An Epistemic Argument for Conservativism
I've come across an article in the journal of social political philosophy. The argument goes like this:
1. The endurance of basic institutions* is in part a function of their 'factual' legitimacy, i.e., their actual actual acceptance by the population they regulate (in other words, endurance and factual legitimacy are correlated).
2. Factual legitimacy is in part a function of how much these institutions avoid producing outcomes that are factually 'intolerable' (and thus not tolerated) for this population.
3. There is some connection between what the people subject to these institutions consider normatively intolerable and what is actually normatively intolerable (i. e., factual and normative legitimacy are correlated, even if normatively intolerable outcomes are not always widely recognized).
4. Therefore, actual endurance is evidence that institutions have avoided producing normatively intolerable outcomes in varied circumstances in the past.
5. The evidence that long-lasting institutions have avoided producing normatively intolerable outcomes in many kinds of unknown past circumstances is also evidence that they may avoid producing such outcomes in unknown future circumstances.
(X. Marquez, 2015, An Epistemic Argument for Conservativism)
*basic institutions are those institutions with the broadest scope of regulation (in my view, those could be, for example, capitalism, family etc.)
Personally, I find it to be more beneficial for the society to keep the status quo and to only improve on the current institutions, previously described as basic. There should not be a direction for a society, meaning there should be no desire for changes, as those changes are unpredictable and would only lead to creating a new ideology and revolutions.
1. The endurance of basic institutions* is in part a function of their 'factual' legitimacy, i.e., their actual actual acceptance by the population they regulate (in other words, endurance and factual legitimacy are correlated).
2. Factual legitimacy is in part a function of how much these institutions avoid producing outcomes that are factually 'intolerable' (and thus not tolerated) for this population.
3. There is some connection between what the people subject to these institutions consider normatively intolerable and what is actually normatively intolerable (i. e., factual and normative legitimacy are correlated, even if normatively intolerable outcomes are not always widely recognized).
4. Therefore, actual endurance is evidence that institutions have avoided producing normatively intolerable outcomes in varied circumstances in the past.
5. The evidence that long-lasting institutions have avoided producing normatively intolerable outcomes in many kinds of unknown past circumstances is also evidence that they may avoid producing such outcomes in unknown future circumstances.
(X. Marquez, 2015, An Epistemic Argument for Conservativism)
*basic institutions are those institutions with the broadest scope of regulation (in my view, those could be, for example, capitalism, family etc.)
Personally, I find it to be more beneficial for the society to keep the status quo and to only improve on the current institutions, previously described as basic. There should not be a direction for a society, meaning there should be no desire for changes, as those changes are unpredictable and would only lead to creating a new ideology and revolutions.
Comments (176)
So, changes are needed? Which changes then?
Your final paragraph (starting with "Personally, I find it to be more beneficial . . .") doesn't seem to have anything to do with the argument though. That final paragraph just reads like a personal preference or a personal credo.
Just added my opinion, and my opinion is in accordance with those arguments because I disagree with changes. Main focus should be on the arguments, though, and whether they seem plausible or not.
Needed by whom? The helpless are unable to change things, by definition. Therefore they tolerate even their annihilation. Those who are able to change things are those who must find things 'tolerable', and that is all that factual legitimacy amounts to.
Needed for the society as a whole. And without involving collectivist ideas, such as saying that everyone is just a cog in the machine.
It seems to me that you're just pointing at inequality.
No. I'm pointing out that the argument is no argument. Slavery persists in society as long as slaves are helpless to change it, and slaveowners find it tolerable. You can call that legitimate if you like, but I call it complacent bullshit.
I don't see how you know when a 'basic institution' has changed especially if you're so vague about what they are. 'The family' for instance is transformed from the time of my childhood (the 1950's) to now.
The argument is basically saying that a government that doesn't undermine the stability of its own society and meets certain basic needs will endure. I don't see how this is an argument for conservatism, though. Liberal thought comes to prominence mainly when the old ways aren't working anymore and new ideas are required. Only a society that never faces changing circumstances would be immune to this occasional need.
This post used to be much longer, until I saw that unenlightened and csal have already eloquently covered this obvious test case. So all that remains to say is (again)
Yeah. Slavery.
As it is, they aren't helpless as the history of slave revolt testifies.
But all of history testifies to no set of institutions ever remaining stable, because things are intolerable, and the argument fails all over again.
