken. It is impossible to give consent for assault.
Lost me there. Assault on whom, by whom?
>||I aim to please.
>|You do, you really do.
>It is good to have found some measure of credibility.
Try not lose it, then, if you value it. (Not that it's all in my gift!)
>||Would you accept Andrea Dworkin, as the world-renowned
>||expert on the insidious connections between men's two heads?
>|Only if there's a good solid brick wall nearby.
>How cruel of you. Am I to assume that you are yet to master the
>art of non-invasive sexual congress?
Yes. (I still get invaded.)
>|Or any boneheaded, dickbrained conservative would do. :)
>Not to impugn your relative standing, but the conservatives enjoy
>the better grade of booze and Cuban cigars galore.
'Tis always the way.
>Ever since the
>lefties had lost their superiority in illicit substances, their
>position remained without any intrinsic appeal. How ironic,
>considering that in any meaningful sense, there is no extant
>alternative to liberalism in the political culture of this
>benighted country.
You surprise me; but I never have understood US politics (even to
the miniscule extent to which I understand the politics of either
of my home islands).
>|[Who needs a life, when there's the Net?] :)
>Erin keeps urging me otherwise.
I didn't want to intrude by asking if she were still keeping you
company, but I'll intrude enough to say that I'm glad she is --
for your sake, I mean. :)
John McCarthy
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>Concerning discrimination, I submit that it may be called unjust only if
>the fundamental discriminating principle is wholly bereft of moral
>relevance. Thus discrimination against an innate characteristic is
>inherently unjust [ . . . ]
What does this mean? It sounds right if "discrimination" means
"imposition of punishment", but not if it includes employment
discrimination and so on. For example, stupidity and blindness are
often innate but are plainly relevant to some employment choices.
If the claim is that making employment and similar decisions on grounds
like sex and race is wrong because such characteristics are irrelevant
to the purposes at hand, that seems wrong as well. After all, people
who make decisions on such grounds thereby show that those grounds *are*
relevant to their purposes. One might claim that purposes that would be
legitimate in choosing the people with whom one socializes are
illegitimate in employment contexts, but the grounds for such a claim
are not clear. (Why isn't it a good thing to work with people you like
to be with? Why isn't it legitimate to confer benefits that you are not
obligated to confer on anyone preferentially on people who are to your
taste?)
--
Jim Kalb (j...@panix.com)
When I was a lad, it was not difficult for my brother to get into an
apprenticeship program for carpenters, he being the son of a carpenter.
Others had more trouble. There were not very many black carpenters -
although I knew one.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Angus H Rodgers
>If the claim is that making employment and similar decisions on grounds
>like sex and race is wrong because such characteristics are irrelevant
>to the purposes at hand, that seems wrong as well. After all, people
>who make decisions on such grounds thereby show that those grounds *are*
>relevant to their purposes.
Brilliant! "Auto-satire": a mystifying but delightful new form of rhetoric.
I cannot think of any comment witty enough not to pale in comparison with
such a concise and effortless demolition of your own case, even as you are
making it. (Am I imitating the Zeleny tone of voice aptly enough yet?) :)
>One might claim that purposes that would be
>legitimate in choosing the people with whom one socializes are
>illegitimate in employment contexts, but the grounds for such a claim
>are not clear.
Although this is what I claim, the grounds for claiming it are no clearer
to me than to anyone else [yes, I'm pretty good at demolishing my own case
as well]: it is a gut reaction, which I have yet to justify.
But one plausible ground is suggested by your non-argument in the first of
the two quoted paragraphs: for it is obvious that the purposes of a private
company or public institution -- either of which is a socio-economic entity,
with some but not all of the attributes of a person -- belong to a different
logical category from the purposes of individual human beings [so much so,
in fact, that the word "purposes" here is almost a pun]; and it is equally
obvious that the purposes of a firm or a public institution cannot (in a
liberal democracy, at any rate) legitimately include that of discriminating
against any class of law-abiding citizens; and therefore, the exercise of
any such prejudice in the course of making of an employment decision cannot
be a legitimate action by the individual on behalf of the firm; and therefore,
in any case where such discrimination can be proved, this proof opens the way,
in principle, to legal action, either against the individual employeee (for
exceeding the authority conferred by the employer) or against the employer
(a firm or institution which is promoting unjust discrimination).
Does this argument stand up?
Even if it does, it raises the problem of how to avoid the stupid "laundry
list" approach of the PC types: according to which, every time that some
new oppressed group is identified, a new law has to be passed to protect
them from their oppressors! This is appallingly inefficient, and surely a
Net full of gifted programmers can devise something more intelligent. :)
As far as I can see, my argument reduces the problem to that of saying -- in
terms clear and general enough to be capable in principle of being drafted as
legislation -- what "unjust discrimination against a class of law-abiding
citizens" means. What seems to have been achieved so far is the abstraction
of this problem from the context of the relationship between the employer
[who is only an abstract "person", don't forget], the interviewer(s), and
the candidate for employment.
If you want it in one sentence: "Individuals may discriminate as much as
they like, against whom they (dis)like, without having to show cause to
anybody; but organisations may only discriminate in ways which they can,
if so required, prove to be relevant to their constituted purposes."
Any comments? (Scathing or otherwise.)
Jim Kalb
>|If the claim is that making employment and similar decisions on grounds
>|like sex and race is wrong because such characteristics are irrelevant
>|to the purposes at hand, that seems wrong as well. After all, people
>|who make decisions on such grounds thereby show that those grounds *are*
>|relevant to their purposes.
>
>You are instantiating the naturalist fallacy here: the factual
>need not coincide with the reasonable. Your decision-makers can
>easily demonstrate the relevance of the said grounds to their
>wishes in the matter; but the relevance to their purposes will
>follow only if their wishes are rational, which is rarely the
>case.
that can be rationally constructed from the grounds on which he makes
the decision. Is there something wrong with that? (It seems to me that
people who talk of "real purposes", as opposed to ostensible or
conscious purposes, tend to do the same.)
If the requirements someone applies in hiring electrical engineers are
whiteness, maleness and technical proficiency I would say his purpose is
to hire the best white male electrical engineer he can find. No doubt
that purpose would be based on further purposes. The requirement of
technical proficiency might be intended to further profitability. The
requirements of whiteness and maleness might be intended to confer
benefits on a favored group, but might also be intended to further
profitability. (For example, the decisionmaker might believe that
smooth cooperation is easier to achieve in a non-diverse workforce.)
Part of your point seems to be that discrimination on grounds of race or
sex is rarely relevant to the ostensible or conscious purposes people
have in making employment decisions. On that issue, Richard Epstein's
_Forbidden Grounds_ contains an interesting discussion of the ways in
which those grounds can be relevant to the narrowly economic purposes of
such decisions.
Jim Kalb
trying, though.
>it is obvious that the purposes of a private company or public
>institution -- either of which is a socio-economic entity, with some but
>not all of the attributes of a person -- belong to a different logical
>category from the purposes of individual human beings [so much so, in
>fact, that the word "purposes" here is almost a pun];
individual purposes is through social institutions. People who love
learning or the religious life set up universities or monasteries; Ben
and Jerry, who had particular ideals regarding the proper relation among
a business, its employees, and the world at large, set up an ice cream
company. (Americana note: Ben and Jerry's is a company that among
other things limits salaries to a maximum of $60,000 and donates excess
profits to the rain forests, or some such thing.)
One issue is whether it is legitimate for people who like sports talk,
horseplay and dirty jokes, or people who like the social usages and
outlook they grew up with, to choose co-workers with a view to creating
a work environment they will be happy with. If the answer is "yes",
then it seems that sex and ethnic discrimination can rationally support
a legitimate goal.
More generally, at least in America we hear a great deal about the
superiority of diversity over uniformity. If that's right, and it
really is a source of strength for a society to have a variety of ethnic
groups, each with its own life, then a legal regime intended to prevent
any socio-economic entity from having any ethnic affiliation seems an
oddity. In what will this wonderful ethnic richness consist after that
regime has been in effect for a while?
>and it is equally obvious that the purposes of a firm or a public
>institution cannot (in a liberal democracy, at any rate) legitimately
>include that of discriminating against any class of law-abiding
>citizens;
permissible purpose. Universities or monasteries need not offer equal
opportunities to morons or atheists, and I suspect an Objectivist would
have trouble getting a job at Ben and Jerry's. Above, I suggested one
way in which sex and ethnic discrimination could contribute to what
appears to be a legitimate objective. Even if the only legitimate
objective of a business is maximizing the bottom line, though,
discrimination can make a contribution. For example, current
discussions of the "challenge of diversity" suggest that non-diversity
is easier to deal with and might make it possible to put more
organizational energy into increasing the bottom line instead of
personnel matters.
>If you want it in one sentence: "Individuals may discriminate as much as
>they like, against whom they (dis)like, without having to show cause to
>anybody; but organisations may only discriminate in ways which they can,
>if so required, prove to be relevant to their constituted purposes."
money making grommets, and to have fun doing it". Then "we just don't
think that guy would be any fun" would appear to be a sufficient defence
to an employment discrimination action.
Rob Jellinghaus
>In article <1993Sep14.0...@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca>
>cssc...@atlas.cs.upei.ca (Scott Cudmore) writes:
>|I think I'm having trouble with your use of the word 'self'. Physical
>|self? (genetics) psychological self? (ego) philosophical self? (spirit)
>|mythological self? (rebirth)
>
>Why not all of the above?
Because they are unrelated?
Your argments re genotype apply exclusively to the "physical" self.
The parents' ego is reproduced in the child through non-physical
processes, known as "raising" the child. I would personally believe
much the same is true of the "spirit", but that term is vaguely enough
defined that using it as a basis for a moral argument is exceedingly
questionable. Likewise for "mythological self".
--
Rob Jellinghaus ro...@netcom.com uunet!netcom!robj
Angus H Rodgers
>arod...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Angus H Rodgers) writes:
>
>>(Am I imitating the Zeleny tone of voice aptly enough yet?) :)
>
>I suspect you may be too much of a softy to get it right.
Damn. This helmet was getting sticky anyway. :)
>>it is obvious that the purposes of a private company or public
>>institution -- either of which is a socio-economic entity, with some but
>>not all of the attributes of a person -- belong to a different logical
>>category from the purposes of individual human beings [so much so, in
>>fact, that the word "purposes" here is almost a pun];
>
>But since man is a social animal, one basic way we realize our
>individual purposes is through social institutions. People who love
>learning or the religious life set up universities or monasteries; Ben
>and Jerry, who had particular ideals regarding the proper relation among
>a business, its employees, and the world at large, set up an ice cream
>company. (Americana note: Ben and Jerry's is a company that among
>other things limits salaries to a maximum of $60,000 and donates excess
>profits to the rain forests, or some such thing.)
>
>One issue is whether it is legitimate for people who like sports talk,
>horseplay and dirty jokes, or people who like the social usages and
>outlook they grew up with, to choose co-workers with a view to creating
>a work environment they will be happy with. If the answer is "yes",
>then it seems that sex and ethnic discrimination can rationally support
>a legitimate goal.
"I hate arguments. They are always vulgar, and sometimes convincing." :)
>More generally, at least in America we hear a great deal about the
>superiority of diversity over uniformity. If that's right, and it
>really is a source of strength for a society to have a variety of ethnic
>groups, each with its own life, then a legal regime intended to prevent
>any socio-economic entity from having any ethnic affiliation seems an
>oddity. In what will this wonderful ethnic richness consist after that
>regime has been in effect for a while?
Damn, blast, and a triple helping of damn! The man is right again! :)
>>and it is equally obvious that the purposes of a firm or a public
>>institution cannot (in a liberal democracy, at any rate) legitimately
>>include that of discriminating against any class of law-abiding
>>citizens;
>
>They can if the discrimination bears a rational relation to a
>permissible purpose. Universities or monasteries need not offer equal
>opportunities to morons or atheists [...]
(Scrambling to salvage some dignity.) I did guard against this objection,
although admittedly not in the passage just quoted.
>Even if the only legitimate
>objective of a business is maximizing the bottom line, though,
>discrimination can make a contribution. For example, current
>discussions of the "challenge of diversity" suggest that non-diversity
>is easier to deal with and might make it possible to put more
>organizational energy into increasing the bottom line instead of
>personnel matters.
I've got to admit that even this is plausible.
>>If you want it in one sentence: "Individuals may discriminate as much as
>>they like, against whom they (dis)like, without having to show cause to
>>anybody; but organisations may only discriminate in ways which they can,
>>if so required, prove to be relevant to their constituted purposes."
>
>Suppose the constituted purpose of the Apex Grommet Company is to "make
>money making grommets, and to have fun doing it". Then "we just don't
>think that guy would be any fun" would appear to be a sufficient defence
>to an employment discrimination action.
It would convince me, all right. :)
I am demolished. I knew I was on an weak ground here, but I didn't know
just how weak. I still feel that all the usual forms of discrimination
are so wicked that something ought to be done to make them illegal; but
I now see that I still have not the faintest idea of what a suitable law
for this purpose would look like. And I still feel that most objections
to the idea of such changes in the Law are based on prejudice, even when
they are couched in general terms, relating to civil liberties; but you
have shown me that this is not always the case. So, I shall have to see
if my "gut feeling" on the matter has any other rational support than
that which has just been knocked out from under me; or if my emotional
belief was just a mistake; and, if that belief was mistaken, then what
form of action, which does not result in any change to the Law, could
express my loathing of this particular form of injustice, as well as
carrying some moral authority in the face of those bigots who continue
to live smugly in the knowledge that the Law is on their side.
For this bitter lesson in politics, I thank you.
Mikhail Zeleny
|[...]
|I am demolished. I knew I was on an weak ground here, but I didn't know
|just how weak. I still feel that all the usual forms of discrimination
|are so wicked that something ought to be done to make them illegal; but
|I now see that I still have not the faintest idea of what a suitable law
|for this purpose would look like. And I still feel that most objections
|to the idea of such changes in the Law are based on prejudice, even when
|they are couched in general terms, relating to civil liberties; but you
|have shown me that this is not always the case. So, I shall have to see
|if my "gut feeling" on the matter has any other rational support than
|that which has just been knocked out from under me; or if my emotional
|belief was just a mistake; and, if that belief was mistaken, then what
|form of action, which does not result in any change to the Law, could
|express my loathing of this particular form of injustice, as well as
|carrying some moral authority in the face of those bigots who continue
|to live smugly in the knowledge that the Law is on their side.
I commend your intellectual honesty. A few non-contentious remarks
follow. Absent a public normative standard of rationality, there is
no way to draw a systematic distinction between unfounded prejudice
and rational judgment. Thus it appears that your intuitive concerns
about discrimination cannot be addressed without instituting such a
standard, which is likely to lend itself to easy subversion, and in
any event may be far more offensive to reasonable sensibilities than
any private form of bigotry. In any event, your wish to ensure the
equality of employment opportunity, ought to be addressed by voluntary
individual effort, a force for which state interference is a very poor
substitute. There is no way to banish strife from the public realm;
nor is it desirable to attempt to do so. As for the matter of rights,
I suggest that the recognition of a fundamental right to work makes
for a most laudable goal to strive for.
|For this bitter lesson in politics, I thank you.
|--
|Gus Rodgers, Dept. of Computer Science, Queen Mary & Westfield College,
|Mile End Road, London, England +44 71 975 5241 arod...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk
cordially,
Jim Kalb
>I still feel that all the usual forms of discrimination are so wicked
The usual forms of intentional discrimination are presented in public
discussions as motivated by malice and small-mindedness. For all I know
that may often or usually be the case. I simply don't know. It's not
something people talk about freely and openly. (In the United States,
by the way, most current issues relate to statistical discrimination and
raise a different set of concerns.)
It seems to me that for most people the best life would be a life as a
member of a community with well-defined customs and standards not all of
which are based solely on universal reason and many of which are
followed as a matter of upbringing and habit rather than conscious
choice. I don't think membership in such a community can be the
organizing principle in most people's lives unless they are allowed to
engage in their day-to-day practical pursuits as members of the
community, and I don't think such a community can exist unless it is
allowed to be exclusive. So if the Mormons or the Gypsies (to pick
groups I know next to nothing about) want to have their own businesses
that don't hire outsiders I think it's wrong to interfere. I'm not sure
why the same rule shouldn't apply to other groups as well, especially in
situations like New York City in 1993 in which no single group is
dominant. (If you want arguments to the effect that in a free market
with minimal government no group can ever be dominant, at least under
modern conditions of cheap and easy communications and transportation,
post a query in one of the newsgroups dominated by the libertarians and
their sympathizers.)
It's true that my views are based on my notion of "the best life", and
that many people live lives that are far from the best life. Some such
people may be inclined to make up for the poverty of their own lives by
asserting the inferiority of other people and expressing their
conviction of that inferiority through discriminatory conduct. Such
people may be acting badly, but I'm not sure how to stop them from
discriminating without interfering with the ability of communities to
organize and maintain themselves, an ability that I think is of the
highest importance. (If you want arguments that at least under modern
conditions and in the absence of government support discriminatory
conduct isn't likely to do much damage, again you can ask the
libertarians.)
>For this bitter lesson in politics, I thank you.
I hope you are aware that such language can result in deprivation of
usenet access.
Mikhail Zeleny
|In <278u7e$7...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
|zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
||There is no multiculturalism for the differently tolerant.
|I think you misunderstand liberalism. (And because I also misunderstand
|it, your misunderstanding interests me. More of this anon, no doubt.)
I think not. My interpretation of liberalism is more or less in line
with Locke, Montesquieu, Lamartine, Mill, and Rawls, to pick a few
names at random.
|||Of course I knew there would be another hand.
||How could there not be another hand, from a liberal, -- or, for
||that matter, philosophical, -- standpoint?
|To be a liberal is not to be incapable of taking a stand.
Nor did I suggest otherwise.
||Stop complaining and keep on digging.
|When you stop complaining, I will.
Please identify one of my complaints.
||I have scars on my face and on my knuckles, as a vivid reminder of
||having taken a stand against powerful prejudice.
|Tell more (please).
Sorry, but I have no stomach for the role of an _ancien combattant_,
especially when I am painfully sober. In any event, I am sure that
you already know the difference between a war story and a fairy tale.
||But I am equally
||appalled by those who clamor to force the public to participate in
||their personal fights.
|This begs the question of whether they have some right on their side.
The subject of rights must be approached through reason and argument,
before initiating the hostilities.
||Do not mistake me for any sort of libertarian.
|I didn't, although I do see a family resemblance.
"Ha ha." Why not an egalitarian, or a fraternitarian then?
||Never did much pub-crawling, did you?
|No.
All's the pity.
||The employment contract is in principle a
||matter of symmetrical trade of goods for services.
|Surely this is wrong, in point of fact, and in point of law.
This is known as gainsaying.
|[Can someone who actually knows something about the Law, as
|I don't, help me out here?]
I can, and I do.
|The two parties to the contract are not two individuals. There is only
|the barest of formal symmetries here.
Wrong. For all relevant intents and purposes, a corporation acts as a
legal individual.
|Where there is a real symmetry between two flesh-and-blood persons,
|(and not only between two "persons" in law), I have no dispute with
|you. Nor could you expect me, as a liberal, to object to the legal
|right of any individual to be a bigot in pursuit of his or her own
|legitimate private interests.
Not a moral right though.
||What public
||rationale can you offer for constraining one party more than you
||constrain the other?
|A difference in their essential natures. [Supply a more correct
|philosophical term, if you know one, and know what I mean.]
I think not. The relevant essential nature being defined in relation
to all rights operative in a contractual relation, there is no salient
difference between a corporation and an individual.
|||If you can convince me that the only way to eliminate unjust prejudice
|||from public employment [and I hope you are not going to go on and on
|||about a "free market", because I would have trouble arguing with you,
|||and would need help to demonstrate where you are wrong] is to adopt
|||blindly mechanical, "Politically Correct" procedures which themselves
|||offend against natural justice and reason, you will have convinced me
|||that the concept of "equal rights" for [category X] is just what you
|||say it is.
||Whose injustice?
|Objective injustice. (Or God's, if you like; but I imagine you don't.)
