Certain arguments in support of relativism arise from the question, asked in the tone of the assured sceptic who knows for certain that there is no answer: 'What is truth?' But Pilate's question can be answered in a simple and reasonable way--though hardly in a way that would have satisfied him--as follows: an assertion, proposition, statement, or belief, is true if, and only if, it corresponds to the facts.
By this logic, the statement "some magical, unknowable force is at work designing all the creatures on the planet" is true (ie, corresponds to the facts) if and only if some magical, unknowable force is at work designing all the creatures on the planet.
I challenge you to find fault with this reasoning.
As should be obvious, it is "belief" I disagree with, not existence of God. I think Man should stand firmly on his own feet, and admit that he's out there clawing his way to survival by his own efforts.
That sounds like something Jesus would have said! Radical personal responsibility is a Christian innovation.
There is no decision to make. Anarchism is full of different ideas about social balances, what kind of social relations are desirable, and how such relations might be put to practice. These ideas are "anarchical" in that they all judge the state to be an undesirable social institution, yet none can claim to be a necessary consequence of that judgment.
Ethical ideas (like what makes a good society) can't even be falsified by experience; the best thinking people can do is to point out their logical inconsistencies and unforeseen consequences.
Simply pick your favorite conception of society out of the anarchist tradition, then. Certainly that society, if instituted, might put an end to some of today's problems and therefore meet the poster's challenge.
The sine qua non of the anarchist intellectual tradition is simply the theory that the state is an unnecessary evil. Anarchist thinkers have come up with a variety of controversial ideas about what kind of society should come next. I have only attempted to suggest some common themes.
To put it crudely, you laugh at anarchists because you do not know what they stand for.
The classical anarchist social model---small communities that govern themselves by consensus---might put an end to many of the evils that abide within today's state-centered societies.
(Not that I suppose they could or should be imposed by force.)
The six billion people of the world cannot today all be paid a fair wage. It seems that the next fairest thing to do, then, would be to pay them all an equal, minimally-unfair wage. But as it is now, billions of people must live as destitute peasants in order to provide Californian programmers with their fair wage. That is a disgustingly unfair policy.
In other words, the same logic that demands a fair wage for Californian programmers also argues most convincingly against that same wage. Since you mentioned God---Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. (Sorry, I couldn't resist; I don't claim to follow that advice and my point here is not to talk ethics but only to point out the paradox that lies within your own principle of wage fairness.)
People who drive Hummers and buy expensive computers that look like alien spaceships are not necessarily manipulated by marketing or psychologically perverse. On the contrary, they may simply enjoy some things that they do not (by your standards) need. Why begrudge a person that?
Our aim is not to collect theories that meet the standards of scientists, but to come up with new true theories and eliminate old false theories. If science cannot meet this challenge then it is clearly of little practical value and students would be better off doing something else.
The same conservative democracy-of-the-dead that sustains red-state religiosity also binds those places to American political tradition. On the other hand, progressive blue-states have been, are, and will be more susceptible to change---including the institution of theocracy.
At least, this reasoning suggests that your question is not so merely rhetorical as you seem to believe.
Executive pay is set by shareholders; the bosses themselves have no say in the matter. The very high price of a world-class boss is equal to his very great responsibilities. A good boss can lead shareholders to huge profits, but a bad boss might send them to the poor-house instead. Is it any wonder that they demand the best and are willing to pay for him dearly?
The point is that some people are worth a little, some people are worth a lot, and an elite few people really are worth a complete and utter fortune on the market. There is little sense in pretending that this is not so, whatever you think of Robin Hood.
Local governments can easily stop globalization. They can even introduce central planning and economic autarchy. (Globalization has no effect on North Korea's economy, for instance.)
It would be far more convenient to live for ten days at work, working sixteen hours each day, and then take twenty days off, repeating the cycle every month. One could then take twelve vacations per year.