It is reasonable to think that habits and strategies that have worked in the past will work in the future. And it is true that change should not be invested in simply for the sake of change. Liberalism isn't about change for the sake of change, though.
I'm not sure why you think a governmental institution has to be immortal in order to meet the needs of its citizens. Could you explain that?
It doesn't need to be immortal. A comet could hit earth.
Do you agree this applies to the US plantation system before emancipation?
I sincerely don't see the path you seem to see out of this deadlock.
I'd apply myself to addressing that if I thought you were really interested. It would have to be tomorrow, though. If not.. I think we can agree on some really basic common sense:
What's worked in the past is likely to work in the future.
Oh stahhhp. Your post was contrarian and you know it. I'm as interested as you are.
....like slavery.
No it wasn't. My impression is that neither you nor un actually read the OP.
Slavery worked fine for Georgia. It was a source of strife for the USA even as the Declaration of Independence was being written (read Jefferson's first draft along with his comments about the future of slavery in the USA.)
God you're fucking jerk.
Or maybe over time humans figure out better ways of making things work. Conservatives seem to want to start with Ancient Greece or the 1950s, but human existence stretches back thousands of years before then.
The truth is that most of human history is that of being in small groups of hunter/gatherers. Farming and civilization is relatively recent. And over the time period of civilization, populations grew, technology advanced, and civilizations became more complex. Our understanding of the world, including the nature of social interaction and civilizations has changed over time as well.
You really wouldn't want Plato to come back to life and tell a modern country how to organize it's government. Nor would you want Jefferson prescribing an economic model. A lot has changed since then, and lot has been learned that they didn't know about.
As such, the conservative approach seems at odds with reality. Things change. A war to end all wars in 1918 didn't seem like that bad of an idea at the time, but such a war now is apocalyptic.
I can't speak for Un, but I did (& I think Un did too, since his response explicitly drew from it.)
& for Georgian slaves too?
Do you find this situation intolerable?
About as well as our present system works for inner cities.
Quoting csalisbury
Yep.
So are you saying our present system should change, or that it should stay the same, bc it works as well as Georgian slavery did, and slavery worked fine for Georgia?
Quoting Mongrel
The moral responsibility of every person and every generation is to eliminate victimization. Where that isn't possible, people should at least work in that direction.
If you'd like to explain exactly how the USA could have eliminated slavery in 1776, I'd love to hear it. If you know a way we could fix the inner cities: again: tell me how to do it.
Legitimacy is not about moral responsibility. You did know that, right?
So (first) you disagree with the OP on the most essential level, then (second) opine that the stuff other people have posted has no real bearing on the OP (which you disagree with), then (third) when people explain why the stuff they posted does have bearing on the OP, you respond by saying you don't agree with the OP anyway?
What a mess.
But you're right, idk how they/we could have eliminated slavery in 1776, or poverty now. I really don't.
1. Institutions that endure are, by and large, providing acceptable outcomes for citizens.
2. What worked in the past is likely to work in the future.
3. Avoid change.
Un's answer to this was: slaves are helpless. You confirmed that this response has something to do with the OP. It doesn't.
The relevant part of the OP is this:
What does 'factually' intolerable mean? It means that people don't tolerate it.
How do people demonstrate that they don't tolerate something?
Depends. Intolerance that actually results in a policy shift carries a threat of social breakdown (or as in the case of the Civil Rights Movement endangers national security).
I understand that you're aiming at saying that slaves can't march in protest. That's true. Neither can sexually/physically abused children, 19th Century American women who were treated like whores because they'd been left by their husbands, Lakota children who were taken from their parents to be raised white... and on .. and on... and on...
Why the fixation on slaves? There's probably a kid in your neighborhood who's being abused right now. Think about it... like right now. And no one is coming to help. Why? Because we're tolerating it.
Exactly
Why is that?
Look, I know you think you have a promising new line - & its legit, in its own right - it just has no bearing on the op.
For all practical purposes, yes. What you think about as you march around with your sign... doesn't really make any difference.
At all.
Your opponents don't explain whether this translates to an obligation to be ready for change or to actively seek it.
My own view is that government exists not only because people tolerate it, but because it's part of who we are, and we embrace it as a path to the manifestation of our greatest potential. The fact that we err and fail doesn't change that. I think a society needs people who are risk averse. We need people who fear change because change can be catastrophic. But not everybody is conservative. Sometimes change is the only choice.