Supply an objective standard of justice.
||Denial presupposes access. Until and unless the right to access
||and acquire "the necessities of life" is fully guaranteed by the
||public sector, your talk of denial will make no sense whatsoever.
|I'm not so sure about the "fully". But more relevantly: the question
|of whether talk makes sense or not cannot depend on the existence of
|particular social arrangements (apart from those of language itself),
|because otherwise how could one talk of changing those arrangements?
By starting from the top, rather than attempting to introduce radical
change through piecemeal reforms of existing statutes, which had been
designed to implement a radically different political philosophy.
|Natural rights can be denied in practice: what's so senseless about
|that statement?
Nothing at all.
||As an employer, I am under no obligation to provide for anyone not
||enjoying a contractual relation with me for that purpose. What
||you call deprivation, cannot be qualified as such in the absence
||of a fully guaranteed supply of the commodity in question, namely
||employment opportunity. But no such guaranteed supply exists in
||our society; and hence your proposal to regulate it in a negative
||fashion, amounts to no more and no less than a unilateral social
||infringement of one party's freedom of association.
|I've already dealt with this point (however inadequately).
Your dealings have been based on false factual assumptions.
||Ah yes, the fabled Categorical Imperative: "So act that the maxim
||of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle
||establishing universal law." Translation: the validation of any
||homosexual act by the Categorical Imperative is tantamount to
||establishing the desirability of the universal extinction of all
||mankind. In my circles, they call it a _reductio ad absurdum_.
|You seem to be getting confused (which is not like you, or so I thought).
|You might as well have said that the validation of the right to smoke
|cigarettes is tantamount to establishing the desirability of lung cancer.
Wrong. It is in the nature of the Categorical Imperative to disregard
the contingent consequences of the action, in favor of focusing solely
on its intrinsic nature. If lung cancer were an ineluctable part of
*each* act of lighting up a fag, the CI would surely enjoin you from
smoking. Since sterility is a necessary and intrinsic aspect of each
particular act of homosexual intercourse, Kantian ethics can approve
of the latter only at the cost of deeming extinction of man a
rationally desirable goal.
|(I'm now getting bored, by the way. Will this prove to have been only
|a one-night stand, after all? That would be sad, as I had hoped that
|your passion for reason would outweigh your loathing of homosexual
|desire: a loathing which appears to spill over into a contempt for all
|who defend its right to exist and to be expressed.) :)
I was going to beg your indulgence for ignoring this passage, until I
reflected on the need to disabuse you of the impression that I loathe
any kind of desire. If there is anything I loathe, it is the loathing
of an uncontrollable emotion, and the fallacy of imputing a moral
inevitability to its fulfillment, by dint of neglecting the faculty of
rational restraint.
||Concerning
||discrimination, I submit that it may be called unjust only if the
||fundamental discriminating principle is wholly bereft of moral
||relevance.
|Agreed.
||Thus discrimination against an innate characteristic
||is inherently unjust; but the legitimacy of discrimination against
||a behavior pattern, regardless of whether or not it is motivated
||by an innate characteristic, depends on the moral merits thereof.
|And its relevance, as you just said.
Subsumed under the moral merits.
||Thus in order to deem discrimination against homosexuality unjust,
||you would have to begin by delegitimizing all comprehensive moral
||conceptions that judge it as morally deficient.
|This does not follow. (What's happened to you? Have you lost track
|of an accessibility relation or two?)
To elaborate: if the Judaeo-Christian morality is deemed licit, then
its practitioners are _ipso facto_ granted the license to discriminate
against those individuals they deem immoral. Now use modus tollens.
||Note that it
||would not do to take the matters in the reverse order, proclaiming
||such discrimination unjust on _a priori_ grounds; for that would
||beg the question of morality altogether.
|I'm not sure what you mean here. If you could clear up the preceding
|point, this one might clarify itself too. As it looks now, you appear
|to be repeating the point already (not) made. But I may just be lost
|in the labyrinth of your prose.
The liberal state is characterized by tolerance, which inherently
excludes a comprehensive public conception of morality. Thus it must
allow a plurality of competing and incompatible moral conceptions.
Given that some of these include demonstrably consistent objections to
the homosexual behavior, it follows that the liberal state is bound to
lack the means to outlaw all discrimination against homosexuality.
||So the ball is in your court.
|Your lob went out of court, actually. (Serves you right for thinking
|that you could go over my head -- which in fact you did, but not in
|a legal way.) Love-fifteen.
I think not. See above.
|||On (2), then, I would try to argue that the focus should be on the
|||arbitrary and irrelevant personal prejudices of the individual who,
|||on behalf of an effectively monopolistic employer, is in a position
|||to grant or refuse employment to a candidate [a gay man, a lesbian,
|||a black man or woman, or some other member of some "Category X" --
|||favoured by the Politically Correct, just because it is in disfavour
|||with the Right]; and not with the free [if not "freely chosen"], and
|||equally irrelevant, personal life of the candidate.
||Huh? why can't the (kindly cut the "effectively monopolistic"
||demagoguery) employer's personal desire to avoid association with
||anyone whatsoever, for any reason of his choosing, be relevant to
||the issue of setting the social constraints on such association?
|You seem unable to grasp my point. And I was indulging in no "demagoguery":
|something which I thought was your strong suit, rather than mine. (Oh dear,
|this really is degenerating into flames. I have done my best to avoid it,
|but must now admit defeat. Let's stop while the flames are only Force One
|on the Zeleny scale, shall we?)
Fine. This issue having been resolved in the meantime, I will add
only that my objection to your bringing in the specter of monopolies,
is based on its utter irrelevance to the original question. For one
thing, protection against monopolies can and should be accomplished by
separate, dedicated means; for another, no emphatic statement of need
will ever substitute for a lacking proof of right.
||If the liberal society should presume to stipulate the criteria of
||relevance governing the individual's freedom to enter into a
||contractual agreement, why can't it do the same for his freedom to
||choose his marriage partner, his religion, his forms of expression
||and sources of information, his dwelling, his educators, or even
||his form of sexuality?
|Point already dealt with, over and over. I was expecting you to point
|up the inadequacies in my argument (because I'm only in this in order
|to learn something from you), and not just to attempt to bypass it.
See the points made by Jim Kalb.
||Where do you propose to draw the line in
||this allegedly benign paternalistic intervention?
|Already dealt with.
Not successfully.
||It seems that
||you have already pronounced the relevant moral tenets of the
||majority of Abrahamite religions to be contrary to your _raison
||d'Etat_;
|Already dealt with.
Not successfully.
||and as I have shown above, you would have to do the same
||for the Categorical Imperative.
|Your argument was invalid; or at best, merely allusive. Repair
|it if you want -- but please don't try my patience any further,
|if you have any interest in prolonging this (once tumescent, but
|now sadly flagging) conversation. Believe it or not, if I have
|simply misunderstood you, I am willing to admit it, for the sake
|of the real pleasure of rational argument.
See above. Further elaboration will be provided as needed.
||So how do you propose to
||reconcile this extremist position with the familiar liberal
||disclaimer of taking a stand on any comprehensive moral or
||political doctrine?
|I don't. I am an "extremist", and I am not a "liberal" -- in the senses
|which you have just attached to these words. But I am no apologist for
|anybody's _raison d'Etat_, either.
Good for you. Perhaps we can agree on some things, after all.
I believe that Abraham Maslow would see things in the opposite way.
Most forms of sex involve the fulfillment of objective social (because
inherently plural of participants) *needs*. By contrast, a large, if
lamentably ever-shrinking segment of our societies, does perfectly
well without any jobs.
|That your mistake lies in mistaking the formal for the informal does
|not, on reflection, surprise me.
I have no idea whence originates your evidently homespun conception of
formality. Have you given any thought at all to the formative social
function of regimentalized sexuality? Why not read some XIXth century
anthropology?
|Our disagreement, anyway, now seems to centre on this question of
|whether employment is a private arrangement between two people.
|(This also was a point at issue, never resolved, in my argument
|with those Libertarians I mentioned.)
Serves you right for arguing with those clowns. And then you decry my
own failure to persuade some of my critics as a sign of error? Why
not apply the same reasoning to your own views?
|I say, no, it isn't, it is a "formal" and "objective" arrangement.
|Its distinguishing characteristic seems to be the extent to which
|actual or prospective employees are, to a significant extent,
|*interchangeable* in respect of their capcity to perform the role.
Given your implicit denial of the same situation obtaining in sexual
arrangements, you really ought to meet most men and some women of my
acquaintance. As a point of interest, employers are as fungible as
employees; so where's the asymmetry?
|And I would say that unjust discrimination consists in the choice
|of an objectively less qualified candidate over a better qualified
|one (for systematic reasons). That is, the injustice I refer to is
|a form of corruption. Note *very* carefully, please, that this point
|of mine tells equally against PC quota-based procedures as it does
|against your free-market libertarian approach. [That's with a small
|`l'. Let me know if the appellation still offends.]
I think I like "fraternitarian" best of all, -- after all, somebody
ought to stand up for a neglected ideal.
|In a case where, for example, a gay man is rejected in favour of an
|equally qualified straight man, then I see no hope of redress -- much
|though I would wish to see it, if the rejection was based on projection
|of the interviewer's private sexual fantasies into the public situation
|of the interview.
I think that Jim Kalb dealt with this claim quite conclusively.
|And I hope I have made it obvious that I do not advocate the mandatory
|hiring (by any employer) of an exclusively lesbian, black, disabled,
|working-class [...] workforce, in preference to a host of better-qualified
|heterosexual, male, white, middle-aged, middle-class, able-bodied [...]
|former South African secret policemen -- although, as a private employer,
|I would reserve my right to do so, and to go broke in the process. :)
Why not simply exercise your right to boycott and otherwise militate
against unjust employers as a private citizen?
|||Incidentally, I notice that I do seem (in spite of myself) to be tackling
|||point (1) at the same time as point (2): because my view (even as little
|||as it has been articulated so far) is already clearly incompatible with
|||any thoroughgoing "free market" ideology.
||Nor is mine; but I make up for that shortcoming by not identifying
||myself as any kind of liberal.
|I must have misunderstood you somewhere along the line.
What did I say to give you an impression of the contrary?
||||Contrary to what you say, I do not recall receiving any "careful
||||rebuttals", as opposed to bombastic denunciations and groundless
||||obloquy; and if any of that verbiage came from "intelligent and
||||decent people", their alleged intelligence and decency sooner or
||||later gave way to a torrent of inarticulate, spiteful mumblings.
|||You memory appears to be at fault: which leads me to wonder (with
|||curiosity and even some dread) how you will recall my contribution. :)
||Please remind me of one specific occasion that fits your description.
|I haven't kept archives of these threads, and I was relying on my own hazy
|memory. If I was mistaken, and you have been subjected to endless torrents
|of mindless abuse, and nothing else, then you have my deepest sympathy --
|all the more, because you will have so much difficulty in proving to me that
|this was the case, and your suffering will go unremarked. :)
Since I have no interest in promulgating an image of the innocent
victim, my suffering will have to go unexperienced.
||Like I said, Mr Mike is an exception among my critics.
|Perhaps I just happened to run across the exceptional one.
Do you really think that any of the rest, say, Gene Ward Smith or John
Donald Collier, did any better in their recurring strident efforts of
criticizing me?
||But even
||in his case, the attempt to promulgate a careful rebuttal of my
||views, ended in abject failure.
|I think I can imagine why. :)
So can I. They failed because they were wrong. Note that this is not
to be taken as implying that their failure conclusively demonstrates
that I am right.
||||denunciations of "alternative
||||sexualities", whether based in revelation
||| ^^^^^^^^^^
|||Ah, that's right, you did only say "valid".
||What else do you want? Validity both confers and certifies
||legitimacy in a liberal society.
| ^^^^^^^
|I did warn you. This is your second warning. After this, I either
|withdraw or get nasty. In a battle of nastiness, you would probably
|win, so I am likely to withdraw.
Contrary to your apparent assumption, I do not use "liberal" as a term
of opprobrium. If you are at a loss for a decent definition thereof,
I recommend John Rawls' recent book, _Political Liberalism_.
||Let me make this crystal clear: as a moral realist, you may well
||feel yourself justified in dismissing incorrect moral conceptions;
||but as a liberal, you are required to allot equal opportunity to
||each coherent system of moral beliefs.
|It is perfectly possible that I have misunderstood the word "liberal"
|all my life. It is more likely that you have misunderstood it. I don't
|care which. I would be most interested to debate the meaning of the
|term; and I am perfectly happy to apologise for any misunderstanding I
|may have caused by my (mis)use of it. I just don't want its apparent
|opacity to be a cause of a tiresome slanging match between us.
Then take its meaning as characterized above (in the passage about
tolerance), and feel free to question it. (I am a big fan of the
Socratic elenchus.)
|If your use of the term is correct, I am not a liberal. Does this
|admission (if that is what it is) help to clear some of the smoke
|out of the air?
Good. Since I have been looking for the proper successor concept for
tolerance, perhaps you would be kind enough to assist me in my search.
What would you recommend in its stead?
||The Kantian position is simple: from an act-deontological
||standpoint, which recognizes the Categorical Imperative,
|I'll ignore that bit.
I mean only that Kant adopts an outlook that takes duty prior to
value, and seeks to decide it for each individual act of a free moral
agent.
||the morality of any choice is (a) wholly independent from one's
||desires in the matter, and (b) must be universalizable to all
||human beings in a similar situation. Another formulation of the
||same principle, which is said to be equivalent to the above ("Act
||so as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of
||another, always as an end and never as means only."), appears to
||rule out any possibility of sex outside of an enduring contractual
||arrangement including total mutual alienation of the participants'
||to each other. And so it goes.
|Although I don't understand this, I don't think it's your fault.
|I have some reading to do.
I wish I understood it myself. Kant claims that "man cannot make use
of *another* person to get this [mere anima] pleasure apart from a
special limitation by a contract establishing the right, by which two
persons put each other under obligation", under which "while one
person is acquired by the other *as if it were a thing*, the one who
is acquired acquires the other in turn; for in this way each reclaims
itself and restores its personality. But acquiring a member of a
human being is at the same time acquiring the whole being, since a
person is an absolute unity. Hence it is not only admissible for the
sexes to surrender to and accept each other for enjoyment under the
condition of marriage, but it is possible for them to do so *only*
under this condition." But, aside from the fact that it would be
impossible for a Kantian agent to get a shoeshine in good conscience
without alienating himself to the shoe-blacker, given that a shoemaker
acquires his products by alienating them from the state of nature and
adjoining them to his political person of a proprietor, it would seem
equally impossible for our hero to engage in any consensual act of
casual trade.
|||No problem for me, as I am not any kind of relativist.
||Then you are bound to lack the tolerance required for maintaining
||the liberal outlook.
|There is little point in repeating this. (You are not bound to quote
|and reply to everything I write.)
I am bound by no more and no less than the force of habit. Please
abridge your reply as you wish.
|||I admit it is, theoretically, just possible that I am the only person
|||in history who is both a political liberal and a moral realist; perhaps
|||I am just too ill-educated and politically and socially inexperienced
|||to have discovered this alarming fact. But it is far more likely that
|||there are many other people out there who also feel like going beserk,
|||every time they hear this simple misunderstanding being repeated -- on
|||both their Left and their Right. (You appear to be on the Right, from
|||my absolutely central perspective.) :)
||I think that your position is logically incoherent. But to show
||it will require some doing. As for your perspective, I am at a
||loss trying to surmise the criteria that warrant your attribution
||of that particular position to my humble person.
|So am I, but I shall try to regularise my judgement. [Is that Kantian?
|Say "universalise", if that's better.]
I am glad to hear this.
|I am very confused about the meanings of the terms "Left" and "Right";
|and for this very reason, they interest me profoundly.
Blame the French National Assembly for imputing a linear order to
something more akin in its structure to a Banach space.
|In this case, I was referring to an objectively mistaken moral absolutism
|as being a characteristic of the Right. (It's not an invariable one, or
|the matter would be much easier than it is.) Those on the Left also tend
|to be overbearing moralists; but they tend to conceal their moralism in
|assertions of alleged facts, mixed (to a variable extent) with naked
|assertions of power.
I can't wait to hear your views about the political center.
|(This is probably completely wrong. I don't mind if you pull it all to
|pieces, so long as the longer aim is constructive. It's not intended to
|be the last word on the subject, or even my last word.)
As I made it clear in conversation with Mr Mike some time ago, I have
no use for that simplistic trichotomy.
||||||Thus I derive no
||||||small amount of pleasure from crushing the creatures who are prone
||||||to such presumption, regardless of the ideology they espouse, or
||||||the orifice they prefer.
|||||I doubt if you really know the source of this pleasure. (No, neither do I.)
||||On the contrary, I know it well enough. It is by far the least
||||objectionable way to cater to my overweening sociopathic urges.
|||I honestly, sincerely, think that -- for once, just once -- you
|||underestimate yourself here. (But then, I'm just a naive, tired,
|||old liberal who never even got to be a Hippy; so what do I know?) :)
||Pray tell.
|Perhaps mistakenly, I imagined that what you call your "sociopathic
|urges" may be the understandable responses of a mind driven to fury
|by other people's stupidity. But I'm having second thoughts.
Why would anyone be driven to fury by common stupidity, rather than
complacency, inertia, injustice, despair, boredom, hypocrisy, betrayal,
misanthropy, cowardice, or any other perversion of the moral order?
|||I'm always game for a bit of consensual (pseudo)intellectual
|||sadomasochism (even a one-night stand).
||Happy to hear that.
|||Anyway, it's neither immoral or illegal. (It's just a bit expensive
|||in terms of time, when you've got academic work to do.) :)
||You are sadly mistaken. It is impossible to give consent for assault.
|Lost me there. Assault on whom, by whom?
Sadomasochism involves assault, by definition. Thus consensual
sadomasochism is an oxymoron.
||||I aim to please.
|||You do, you really do.
||It is good to have found some measure of credibility.
|Try not lose it, then, if you value it. (Not that it's all in my gift!)
There is a far greater value in liberating oneself from the mundane
attachments.
||||Would you accept Andrea Dworkin, as the world-renowned
||||expert on the insidious connections between men's two heads?
|||Only if there's a good solid brick wall nearby.
||How cruel of you. Am I to assume that you are yet to master the
||art of non-invasive sexual congress?
|Yes. (I still get invaded.)
I think Andrea would approve of that experience for men.
|||Or any boneheaded, dickbrained conservative would do. :)
||Not to impugn your relative standing, but the conservatives enjoy
||the better grade of booze and Cuban cigars galore.
|'Tis always the way.
Not right after a revolution, it isn't.
||Ever since the
||lefties had lost their superiority in illicit substances, their
||position remained without any intrinsic appeal. How ironic,
||considering that in any meaningful sense, there is no extant
||alternative to liberalism in the political culture of this
||benighted country.
|You surprise me; but I never have understood US politics (even to
|the miniscule extent to which I understand the politics of either
|of my home islands).
It has been that way ever since the demise of anarchism and socialism.
Now all we have, is what Noam Chomsky rightly calls "the left and
right wings of the Property Party", i.e. liberals all. As a matter of
tradition, the new ideas arising outside of the bipartisan system,
eventually tend to get absorbed therein.
|||[Who needs a life, when there's the Net?] :)
||Erin keeps urging me otherwise.
|I didn't want to intrude by asking if she were still keeping you
|company, but I'll intrude enough to say that I'm glad she is --
|for your sake, I mean. :)
How uncharacteristically unpaternalistic of you to lack concern for
the well-being of a near-minor.
|--
|Gus Rodgers, Dept. of Computer Science, Queen Mary & Westfield College,
|Mile End Road, London, England +44 71 975 5241 arod...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk
jw...@key.amdahl.com
it comes under ethics. I personally do not believe that communities have
to be pure, in fact, I think it is admirable to want to integrate. I know
that the environment I live and work in is very integrated, and I wouldn't
want it any other way. I really enjoy talking with other people and learning
about their beliefs and cultures. I think there are rational reasons for
wanting integration, namely that it provides a great deal of contact and
experience with the world at large. If you examine exclusive communities,
they may have a certain cohesion, but they certainly tend to be backward
and intolerant. Integration to me doesn't mean a great melting pot, it means
diverse groups or individuals interacting. Exclusive groups that isolate
themselves from the world at large are definitely losing out, and I hardly
call that diversity. I call it territorial and they are cutting themselves
off from the world at large, at their loss.