Your choice of occupation and your relationship with the Man are largely harmless, ethically neutral expressions of personal preference, and to oppose them is tyranny. On the other hand, when young men are arrested and imprisoned because they have copied proprietary computer programs, on the basis that such punishments are necessary in order to preserve and maintain the useful trade of computer programming---you must agree that this raises moral issues not merely for the computer programming trade but for anyone who dislikes to see shy, unlucky boys made miserable.
Nevertheless you have my sympathy, and I share your dismay at the haughty, superficial, and mean-spirited attacks that so pervade this perennial tech-culture war.
The less a tyrant controls, the less misery he causes. Liberals hate tyranny and human suffering. Therefore a liberal who seeks to hobble a tyrant rightly practices his faith.
A thus hobbled tyrant's appeal to principles of fairness and justice is an abuse of those principles. To demand justice before the law is first and foremost to deny any one the privilege to commit crime. Yet to abet a tyrant is to prop up and support that very privilege in him. Injustice lies not in hunting down one criminal but in accepting another.
My theory: A child can point to Pluto on a map of the solar system though he cannot at all understand Newton's abstract conjectures. His intellectual relationship with the natural world begins when he learns about the various animals and, say, the reptiles---that is, when he discovers various concrete things and is taught to classify them.
It seems that long after such children grow up, they yet expect scientific inquiry to proceed along those lines. But science grew up long ago.
That a publication entitled "New Scientist" should publish this article is an irony, because to invent and dispute definitions is to carry on the scientific tradition of Aristotle.
As luck would have it, there are ethical ways to make money.
Yes, someone considering a career in computer programming had better think long and hard about how he is going to put the food on the table and the kids through college. If he is a decent person, and he sees the evil of proprietary software, he may look for another line of work. He may deem it unlikely that he will be able to pay his bills without writing proprietary software.
If a gangster understands that his career is unethical, yet persists in it because he enjoys his job or because he is a valuable, skilled gangster, then I say he is clearly in the wrong, and ought to find another job.
Are computer programmers any different? If you write proprietary software, you turn yourself into an exploiter, bully and big brother, who sticks his nose where it has no right to be stuck: into other people's computers, and other people's lives. You metamorphosize into a computer policeman who scrutinizes the programs on other people's computers, examining each one to ensure that it is allowed to be had, and punishing anyone found to be having a forbidden program.
If you are a bad character, you may have little objection to that sort of behavior. Otherwise, be rational: don't fill your gas tank with evil.
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By this logic, the statement "some magical, unknowable force is at work designing all the creatures on the planet" is true (ie, corresponds to the facts) if and only if some magical, unknowable force is at work designing all the creatures on the planet.
I challenge you to find fault with this reasoning.
That sounds like something Jesus would have said! Radical personal responsibility is a Christian innovation.
I can easily imagine your post as written a century ago by a critic of Albert Einstein.
There is no decision to make. Anarchism is full of different ideas about social balances, what kind of social relations are desirable, and how such relations might be put to practice. These ideas are "anarchical" in that they all judge the state to be an undesirable social institution, yet none can claim to be a necessary consequence of that judgment.
Ethical ideas (like what makes a good society) can't even be falsified by experience; the best thinking people can do is to point out their logical inconsistencies and unforeseen consequences.
Simply pick your favorite conception of society out of the anarchist tradition, then. Certainly that society, if instituted, might put an end to some of today's problems and therefore meet the poster's challenge.
The sine qua non of the anarchist intellectual tradition is simply the theory that the state is an unnecessary evil. Anarchist thinkers have come up with a variety of controversial ideas about what kind of society should come next. I have only attempted to suggest some common themes.
To put it crudely, you laugh at anarchists because you do not know what they stand for.
The classical anarchist social model---small communities that govern themselves by consensus---might put an end to many of the evils that abide within today's state-centered societies.
(Not that I suppose they could or should be imposed by force.)
The six billion people of the world cannot today all be paid a fair wage. It seems that the next fairest thing to do, then, would be to pay them all an equal, minimally-unfair wage. But as it is now, billions of people must live as destitute peasants in order to provide Californian programmers with their fair wage. That is a disgustingly unfair policy.