I hope you drop by the forum and share your thoughts. Otherwise... vaya con dios.
Here is the full paper by the way.
Where do you think we're going wrong?
Secondly, defending slavery doesn't follow from his argument, for it isn't clear that it meets, or would meet on Marquez's grounds, the definitions of "basic" and "institution." A basic institution is not meant to refer to simply anything people have done for a certain amount of time. People have murdered, tortured, enslaved, etc other people from time immemorial, but to call these "basic institutions" is absurd and could only be done facetiously.
The author explicitly deals with "slavery" and "other large violations of basic human rights, famine." Page 11 for the lazy mongols, which is probably all of you that replied.
But this is simply missing the crux. As the paper's title suggests, an epistemic argument for conservatism. The crux of the paper is that conservatism is a viable (or even sound) strategy to deal with "the weakness of human reason" in the "complexity of the social world."
Ironically enough, unenlightened (and some others) is (are) perfect example(s) to prove the crux of the paper. You lot even struggle with some basic economics. Thank god none of you hold any position of power, and probably never will.
Could there be a more naked example of appeal to authority than this?
Slavery in and of itself is not an institution, sure, but specific instances of it, like the american plantation system, are. If you don't think the american plantation system was an institution, then we have very different understandings of what the term means.
Utter nonsense. I was pointing out your unwarranted disposal of the principle of charity.
Quoting csalisbury
Good, so we're done here.
[quote=Emptyheady] Am I honestly the only one who looked up the actual paper and read a reasonable amount of it? [/quote]
[quote=Terrapin]Utter nonsense. I was pointing out your unwarranted disposal of the principle of charity.[/quote]
Look you guys, the OP presented an argument. In posting an argument, one invites others to address the argument on its own merits. That's what people did.
[quote=Thorongil]Good, so we're done here.[/quote]
Are you just being sulky again or do you sincerely not understand? (Let me charitable and assume you're just being sulky)
I understand that you conceded to me my point. Perhaps you are a sore loser, though.
Did slavery arise and was it maintained by a basic institution? Sure, but that was not the point of dispute and it doesn't make the basic institution from which it arose bad or evil, i.e. we can ask if a plantation system in and of itself is evil or requires slavery, and the answer is no.
But please, go ahead and drop those logic bombs you're apparently sitting on.
Then any criticism regarding the author can be dismissed.
I strongly advise you to read the substance -- and attempt to understand it -- before you criticise it.
I agree with the argument but I don't like the way it is made. It's too much anti-reason, and skeptical of reason. I prefer rational conservatism - as per the distinction made here.
An opposing response is that human society is often in a state of moral failure without strictly being broken.
1. The endurance of basic institutions is in part a function of their ‘factual’ legitimacy, i.e., their actual acceptance by the population they regulate (in other words, endurance and factual legitimacy are correlated).[/quote]
If the population regulated is helpless to reject the basic institution, as is nearly always the case, then their 'acceptance' as evidenced by the endurance of said institution has no value and no legitimacy, because everybody necessarily 'accepts' what they can do nothing about, however repugnant and illegitimate it is.
It is a complete travesty of an argument from the first premise.
No I don't mean this at all.
Quoting Kazuma
A conclusion which says that it is a possibility that such outcomes will be avoided. That's not strong enough for my conservatism. That's anti-reason - they're refusing to use reason to draw the actual and real conclusions.
"Slavery" seems like an institution. It is usually organized, supported by law and social custom, endures across generations, and so forth. But...
Underlying slavery, and a good deal else, is the institution of "property", one that has endured for a very long time. Slavery was a subset of property relationships. What is counted as property will change from time to time (humans can't be "owned"--officially at least, in much of the world; PETA objects to animals being owned. Some people object to the federal governments ownership of vast stretches of land; there are disputes about the legitimacy of intellectual property, and so on).
The Civil War wasn't really about liberation of slaves and their up-lift to equal status. It was about redefining property relationships. The North wanted to redefine property to exclude human beings, and they wanted to impose that redefinition on states which supported the institution of slavery. There was some idealism here, but not all that much. Many institutions of property in the north (banking, shipping, insurance...) were up to their financial eyeballs in slavery.
The north had a political stake in preserving its institution of free labor, which had, among other things, given it population superiority over the south. The north was interested in progressive practice in industry and agriculture -- something the south didn't want. Industrialization (as opposed to southern agrarianism) also gave the north significant advantages.