So, while there is no moral argument, there is an ethical argument. One
that for me outweighs any sort term gain in presumed productivity or
enjoyment. I consider myself the product of integration, and I believe
I have gained valuable insights that I might have otherwise missed.
John Williams
Jim Kalb
>I personally do not believe that communities have to be pure, in fact, I
>think it is admirable to want to integrate.
the members of which preferred to deal with each other and to live in
accordance with their own ways but who were ready to deal with and learn
from outsiders when they saw a definite benefit from doing so.
>I really enjoy talking with other people and learning about their
>beliefs and cultures.
each with its own culture and characteristic beliefs. If so, what do
you think the effect will be on that desirable situation if it is
illegal or otherwise difficult for separate communities to carry on
their life through institutions of practical importance, such as schools
and places of employment?
>If you examine exclusive communities, they may have a certain cohesion,
>but they certainly tend to be backward and intolerant.
effect would be replicated by an all-inclusive culture that by
definition would have no outsiders and no outside. On the other hand,
many progressive communities (the Greeks come to mind) have managed to
avoid the vices of absolute exclusivity while preferring their own
members to others.
Andrew Dinn
>In <278u7e$7...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
>zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>>Ah yes, the fabled Categorical Imperative: "So act that the maxim
>>of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle
>>establishing universal law." Translation: the validation of any
>>homosexual act by the Categorical Imperative is tantamount to
>>establishing the desirability of the universal extinction of all
>>mankind. In my circles, they call it a _reductio ad absurdum_.
>
>You seem to be getting confused (which is not like you, or so I thought).
>You might as well have said that the validation of the right to smoke
>cigarettes is tantamount to establishing the desirability of lung cancer.
This is one of Mr Zeleny's rock-bottom principles. It allows him to
argue for all sorts of nonsense when he chooses to apply it (as your
example shows he would look stupid if he applied it everywhere). Why
does it have such authority? for him? for anyone else? Just because
Father Immanuel said so?
Even granted its validity as a universal principle is Mr Zeleny
applying it correctly. What about validation of individual acts of
homosexuality in particular circumstances by particular individuals.
Validation of such closely circumscribed actions is not tantamount to
establishing the desirability of the universal extinction of the
persons involved, let alone mankind (there is room for them to
procreate elsewhere granted adequate particularity to the
circumstances). In the end it all depends how you want to slice the
salami. Mr Zeleny offends by wanting it both sideways and lengthways.
Andrew Dinn
-----------------------------
Our Motto - A Proper Lisp Now
Francis Muir
This is one of Mr Zeleny's rock-bottom principles.
No comment.
Fido
gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu
> In article <1993Sep13....@uoft02.utoledo.edu>,
> <gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu> wrote:
>>In that case, might I humbly suggest that you shut the fuck up?
>>That way you could spare the rest of us the boredom, indifference,
>>pity, contempt, and nausea your postings generally engender.
> He probably finds comfort in the fact that at least he is engendering
> *something*.
It is his quest for immortality in action. I still want to know when
he is going to start having kids. The sight of a healthy, childless
person nearing if not in middle age who lectures the world at large
about the immorality of not having a big family is either
ludicrous or nauseating, depending on one's taste in these matters.
Hey, I almost forgot. The guy is a frigging Nazi. He is a Platonist
the way Eichmann was a Kantian--mouthing the words of morality
without knowing what they mean.
Sorry about almost missing the Nazi reference.
gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu
> In article <277mvg$5...@eff.org> mnem...@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
> ||In that case, might I humbly suggest that you shut the fuck up?
> Avec plaisir, mon vieux. Get your fuck within my range, and I
> will shut it up once and for all.
Is that a threat, creep? Stinking slime like you should be careful
of making threats. Someone might take them seriously.
Kermit Rose
>
> I wish (note the proper English verb) to live in an environment
> where I can kill, rob, maim, rape, and steal, with utter impunity.
> It follows that my moral imperative is to strive towards perfecting
> my skills of stealth and evasion, while engaging in my favorite
> pursuits. Sounds like fun.
>
It is not credible that you would wish to be immoral.
ro...@fsu1.cc.fsu.edu To be sure I see your response, use e-mail.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
You may post, repost, or publish ANY communication received from me.
male female common neuter
nomitive he she sie it
genitive his her hir its
objective him her hym it
Frank Casper
If I understand Mr. Kalb correctly then the upshot is that
all so-called rights devolve down to personal or corporate
preferences. Hence, it would seem, the only right is the
right to prosecute preferences. I don't doubt that this
view can sound "plausible" but if bought it means that
those preferences prevail where those who hold them
have the power and prefer to make them so. "Let them eat cake",
as it is proverbially quoted. Let us just say of our schools,
for example, that the institutions be permitted to pick and
choose among would be students based upon whether we like
them, or that they "fit in". I think an equally "plausible"
argument can, has, and should be made for the conception of
rights as inalienable, not liable to preference of any sort,
and the correlate obligation to institute and protect those
rights. It always amazes me how many of us there are who
live in and take advantage of institutions that advance and protect
their rights and then generate plausible arguments as to why
this probably should not be done because it violates some
matters of taste.
fjc
Mikhail Zeleny
and...@cee.hw.ac.uk (Andrew Dinn) writes:
|In article <CDGAF...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk>
|arod...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Angus H Rodgers) writes:
||In <278u7e$7...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
||zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
|| [stuff]
|||Ah yes, the fabled Categorical Imperative: "So act that the maxim
|||of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle
|||establishing universal law." Translation: the validation of any
|||homosexual act by the Categorical Imperative is tantamount to
|||establishing the desirability of the universal extinction of all
|||mankind. In my circles, they call it a _reductio ad absurdum_.
||You seem to be getting confused (which is not like you, or so I thought).
||You might as well have said that the validation of the right to smoke
||cigarettes is tantamount to establishing the desirability of lung cancer.
|This is one of Mr Zeleny's rock-bottom principles. It allows him to
|argue for all sorts of nonsense when he chooses to apply it (as your
|example shows he would look stupid if he applied it everywhere). Why
|does it have such authority? for him? for anyone else? Just because
|Father Immanuel said so?
[Disclaimer: contrary to Mr Dinn's blithe assertions, I am not any
sort of Kantian; nor do I play one on TV.]
Although some of these points have been addressed in my reply to Gus
Rodgers, they are of a basic importance, and bear repetition. I take
the Kantian position to be act-deontological, judging duty to be
logically prior to value, and seeking to decide it for each individual
act of a free moral agent. Thus the Categorical Imperative implies
that the morality of any human action is wholly independent from the
agent's purposes and desires in the matter, and that his choice must
instantiate a maxim that is universalizable to all human beings in a
similar situation. It is in the nature of the Categorical Imperative
to disregard altogether the contingent consequences of the action, in
favor of focusing on its intrinsic nature. So if lung cancer were an
ineluctable part of each act of lighting up a fag, Kant's principle
would surely enjoin us from smoking. But since sterility is indeed a
necessary and intrinsic aspect of each particular act of homosexual
intercourse, Kantian ethics can approve of the latter only at the cost
of deeming extinction of man a rationally desirable goal.
Another formulation of the same principle, which Kant claims to be
equivalent to the above, is "Act so as to treat humanity, whether in
your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as
means only." But in its application, it seems to place greater
strictures on moral conduct, ruling out any possibility of sexual
intercourse outside of an enduring contractual arrangement involving
total mutual alienation of the participants. Thus Kant claims that
"man cannot make use of *another* person to get this [mere animal]
pleasure apart from a special limitation by a contract establishing
the right, by which two persons put each other under obligation",
under which "while one person is acquired by the other *as if it were
a thing*, the one who is acquired acquires the other in turn; for in
this way each reclaims itself and restores its personality. But
acquiring a member of a human being is at the same time acquiring the
whole being, since a person is an absolute unity."
Note that this argument depends on an equivocation. On one hand, it
involves what we call personal identity, or the identity of a man as a
_homo noumenon_, the Cartesian _res cogitans_, which, as we often
neglect to add, is also the _res dubitans, affirmans, negans, pauca
intelligens, multa ignorans, volens, nolens, imaginans etiam &
sentiens_; on the other hand, in construing the same as an object of
base "animal pleasure", it involves the material identity of a human
being as a _res corporeas_, or the Kantian _homo phaenomenon_, a
concrete physical organism. Put the two together, and you have that
allegedly contingent, and admittedly fragile unity that Pascal calls
_un roseau pensant_, the thinking reed. But it is unclear, to what
extent Kant's conception of what is involved in animal pleasure, --
namely, the fulfillment of a desire obviously appertaining to the _res
cogitans_, but supposedly having as its aim solely the corresponding
_res corporeas_, -- furnishes an adequate link between these two types
of human identity. For if it does, then the pleasure is certainly not
*merely* animal; but if it doesn't, then acquiring a member of a human
being (_res corporeas_) is certainly *not* tantamount to acquiring the
whole being, since as Descartes observes on several occasions, the
human organism is *not* an absolute unity.
Kant continues: "Hence it is not only admissible for the sexes to
surrender to and accept each other for enjoyment under the condition
of marriage, but it is possible for them to do so *only* under this
condition." To extend this reasoning to other kinds of enjoyment, it
would be impossible for a Kantian agent to get a shoeshine in good
conscience without alienating himself to the shoe-blacker, inasmuch as
in receiving his services, he accepts his brush-wielding member for
his enjoyment. Moreover, given that a shoemaker in the final analysis
acquires his products by alienating them from the state of nature and
adjoining them to his political person of a proprietor, it would seem
equally impossible for our hero to get mere "mercantile pleasure" by
engaging in any consensual act of casual trade, at least until we can
figure out a way to disentangle his acquisitive social body from its
physical and mental counterparts. And as far as I know, Kant makes no
effort in that direction. (Does he even have a theory of property?)
So in some instances, one may indeed come to look stupid by applying
the Categorical Imperative in its second form. But to return to your
question, the reason it has any authority, is that it exemplifies the
intuition that the moral merits of the human actions are independent
of their contingent, opportunistic, and self-serving aspects.
|Even granted its validity as a universal principle is Mr Zeleny
|applying it correctly. What about validation of individual acts of
|homosexuality in particular circumstances by particular individuals.
To understand the nature of the Categorical Imperative, is to
appreciate the fatuous frivolity of this hypothetical question.
|Validation of such closely circumscribed actions is not tantamount
|to establishing the desirability of the universal extinction of
|the persons involved, let alone mankind (there is room for them to
|procreate elsewhere granted adequate particularity to the
|circumstances). In the end it all depends how you want to slice
|the salami. Mr Zeleny offends by wanting it both sideways and
|lengthways.
Mr Dinn, it is a rare pleasure to offend you both sideways and
lengthways.
|
|Andrew Dinn
|-----------------------------
|Our Motto - A Proper Lisp Now
cordially, | Why is it that all those who have become eminent
Mikhail Zeleny
gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu writes:
|In article <278o6o$6...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
|zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
||||In that case, might I humbly suggest that you shut the fuck up?
||Avec plaisir, mon vieux. Get your fuck within my range, and I
||will shut it up once and for all.
|Is that a threat, creep? Stinking slime like you should be careful
|of making threats. Someone might take them seriously.
Consider it a standing offer, sweetie. Although I much prefer pulling
your strings in a leisurely fashion, I can oblige by assisting you in a
conclusive and expeditious termination of your torment, on a strictly
consensual basis, to be sure.
Thomas Price
>if my "gut feeling" on the matter has any other rational support than
>that which has just been knocked out from under me; or if my emotional
>belief was just a mistake; and, if that belief was mistaken, then what
>form of action, which does not result in any change to the Law, could
>express my loathing of this particular form of injustice,
Why don't you make like Zeleny: hold to an extremely individualistic,
liberal philosophy of political and social structure, and then browbeat
everybody in sight for not living up to the particular humanistic ideals
that you hold as an individual?
>
>For this bitter lesson in politics, I thank you.
>--
>Gus Rodgers, Dept. of Computer Science, Queen Mary & Westfield College,
Tom Price | heaven and earth regard the 10,000 | tp...@cs.cmu.edu
****************** | things as straw dogs, baby -- TTC | ******************
Jim Kalb
> If I understand Mr. Kalb correctly then the upshot is that
> all so-called rights devolve down to personal or corporate
> preferences. Hence, it would seem, the only right is the
> right to prosecute preferences.
discriminate on grounds like ethnicity in contexts like employment
because such discrimination does not rationally advance any permissible
purpose by pointing out situations in which such discrimination appears
to do just that. My examples did assume that certain preferences were
legitimate (for example, a preference for working with compatible people
or for integrating one's working life with the life of a particular
community). I neither assumed nor concluded that the right to prosecute
preferences is the only right or even that in general there is such a
right.
It's true, of course, that people who do believe in the right to
prosecute whatever preferences one happens to have are likely to find my
examples more significant that some people who don't believe in that
right.
> I think an equally "plausible" argument can, has, and should be
> made for the conception of rights as inalienable, not liable to
> preference of any sort, and the correlate obligation to
> institute and protect those rights.
That may be so, and if you think it worth the time and effort by all
means present such an argument. An argument that such rights include
the right not to be subjected to sex or race discrimination in
employment and the like would certainly be relevant to this thread.
> It always amazes me how many of us there are who
> live in and take advantage of institutions that advance and protect
> their rights and then generate plausible arguments as to why
> this probably should not be done because it violates some matters of
> taste.
Some of the people who generate such arguments may believe that the
things that are being advanced and protected are not really rights, and
that the effort to advance and protect them causes more harm than good.
Others may think that the arguments usually presented on behalf of such
things are bad arguments and want to explore what the relevant
considerations really are.
Angus H Rodgers
zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>In article <CDGAF...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk>
>arod...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Angus H Rodgers) writes:
>|The two parties to the contract are not two individuals. There is only
>|the barest of formal symmetries here.
>Wrong. For all relevant intents and purposes, a corporation acts as a
>legal individual.
>||What public
>||rationale can you offer for constraining one party more than you
>||constrain the other?
>|A difference in their essential natures. [Supply a more correct
>|philosophical term, if you know one, and know what I mean.]
>I think not. The relevant essential nature being defined in relation
>to all rights operative in a contractual relation, there is no salient
>difference between a corporation and an individual.
I cannot decide whether to prolong this part of the argument by pointing
out the absurdity in what you have just written, or instead try to bring
it to an end by admitting that my own position has already been shown to
be absurd. [See the "Unjust discrimination" thread.]
As to the first option, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt: because,
even if you are being as silly as I think you are, I don't want to argue
about it. I shall behave as if what you have in mind (as opposed to what
you have written) is the refutation which my daft argument was asking for.
I must go for the second option, then: because it looks as though it is
going to take me a long time for me to find a more coherent language in
which to express my moral feelings (which, on this issue, are unchanged).
>The liberal state is characterized by tolerance, which inherently
>excludes a comprehensive public conception of morality.
Again I shall force myself to assume that you know what you are talking
about, and ask you (with less irony that I would like) to explain to me
what the role of law is in a liberal society, if it does not ... ah ...
light dawns. What do you mean by "comprehensive", here? (If you have no
unexpected definition in mind, we are probably in agreement after all.)
>Thus it must
>allow a plurality of competing and incompatible moral conceptions.
About some matters, yes. (About others, no.)
>Given that some of these include demonstrably consistent objections to
>the homosexual behavior, it follows that the liberal state is bound to
>lack the means to outlaw all discrimination against homosexuality.
Agreed.
So we get back to my phrase "effectively monopolistic": which you
dismissed (for no apparent reason) as demagogic. I inserted it as
an essential qualification to what I was saying.
I do not object to individuals discriminating against homosexuals.
(I even feel strongly that individuals have the right to do so.)
And I have been forced painfully to admit that organisations, too,
may (both ethically and legally) discriminate against homosexuals.
But an entire society may not ethically so discriminate. Of course
it may legally do so, in the terms of its own (unjust) laws and/or
customs. That is just a fact -- and not even a moral fact, except
for my description of it as "unjust".
>[...] I will add
>only that my objection to your bringing in the specter of monopolies,
>is based on its utter irrelevance to the original question. For one
>thing, protection against monopolies can and should be accomplished by
>separate, dedicated means; for another, no emphatic statement of need
>will ever substitute for a lacking proof of right.
I accept the first point. The second appears irrelevant, unless you do
after all want to argue that no wrong is done if members of category X
(e.g. homosexuals) are largely excluded from gainful employment.
>See the points made by Jim Kalb.
Alas, I did! :)
>||Where do you propose to draw the line in
>||this allegedly benign paternalistic intervention?
>|Already dealt with.
>Not successfully.
True.
>||So how do you propose to
>||reconcile this extremist position with the familiar liberal
>||disclaimer of taking a stand on any comprehensive moral or
>||political doctrine?
>|I don't. I am an "extremist", and I am not a "liberal" -- in the senses
>|which you have just attached to these words. But I am no apologist for
>|anybody's _raison d'Etat_, either.
>Good for you. Perhaps we can agree on some things, after all.
Some, maybe. It's not clear yet.
>|||"Refusal of employment, on grounds which are irrelevant to the job to be
>|||done, in cases where no reasonable alternative employment is available,
>|||should be illegal." -- Something like that. (Obviously the law needs to
>|||be drafted a little more carefully than this; but the more general moral
>|||laws tend to be like that.) :)
This still seems valid to me -- as far as it goes -- but it doesn't go
even the short distance that I thought it would before falling over --
so some redesign is necessary.
>|[...] a "job" is an
>|objective social role to be performed, whereas the role of a "sexual
>|partner" is not a formal one (except possibly in just those sort of
>|promiscuous or mercenary encounters which you are apparently not
>|contemplating here).
>I believe that Abraham Maslow would see things in the opposite way.
>Most forms of sex involve the fulfillment of objective social (because
>inherently plural of participants) *needs*. By contrast, a large, if
>lamentably ever-shrinking segment of our societies, does perfectly
>well without any jobs.
A joke? (In bad taste, if so.) And designed to evade my point? (But
it scarcely needed evading, as the thrust went wide in any case.) :)
>|That your mistake lies in mistaking the formal for the informal does
>|not, on reflection, surprise me.
>I have no idea whence originates your evidently homespun conception of
>formality.
If I thought you were interested, I might try to explain; but never mind,
it was only a passing remark.
>Have you given any thought at all to the formative social
>function of regimentalized sexuality?
What's that?
>Why not read some XIXth century anthropology?
Lack of time, lack of knowledge of the field, and lack of any sense of
its precise relevance at this point.
>|Our disagreement, anyway, now seems to centre on this question of
>|whether employment is a private arrangement between two people.
>|(This also was a point at issue, never resolved, in my argument
>|with those Libertarians I mentioned.)
>Serves you right for arguing with those clowns.
Actually, they were very reasonable (some of them). Even worse, they
may have been right, (They just didn't convince me of it at the time).
>And then you decry my
>own failure to persuade some of my critics as a sign of error? Why
>not apply the same reasoning to your own views?
Where did I try to apply it to you? I'm mystified.
>As a point of interest, employers are as fungible as
>employees; so where's the asymmetry?
I remain tight-lipped. :)
>|And I would say that unjust discrimination consists in the choice
>|of an objectively less qualified candidate over a better qualified
>|one (for systematic reasons). That is, the injustice I refer to is
>|a form of corruption. Note *very* carefully, please, that this point
>|of mine tells equally against PC quota-based procedures as it does
>|against your free-market libertarian approach. [That's with a small
>|`l'. Let me know if the appellation still offends.]
>I think I like "fraternitarian" best of all, -- after all, somebody
>ought to stand up for a neglected ideal.