In other words, the same logic that demands a fair wage for Californian programmers also argues most convincingly against that same wage. Since you mentioned God---Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. (Sorry, I couldn't resist; I don't claim to follow that advice and my point here is not to talk ethics but only to point out the paradox that lies within your own principle of wage fairness.)
People who drive Hummers and buy expensive computers that look like alien spaceships are not necessarily manipulated by marketing or psychologically perverse. On the contrary, they may simply enjoy some things that they do not (by your standards) need. Why begrudge a person that?
...was that no form of logic can derive a true law of nature from true observations.
Our aim is not to collect theories that meet the standards of scientists, but to come up with new true theories and eliminate old false theories. If science cannot meet this challenge then it is clearly of little practical value and students would be better off doing something else.
Such a theory as you describe could, in fact, be a false theory that has not yet been experimentally falsified.
The same conservative democracy-of-the-dead that sustains red-state religiosity also binds those places to American political tradition. On the other hand, progressive blue-states have been, are, and will be more susceptible to change---including the institution of theocracy.
At least, this reasoning suggests that your question is not so merely rhetorical as you seem to believe.
The point is that some people are worth a little, some people are worth a lot, and an elite few people really are worth a complete and utter fortune on the market. There is little sense in pretending that this is not so, whatever you think of Robin Hood.
Local governments can easily stop globalization. They can even introduce central planning and economic autarchy. (Globalization has no effect on North Korea's economy, for instance.)
It would be far more convenient to live for ten days at work, working sixteen hours each day, and then take twenty days off, repeating the cycle every month. One could then take twelve vacations per year.
Your choice of occupation and your relationship with the Man are largely harmless, ethically neutral expressions of personal preference, and to oppose them is tyranny. On the other hand, when young men are arrested and imprisoned because they have copied proprietary computer programs, on the basis that such punishments are necessary in order to preserve and maintain the useful trade of computer programming---you must agree that this raises moral issues not merely for the computer programming trade but for anyone who dislikes to see shy, unlucky boys made miserable.
Nevertheless you have my sympathy, and I share your dismay at the haughty, superficial, and mean-spirited attacks that so pervade this perennial tech-culture war.
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
The less a tyrant controls, the less misery he causes. Liberals hate tyranny and human suffering. Therefore a liberal who seeks to hobble a tyrant rightly practices his faith.
A thus hobbled tyrant's appeal to principles of fairness and justice is an abuse of those principles. To demand justice before the law is first and foremost to deny any one the privilege to commit crime. Yet to abet a tyrant is to prop up and support that very privilege in him. Injustice lies not in hunting down one criminal but in accepting another.
Amen.
My theory: A child can point to Pluto on a map of the solar system though he cannot at all understand Newton's abstract conjectures. His intellectual relationship with the natural world begins when he learns about the various animals and, say, the reptiles---that is, when he discovers various concrete things and is taught to classify them.
It seems that long after such children grow up, they yet expect scientific inquiry to proceed along those lines. But science grew up long ago.
That a publication entitled "New Scientist" should publish this article is an irony, because to invent and dispute definitions is to carry on the scientific tradition of Aristotle.
As luck would have it, there are ethical ways to make money.
Yes, someone considering a career in computer programming had better think long and hard about how he is going to put the food on the table and the kids through college. If he is a decent person, and he sees the evil of proprietary software, he may look for another line of work. He may deem it unlikely that he will be able to pay his bills without writing proprietary software.
If a gangster understands that his career is unethical, yet persists in it because he enjoys his job or because he is a valuable, skilled gangster, then I say he is clearly in the wrong, and ought to find another job.
Are computer programmers any different? If you write proprietary software, you turn yourself into an exploiter, bully and big brother, who sticks his nose where it has no right to be stuck: into other people's computers, and other people's lives. You metamorphosize into a computer policeman who scrutinizes the programs on other people's computers, examining each one to ensure that it is allowed to be had, and punishing anyone found to be having a forbidden program.
If you are a bad character, you may have little objection to that sort of behavior. Otherwise, be rational: don't fill your gas tank with evil.