The north was interested in preserving the institutions of centralized power. The south's allegiance to the institution of distributed and diluted power was a reason for the south both starting and then losing the Civil War.
Were slaves incapable of resistance? Of course not. But like the Jews in Nazi occupied territories, the forces arrayed against them were overwhelming. They resisted if they could find a way of resisting that didn't result in the certainty of horrific torture or immediate death. A group of Jews rounded up in the town square and surrounded by hostile citizens, could do what to resist? A slave in the field overseen by an armed overseer on a horse could do what to resist? A calculation was made to survive a little longer.
I disagree with that conservatism. That conservatism is right for the wrong reasons.
:s In what way?
lol
Quoting Bitter Crank
Hi! The author says that we might want to get rid of institutions that produce results that may seem evil to us (slavery, poverty etc), but he gives some criteria that should be met if we want to make that decision.
If we take for granted that it is property relations that produced slavery, then I think the author would argue that we could fix that specific part of these relations, as you said "What is counted as property will change from time to time (humans can't be "owned)"". This seems to be included in the author's argument. He claims that...
I identify conservatism with a group of values, not with a method. Most people identify conservatism with a method of reason-skepticism which started with Hume/Burke and continued with the American tradition with Russell Kirk, etc. My conservatism is of the Aristotelian/Platonic/Spinozist/Schopenhaurian/Hegelian kind - reason based. This reason-skepticism is actually dangerous to conservatism, because skepticism can just as easily fall on the other side.
If you go here, then you'll see the big conservative principles. I agree with (1), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8), (9), and (10). I disagree with (2) and (3).
In fact I'll paste it underneath:
~
I'm not sold on slavery being regarded as a basic institution. I don't think Marquez would think so, either.
The extent to which anyone supports or rejects a given institution is likely to be ambivalent and ambiguous. Even some slave owners in the south thought that slavery was probably wrong; quite a few people in the south found the business of slavery objectionable. Some people in the north had no particular objections to slavery (after all, it was black people who were enslaved, and not white people who felt the lash of the overseer). The interests of workers were opposed because as "wage slaves" they were at a disadvantage compared to "chattel slaves". Daniel Deleon, an American socialist, pointed out that if a slave was re-roofing a barn and fell of and died, the owner was out quite a lot of money. If an Irishman fell off the same roof and died, the owner wouldn't be out anything.
In the present, people have ambiguous and ambivalent views about property relationships. To the extent they view themselves as exploited workers, they feel like they are getting the shaft. Negative view. To the extent that they view themselves as "working hard to et ahead" and will some day be rich, they feel like the pot of gold is just around the corner. positive view. They may entertain both views in rapidly alternating sequence.
Our vacillation, ambiguity, and ambivalence screws things up, resulting in a certain amount of lurching from side to side. Trump won by appealing to the most sensitive side of ambivalent and ambiguity in the correct places. Hillary did the same thing, won the popular vote, but didn't stroke the correct sensitivities in the critical states.
Please unpack this. I don't understand what influence John Locke had on your society much or what he had to do with reason-skepticism and conservatism for that matter (indeed I often hear him cited as the father of liberalism). I've never read or studied Locke. All I know is that Hume (who did have reason skepticism and who did follow Locke in his empiricism and whom I've studied lol) was greatly influenced by him.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, I think I see your point and I also think that the author's argument is mostly theoretical because he seems to take for granted things that in practice do not work that way, or so it seems to me!! For example, he says that the first criterion that must be met when we want to make radical changes in basic institutions is "showing that some outcome is intolerable even if the population regulated by the institution does not think so" and later he says that this would be done in such a way... "might be that some institutionalized practices have the epistemic prerequisites (information, abilities, and epistemic division of labor) to show that some outcomes are normatively intolerable and ought to be avoided, regardless of whether or not they are properly recognized by the population regulated by the institution". So more or less by argument. But this takes for granted that the population responds to rational arguments. But that does not seem possible in the example he gives because he writes "a proponent of wholesale change might argue that we have substantial evidence that many basic institutions do produce such normatively intolerable outcomes, even if many people are unable to see this because of, e.g., ideologically produced false consciousness, and hence that these institutions should be radically altered". Certainly though, an ideologically brainwashed population, as a rule, does not respond in rational arguments. If it did it would probably have recognized the intolerable nature of the practice. So even if evidence is provided and the first criterion is met, in practice it would probably not help. And the author says that among the three, this first criterion is the easiest to meet. But I think that's only in theory! What do you think?