I'm all ears. (It would be nice to hear you say something positive for
a change -- if that doesn't put you off.) :)
>|In a case where, for example, a gay man is rejected in favour of an
>|equally qualified straight man, then I see no hope of redress -- much
>|though I would wish to see it, if the rejection was based on projection
>|of the interviewer's private sexual fantasies into the public situation
>|of the interview.
>I think that Jim Kalb dealt with this claim quite conclusively.
So do I. :(
>Why not simply exercise your right to boycott and otherwise militate
>against unjust employers as a private citizen?
Oh boy, if you knew me ... :(
>|||Incidentally, I notice that I do seem (in spite of myself) to be tackling
>|||point (1) at the same time as point (2): because my view (even as little
>|||as it has been articulated so far) is already clearly incompatible with
>|||any thoroughgoing "free market" ideology.
>||Nor is mine; but I make up for that shortcoming by not identifying
>||myself as any kind of liberal.
>|I must have misunderstood you somewhere along the line.
>What did I say to give you an impression of the contrary?
When you're describing fraternarianism, say something about markets,
and their regulation.
>Since I have no interest in promulgating an image of the innocent
>victim, my suffering will have to go unexperienced.
But you are perpetually claiming to have been misunderstood (or not
understood at all), and verbally attacked, in various ways. Indeed,
that is just what you were doing, in the passage [deleted -- but I'm
sure you remember it] to which I was replying. And, since you are in
fact frequently the victim of verbal attacks over the Net, are you
now admitting to being a guilty victim? If so, then guilty of what?
>||Like I said, Mr Mike is an exception among my critics.
>|Perhaps I just happened to run across the exceptional one.
>Do you really think that any of the rest, say, Gene Ward Smith or John
>Donald Collier, did any better in their recurring strident efforts of
>criticizing me?
Instead of answering that question, I exhibit it as evidence. :)
>|I did warn you. This is your second warning. After this, I either
>|withdraw or get nasty. In a battle of nastiness, you would probably
>|win, so I am likely to withdraw.
[Incidentally, I did not mean this in the way it sounds! That is,
I was not saying that you are intrinsically any nastier than I am.
That would take some going on your part ... I meant that you are
adept at the use of verbal venom as a weapon, whereas I invariably
hurt myself more than my opponent, when I get nasty. I'm hoping to
pick up a few tips! That's one reason why I'm hanging on in here.] :)
>Contrary to your apparent assumption, I do not use "liberal" as a term
>of opprobrium.
Although it does seem clear to me that you strongly disapprove of
liberalism (to put it mildly), that wasn't what I meant; I meant
that you were using the term "liberal" incorrectly when you wrote
of validity being the only form of moral legitimacy recognised by
a liberal society. To me it seems that a liberal society embodies
and enforces a particular morality -- which happens also to be my
morality (for reasons I do not understand -- as I was brought up
to be, if anything, an ultra-conservative).
You may still have been using the word correctly (you have certainly
read about a hundred times as many books as I have): in which case I
will have to find a new word with which to christen that outlook on
life which I feel in my bones to be right; and I will then have you,
partly, to thank for freeing me from the bond of an ill-fitting word.
>If you are at a loss for a decent definition thereof,
>I recommend John Rawls' recent book, _Political Liberalism_.
I am indeed at such a loss; and I know of the respect in which Rawls
is held; so I will look at this book, when I have time.
>|It is perfectly possible that I have misunderstood the word "liberal"
>|all my life. It is more likely that you have misunderstood it. I don't
>|care which. I would be most interested to debate the meaning of the
>|term; and I am perfectly happy to apologise for any misunderstanding I
>|may have caused by my (mis)use of it. I just don't want its apparent
>|opacity to be a cause of a tiresome slanging match between us.
>Then take its meaning as characterized above (in the passage about
>tolerance), and feel free to question it. (I am a big fan of the
>Socratic elenchus.)
I shall first have to examine where I get my own use of the word from,
as I am quite sure that it has *some* basis in accepted usage -- about
which basis, I have unfortunately never been explicit (nor had to be).
>|If your use of the term is correct, I am not a liberal. Does this
>|admission (if that is what it is) help to clear some of the smoke
>|out of the air?
>Good. Since I have been looking for the proper successor concept for
>tolerance, perhaps you would be kind enough to assist me in my search.
>What would you recommend in its stead?
Sorry, I've only got "sensitivity", "imagination", "empathy", "modesty",
"flexibility", "curiosity", "creativity", and the like, to offer.
Wipe that vomit off the floor, please! I was not claiming these virtues
for myself, but naming them as typical ideals belonging to that outlook
on life which I wish I had been able to put into practice, but have not.
(Failed to do so to a quite amazing extent, in fact.)
Other than those cliches, I only have something inarticulate. Something
to do with strength neither being "hard" nor "soft". Something to do with
morality not being a matter of rules [so, not at all Kantian, after all?],
but of consciousness. Something to do with a view of the world which is
partly childlike, and partly protective of children. Something to do with
recognising diversity and conflict, not only in society, but in the self.
And yes, something to do with *reason* -- a cliche, certainly, but one
still with the potential for novelty, in that Western society's *form*
of reason is astonishingly one-sided and in need of renewal. Reason has
become skewed by the successes of science, which has filled a religious
void, becoming (inevitably) a religion itself. Reason has ceased to be
the human ethical ideal which it surely (?) once must have been.
I think a new morality will be born from the impregnation of religion --
although I don't know which religion -- by science. (It's overdue, so
perhaps a Caesarian operation is required.)
>||The Kantian position is simple: from an act-deontological
>||standpoint, which recognizes the Categorical Imperative,
>|I'll ignore that bit.
>I mean only that Kant adopts an outlook that takes duty prior to
>value, and seeks to decide it for each individual act of a free moral
>agent.
Still lost, I'm afraid. :(
>||the morality of any choice is (a) wholly independent from one's
>||desires in the matter, and (b) must be universalizable to all
>||human beings in a similar situation. Another formulation of the
>||same principle, which is said to be equivalent to the above ("Act
>||so as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of
>||another, always as an end and never as means only."), appears to
>||rule out any possibility of sex outside of an enduring contractual
>||arrangement including total mutual alienation of the participants'
>||to each other. And so it goes.
>|Although I don't understand this, I don't think it's your fault.
>|I have some reading to do.
>I wish I understood it myself. Kant claims that "man cannot make use
>of *another* person to get this [mere anima] pleasure apart from a
>special limitation by a contract establishing the right, by which two
>persons put each other under obligation", under which "while one
>person is acquired by the other *as if it were a thing*, the one who
>is acquired acquires the other in turn; for in this way each reclaims
>itself and restores its personality. But acquiring a member of a
>human being is at the same time acquiring the whole being, since a
>person is an absolute unity. Hence it is not only admissible for the
>sexes to surrender to and accept each other for enjoyment under the
>condition of marriage, but it is possible for them to do so *only*
>under this condition."
Looks like my limerick wasn't so far off the mark after all. :)
Did he ever get married? (Guess not.)
Does he think wanking is all right?
Would he object to homosexuality [not for himself, obviously -- at
least, I suppose not], and if so, why? (Not that I'll understand
the answer -- but it's worth a shot.)
Some echo of St. Paul here?
Why no mention of the rearing of children, which is surely the most
obvious excuse for requiring marriage as a house (so to speak) for sex?
>But, aside from the fact that it would be
>impossible for a Kantian agent to get a shoeshine in good conscience
>without alienating himself to the shoe-blacker, given that a shoemaker
>acquires his products by alienating them from the state of nature and
>adjoining them to his political person of a proprietor, it would seem
>equally impossible for our hero to engage in any consensual act of
>casual trade.
Well, I partly understood the first half of that witticism. That's
progress, I suppose. :)
I guess you find the jokes in Shakespeare a bit too obvious? :)
Anyway I think I get the point that he doesn't really say what's
so special about sex. (Now, if only I could have a chin-wag with
him, and get him to work out the connection between sexual and
intellectual lives, we might be on to a winner.) :)
>(You are not bound to quote
>|and reply to everything I write.)
>I am bound by no more and no less than the force of habit.
Learn to resist. :)
>|I am very confused about the meanings of the terms "Left" and "Right";
>|and for this very reason, they interest me profoundly.
>Blame the French National Assembly for imputing a linear order to
>something more akin in its structure to a Banach space.
I am quite sure there is a discrete, not a continuous, structure
involved. (No idea what it is, though.)
>|In this case, I was referring to an objectively mistaken moral absolutism
>|as being a characteristic of the Right. (It's not an invariable one, or
>|the matter would be much easier than it is.) Those on the Left also tend
>|to be overbearing moralists; but they tend to conceal their moralism in
>|assertions of alleged facts, mixed (to a variable extent) with naked
>|assertions of power.
>I can't wait to hear your views about the political center.
OK, we're moralists too; and our defect is a lack of practical nous,
and we're not much good in a fight. (Softies, as has been said.) :)
>As I made it clear in conversation with Mr Mike some time ago, I have
>no use for that simplistic trichotomy.
I have a use for it, as a very (very) rough approximation to something
I otherwise can't glimpse at all.
>|Perhaps mistakenly, I imagined that what you call your "sociopathic
>|urges" may be the understandable responses of a mind driven to fury
>|by other people's stupidity. But I'm having second thoughts.
>Why would anyone be driven to fury by common stupidity, rather than
>complacency, inertia, injustice, despair, boredom, hypocrisy, betrayal,
>misanthropy, cowardice, or any other perversion of the moral order?
OK, that's still ... er ... OK by me. I still wonder why you choose
to dismiss your own sense of moral outrage as "sociopathic". (Do you,
perchance, suspect that you sometimes milk it a little, or even a lot?
>Sadomasochism involves assault, by definition. Thus consensual
>sadomasochism is an oxymoron.
Obviously never done it, then. (No, neither have I.) But I'm
surprised by the lack of (your usual?) subtlety here. Surely
Sartre or somebody has anatomised this sort of thing, teasing
out the different levels in the drama? [I'll give him that,
he was a damn good playwright.] Failing that, there's always
the Net (for exemplification, as well as discussion with those
who know about S/M from experience). :)
>Now all we have, is what Noam Chomsky rightly calls "the left and
>right wings of the Property Party", i.e. liberals all.
Not in my sense ...
Mikhail Zeleny
>Why don't you make like Zeleny: hold to an extremely individualistic,
>liberal philosophy of political and social structure, and then browbeat
>everybody in sight for not living up to the particular humanistic ideals
>that you hold as an individual?
Are you implying that there are no general humanistic ideals that I
can hold as a human being, or that there are no such ideals that I can
know as an individual? As an ostensible heir of Gorgias, you owe me
yet another possibility.
> Tom Price | heaven and earth regard the 10,000 | tp...@cs.cmu.edu
>****************** | things as straw dogs, baby -- TTC | ******************
cordially,
Mikhail Zeleny
|Now, I defy you to show any other purpose for the existence of logic
|than to establish concensus.
To enable the grasp of the Forms.
| I also defy you to show any other purpose
|for concensus than to enable the exercise of free will.
To constrain the exercise of free will.
| John Williams
Marko Amnell
Now, I defy you to show any other purpose for the existence of logic
than to establish concensus.
Mikhail Zeleny replied:
To enable the grasp of the Forms.
Hmmm. I thought the purpose of logic was to construct good arguments:
processes of deductive or inductive reasoning that purport to show that
the truth of the conclusion follows from the truth of the premisses.
Even Kit Marley has his Dr Faustus declare:
Is, to dispute well, logic's chiefest end?
Affords this art no greater miracle?
Then read no more; thou hast attain'd the end:
A greater subject fitteth Faustus' wit . . .
--
Marko Amnell
amn...@klaava.helsinki.fi
John McCarthy
References: <27587l$q...@largo.key.amdahl.com> <275je5$7...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <278vsf$3...@largo.key.amdahl.com> <27f9lc$5...@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: kruuna.helsinki.fi
--
Marko Amnell
Robots will express what they know in logical formulas and will decide
what to do by deductive logical reasoning supplemented by nonmonotonic
logical reasoning.
Mikhail Zeleny
I wrote what I had in mind. If you like to sneer at it, you might as
well supply a reason or two.
|I must go for the second option, then: because it looks as though it is
|going to take me a long time for me to find a more coherent language in
|which to express my moral feelings (which, on this issue, are unchanged).
So be it.
||The liberal state is characterized by tolerance, which inherently
||excludes a comprehensive public conception of morality.
|Again I shall force myself to assume that you know what you are talking
|about, and ask you (with less irony that I would like) to explain to me
|what the role of law is in a liberal society, if it does not ... ah ...
|light dawns. What do you mean by "comprehensive", here? (If you have no
|unexpected definition in mind, we are probably in agreement after all.)
A comprehensive moral conception seeks to rule on every moral issue.
||Thus it must
||allow a plurality of competing and incompatible moral conceptions.
|About some matters, yes. (About others, no.)
Yes.
||Given that some of these include demonstrably consistent objections to
||the homosexual behavior, it follows that the liberal state is bound to
||lack the means to outlaw all discrimination against homosexuality.
|Agreed.
Noted.
|So we get back to my phrase "effectively monopolistic": which you
|dismissed (for no apparent reason) as demagogic. I inserted it as
|an essential qualification to what I was saying.
I misunderstood. Please define "effectively monopolistic" practices.
|I do not object to individuals discriminating against homosexuals.
|(I even feel strongly that individuals have the right to do so.)
Why?
|And I have been forced painfully to admit that organisations, too,
|may (both ethically and legally) discriminate against homosexuals.
Noted.
|But an entire society may not ethically so discriminate. Of course
|it may legally do so, in the terms of its own (unjust) laws and/or
|customs. That is just a fact -- and not even a moral fact, except
|for my description of it as "unjust".
Why not? May a society justly discriminate against persons engaged in
unauthorized redistribution of wealth? or persons habitually engaged
in stating categorical inaccuracies? or alcohol or heroin users? or
gun owners? or the intellectually challenged? or tobacco or marijuana
smokers? or animal lovers? or killers, introverted or otherwise? or
red meat eaters? or persons without a fixed domicile or occupation?
Why or why not? Exactly what makes the discrimination against
homosexuals different from the existing kinds of morally warranted
discrimination, and similar to other kinds of morally unwarranted
factual discrimination?
||[...] I will add
||only that my objection to your bringing in the specter of monopolies,
||is based on its utter irrelevance to the original question. For one
||thing, protection against monopolies can and should be accomplished by
||separate, dedicated means; for another, no emphatic statement of need
||will ever substitute for a lacking proof of right.
|I accept the first point. The second appears irrelevant, unless you do
|after all want to argue that no wrong is done if members of category X
|(e.g. homosexuals) are largely excluded from gainful employment.
Unless you can identify the grounds of social entitlement to gainful
employment for everyone, I refuse to grant any consideration to the
needs of any specific group.
||See the points made by Jim Kalb.
|Alas, I did! :)
||||Where do you propose to draw the line in
||||this allegedly benign paternalistic intervention?
|||Already dealt with.
||Not successfully.
|True.
My question stands.
||||So how do you propose to
||||reconcile this extremist position with the familiar liberal
||||disclaimer of taking a stand on any comprehensive moral or
||||political doctrine?
|||I don't. I am an "extremist", and I am not a "liberal" -- in the senses
|||which you have just attached to these words. But I am no apologist for
|||anybody's _raison d'Etat_, either.
||Good for you. Perhaps we can agree on some things, after all.
|Some, maybe. It's not clear yet.
|||||"Refusal of employment, on grounds which are irrelevant to the job to be
|||||done, in cases where no reasonable alternative employment is available,
|||||should be illegal." -- Something like that. (Obviously the law needs to
|||||be drafted a little more carefully than this; but the more general moral
|||||laws tend to be like that.) :)
|This still seems valid to me -- as far as it goes -- but it doesn't go
|even the short distance that I thought it would before falling over --
|so some redesign is necessary.
Give it a try.
|||[...] a "job" is an
|||objective social role to be performed, whereas the role of a "sexual
|||partner" is not a formal one (except possibly in just those sort of
|||promiscuous or mercenary encounters which you are apparently not
|||contemplating here).
||I believe that Abraham Maslow would see things in the opposite way.
||Most forms of sex involve the fulfillment of objective social (because
||inherently plural of participants) *needs*. By contrast, a large, if
||lamentably ever-shrinking segment of our societies, does perfectly
||well without any jobs.
|A joke? (In bad taste, if so.) And designed to evade my point? (But
|it scarcely needed evading, as the thrust went wide in any case.) :)
Neither of the above, but an effective illustration that a legitimate
need is not tantamount to a legal or moral entitlement.
|||That your mistake lies in mistaking the formal for the informal does
|||not, on reflection, surprise me.
||I have no idea whence originates your evidently homespun conception of
||formality.
|If I thought you were interested, I might try to explain; but never mind,
|it was only a passing remark.
Please explain. I like poking holes in homespun conceptions.
||Have you given any thought at all to the formative social
||function of regimentalized sexuality?
|What's that?
The family and the rites of passage, among other things.
||Why not read some XIXth century anthropology?
|Lack of time, lack of knowledge of the field, and lack of any sense of
|its precise relevance at this point.
Since you brought up the social implications of sexual behavior, it
behooves you to acquaint yourself with some apposite empirical data.
|||Our disagreement, anyway, now seems to centre on this question of
|||whether employment is a private arrangement between two people.
|||(This also was a point at issue, never resolved, in my argument
|||with those Libertarians I mentioned.)
||Serves you right for arguing with those clowns.
|Actually, they were very reasonable (some of them). Even worse, they
|may have been right, (They just didn't convince me of it at the time).
Better luck next time.
||And then you decry my
||own failure to persuade some of my critics as a sign of error? Why
||not apply the same reasoning to your own views?
|Where did I try to apply it to you? I'm mystified.
My mistake. Then you have no outstanding objections to my argument?
||As a point of interest, employers are as fungible as
||employees; so where's the asymmetry?
|I remain tight-lipped. :)
Being cryptic is your prerogative.
|||And I would say that unjust discrimination consists in the choice
|||of an objectively less qualified candidate over a better qualified
|||one (for systematic reasons). That is, the injustice I refer to is
|||a form of corruption. Note *very* carefully, please, that this point
|||of mine tells equally against PC quota-based procedures as it does
|||against your free-market libertarian approach. [That's with a small
|||`l'. Let me know if the appellation still offends.]
||I think I like "fraternitarian" best of all, -- after all, somebody
||ought to stand up for a neglected ideal.
|I'm all ears. (It would be nice to hear you say something positive for
|a change -- if that doesn't put you off.) :)
I favor advanced forms of social solidarity.
|||In a case where, for example, a gay man is rejected in favour of an
|||equally qualified straight man, then I see no hope of redress -- much
|||though I would wish to see it, if the rejection was based on projection
|||of the interviewer's private sexual fantasies into the public situation
|||of the interview.
||I think that Jim Kalb dealt with this claim quite conclusively.
|So do I. :(
||Why not simply exercise your right to boycott and otherwise militate
||against unjust employers as a private citizen?
|Oh boy, if you knew me ... :(
If this is an admission of personal unwillingness or inadequacy, I
fail to see what entitles you to ask others to do your social work.
|||||Incidentally, I notice that I do seem (in spite of myself) to be tackling
|||||point (1) at the same time as point (2): because my view (even as little
|||||as it has been articulated so far) is already clearly incompatible with
|||||any thoroughgoing "free market" ideology.
||||Nor is mine; but I make up for that shortcoming by not identifying
||||myself as any kind of liberal.
|||I must have misunderstood you somewhere along the line.
||What did I say to give you an impression of the contrary?
|When you're describing fraternarianism, say something about markets,
|and their regulation.
Why should I commit myself to the recognition or regulation of a
state of affairs I see as mostly unfounded in natural right?
||Since I have no interest in promulgating an image of the innocent
||victim, my suffering will have to go unexperienced.
|But you are perpetually claiming to have been misunderstood (or not
|understood at all), and verbally attacked, in various ways. Indeed,
|that is just what you were doing, in the passage [deleted -- but I'm
|sure you remember it] to which I was replying. And, since you are in
|fact frequently the victim of verbal attacks over the Net, are you
|now admitting to being a guilty victim? If so, then guilty of what?