So I've read the paper, and the substance of the article is the argument in the OP, so the all the same criticisms apply. The author does, indeed, briefly mention slavery, to say, merely, that we might not want to preserve institutions that enable evil.
Yes, we might not.
But I'm still confused why you think the responses to to the post are "hilarious" when they hit the mark exactly.
http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/973/an-epistemic-argument-for-conservativism/p3
edit: oh sorry, a bit too quick in reply without properly reading what you said.
Quoting csalisbury
Interesting. How does "Slavery" destroy his paper?
edit(2): I have read the paper as well up to page 14.
Well, one for the reason Un has already laid out
& 2, because someone defending, say, the US plantation/slave system could claim we ought be epistemically deferent to that system, for every reason the author gives. The only difference is that the author thinks we might not want to preserve slavery because it slavery is evil. Well and good, except what if opponents of a system he thinks we ought be epistemically deferent too, think that system is evil, and so intolerable?
Well, he disagrees it's evil, but just how intolerable is it? Can't be that intolerable - look how long it's been around! But then, again, that applies to who knows how many slave-owning systems.
The thing's a mess.
Exactly. And what was the outcome?
tip: see Democrats VS Republicans (the great Abe)
edit: by the way, the arguments in the paper are all too familiar to me for obvious reasons, I just have to get used to his terminologies, AND I would strongly advise you to do the same.
:-! We've all been radicalised, except you Mongrel
Good job lads. Wonders can happen when you actually read stuff huh?
Genius! I actually agree, good point (Y)
Well you should always remember that if you can't beat us, you should join us (Y)
>:O Right - move on to reading liberal progressive websites!
OMG. There really is a strawdogs.com
Ironically, the conservatism that I subscribe to is anti-radical and anti-ideological.
But this is a bad answer, for two simple reasons.
(1)If those who opposed slavery had read and agreed with this article, they wouldn't have tried to change things, because they would recognize they owed epistemic deference to the old institutions and lacked sure answers to replace it.
(2) Further, if you think the ending of an institution means that it was, in fact, intolerable, and therefore didn't deserve epistemic deference.....well essentially every institution ever has ended. And therefore none of them deserved epistemic deference. So, by your own logic, unless our own present institutions are unlike all past institutions (an idea which is astoundingly radical and reluctant to draw form the past) our institutions too will fail, and deserve no epistemic deference.
Again, the argument is blisteringly bad.
What did the author say regarding changes. He mentions it throughout the entire paper, and even dedicates an entire chapter to it: A Precautionary Principle for Institutional Change. There is absolutely no way you could have missed it, if you read it.
Did you actually read it or just rush through it. I suspect the latter since the author has been explicit about how we should deal with changes. Slavery is such a silly (counter) example, because it is obviously intolerable. The author swept it away with such ease in the earlier chapters.
Quoting csalisbury
Note that I do not have to defend the author at all, I have my own political standings.
Probably because you're strawmanning it.
But he has got 800+ posts on The Philosophy Forum, that must count for something, so Marquez's arguments must be "blisteringly bad."
[quote=Emptyheady]edit(2): I have read the paper as well up to page 14.[/quote]
A Precautionary Principle for Institutional Change starts at the bottom of page 14. The irony here is painful.
And the author, of course, does talk about change. A cautious change, where we have to know the risk we subject ourselves to in changing a system, to be quite sure that it will work better than the current one. Again, if everyone agreed with the author, emancipation never would have happened.
He doesn't 'sweep it away.' He literally doesn't deal with it, except to say he's not in favor of it. Which I believe, and have believed since reading the OP. I'm not, nor have I ever been, saying that I think the author is defending slavery. I'm saying that his argument for conservatism would apply perfect well to slave-owning systems. I'm saying his argument fails to explain why it would not apply to them. And that's a big problem.
God we're so stupid.
Here's an idea. Let's begin the discussion of any philosopher on the boards with a list of the awards they've won. And then if people disagree, let's not address the substance of their disagreement, but list the awards that philosopher's won, and point out their hubris. Do you, for instance, agree with Chomsky's political views? Wait, but do you know the amount of awards he's won? Do you think you're smarter than Chomsky?
This is bad stuff emptyheady, and again, I've never stated that I think the author is defending slavery. I'm quite sure he's against it.
It is impossible for me to continue reading after I stated that, right? You try too hard to antagonise. Go take a break, this is getting desperate.
Quoting csalisbury
The argument applies to everything you dip.
I am done with this for now.
Business conservative and I lean more towards the pragmatic side of conservatism. With a background in industrial engineering and business management, economics and actually studied philosophy for a brief moment.
With influences of Anscombe, Foot, MacIntyre, Aristotle, Hume, Burke, Kekes, Oakeshott, Hobbes, Hayek, Friedman, Sowell -- and Pinker of course.
As an interesting side note, I am fully aware that many people think that 'slavery' and women's right to vote are good arguments against conservatism and in favour of change -- Burke was explicit on the crucial importance of change -- and people use this as an excuse for radical untested ideas that sound nice on paper. They have to realise that the opposite can also happen and things could get ugly:
Let alone the insane increase in homicides and rapes.
People are so extremely naive. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, and still manges to cock up -- ends up as the worst performing economy in the world. Now see how many people suffer, because of "change."
I also observed how priceless things can be lost because somebody had a great new idea (in my time at AT&T.)
I'm that dot where the x/y axes cross.
My field is more managerial than analytical.
Which is why it fails. It cannot distinguish either a basic institution nor intolerable practices. All it amounts to is cheering for the present power. Empty rhetoric, aimed not at pointing out an upcoming catastrophe, but rather defending whatever structure or institution is present.
Un and csalisbury are correct that this argument defends slavery: it worships present institution without question, out fear of the change boogyman. Rather than pointing out the risk of a revolution (that's obvious to anyone who bothers to look the policies, usually missing, of the revolutionaries), it's nothing more than a banner saying change must be bad for change's sake.
I remember you from the old PF. I will skip this one.
[quote=Un]If the population regulated is helpless to reject the basic institution, as is nearly always the case, then their 'acceptance' as evidenced by the endurance of said institution has no value and no legitimacy, because everybody necessarily 'accepts' what they can do nothing about, however repugnant and illegitimate it is.[/quote]
This, to my mind, is a knock down argument.
Does anyone want to address it?
Or do we all agree Marquez is right based on his cv?
Par for the course. The irrationality of your brand of conservatism can't abide description of society and people. It works through mindless worship of past tradition, a philosophy not defined by restraint of revolutionary violence and destruction, but by a fear of anything different, such that one cannot even describe losses, gains or destruction that occur from change.
Just as Marquez argues, it's change that must be avoid, no matter what that might be. The philosophy which is the flip-side of the naive Marxist who thinks the destruction of revolution amounts to a social and economic progress. Change nothing, and the world will be functioning as smoothly and as well as it ever could.
Like the naive Marxist, to actually start describing the world, to specify basic institutions, to point out what it intolerable or not, to realise that institutions are always in flux and bettering them amounts to a change, would to destroy the vision of your wondrous utopia. You would, Marquez and Pinker forbid, actually have to do some work describing and maintaining society, rather than just running of a general principle of "no change."
Un thinks he's helpless. He thinks the world needs to be saved. Really not a happy combo for an atheist.
In any case, people have presented good reasons to think the argument in the op is bunk and no one has addressed them except to say, as thornongil and emptyheady have, that theyre wrong bc the ppl presenting those arguments cant possibly poke a hole in the argument of someone with accolades, bc what gall. And that's fine, again, i know where that kind of rhetoric stems from, but it feels like vindication to me and that's where I'll leave things unless anyone wants to actually engage.
That you clarify this now, albeit on page 6 of this thread, is most welcome.
And speaking for myself, I'm the last person to think a person's credentials immunizes them from criticism.
Quoting csalisbury
That isn't clear.
Quoting csalisbury
According to Marquez? You're playing a crafty game here, which you must realize.
I meant that you didn't appear to understand what I said. But since you seem to be satisfied that you understand all you need to about the topic and just need to get a logic joust in so you can use the suffering of dead slaves to make yourself feel superior... I don't guess I really need to explain it.
That's not what I'm doing and nor something I would ever wish to do. If you're done conversing in this thread, fine, but you're not getting away with spreading falsehoods about me.
Also, have you noticed that your grammar goes out the window the grumpier you get? You can't even spell my username correctly!