That would be "the *target* of verbal attacks". My guilt is no more
and no less than anyone else's. Nothing I have ever said in this
forum should be construed as any sort of complaint. If you find it
difficult to interpret any of my assertions, feel free to ask me to
elaborate.
||||Like I said, Mr Mike is an exception among my critics.
|||Perhaps I just happened to run across the exceptional one.
||Do you really think that any of the rest, say, Gene Ward Smith or John
||Donald Collier, did any better in their recurring strident efforts of
||criticizing me?
|Instead of answering that question, I exhibit it as evidence. :)
Calling the aforementioned individuals both morally and intellectually
bankrupt, does not constitute a complaint.
|||I did warn you. This is your second warning. After this, I either
|||withdraw or get nasty. In a battle of nastiness, you would probably
|||win, so I am likely to withdraw.
|[Incidentally, I did not mean this in the way it sounds! That is,
|I was not saying that you are intrinsically any nastier than I am.
|That would take some going on your part ... I meant that you are
|adept at the use of verbal venom as a weapon, whereas I invariably
|hurt myself more than my opponent, when I get nasty. I'm hoping to
|pick up a few tips! That's one reason why I'm hanging on in here.] :)
Try reading Martial and Catullus. I always defer to the real masters.
||Contrary to your apparent assumption, I do not use "liberal" as a term
||of opprobrium.
|Although it does seem clear to me that you strongly disapprove of
|liberalism (to put it mildly), that wasn't what I meant; I meant
|that you were using the term "liberal" incorrectly when you wrote
|of validity being the only form of moral legitimacy recognised by
|a liberal society. To me it seems that a liberal society embodies
|and enforces a particular morality -- which happens also to be my
|morality (for reasons I do not understand -- as I was brought up
|to be, if anything, an ultra-conservative).
Please describe the morality being so embodied and enforced.
|You may still have been using the word correctly (you have certainly
|read about a hundred times as many books as I have): in which case I
|will have to find a new word with which to christen that outlook on
|life which I feel in my bones to be right; and I will then have you,
|partly, to thank for freeing me from the bond of an ill-fitting word.
I shall look forward to your forthcoming neologism.
||If you are at a loss for a decent definition thereof,
||I recommend John Rawls' recent book, _Political Liberalism_.
|I am indeed at such a loss; and I know of the respect in which Rawls
|is held; so I will look at this book, when I have time.
|||It is perfectly possible that I have misunderstood the word "liberal"
|||all my life. It is more likely that you have misunderstood it. I don't
|||care which. I would be most interested to debate the meaning of the
|||term; and I am perfectly happy to apologise for any misunderstanding I
|||may have caused by my (mis)use of it. I just don't want its apparent
|||opacity to be a cause of a tiresome slanging match between us.
||Then take its meaning as characterized above (in the passage about
||tolerance), and feel free to question it. (I am a big fan of the
||Socratic elenchus.)
|I shall first have to examine where I get my own use of the word from,
|as I am quite sure that it has *some* basis in accepted usage -- about
|which basis, I have unfortunately never been explicit (nor had to be).
Either way, it would be best to limit the foot-shuffling.
|||If your use of the term is correct, I am not a liberal. Does this
|||admission (if that is what it is) help to clear some of the smoke
|||out of the air?
||Good. Since I have been looking for the proper successor concept for
||tolerance, perhaps you would be kind enough to assist me in my search.
||What would you recommend in its stead?
|Sorry, I've only got "sensitivity", "imagination", "empathy", "modesty",
|"flexibility", "curiosity", "creativity", and the like, to offer.
Neither of these furnishes an adequate focus for a social doctrine, as
do justice, loyalty, honor, or efficiency.
|Wipe that vomit off the floor, please! I was not claiming these virtues
|for myself, but naming them as typical ideals belonging to that outlook
|on life which I wish I had been able to put into practice, but have not.
|(Failed to do so to a quite amazing extent, in fact.)
But I was inquiring for a public, rather than a private ideal.
|Other than those cliches, I only have something inarticulate. Something
|to do with strength neither being "hard" nor "soft". Something to do with
|morality not being a matter of rules [so, not at all Kantian, after all?],
|but of consciousness. Something to do with a view of the world which is
|partly childlike, and partly protective of children. Something to do with
|recognising diversity and conflict, not only in society, but in the self.
None of this is sufficiently clear for our purposes.
|And yes, something to do with *reason* -- a cliche, certainly, but one
|still with the potential for novelty, in that Western society's *form*
|of reason is astonishingly one-sided and in need of renewal. Reason has
|become skewed by the successes of science, which has filled a religious
|void, becoming (inevitably) a religion itself. Reason has ceased to be
|the human ethical ideal which it surely (?) once must have been.
I do not believe that it is the case.
|I think a new morality will be born from the impregnation of religion --
|although I don't know which religion -- by science. (It's overdue, so
|perhaps a Caesarian operation is required.)
Comte's followers have largely been judged unsuccessful in this quest.
||||The Kantian position is simple: from an act-deontological
||||standpoint, which recognizes the Categorical Imperative,
|||I'll ignore that bit.
||I mean only that Kant adopts an outlook that takes duty prior to
||value, and seeks to decide it for each individual act of a free moral
||agent.
|Still lost, I'm afraid. :(
There are no smaller words I can use to convey the same idea.
He considered it twice.
|Does he think wanking is all right?
No.
|Would he object to homosexuality [not for himself, obviously -- at
|least, I suppose not], and if so, why? (Not that I'll understand
|the answer -- but it's worth a shot.)
He did, on the grounds that it violates the Right of humanity in the
participants' persons. Kant holds that procreation is a right, not
just a virtue.
|Some echo of St. Paul here?
I think not. Unlike Paul of Tarsus, Kant does not object to pleasure.
|Why no mention of the rearing of children, which is surely the most
|obvious excuse for requiring marriage as a house (so to speak) for sex?
Because he rightly thinks that his excuse is more compelling. If you
accept his reasoning, this is surely the case. I have tried to
describe some difficulties implicit in his reasoning in a separate
article.
||But, aside from the fact that it would be
||impossible for a Kantian agent to get a shoeshine in good conscience
||without alienating himself to the shoe-blacker, given that a shoemaker
||acquires his products by alienating them from the state of nature and
||adjoining them to his political person of a proprietor, it would seem
||equally impossible for our hero to engage in any consensual act of
||casual trade.
|Well, I partly understood the first half of that witticism. That's
|progress, I suppose. :)
I elaborate elsewhere.
|I guess you find the jokes in Shakespeare a bit too obvious? :)
Mostly too shallow.
|Anyway I think I get the point that he doesn't really say what's
|so special about sex. (Now, if only I could have a chin-wag with
|him, and get him to work out the connection between sexual and
|intellectual lives, we might be on to a winner.) :)
No such connection is required. Sex is special because that's how we
got here.
||(You are not bound to quote
|||and reply to everything I write.)
||I am bound by no more and no less than the force of habit.
|Learn to resist. :)
Old dogs and new tricks; not a winning combination.
|||I am very confused about the meanings of the terms "Left" and "Right";
|||and for this very reason, they interest me profoundly.
||Blame the French National Assembly for imputing a linear order to
||something more akin in its structure to a Banach space.
|I am quite sure there is a discrete, not a continuous, structure
|involved. (No idea what it is, though.)
Most philosophers prefer starting with doubt, rather than certainty.
|||In this case, I was referring to an objectively mistaken moral absolutism
|||as being a characteristic of the Right. (It's not an invariable one, or
|||the matter would be much easier than it is.) Those on the Left also tend
|||to be overbearing moralists; but they tend to conceal their moralism in
|||assertions of alleged facts, mixed (to a variable extent) with naked
|||assertions of power.
||I can't wait to hear your views about the political center.
|OK, we're moralists too; and our defect is a lack of practical nous,
|and we're not much good in a fight. (Softies, as has been said.) :)
Nous is impractical by definition; you may be thinking of techne or
proairesis. Fighting can be taught.
||As I made it clear in conversation with Mr Mike some time ago, I have
||no use for that simplistic trichotomy.
|I have a use for it, as a very (very) rough approximation to something
|I otherwise can't glimpse at all.
I find it miseading.
|||Perhaps mistakenly, I imagined that what you call your "sociopathic
|||urges" may be the understandable responses of a mind driven to fury
|||by other people's stupidity. But I'm having second thoughts.
||Why would anyone be driven to fury by common stupidity, rather than
||complacency, inertia, injustice, despair, boredom, hypocrisy, betrayal,
||misanthropy, cowardice, or any other perversion of the moral order?
|OK, that's still ... er ... OK by me. I still wonder why you choose
|to dismiss your own sense of moral outrage as "sociopathic". (Do you,
|perchance, suspect that you sometimes milk it a little, or even a lot?
I have no illusions about the flaws of my character.
||Sadomasochism involves assault, by definition. Thus consensual
||sadomasochism is an oxymoron.
|Obviously never done it, then. (No, neither have I.) But I'm
|surprised by the lack of (your usual?) subtlety here. Surely
|Sartre or somebody has anatomised this sort of thing, teasing
|out the different levels in the drama? [I'll give him that,
|he was a damn good playwright.] Failing that, there's always
|the Net (for exemplification, as well as discussion with those
|who know about S/M from experience). :)
Try not to jump to conclusions about the correlation of my experience
with my moral beliefs. Sartre indeed has a theory about such things,
but its moral implications, as with every other existentialist notion,
are quite moot.
||Now all we have, is what Noam Chomsky rightly calls "the left and
||right wings of the Property Party", i.e. liberals all.
|Not in my sense ...
Duke it out with John Locke.
|--
|Gus Rodgers, Dept. of Computer Science, Queen Mary & Westfield College,
|Mile End Road, London, England +44 71 975 5241 arod...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk
Mikhail Zeleny
RO...@FSU1.CC.FSU.EDU (Kermit Rose) writes:
|In <275je5$7...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
|zel...@athena.mit.edu writes:
||I wish (note the proper English verb) to live in an environment
||where I can kill, rob, maim, rape, and steal, with utter impunity.
||It follows that my moral imperative is to strive towards perfecting
||my skills of stealth and evasion, while engaging in my favorite
||pursuits. Sounds like fun.
|It is not credible that you would wish to be immoral.
Do you think Jeffrey Dahmer or Saddam Hussein suffer from your incredulity?
|ro...@fsu1.cc.fsu.edu To be sure I see your response, use e-mail.
To be sure you see my response, read the groups to which you post.
| - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
|You may post, repost, or publish ANY communication received from me.
| male female common neuter
|nomitive he she sie it
|genitive his her hir its
|objective him her hym it
simpler: s/he(it) in the nominative, s/he(it)er in the genitive and
the objective.
gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu
> ||I have scars on my face and on my knuckles, as a vivid reminder of
> ||having taken a stand against powerful prejudice.
> |Tell more (please).
> Sorry, but I have no stomach for the role of an _ancien combattant_,
> especially when I am painfully sober.
The interesting thing about this story is that *whatever* happened,
it pretty well shows that Zeleny is a complete hypocrite. At one
point is is adopting Nietzschean poses, and talking about slave morality.
Now it seems that at least when drunk and belligerent, he is
perfectly well aware that bigotry is nasty stuff, and that the sorts
of feelings he delights in arousing are just the kind he broke his knuckles
fighting.
So, MZ is not a Nietzschean superman, and he does realize that
hateful words and attitudes are hateful. He may not have figured out
that the face he was pounding with his scarred knuckles was really his own,
but it clearly is.
Zeleny once called me a "typical slave" because bigotry made me mad.
If it makes him mad in some cases also (I would guess when his
own ox is being gored) perhaps it makes him more human, but
certainly it makes him a hypocrite. No surprise there.
Mike Godwin
Mikhail Zeleny <zel...@gevalt.mit.edu> wrote:
>In article <277mvg$5...@eff.org> mnem...@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
>
>
>Avec plaisir, mon vieux. Get your fuck within my range, and I
>will shut it up once and for all.
Godwin, of course, did not write the remark attributed to him here.
--Mike
--
Mike Godwin, (202) 347-5400 |"If the doors of perception were cleansed
mnem...@well.sf.ca.us | every thing would appear to man as it is,
Electronic Frontier | infinite."
Foundation | --Blake
Thomas Price
>In article <CDIKt6...@cs.cmu.edu> tp...@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price) writes:
>
>>Why don't you make like Zeleny: hold to an extremely individualistic,
>>liberal philosophy of political and social structure, and then browbeat
>>everybody in sight for not living up to the particular humanistic ideals
>>that you hold as an individual?
>
>Are you implying that there are no general humanistic ideals that I
>can hold as a human being, or that there are no such ideals that I can
>know as an individual? As an ostensible heir of Gorgias, you owe me
>yet another possibility.
Whatever the nature of the humanistic ideals, they are better championed
by individuals speaking qua individuals than by the political or
social structure -- as I believe you have as much as said once or twice.
Steven Cherry
>In article <1993Sep17.1...@cee.hw.ac.uk>
>and...@cee.hw.ac.uk (Andrew Dinn) writes:
>[Disclaimer: contrary to Mr Dinn's blithe assertions, I am not any
>sort of Kantian; nor do I play one on TV.]
>Although some of these points have been addressed in my reply to Gus
>Rodgers, they are of a basic importance, and bear repetition. I take
>the Kantian position to be act-deontological, judging duty to be
>logically prior to value, and seeking to decide it for each individual
>act of a free moral agent. Thus the Categorical Imperative implies
>that the morality of any human action is wholly independent from the
>agent's purposes and desires in the matter, and that his choice must
>instantiate a maxim that is universalizable to all human beings in a
>similar situation. It is in the nature of the Categorical Imperative
>to disregard altogether the contingent consequences of the action, in
>favor of focusing on its intrinsic nature. So if lung cancer were an
>ineluctable part of each act of lighting up a fag, Kant's principle
>would surely enjoin us from smoking. But since sterility is indeed a
>necessary and intrinsic aspect of each particular act of homosexual
>intercourse, Kantian ethics can approve of the latter only at the cost
>of deeming extinction of man a rationally desirable goal.
Sterility is not a necessary and intrinsic aspect of a society which
tolerates homosexuality, or masterbation for that matter. Mr Z really
doesn't need (or make proper use of) Kant here, what he wants is that
old-time religion, where spilling seed on unfertile soil is contrary to
God's will.
[Irrelevant (and long! and boring!) discussion of alternative treatment
of categorical imperative deleted. Can you say "straw man", Mr Z?]
>|Even granted its validity as a universal principle is Mr Zeleny
>|applying it correctly. What about validation of individual acts of
>|homosexuality in particular circumstances by particular individuals.
>To understand the nature of the Categorical Imperative, is to
>appreciate the fatuous frivolity of this hypothetical question.
No, actually, the reverse is the case. To understand the c.i. is to
understand its main limitation: choosing the maxim more or less
presupposes the outcome. A maxim such as, may I, as a member of a distinct
minority, engage in a homosexual act, is perfectly universalizable; though
my father may despair of my carrying on his good Name, the human race is
safe for the nonce from extinction (intrinsically, not contingently, as Mr
Z points out in the one patch of usenet soil where he allows the light of
reason to cast herself). Indeed, the traditional Catholic explosion of
procreation (which Mr Z, in his haste, seems to be advocating; after all,
both abstinance and birth control contain sterility as a "necessary and
intrinsic" aspect, haha!) is far more problematic, as Kant, had he read a
little Malthus, would would have seen.
--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Could you really persuade," he said, "if s...@panix.com
we don't listen?" (Plato, Republic 327c) Steven Cherry
Mike Godwin
<gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu> wrote:
>> He probably finds comfort in the fact that at least he is engendering
>> *something*.
>
>It is his quest for immortality in action. I still want to know when
>he is going to start having kids. The sight of a healthy, childless
>person nearing if not in middle age who lectures the world at large
>about the immorality of not having a big family is either
>ludicrous or nauseating, depending on one's taste in these matters.
I find it rather comforting, actually. Zeleny will never be able to con
even the must gullible of the teenaged girls he favors into allowing him
to reproduce. This means that the sad and twisted worldview he represents
(not to mention his constipated prose style) is likely to depart this
world along with his body when he dies. In the long run, given his
extraordinary lack of personal accomplishment, it seems likely that he'll
be forgotten as well.
Except as a sort of joke.
INFIDEL
#In <278ns3$f...@uniwa.uwa.edu.au> woj...@maths.uwa.oz.au (INFIDEL) writes:
###AR:
[...] The existence of a connection
between people's sexual and intellectual lives becomes more and more
obvious to me, the older (and sadder and wiser) I get; but the exact
nature of this connection still escapes me almost completely. [...]
##JW:
The causal nature of the connection is unimportant; what is important is
that one has the ability to _will_ it. Why ought one will it?
#AR:
Because it is there?
Not everybody agrees that it is there; exactly at which point does
bashing your wife turn into a violation of the individual? What if the
couple love "making up" the next day, the wife voluntarily taking the
beating for the ecstasy it brings later?
Some say the line doesn't exist. [Your insinuation was that something
is willed because it is there. It certainly is not there in some minds.]
#AR:
Because otherwise one must kill one of two Siamese twins?
It's up to consensus to decide if killing the twins is less desireable
than allowing wifebashing. With any luck, moral/ethical matters will
be considered, some kind of norm emerging thereby.
##JW:
You experience thousands of contradictory impulses every day; why will
yourself to refuse some of them?
#AR:
(I don't see the connection between this question and the other one, but:)
This is because you only see material connections, in other words, the
world, rather than "the world" and "thought about the world". Can you
imagine how another world might be?
#AR:
Because of lack of time?
Not a moral reason.
#AR:
Because one must compose oneself from the materials available, which
means leaving most of them out of the picture (even a moving picture)?
Ditto.
#AR:
Because you want question the orders before obeying them, because it's
not always clear where your impulses are coming from?
Ditto. Each time you act while not knowing where your impulses are coming from
you're somebody else's puppet.
#AR:
Or simply because choosing one of them logically implies rejecting others?
You did say "contradictory".)
Indeed. Willing myself not to kill my wife in a fit of rage rejects the
impulse to chop her up.
#AR:
Because even if there is time, and even if harmonious composure is not
important, and even if the impulses are all one's own, and even if the
acceptance of one of them today does not preclude the acceptance of an
incompatible one tomorrow, some choices one must make in relationship
to other agents have the logical property of implying some consistency
between further choices contingent on these: for example, one may wish
to keep one's promises, because if one does not, then certain rewards
of relationship are unavailable.
Your personal rewards from your relationship is not a matter of interest;
what interests the society in which you live, insofar as normative
consensus is desirable, is the consequences of your acts on others.
#AR:
I'll leave Zeleny to iron out all the
kinks in this "argument", and present it in formal deontic logic.) :)
I venture to note that not much of what you said is of interest morally,
except for the consistent inability to imagine other worlds. Most of it
is of the same class as "personal hygiene".
#AR:
You've confused me, but it's interesting, all the same.)
Gus Rodgers, Dept. of Computer Science, Queen Mary & Westfield College,
Mile End Road, London, England +44 71 975 5241 arod...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk
jw
Francis Muir
Gene Smith writes:
Someone writes:
He probably finds comfort in the fact that at
least he is engendering *something*.
It is his quest for immortality in action. I still want
to know when he is going to start having kids. The sight
of a healthy, childless person nearing if not in middle
age who lectures the world at large about the immorality
of not having a big family is either ludicrous or nauseating,
depending on one's taste in these matters.
I find it rather comforting, actually. Zeleny will never be able
to con even the must gullible of the teenaged girls he favors into
allowing him to reproduce. This means that the sad and twisted
worldview he represents (not to mention his constipated prose style)
is likely to depart this world along with his body when he dies.
In the long run, given his extraordinary lack of personal
accomplishment, it seems likely that he'll be forgotten as well.
Except as a sort of joke.
For all that, it is amazing how Les Mouches swarm around Le Merdier, if that
is how Misha is to be seen. My own perspective is a little different. Zeleny
was kind enough to delegate one of his young friends to hand carry a book,
Martin d'Arcy's MIND & HEART OF LOVE, from Boston to Palo Alto and present it
to me. After all, this is rec.arts.books.
Fido
CHANCELLOR THURLOW: Your Majesty seems more yourself.
KING GEORGE III: Do I? Yes I do. I have always been
myself even when I was ill. Only now I seem myself.
That's the important thing. I have remembered how I
seem.
"George III" by Alan Bennett.
Mikhail Zeleny
Silly. The individual judgment of each particular act need
not in any way translate into a social attitude of toleration
or otherwise. But the moral merits of each act indeed depend
on its generalization to the highest level of abstraction
from its particular circumstances, and the individual goals
and dispositions involved therein.
|[Irrelevant (and long! and boring!) discussion of alternative treatment
|of categorical imperative deleted. Can you say "straw man", Mr Z?]
|||Even granted its validity as a universal principle is Mr Zeleny
|||applying it correctly. What about validation of individual acts of
|||homosexuality in particular circumstances by particular individuals.
||To understand the nature of the Categorical Imperative, is to
||appreciate the fatuous frivolity of this hypothetical question.
|No, actually, the reverse is the case. To understand the c.i.
|is to understand its main limitation: choosing the maxim more
|or less presupposes the outcome. A maxim such as, may I, as a
|member of a distinct minority, engage in a homosexual act, is
|perfectly universalizable; though my father may despair of my
|carrying on his good Name, the human race is safe for the
|nonce from extinction (intrinsically, not contingently, as Mr
|Z points out in the one patch of usenet soil where he allows
|the light of reason to cast herself). Indeed, the traditional
|Catholic explosion of procreation (which Mr Z, in his haste,
|seems to be advocating; after all, both abstinance and birth
|control contain sterility as a "necessary and intrinsic"
|aspect, haha!) is far more problematic, as Kant, had he read a
|little Malthus, would would have seen.
If a distinct minority is defined by its ends or dispositions,
the imperative becomes hypothetical. So it is incumbent upon
its members to define themselves otherwise, so as to escape
from its categorical clutches. But of course, the main thrust
of the Categorical Imperative is that no definition of the
deliberating self, other than that of a rational free agent,
is ever allowable. And if this characteristic is ignored, so
that it becomes possible to say that sex between an interior
decorator and a florist is a different kind of act than sex
between a car mechanic and a waitress, then it would be also
possible to say that a lie uttered by a politician, or a gun
fired by a white South African, makes for a different sort of
act, in virtue of the actor's belonging to a distinct moral
minority.
And if my interlocutor seems himself fit to characterize the
homosexual act as an instance of higher Malthusianism, surely
he will not begrudge me the license to offer an alternative
perspective, regarding it as the domestication of Auschwitz.
Sans issue.
|--
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
| "Could you really persuade," he said, "if s...@panix.com
| we don't listen?" (Plato, Republic 327c) Steven Cherry
If you don't listen, you don't matter.
Mikhail Zeleny
Silly. The individual judgment of each particular act need
not in any way translate into a social attitude of toleration
or otherwise. But the moral merits of each act indeed depend
on its generalization to the highest level of abstraction
from its particular circumstances, and the individual goals
and dispositions involved therein.
|[Irrelevant (and long! and boring!) discussion of alternative treatment
|of categorical imperative deleted. Can you say "straw man", Mr Z?]
|||Even granted its validity as a universal principle is Mr Zeleny
|||applying it correctly. What about validation of individual acts of
|||homosexuality in particular circumstances by particular individuals.
||To understand the nature of the Categorical Imperative, is to
||appreciate the fatuous frivolity of this hypothetical question.
|No, actually, the reverse is the case. To understand the c.i.
|is to understand its main limitation: choosing the maxim more
|or less presupposes the outcome. A maxim such as, may I, as a
|member of a distinct minority, engage in a homosexual act, is
|perfectly universalizable; though my father may despair of my
|carrying on his good Name, the human race is safe for the
|nonce from extinction (intrinsically, not contingently, as Mr
|Z points out in the one patch of usenet soil where he allows
|the light of reason to cast herself). Indeed, the traditional
|Catholic explosion of procreation (which Mr Z, in his haste,
|seems to be advocating; after all, both abstinance and birth
|control contain sterility as a "necessary and intrinsic"
|aspect, haha!) is far more problematic, as Kant, had he read a
|little Malthus, would would have seen.
If a distinct minority is defined by its ends or dispositions,
the imperative becomes hypothetical. So it is incumbent upon
its members to define themselves otherwise, so as to escape
from its categorical clutches. But of course, the main thrust
of the Categorical Imperative is that no definition of the
deliberating self, other than that of a rational free agent,
is ever allowable. And if this characteristic is ignored, so
that it becomes possible to say that sex between an interior
decorator and a florist is a different kind of act than sex
between a car mechanic and a waitress, then it would be also
possible to say that a lie uttered by a politician, or a gun
fired by a white South African, makes for a different sort of
act, in virtue of the actor's belonging to a distinct moral
minority.
And if my interlocutor sees himself fit to characterize the
homosexual act as an instance of higher Malthusianism, surely
he will not begrudge me the license to offer an alternative
perspective, regarding it as the domestication of Auschwitz.
Sans issue.
|--
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
| "Could you really persuade," he said, "if s...@panix.com
| we don't listen?" (Plato, Republic 327c) Steven Cherry
If you don't listen, you don't matter.
cordially, | Why is it that all those who have become eminent
peter yeates
HELP! - another Zeleny thread which I havn't put into my
killfile yet, <sigh>
--
___________________________________________________________
peter yeates \ \ / / p.ye...@phys.canterbury.ac.nz
\ x /
"a sig a day \/ \/ keeps you feeling gay" - Kumar
-----------------------------------------------------------
Jim Kalb
>Whatever the nature of the humanistic ideals, they are better championed
>by individuals speaking qua individuals than by the political or social
>structure -- as I believe you have as much as said once or twice.
individuals speak out, the speaking out becomes a social practice that
affects political and (still more) social structures. That is
especially true in a society that idealizes consent and maximum
satisfaction of individual preferences.
Gordon Fitch
| And if my interlocutor sees himself fit to characterize the
| homosexual act as an instance of higher Malthusianism, surely
| he will not begrudge me the license to offer an alternative
| perspective, regarding it as the domestication of Auschwitz.
|
| Sans issue.
Maybe this has been said before, and if so, my apologies:
Homosexual sex and autosexual sex are not necessarily
"sans issue" -- as _categories_, if you like; only
certain homosexual or autosexual acts are "sans issue."
And this is true also of heterosexual sex.
I quote "sans issue" since it seems to mean "without the
result of reproduction"; sex produces things besides
new humans which may also be of importance to the
individuals involved and their communities.
Sorry to be so rational, but I'm having a slow day.
--
)*( Gordon Fitch )*( g...@panix.com )*(
Mike Godwin
>I quote "sans issue" since it seems to mean "without the
>result of reproduction"; sex produces things besides
>new humans which may also be of importance to the
>individuals involved and their communities.
Just so. Indeed, if sex did not serve other critical purposes
besides reproduction, it is unlikely that human beings would have
evolved, as they in fact have evolved, to be capable of sexual activity
throughout the year.
Michael Zeleny's notion, that the purpose of sex is so fundamentally a
purpose of reproduction that it renders homosexuality immoral, is,
ironically, a rather a sterile notion.
Anthropologists have written much on the subject of the role of sex in
bonding not only for child-rearing but also for other social purposes.
Perhaps some rec.arts.books readers can recommend a good selection of
readings on this subject.
Jeff Inman
>I guess the only solace I can give to those against discrimination is that
>it comes under ethics. I personally do not believe that communities have
>to be pure, in fact, I think it is admirable to want to integrate. I know
>that the environment I live and work in is very integrated, and I wouldn't
>want it any other way. I really enjoy talking with other people and learning
>about their beliefs and cultures. I think there are rational reasons for
>wanting integration, namely that it provides a great deal of contact and
>experience with the world at large. If you examine exclusive communities,
>they may have a certain cohesion, but they certainly tend to be backward
>and intolerant.
Permit me a metaphor from computer science. Think of the entire
biosphere, operating under natural selection (evolution) as a
process which searches for "good" organisms. You ask: "what does
'good' mean?" This is a good question, and the question is 'good'
in such a way that answers itself. A good question is one which
opens up many new avenues that are "robust" (or, have a good chance
of surviving, that is). So, "good" organisms are ones that have a
good chance of surviving, and of producing viable offspring.
So, the metaphor I'm thinking about is analogous to a search. But the
space through which evolution searches has some blindspots. For
example, the dinosaurs were onto a very promising "solution", and they
were around for a good long time, while our ancestors were hiding
under leaves, or trying to avoid being part of a mouthful of
shrubbery. Then, something happened. The dinosaurian solution had
failed to account for the contingency of a comet crashing into the
earth, darkening the skies, lowering temperatures, and making other
sudden, catastrophic changes. (The specifics here may be
controversial, but my point about unexpected contingencies holds up.)
Suddenly, the various "vermin", like our ancestors, had a new ball
game, and the rest is, as they say, history.
In this example, the diversity of biological life provided
alternatives in the event that the going methodology was suddenly made
unviable. In intellectual terms, you could say that the bioshpere had
more than one way of looking at the question, and was able to "change
its mind", in the event of new information which made the current
"paradigm" unfeasible. I think it is fairly intuitive that one wants
to have some diversity for this very reason. Try Aesop's fable about
the Lion and the Mouse. If you're a healthy lion, mice seem pretty
useless. But when the hunters throw a net over you, it's nice to have
some resources you can marshal for the occassion.
So far, I've made something of a case for diversity. But let's look
back at the original metaphor. In evolution, you don't get to stick
around just because you might be useful someday. You have to have it
together enough (or have "luck" enough) to survive *today*, as well.
Through the other end of the telescope, this means that "intelligence"
requires a broad mind, *but* that it is rediculous to attempt to allow
every question. Generalization (the root of conceptualization) has
both advantages and pitfalls. Some things that later turn out to be
useful are necessarily thrown away prematurely. In order to have
character, personality, location in space and time, effectiveness,
etc, you must have some limitations, and some biases. They may seem
unfair to others. You've got to weigh these conflicting directives in
an "appropriate" manner, yet you necessarily lack sufficient
information to be sure that you are doing it right. Hence, you must
generalize even about your generalizations. It is an objective of
"intelligence" to form generalizations that tend to match specific
circumstances. It is to your advantage to learn as much as you can
about the principles by which things work, and to get specific
information about the actual situation of things. But, given these
things, you still must rely on your generalizations.
In terms of human society then, which I am arguing as a recapitulation
of both the biosphere and of human consciousness, we also should
expect some balance between diversity and bias. Both things are
necessary. This has actual, as well as political, implications. If
your society gets too "efficient", people will sense that your regime
is dangerously "unfair", vulnerable to lack of perception or
foresight. Others will unite against you (assuming they have the
capability). On the other hand, if your society is extremely diverse,
people will find you indecisive and, well, "wimpy", in that you become
incapable of making any kind of stand. They will instinctively
understand this as a weakness (which it is).
Exercises for the reader:
(1) what about ant colonies?
(2) can't we all get together and live peacefully, with liberty
and justice for all? (see Malthus)
Thanks to Jim Kalb for an excellent discussion of the arguments for
discrimination, in human terms.
> Integration to me doesn't mean a great melting pot, it means
>diverse groups or individuals interacting. Exclusive groups that isolate
>themselves from the world at large are definitely losing out, and I hardly
>call that diversity. I call it territorial and they are cutting themselves
>off from the world at large, at their loss.
Unfortunately, exclusive groups that isolate themselves have a
tremendous advantage in terms of efficiency. A society that attempts
to preserve every perspective is analogous to the person who refuses
to resolve any question because there's always more to learn. Sure,
that's a good idea in principle, but are you hungry or not? Shall we
put our clothes on today? Are you going to get out of bed?
The original question was not about discrimination, but about "unjust"
discrimination. My point is that the "justness" of some
discrimination depends on information which we do not have.
Jeff
PS: I may not be able to read responses to this. Very busy. I'll
try, though.
--
j...@santafe.edu
"Sometimes in his arguments, Uncle Earle would get Teresa,
the Catholic Church, and the county marshals a little confused."
Sean Philip Engelson
In article <JMC.93Se...@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>, j...@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) writes:
|> In article <27fg6k$9...@kruuna.Helsinki.FI> amn...@kruuna.Helsinki.FI (Marko Amnell) writes:
|> References: <27587l$q...@largo.key.amdahl.com> <275je5$7...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <278vsf$3...@largo.key.amdahl.com> <27f9lc$5...@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu>
|> NNTP-Posting-Host: kruuna.helsinki.fi
|>
|> John Williams wrote:
|> Now, I defy you to show any other purpose for the existence of logic
|> than to establish concensus.
|>
|> Mikhail Zeleny replied:
|> To enable the grasp of the Forms.
|>
|> Hmmm. I thought the purpose of logic was to construct good arguments:
|> processes of deductive or inductive reasoning that purport to show that
|> the truth of the conclusion follows from the truth of the premisses.
|> Even Kit Marley has his Dr Faustus declare:
|>
|> Is, to dispute well, logic's chiefest end?
|> Affords this art no greater miracle?
|> Then read no more; thou hast attain'd the end:
|> A greater subject fitteth Faustus' wit . . .
|>
|> what to do by deductive logical reasoning supplemented by nonmonotonic
|> logical reasoning.
Not bloody likely. Humans certainly don't.
--
Sean Philip (Shlomo) Engelson
Yale Department of Computer Science
Box 2158 Yale Station
New Haven, CT 06520
Steven Cherry
>In article <27j11f$a...@panix.com> s...@panix.com (Steven Cherry) writes:
>|Sterility is not a necessary and intrinsic aspect of a society which
>|tolerates homosexuality, or masterbation for that matter. Mr Z really
>|doesn't need (or make proper use of) Kant here, what he wants is that
>|old-time religion, where spilling seed on unfertile soil is contrary
>|to God's will.
>Silly. The individual judgment of each particular act need
>not in any way translate into a social attitude of toleration
>or otherwise.
No one said or suggested it did. It's this sort of irrelevancy that makes
one wonder if you understand even your own posts.
But the moral merits of each act indeed depend
>on its generalization to the highest level of abstraction
>from its particular circumstances, and the individual goals
>and dispositions involved therein.
Ditto.
>|No, actually, the reverse is the case. To understand the c.i.
>|is to understand its main limitation: choosing the maxim more
>|or less presupposes the outcome. A maxim such as, may I, as a
>|member of a distinct minority, engage in a homosexual act, is
>|perfectly universalizable; though my father may despair of my
>|carrying on his good Name, the human race is safe for the
>|nonce from extinction (intrinsically, not contingently, as Mr
>|Z points out in the one patch of usenet soil where he allows
>|the light of reason to cast herself). Indeed, the traditional
>|Catholic explosion of procreation (which Mr Z, in his haste,
>|seems to be advocating; after all, both abstinance and birth
>|control contain sterility as a "necessary and intrinsic"
>|aspect, haha!) is far more problematic, as Kant, had he read a
>|little Malthus, would would have seen.
>If a distinct minority is defined by its ends or dispositions,
>the imperative becomes hypothetical. So it is incumbent upon
>its members to define themselves otherwise, so as to escape
>from its categorical clutches.
Well, it's nice of you to lay the hole in your argument open wide. Makes
the rhetorical dentistry so much easier. Defining the act does not define
the agents. No one is defining the distinct minority by its ends or
dispositions - they are agents *qua* a particular kind of act, but these
are not their essence, or even propria. For the exact use of the term
"qua" here, you are welcome to read _Being Qua Being_ by Butchvarov. You
do not have to understand the term at all to find it in the library. If
you're afraid to go where all the big books are, I'll make it simple for
you: the essence of a homosexual is no different from the essence of a
heterosexual.
But of course, the main thrust
>of the Categorical Imperative is that no definition of the
>deliberating self, other than that of a rational free agent,
>is ever allowable. And if this characteristic is ignored, so
>that it becomes possible to say that sex between an interior
>decorator and a florist is a different kind of act than sex
>between a car mechanic and a waitress, then it would be also
>possible to say that a lie uttered by a politician, or a gun
>fired by a white South African, makes for a different sort of
>act, in virtue of the actor's belonging to a distinct moral
>minority.
You still haven't said what's wrong with the proposed maxim.
Are you saying that it is never right for a politician to lie?
For a white South African to fire a gun?
How do you want this? Let's say that the sex between the decorator and the
florist *isn't* a different kind of act than sex between a car mechanic
and a waitress (I hope I have your juvenile stereotypes correct). Then I
suppose each is just fine (or is the latter ununiversalizable too, and no
sex is permitted at all?)
>And if my interlocutor seems himself fit to characterize the
>homosexual act as an instance of higher Malthusianism, surely
>he will not begrudge me the license to offer an alternative
>perspective, regarding it as the domestication of Auschwitz.
>Sans issue.
It's never been obvious to me in the past that the Z-man has a problem
with Auschwitz, so I'm not sure how to take this. But I'll ask again,
would you prefer a world in which every act of sex resulted in "issue"?
>| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>| "Could you really persuade," he said, "if s...@panix.com
>| we don't listen?" (Plato, Republic 327c) Steven Cherry
>If you don't listen, you don't matter.
This was just a little test, my good sir, to see if you can tell the
difference between Glaucon and Socrates. You failed, sir, and now we
know that you haven't gotten much past the Monarch notes in Platonic
scholarship (not that it wasn't obvious already).
--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
I do not write for such dull elves, As have not a s...@panix.com
great deal of ingenuity themselves. (Jane Austen) Steven Cherry
Mikhail Zeleny
s...@panix.com (Steven Cherry) writes:
|In <27jf9h$a...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
|zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
||In article <27j11f$a...@panix.com>
||s...@panix.com (Steven Cherry) writes:
||||[Disclaimer: contrary to Mr Dinn's blithe assertions, I am not any
||||sort of Kantian; nor do I play one on TV.]
||||Although some of these points have been addressed in my reply to Gus
||||Rodgers, they are of a basic importance, and bear repetition. I take
||||the Kantian position to be act-deontological, judging duty to be
||||logically prior to value, and seeking to decide it for each individual
||||act of a free moral agent. Thus the Categorical Imperative implies
||||that the morality of any human action is wholly independent from the
||||agent's purposes and desires in the matter, and that his choice must
||||instantiate a maxim that is universalizable to all human beings in a
||||similar situation. It is in the nature of the Categorical Imperative
||||to disregard altogether the contingent consequences of the action, in
||||favor of focusing on its intrinsic nature. So if lung cancer were an
||||ineluctable part of each act of lighting up a fag, Kant's principle
||||would surely enjoin us from smoking. But since sterility is indeed a
||||necessary and intrinsic aspect of each particular act of homosexual
||||intercourse, Kantian ethics can approve of the latter only at the cost
||||of deeming extinction of man a rationally desirable goal.
|||Sterility is not a necessary and intrinsic aspect of a society which
|||tolerates homosexuality, or masterbation for that matter. Mr Z really
|||doesn't need (or make proper use of) Kant here, what he wants is that
|||old-time religion, where spilling seed on unfertile soil is contrary
|||to God's will.
||Silly. The individual judgment of each particular act need
||not in any way translate into a social attitude of toleration
||or otherwise.
|No one said or suggested it did. It's this sort of irrelevancy that
|makes one wonder if you understand even your own posts.
|| But the moral merits of each act indeed depend
||on its generalization to the highest level of abstraction
||from its particular circumstances, and the individual goals
||and dispositions involved therein.
|Ditto.
See above, my morally challenged friend. I was treating of individual
duty of a moral agent, whereas you took it upon yourself to jump to
conclusions about social policies. It seems that the irrelevancy is
all yours, in writing as elsewhere.
Then there is no basis for positing different maxims for homosexuals.
I rest my case.
|| But of course, the main thrust
||of the Categorical Imperative is that no definition of the
||deliberating self, other than that of a rational free agent,
||is ever allowable. And if this characteristic is ignored, so
||that it becomes possible to say that sex between an interior
||decorator and a florist is a different kind of act than sex
||between a car mechanic and a waitress, then it would be also
||possible to say that a lie uttered by a politician, or a gun
||fired by a white South African, makes for a different sort of
||act, in virtue of the actor's belonging to a distinct moral
||minority.
|You still haven't said what's wrong with the proposed maxim.
|Are you saying that it is never right for a politician to lie?
|For a white South African to fire a gun?
A wee bit of research will enable you to determine the Kantian
position on prevarication and murder.
|How do you want this? Let's say that the sex between the decorator
|and the florist *isn't* a different kind of act than sex between a
|car mechanic and a waitress (I hope I have your juvenile stereotypes
|correct). Then I suppose each is just fine (or is the latter
|ununiversalizable too, and no sex is permitted at all?)
I refuse to repeat myself for your sole benefit. The relevant texts
are _The Doctrine of Right_, Part I, Chapter II, Section III ("On
Rights to Persons Akin to Rights to Things"), Title I ("Marriage
Right"), Paragraph 24, and _The Doctrine of Virtue_, Part I, Book I,
Chapter I ("Man's Duty to Himself as an Animal Being"), Article II,
Paragraph 7.
||And if my interlocutor seems himself fit to characterize the
||homosexual act as an instance of higher Malthusianism, surely
||he will not begrudge me the license to offer an alternative
||perspective, regarding it as the domestication of Auschwitz.
||Sans issue.
|It's never been obvious to me in the past that the Z-man has a
|problem with Auschwitz, so I'm not sure how to take this. But
|I'll ask again, would you prefer a world in which every act of
|sex resulted in "issue"?
I would prefer a world in which every act of sex had a potential to
result in issue, as determined by the reproductive capacity of its
participants. I also would prefer a world in which individuals did
not feel justified in treating their private preferences as a
legitimate ground for claiming a social right.
||| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
||| "Could you really persuade," he said, "if s...@panix.com
||| we don't listen?" (Plato, Republic 327c) Steven Cherry
||If you don't listen, you don't matter.
|This was just a little test, my good sir, to see if you can tell the
|difference between Glaucon and Socrates. You failed, sir, and now we
|know that you haven't gotten much past the Monarch notes in Platonic
|scholarship (not that it wasn't obvious already).
You and your tapeworm would do well to reflect on the reasons why
Socrates' persuasive denunciation of rhetoric should not be taken
literally.
|--
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
| I do not write for such dull elves, As have not a s...@panix.com
| great deal of ingenuity themselves. (Jane Austen) Steven Cherry
INFIDEL
>zel...@gevalt.mit.edu writes:
>| And if my interlocutor sees himself fit to characterize the
>| homosexual act as an instance of higher Malthusianism, surely
>| he will not begrudge me the license to offer an alternative
>| perspective, regarding it as the domestication of Auschwitz.
>|
>| Sans issue.
>Maybe this has been said before, and if so, my apologies:
>Homosexual sex and autosexual sex are not necessarily
>"sans issue" -- as _categories_, if you like; only
>certain homosexual or autosexual acts are "sans issue."
>And this is true also of heterosexual sex.
>I quote "sans issue" since it seems to mean "without the
>result of reproduction"; sex produces things besides
>new humans which may also be of importance to the
>individuals involved and their communities.
It often produces substantial amounts of heat, thereby enhancing the physical
condition of the participants. Not for the overly faint hearted.
If you had had the patience to read through the thread over the
past few weeks, you'd have said something less beside the point.
>Sorry to be so rational, but I'm having a slow day.
"A Stitch in time saves Nine."
>--
> )*( Gordon Fitch )*( g...@panix.com )*(
jw
Andrew Dinn
>Robots will express what they know in logical formulas and will decide
>what to do by deductive logical reasoning supplemented by nonmonotonic
>logical reasoning.
I just love the way the term `nonmonotonic logical reasoning' was
dropped into the discussion right next to good ole `deductive'
reasoning.
I can't wait until Zeleny the Grand Inquisitor gets wind of it!
>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
>*
>He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Andrew Dinn
-----------
He who refuses to talk nonsense is doomed to do arithmetic
(If the fool would but persist in his folly he would become wise :-)
Andrew Dinn
> [more stuff]
>
>[Disclaimer: contrary to Mr Dinn's blithe assertions, I am not any
>sort of Kantian; nor do I play one on TV.]
The assertion was that you use the categorical imperative as a trick
of rhetoric, Mr Zeleny e.g. to justify the move from the obvious fact
that homosexual acts cannot bear fruit to the claim that they are
thereby tainted. If that makes you a Kantian in my eyes then your
skimming of Wittgenstein makes you a philosopher in my eyes (treat
that as a counterfactual if you can't take it at face value). I have
this vague memory that Father Immanuel was head of the Smurfs... hmm?
> ... Thus the Categorical Imperative implies
>that the morality of any human action is wholly independent from the
>agent's purposes and desires in the matter, and that his choice must
>instantiate a maxim that is universalizable to all human beings in a
>similar situation. It is in the nature of the Categorical Imperative
>to disregard altogether the contingent consequences of the action, in
>favor of focusing on its intrinsic nature... since sterility is indeed a
>necessary and intrinsic aspect of each particular act of homosexual
>intercourse, Kantian ethics can approve of the latter only at the cost
>of deeming extinction of man a rationally desirable goal.
You are still begging the same question. You talk of the intrinsic
nature of an action and of its necessary consequences but such talk
presumes a particular characterisation of the `action' e.g. one could
regard a particular act as sexual intercourse or as rape. Whether such
characterisations are appropriate or not is not a question of logic.
Your characterisation of homosexual intercourse as sex without
potential for reproduction (allied with your equally definitional
arguments for the moral value of reproduction) is necessary for you to
be able to apply the Kantian maxim. The problem is that every time you
build all these presuppositions into the logic of your argument you
thereby build out any utility for the argument. You and I (and almost
everyone who disagrees with you) are not (always) arguing
inconsistently nor even arguing from different premises. You are
arguing from premises of your own construction whose foundation is in
another universe; we are pointing out that you are a space cadet.
>[more non-Kantian exposition of Kant]
> ... But to return to your
>question, the reason it has any authority, is that it exemplifies the
>intuition that the moral merits of the human actions are independent
>of their contingent, opportunistic, and self-serving aspects.
A fine sentiment which should be adhered to. Only where did a
homosexual act necessarily become opportunistic and self-serving? What
is of the `essence' of such acts to make them so? No, don't answer
that. I don't want another specious, circular argument for the
immorality of homosexuality.
>|Even granted its validity as a universal principle is Mr Zeleny
>|applying it correctly. What about validation of individual acts of
>|homosexuality in particular circumstances by particular individuals.
>
>To understand the nature of the Categorical Imperative, is to
>appreciate the fatuous frivolity of this hypothetical question.
To understand the nature of necessity and contingency is to appreciate
the fatuous frivolity of this `answer'.
>| ... In the end it all depends how you want to slice
>|the salami. Mr Zeleny offends by wanting it both sideways and
>|lengthways.
>
>Mr Dinn, it is a rare pleasure to offend you both sideways and
>lengthways.
It is not me you offend, Mr Zeleny, but discourse.
>cordially, | Why is it that all those who have become eminent
>mikhail "el desdichado" | in philosophy or politics or poetry or art
>zel...@gevalt.mit.edu | are clearly of an atrabilious temperament?
atrabiliously (yet with
no claim to eminence)
Andrew Dinn
-----------------------------
Our Motto - A Proper Lisp Now
gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu
> Do you really think that any of the rest, say, Gene Ward Smith or John
> Donald Collier, did any better in their recurring strident efforts of
> criticizing me?
I proved conclusively you were a fool and a hypocrite last year. I don't
need to keep on proving it. These days I am just sniping.
--
Gene Ward Smith/Brahms Gang/University of Toledo
gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu
gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu
> And I have been forced painfully to admit that organisations, too,
> may (both ethically and legally) discriminate against homosexuals.
The same reasoning applies to, for instance, blacks. The conclusion is
that trying to abolish Jim Crow was a mistake.
You can't let organizations discriminate, and then say "an entire
society may not", as you go on to do. This won't work, and laws
about discrimination were needed for practical reasons, a fact you
seem to be ignoring.
You the philosophy you two are smugly agreeing on is a philosophy
which promotes and encourages discrimination. Funny that you
two are precisely the privileged class, and that it usually seems to
be that white male heterosexuals are the ones who painfully come to
conclude that keeping niggers in the back of the bus might be the
moral course after all.
I would think about it if I was you.
Angus H Rodgers
zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>I wrote what I had in mind. If you like to sneer at it, you might as
>well supply a reason or two.
The sneer (if it was one) is hereby withdrawn.
>||The liberal state is characterized by tolerance, which inherently
>||excludes a comprehensive public conception of morality.
>|Again I shall force myself to assume that you know what you are talking
>|about, and ask you (with less irony that I would like) to explain to me
>|what the role of law is in a liberal society, if it does not ... ah ...
>|light dawns. What do you mean by "comprehensive", here? (If you have no
>|unexpected definition in mind, we are probably in agreement after all.)
>A comprehensive moral conception seeks to rule on every moral issue.
Then I agree that liberal states are tolerant in your sense. But are any
states *not* tolerant in this sense? Does even a totalitarian state seek
to pronounce publicly on "every moral issue"?
>|So we get back to my phrase "effectively monopolistic": which you
>|dismissed (for no apparent reason) as demagogic. I inserted it as
>|an essential qualification to what I was saying.
>I misunderstood. Please define "effectively monopolistic" practices.
Instead of a definition, would the example of the military not do?
>|I do not object to individuals discriminating against homosexuals.
>|(I even feel strongly that individuals have the right to do so.)
>Why?
For example, a man might once have been raped by another man, and as a
result he might be, quite understandably, unable to endure being in the
vicinity of anybody whom he knows to be gay.
(Equally, he might hate redheads, or fat people, or people called "Adolf",
or liberals, or computer scientists, or dogs, or [etc.])
>|But an entire society may not ethically so discriminate. Of course
>|it may legally do so, in the terms of its own (unjust) laws and/or
>|customs. That is just a fact -- and not even a moral fact, except
>|for my description of it as "unjust".
>Why not?
That's what we're arguing about.
>May a society justly discriminate against persons engaged in
>unauthorized redistribution of wealth?
Yes. They presumably harm others.
>or persons habitually engaged in stating categorical inaccuracies?
Yes. They presumably harm others.
>or alcohol or heroin users?
Only to the extent that they harm others.
>or gun owners?
That's a nice idea. :)
>or the intellectually challenged?
Everyone must be judged on their relevant merits.
>or tobacco or marijuana smokers?
Only to the extent that they harm others.
>or animal lovers?
Too vague.
>or killers, introverted or otherwise?
Yes (subject to some of the usual qualifications).
>or red meat eaters?
Another nice idea (possibly). :)
>or persons without a fixed domicile or occupation?
Everyone must be judged on their relevant merits.
>Why or why not?
Sufficiently clear from the above?
>Exactly what makes the discrimination against
>homosexuals different from the existing kinds of morally warranted
>discrimination, and similar to other kinds of morally unwarranted
>factual discrimination?
That's what we're arguing about: is it *bad* to be gay? (Can't rehash
the whole argument here. It's sprawling all over the place already.)
>|||||"Refusal of employment, on grounds which are irrelevant to the job to be
>|||||done, in cases where no reasonable alternative employment is available,
>|||||should be illegal." -- Something like that. (Obviously the law needs to
>|||||be drafted a little more carefully than this; but the more general moral
>|||||laws tend to be like that.) :)
>|This still seems valid to me -- as far as it goes -- but it doesn't go
>|even the short distance that I thought it would before falling over --
>|so some redesign is necessary.
>Give it a try.
My brain hurts.
>|||[...] a "job" is an
>|||objective social role to be performed, whereas the role of a "sexual
>|||partner" is not a formal one (except possibly in just those sort of
>|||promiscuous or mercenary encounters which you are apparently not
>|||contemplating here).
>||I believe that Abraham Maslow would see things in the opposite way.
>||Most forms of sex involve the fulfillment of objective social (because
>||inherently plural of participants) *needs*. By contrast, a large, if
>||lamentably ever-shrinking segment of our societies, does perfectly
>||well without any jobs.
>|A joke? (In bad taste, if so.) And designed to evade my point? (But
>|it scarcely needed evading, as the thrust went wide in any case.) :)
>Neither of the above, but an effective illustration that a legitimate
>need is not tantamount to a legal or moral entitlement.
Unemployment and sexual frustration are still evils, though. Perhaps
the one is as hard to cure as the other? :)
>|||That your mistake lies in mistaking the formal for the informal does
>|||not, on reflection, surprise me.
>||I have no idea whence originates your evidently homespun conception of
>||formality.
>|If I thought you were interested, I might try to explain; but never mind,
>|it was only a passing remark.
>Please explain. I like poking holes in homespun conceptions.
(That's not the sort of interest I meant.) I decline.
>||Why not read some XIXth century anthropology?
>|Lack of time, lack of knowledge of the field, and lack of any sense of
>|its precise relevance at this point.
>Since you brought up the social implications of sexual behavior, it
>behooves you to acquaint yourself with some apposite empirical data.
I brought it up? Sorry, head like a sieve; remind me. (Are we getting
back to the point yet?)
>||And then you decry my
>||own failure to persuade some of my critics as a sign of error? Why
>||not apply the same reasoning to your own views?
>|Where did I try to apply it to you? I'm mystified.
>My mistake. Then you have no outstanding objections to my argument?
BOING! Now come on, you *must* admit that this is illogical. (Not that
it matters a bit. We're approaching the 600-lines-per-article mark. I
just thought I'd let you know.)
>Being cryptic is your prerogative.
>[...]
>I favor advanced forms of social solidarity.
BOING!
>||Why not simply exercise your right to boycott and otherwise militate
>||against unjust employers as a private citizen?
>|Oh boy, if you knew me ... :(
>If this is an admission of personal unwillingness or inadequacy, I
>fail to see what entitles you to ask others to do your social work.
Repeat after me:
"I don't see what my undoubted personal inadequacies have to do
with my moral disapproval of anything -- and in particular with
my opinions on the subject of homosexuality and discrimination."
;)
>||Since I have no interest in promulgating an image of the innocent
>||victim, my suffering will have to go unexperienced.
>|But you are perpetually claiming to have been misunderstood (or not
>|understood at all), and verbally attacked, in various ways. Indeed,
>|that is just what you were doing, in the passage [deleted -- but I'm
>|sure you remember it] to which I was replying. And, since you are in
>|fact frequently the victim of verbal attacks over the Net, are you
>|now admitting to being a guilty victim? If so, then guilty of what?
>That would be "the *target* of verbal attacks".
You mean they miss? :)
>||Do you really think that any of the rest, say, Gene Ward Smith or John
>||Donald Collier, did any better in their recurring strident efforts of
>||criticizing me?
>|Instead of answering that question, I exhibit it as evidence. :)
>Calling the aforementioned individuals both morally and intellectually
>bankrupt, does not constitute a complaint.
It doesn't bother you, then?
You dispense wisdom, dispassionately and disinterestedly, for the benefit
of those who appreciate it?
>|[...] I meant that you are
>|adept at the use of verbal venom as a weapon, whereas I invariably
>|hurt myself more than my opponent, when I get nasty. I'm hoping to
>|pick up a few tips! That's one reason why I'm hanging on in here.] :)
>Try reading Martial and Catullus. I always defer to the real masters.
Any other tips? (No, seriously.)
>|[...] To me it seems that a liberal society embodies
>|and enforces a particular morality -- which happens also to be my
>|morality (for reasons I do not understand -- as I was brought up
>|to be, if anything, an ultra-conservative).
>Please describe the morality being so embodied and enforced.
I am unable to; and will probably continue to be unable to do so, until I
find the opportunity to swop political opinions with others of a similar
basic outlook to my own (if there are any).
It is only to a limited extent that one can find out what one's own opinions
are by arguing with those of very different outlooks; and such arguments had
probably better be over particular issues rather than grand generalities. So,
regretfully, I decline again.
>|You may still have been using the word correctly (you have certainly
>|read about a hundred times as many books as I have): in which case I
>|will have to find a new word with which to christen that outlook on
>|life which I feel in my bones to be right; and I will then have you,
>|partly, to thank for freeing me from the bond of an ill-fitting word.
>I shall look forward to your forthcoming neologism.
Don't hold your breath. :)
>Either way, it would be best to limit the foot-shuffling.
Mea culpa. (How did all this get started, anyway?)
>||[...] Since I have been looking for the proper successor concept for
>||tolerance, perhaps you would be kind enough to assist me in my search.
>||What would you recommend in its stead?
>|Sorry, I've only got "sensitivity", "imagination", "empathy", "modesty",
>|"flexibility", "curiosity", "creativity", and the like, to offer.
>Neither of these furnishes an adequate focus for a social doctrine, as
>do justice, loyalty, honor, or efficiency.
As I am painfully aware.
>But I was inquiring for a public, rather than a private ideal.
I did apologise.
>|[mush]
>None of this is sufficiently clear for our purposes.
Too true.
>|And yes, something to do with *reason* -- a cliche, certainly, but one
>|still with the potential for novelty, in that Western society's *form*
>|of reason is astonishingly one-sided and in need of renewal. Reason has
>|become skewed by the successes of science, which has filled a religious
>|void, becoming (inevitably) a religion itself. Reason has ceased to be
>|the human ethical ideal which it surely (?) once must have been.
>I do not believe that it is the case.
This is more like a real disagreement. My move? Oh, very well:
'Tis so!
So much for reason ... :)
Slightly more seriously, I see no sign anywhere of reason as an
*ethical* ideal. Can you point me in the right direction -- if,
as you say, this ideal is not really lacking?
[I haven't much stomach for this argument, to be honest. Trying
to understand better what "reason" is is one of those operations
I would prefer to undertake in less hostile territory.]
>|I think a new morality will be born from the impregnation of religion --
>|although I don't know which religion -- by science. (It's overdue, so
>|perhaps a Caesarian operation is required.)
>Comte's followers have largely been judged unsuccessful in this quest.
How dare you, sir! I'm no positivist!
>||[...] Kant claims that "man cannot make use
>||of *another* person to get this [mere anima] pleasure apart from a
>||special limitation by a contract establishing the right, by which two
>||persons put each other under obligation", under which "while one
>||person is acquired by the other *as if it were a thing*, the one who
>||is acquired acquires the other in turn; for in this way each reclaims
>||itself and restores its personality. But acquiring a member of a
>||human being is at the same time acquiring the whole being, since a
>||person is an absolute unity. Hence it is not only admissible for the
>||sexes to surrender to and accept each other for enjoyment under the
>||condition of marriage, but it is possible for them to do so *only*
>||under this condition."
>|Looks like my limerick wasn't so far off the mark after all. :)
>|Did he ever get married? (Guess not.)
>He considered it twice.
I should probably have thought twice about it myself. :)
>|Would he object to homosexuality [not for himself, obviously -- at
>|least, I suppose not], and if so, why? (Not that I'll understand
>|the answer -- but it's worth a shot.)
>He did, on the grounds that it violates the Right of humanity in the
>participants' persons. Kant holds that procreation is a right, not
>just a virtue.
This seems to be close to your own view.
>|Some echo of St. Paul here?
>I think not. Unlike Paul of Tarsus, Kant does not object to pleasure.
He did have some idea of the naughty bits being exchanged by the
partners in marriage, though. I'll see if I can get the reference.
>|Anyway I think I get the point that he doesn't really say what's
>|so special about sex. (Now, if only I could have a chin-wag with
>|him, and get him to work out the connection between sexual and
>|intellectual lives, we might be on to a winner.) :)
>No such connection is required. Sex is special because that's how we
>got here.
Ah-ha! I don't think that the scientific "facts of life" explain
what's special about sex from our subjective point(s) of view.
>||I am bound by no more and no less than the force of habit.
>|Learn to resist. :)
>Old dogs and new tricks; not a winning combination.
It's tough, I know. :(
>|OK, we're moralists too; and our defect is a lack of practical nous,
>|and we're not much good in a fight. (Softies, as has been said.) :)
>Nous is impractical by definition;
I beg your pardon.
[How are we doing? Not quite 400 lines. But I fear it's all getting rather
silly. For my contribution to that, I apologise. If it gets any sillier, I
bow out. Perhaps one of the other threads has more life.]
Jim Kalb
>> And I have been forced painfully to admit that organisations, too,
>> may (both ethically and legally) discriminate against homosexuals.
>
>The same reasoning applies to, for instance, blacks.
blackness, is a component of a way of life. So it would be more
understandable for an organization intended to be a vehicle for a
particular way of life to exclude homosexuals as such than blacks as
such. (It's true, though, that ways of life are often ethnically based,
so I would be inclined to extend the same reasoning to blacks.)
>The conclusion is that trying to abolish Jim Crow was a mistake.
commanded by law and further supported by thuggery that the legal system
refuses to suppress.
>You can't let organizations discriminate, and then say "an entire
If the support for discrimination of a particular sort is so general
that permitting organizations to discriminate will result in the entire
society doing so, it's hard to see how legal rules forbidding
discrimination could be adopted.
>Funny that you two are precisely the privileged class [ . . . ]
Do you hope to benefit from legislation prohibiting discrimination
against homosexuals? If so, it seems that an _argumentum ad hominem_
would work as well against you as against members of what you call the
privileged class.
Ozan S. Yigit
logical reasoning etc]:
I can't wait until Zeleny the Grand Inquisitor gets wind of it!
what would a maniacal windbag do with more wind? and why would
anyone care?
... oz
John Donald Collier
>In article <27bj7s$2...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>, zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>> Do you really think that any of the rest, say, Gene Ward Smith or John
>> Donald Collier, did any better in their recurring strident efforts of
>> criticizing me?
>I proved conclusively you were a fool and a hypocrite last year. I don't
>need to keep on proving it. These days I am just sniping.
And I showed this year that you didn't know what you were talking
about as far as reproduction was concerned. You responded with
hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty. Now we'll see about whether
you have the right to use MIT media to spread your bullcrap.
--
John Collier Email: jcol...@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au
HPS -- U. of Melbourne Fax: +61 3 344 7959
Parkville, Victoria, AUSTRALIA 3052
Mikhail Zeleny
and...@cee.hw.ac.uk (Andrew Dinn) writes:
|In article <27csqv$e...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
|zel...@gevalt.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
|| [more stuff]
||
||[Disclaimer: contrary to Mr Dinn's blithe assertions, I am not any
||sort of Kantian; nor do I play one on TV.]
|The assertion was that you use the categorical imperative as a trick
|of rhetoric, Mr Zeleny e.g. to justify the move from the obvious fact
|that homosexual acts cannot bear fruit to the claim that they are
|thereby tainted. If that makes you a Kantian in my eyes then your
|skimming of Wittgenstein makes you a philosopher in my eyes (treat
|that as a counterfactual if you can't take it at face value). I have
|this vague memory that Father Immanuel was head of the Smurfs... hmm?
Your opinion of my philosophical merit would have been of interest to
me only if you had evinced any signs of intelligence or discernment.
|| ... Thus the Categorical Imperative implies
||that the morality of any human action is wholly independent from the
||agent's purposes and desires in the matter, and that his choice must
||instantiate a maxim that is universalizable to all human beings in a
||similar situation. It is in the nature of the Categorical Imperative
||to disregard altogether the contingent consequences of the action, in
||favor of focusing on its intrinsic nature... since sterility is indeed a
||necessary and intrinsic aspect of each particular act of homosexual
||intercourse, Kantian ethics can approve of the latter only at the cost
||of deeming extinction of man a rationally desirable goal.
|You are still begging the same question. You talk of the intrinsic
|nature of an action and of its necessary consequences but such talk
|presumes a particular characterisation of the `action' e.g. one could
|regard a particular act as sexual intercourse or as rape. Whether such
|characterisations are appropriate or not is not a question of logic.
A predictably irrelevant Witterhead knee-jerk. Read up on actions and
events. For Kant's purposes, an action is fully characterized by an
event together with an intention. A brief perusal of the _Groundwork_
will set you straight on this matter. So to speak.
|Your characterisation of homosexual intercourse as sex without
|potential for reproduction (allied with your equally definitional
|arguments for the moral value of reproduction) is necessary for you to
|be able to apply the Kantian maxim. The problem is that every time you
|build all these presuppositions into the logic of your argument you
|thereby build out any utility for the argument. You and I (and almost
|everyone who disagrees with you) are not (always) arguing
|inconsistently nor even arguing from different premises. You are
|arguing from premises of your own construction whose foundation is in
|another universe; we are pointing out that you are a space cadet.
You are equivocating between a (perfectly standard) definition of
homosexual intercourse, and its characterization as necessarily
sterile sex, which follows from it by the laws of biology. If you
fancy that the laws of biology have their foundation in another
universe, you are well beyond any help I can offer.
||[more non-Kantian exposition of Kant]
|| ... But to return to your
||question, the reason it has any authority, is that it exemplifies the
||intuition that the moral merits of the human actions are independent
||of their contingent, opportunistic, and self-serving aspects.
|A fine sentiment which should be adhered to. Only where did a
|homosexual act necessarily become opportunistic and self-serving? What
|is of the `essence' of such acts to make them so? No, don't answer
|that. I don't want another specious, circular argument for the
|immorality of homosexuality.
The self-serving opportunism arises whenever a well-educated
homosexual like Mr Collier argues that his genes are adequately passed
on by dint of effortless selection among his intellectually inferior
heterosexual kin. As John Wojdylo aptly noted, this course of action
is tantamount to discharging personal responsibility by delegating it
to the collective.
|||Even granted its validity as a universal principle is Mr Zeleny
|||applying it correctly. What about validation of individual acts of
|||homosexuality in particular circumstances by particular individuals.
||To understand the nature of the Categorical Imperative, is to
||appreciate the fatuous frivolity of this hypothetical question.
|To understand the nature of necessity and contingency is to appreciate
|the fatuous frivolity of this `answer'.
Can you do no better than wank in the manner of Pee-Wee Herman?
||| ... In the end it all depends how you want to slice
|||the salami. Mr Zeleny offends by wanting it both sideways and
|||lengthways.
||Mr Dinn, it is a rare pleasure to offend you both sideways and
||lengthways.
|It is not me you offend, Mr Zeleny, but discourse.
How nice of discourse to delegate you to argue in its stead.
||cordially, | Why is it that all those who have become eminent
||mikhail "el desdichado" | in philosophy or politics or poetry or art
||zel...@gevalt.mit.edu | are clearly of an atrabilious temperament?
|atrabiliously (yet with
|no claim to eminence)
You are confusing hot air with black bile, Mr Dinn.
|Andrew Dinn
|-----------------------------
|Our Motto - A Proper Lisp Now
cordially,
Angus H Rodgers
gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu writes:
>In article <27bj7s$2...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>,
zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
>> ||I have scars on my face and on my knuckles, as a vivid reminder of
>> ||having taken a stand against powerful prejudice.
>
>> |Tell more (please).
>
>> Sorry, but I have no stomach for the role of an _ancien combattant_,
>> especially when I am painfully sober.
>[...] So, MZ is not a Nietzschean superman, and he does realize that
>hateful words and attitudes are hateful. [...]
>Zeleny once called me a "typical slave" because bigotry made me mad.
>If it makes him mad in some cases also (I would guess when his
>own ox is being gored) perhaps it makes him more human, but
>certainly it makes him a hypocrite. No surprise there.
I'll sign up for this slave rebellion. :)
I would still like to know what powerful prejudice it was which -- once
upon a time, in olden days -- provoked this philosopher to take up arms.
I doubt if the telling of the story, whatever it is, would diminish him
in my mind; but perhaps he feels it would weaken his position on the Net
generally. He might appear to be climbing down from those splendid but
chilly peaks on which he apparently feels so much at home -- with only
Nietzsche, Moses, and a few goats for company.
Or it might just seem to be out of character. Perhaps the play must go on.
I'd almost be disappointed, now, if he were to answer my question at last.
But still, my vote is to: "Stop the sketch -- this is getting too silly!"
Angus H Rodgers
>[...] Zeleny will never be able to con
>even the must gullible of the teenaged girls he favors into allowing him
>to reproduce. This means that the sad and twisted worldview he represents
>(not to mention his constipated prose style) is likely to depart this
>world along with his body when he dies. In the long run, given his
>extraordinary lack of personal accomplishment, it seems likely that he'll
>be forgotten as well. [...]
Then he is clearly forgetting his duty to himself, and it is our duty to
remind him of it. ;)
Angus H Rodgers
>Willing myself not to kill my wife in a fit of rage rejects the
>impulse to chop her up.
I didn't realise that you were a neighbour! I'm sorry about all that noise
last night. It's these damn walls -- they're so thin. ... What's that? Oh --
she's all right. Actually, the blood is mine: a testament to my morality. :)
>I venture to note that not much of what you said is of interest morally,
>except for the consistent inability to imagine other worlds. Most of it
>is of the same class as "personal hygiene".
I'll mop it up later. Can't use both hands right now.
--
Mikhail Zeleny
gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu writes:
|In article <27bj7s$2...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>,
|zel...@athena.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
||||I have scars on my face and on my knuckles, as a vivid reminder of
||||having taken a stand against powerful prejudice.
|||Tell more (please).
||Sorry, but I have no stomach for the role of an _ancien combattant_,
||especially when I am painfully sober.
|The interesting thing about this story is that *whatever* happened, it
|pretty well shows that Zeleny is a complete hypocrite. At one point
|is is adopting Nietzschean poses, and talking about slave morality.
|Now it seems that at least when drunk and belligerent, he is perfectly
|well aware that bigotry is nasty stuff, and that the sorts of feelings
|he delights in arousing are just the kind he broke his knuckles
|fighting.
Smith is mistaken in assuming that "hypocrite" is a term of opprobrium.
This being a literate forum, the readers may refer to the liminary poem
of _Les fleurs du mal_ for adequate clarification.
|So, MZ is not a Nietzschean superman, and he does realize that
|hateful words and attitudes are hateful. He may not have figured out
|that the face he was pounding with his scarred knuckles was really his
|own, but it clearly is.
|Zeleny once called me a "typical slave" because bigotry made me
|mad. If it makes him mad in some cases also (I would guess when
|his own ox is being gored) perhaps it makes him more human, but
|certainly it makes him a hypocrite. No surprise there.
Smith is also mistaken in assuming that being a "typical slave"
negates the possibility of mastery. No surprise in seeng that come
from a creature so obviously incapable of conceiving of motives not
arising from selfish urges.
gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu
>>This "argument" is gibberish.
> Did I say it wasn't?
Did I say you said it wasn't?
> I was doing something which we rational people call "suspending judgement".
> (You should try it some time.)
You did not suspend judgment in the above instance. The notion that
you should *always* suspend judgment would mean no judgments, an
interesting alternative lifestyle.
>>Arguing that one ought not to do something because one "really" wants to
>>do something different supposes that there is a real nature that
>>everyone has, and that Zeleny knows what it is. Do you buy this?
> I buy the first part, but not the second.
Same here. What about the proposition that it is immoral not to do
what you "really" want, which Zeleny also needs to make his argument work?
> I cannot tell whether you think
> I have "bought": the argument; the fact that the argument presupposes
> one thing; the non-fact that it presupposes something else; or either
> or both of the presuppositions in question.
If I don't say it, don't assume I meant to say it.
> (If you could just be a bit more like Zeleny, without tipping over the
> edge into formalisation of everything, it would help me to understand
> what you are getting at.)
Use the above principle and I think you will find I am much easier to
understand than Zeleny.
>>[...] So this is all rubbish.
> I fear that you have lost the baby along with the bathwater.
I saw a lot of bathwater, but no baby. Can you locate the baby for me?
Mikhail Zeleny
||zel...@gevalt.mit.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
|In article <CDIKt6...@cs.cmu.edu>
|tp...@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price) writes:
In article <27k2us$m...@panix.com>
j...@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
||||Why don't you make like Zeleny: hold to an extremely individualistic,
||||liberal philosophy of political and social structure, and then browbeat
||||everybody in sight for not living up to the particular humanistic ideals
||||that you hold as an individual?
|||Are you implying that there are no general humanistic ideals that I
|||can hold as a human being, or that there are no such ideals that I can
|||know as an individual? As an ostensible heir of Gorgias, you owe me
|||yet another possibility.
||Whatever the nature of the humanistic ideals, they are better championed
||by individuals speaking qua individuals than by the political or social
||structure -- as I believe you have as much as said once or twice.
You are begging the question of whether certain humanistic ideals
ought to be exemplified in the just social and political arrangements.
|The personal is the political, though. If a significant number of
|individuals speak out, the speaking out becomes a social practice
|that affects political and (still more) social structures. That is
|especially true in a society that idealizes consent and maximum
|satisfaction of individual preferences.
You are begging the question of the legitimacy of indiscriminate
satisfaction of individual or collective preferences.
|--
|Jim Kalb (j...@panix.com)
|"If we only wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be
|happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we
|think them happier than they are." (Montesquieu)
cordially, | Why is it that all those who have become eminent
Angus H Rodgers
gsm...@uoft02.utoledo.edu writes:
>In article <CDInB...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk>,
arod...@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Angus H Rodgers) writes:
>> And I have been forced painfully to admit that organisations, too,
>> may (both ethically and legally) discriminate against homosexuals.
I could reconsider my use of the word "ethically", in that sentence.
Let's argue about that (if you really do want to argue, and not just
to hurl abuse at anybody you disagree with).
I would be grateful to you if you could show me that I was right about
this issue in the first place, and that I have given in too easily.
>The same reasoning applies to, for instance, blacks. The conclusion is
>that trying to abolish Jim Crow was a mistake.
What is Jim Crow?
>You can't let organizations discriminate, and then say "an entire
>society may not", as you go on to do.
Why not, exactly?
>This won't work, and laws about discrimination were needed for
>practical reasons, a fact you seem to be ignoring.
What have I written that gives you the impression that I am ignoring it?
>You the philosophy you two are smugly agreeing on
^^^^^^
What have I written that strikes you as being smug?
>is a philosophy which promotes and encourages discrimination.
I have no wish to promote or encourage discrimination, on any of the usual
conservative grounds. At worst, I may encourage it by being too weak in my
opposition to it.
>Funny that you two are precisely the privileged class and that it
>usually seems to be that white male heterosexuals are the ones
I'm white; I'm male; I'm married. But I'm not a class (or even half of
a class). I'm not even remotely typical of the class you've described.
I doubt if the description of me as "heterosexual" is accurate; and I
do not regard that as a failing on my part. Rather, I regard myself as
having failed to give expression to my homosexual side. More generally,
I have failed to become a man. At the same time, I wish to be a good
father to my daughter, and I am even willing to consider being a better
husband to my wife, with a little encouragement. :)
>who painfully come to conclude that keeping niggers in the back of the
>bus might be the moral course after all.
If anyone sends my wife and daughter to the back of the bus, I will
naturally accompany them. The last person who called me a "nigger-
lover", by the way, nearly got my fist in his face. (I hate violence,
but I can scarcely contain the violence I feel when I am personally
faced by irrational prejudice. -- Fortunately, nobody has called my
lovely daughter by any nasty names yet. They would probably not live.)
>I would think about it if I was you.
You have given little evidence of any capacity to think at all. But
I do not doubt that the capacity is there.
Michael Feld
>
>Using Zeleny's line of argument, it is provable that philosophy is unethical.
>If all men were philosophers, then there would be no one to grow crops, and
>mankind would surely starve.
>
>Likewise, if all men were homosexual, then there would be no one to reproduce,
>and humanity would become extinct.
>
Will you grant me a non-hostile reading? I don't intend a flame. I
do want to suggest that you may have misunderstood Kant (which is easy
enough) and/or Zeleny-on-Kant (which is loads easier).
Kant does not say that actions which would have undesirable
consequences were everyone to undertake them are therefore immoral.
Such a theory is teleological, first cousin to the utilitarianism Kant
despised. Such a theory depends on the desirability of outcomes to
determine whether an action is morally permissible.
Kant is a deontologist; he thinks outcomes and their desirability
are alike irrelevant to the morality of possible actions. His test is
"COULD we all tell lies all the time?", not "would we get bad RESULTS
were we to tell lies all the time?" Kant thought, in fact, that
consistent lying is logically self-defeating, so we could not do it,
so we could not will it to be universal law, so lying is wrong.
>Kantian ethics does not allow for diversity, yet diversity is what allows
>philosophy in the first place.
>
Kant allows for lots of diversity: actions are moral if
universalizable, which is rather different from saying that actions
are moral only if universal. It's ok for you to study philosophy if
(it's ok that all of us are so permitted), not (all of us do in fact
do it).
Ok? And I speak here as an only-occasionally-vulgar non-Kantian.
Happy new year.
--
Michael Feld | E-mail: <fe...@cc.umanitoba.ca>
Dept. of Philosophy | FAX: (204) 261-0021
University of Manitoba | Voice: (204) 474-9136
Winnipeg, MB, R3T 2M8, Canada
jw...@key.amdahl.com
Using Zeleny's line of argument, it is provable that philosophy is unethical.
If all men were philosophers, then there would be no one to grow crops, and
mankind would surely starve.
Likewise, if all men were homosexual, then there would be no one to reproduce,
and humanity would become extinct.
Kantian ethics does not allow for diversity, yet diversity is what allows
philosophy in the first place.
I wonder what sort of vulgar images he'll invoke to "refute" this.
John Williams
Jim Kalb
>|The personal is the political, though. If a significant number of
>|individuals speak out, the speaking out becomes a social practice
>|that affects political and (still more) social structures.
>
>satisfaction of individual or collective preferences.
politics is that its proper purpose is to advance the common good rather
than collective preferences. It also seems to me that the difficulty of
separating the personal from the political makes it difficult to define
an abstract right of privacy that would legitimize the indiscriminate
satisfaction of individual preferences.
Thomas Price
>||||Why don't you make like Zeleny: hold to an extremely individualistic,
>||||liberal philosophy of political and social structure, and then browbeat
>||||everybody in sight for not living up to the particular humanistic ideals
>||||that you hold as an individual?
zeleny
>|||Are you implying that there are no general humanistic ideals that I
>|||can hold as a human being, or that there are no such ideals that I can
>|||know as an individual? As an ostensible heir of Gorgias, you owe me
>|||yet another possibility.
me
>||Whatever the nature of the humanistic ideals, they are better championed
>||by individuals speaking qua individuals than by the political or social
>||structure -- as I believe you have as much as said once or twice.
zeleny
>You are begging the question of whether certain humanistic ideals
>ought to be exemplified in the just social and political arrangements.
I know it. I have given up on social and political arrangements and
seek for "salvation" solely through the action of the individual. However,
I'm happy to see anyone else try to improve things.
Tom Price | heaven and earth regard the 10,000 | tp...@cs.cmu.edu
****************** | things as straw dogs, baby -- TTC | ******************
INFIDEL
>In <27j68o$p...@uniwa.uwa.edu.au> woj...@maths.uwa.oz.au (INFIDEL) writes:
>>Willing myself not to kill my wife in a fit of rage rejects the
>>impulse to chop her up.
>I didn't realise that you were a neighbour! I'm sorry about all that noise
>last night.
If you'd used a Mixmaster, you wouldn't have to be sorry.
>It's these damn walls -- they're so thin. ... What's that? Oh --
>she's all right. Actually, the blood is mine: a testament to my morality. :)
In China, they call their Mixmasters, Tiananmen - "heaven-peace-gate". I
hope Beijing does get the Olympics, the financial windfall could allow
for an export industry.
>>I venture to note that not much of what you said is of interest morally,
>>except for the consistent inability to imagine other worlds. Most of it
>>is of the same class as "personal hygiene".
>I'll mop it up later. Can't use both hands right now.
As long as you wipe them before fronting the keyboard, I'm sure your
sysadmin won't mind.