I'm sincerely (sincerely sincerely, not just rhetorically sincerely) surprised people thought that I thought that anyone was defending slavery. I would have clarified earlier otherwise. I thought un's initial posts, making reference to slavery, poked a very serious hole in the OP's argument, but it would never have struck me that he was suggesting the OP (or the person the OP was drawing from) supported slavery.
Marquez says we shouldn't abandon the institutions we owe epistemic deference to unless we already have a firm understanding of a system to replace it, which would better deal with the 'problems' the old institution responded to. And we didn't, at all, have a firm understanding of what new institutions the south would have to create to deal with the vacuum caused by emancipation. The civil war alone would have made the shift unpalatable to someone who internalized the essay's points.
According to my own understanding of 'basic institutions' and Marquez's.
Quoting Kazuma
Slavery did not avoid producing normatively intolerable outcomes. 600,000 Americans died. What caused the American Civil War? My guess is you have no clue.
I don't know. There's definitely a lot of animosity. But there's also a clear argument in the OP, and a clear rebuttal in Un's post. It's not so messy, after all. What do you think?
Yes, but, how do we decide on what's normatively intolerable? Marquez (and the OP) provide an answer. Do you disagree with their answer? Is 600,000 Americans dying a priori normatively intolerable? I suppose it depends on the circumstances they die in, what they die due to. But if they don't die due to natural causes, if 600,0000 die due to the system they live in, yeah, that's a problem, I'd say. But what does the OP say, what does Marquez say? What do they say?
I don't know why Kazuma was so taken by the text which he quoted. No, I didn't read the paper to which there was a link. I don't like it when people pull a few paragraphs out of a long text, and let that be the start of a discussion. I have a backlog of reading already. It doesn't seem like anything earth-shaking was proposed. I didn't like the way Unenlightened stated his view:
Quoting unenlightened
I don't disagree with the upshot of his statement, just didn't like its construction--in response to which anybody might mutter "too bad".
But so what? It doesn't seem like anybody was arguing in favor of slavery. Probably the level of hostility is so high because so little is at stake. Having nothing substantive about which to quarrel, we turn on each other.
It seems that there has been more 'testiness' around here lately. Some people have extended their sensitive feelers all the way across the room and squawk every time somebody touches them. Probably fallout from Brexit, Trump, LaPen, et al. Change is in the air, but we can't quite tell from which direction the next disaster will come. Makes people nervous.
Yea.. I wrote out a long essay and then deleted it. I'm also frustrated because this is an interesting topic to me. Repeatedly, though, I find that I can't invest in talking to you.
Peace out FJ.
A good example of what I was talking about.
I think Kazuma chose to pull this section out of the text, because the author of the text states/signals that this is the main argument, the meat. Normally, I'd agree with you, there's something suspicious about excising one bit, setting it out, outside the rest. But it makes sense here. The author himself says this is the meat. And it is.
As to the rest, no one has been arguing in favor of slavery (or arguing that others are in favor of slavery), from the beginning. Maybe the testiness is due to anxiety around the ascendancy of populist movements, who knows, but, much as I agree that real, in the moment feelings, seep into forum convos, I can't see any good way to tie that into the convo.
I've been fair to both sides. I'll entertain any rational - or even persuasive - argument. I talked with you for a while. I understand - I really do! - if you don't find any benefit in talking to me. But I don't understand - I really don't - if you think what I'm saying doesn't fairly and earnestly address the OP.
For what's worth, your analysis stuck me more as a strawman of Un's point than anything else. What's at stake here is not "victimhood," but a description of the actions of others on people. People are never helpless. In most cases (depending on the restrictions placed on their body), they can resist, make the best of their circumstances, kill themselves, attempt to run away, etc.,etc., but Un didn't mean people couldn't do any of those things when he said they were "helpless." He was talking about how people are "helpless" in the face of the freedom of others.
No matter how much the individual resists, accepts or even thrives in a circumstance, they helpless in the face of other's freedom. If someone makes the choice to shoot you dead and does it, you're dead. If a society and government (a group of people making free decisions), decree that you are to be owned and passed around as the property of others, there's nothing you can do about it. Until they stop using their freedom in such a way, you're stuck as a slave. The point is not the people are merely objects that are helpless victims, but rather we are all at the mercy of the freedom of others. If we live with others, we are stuck with what they decide to do with us.
So in society, anyone is helpless before another or an institution, for it amounts to being subject to the freedom of other people. For someone to avoid being "helpless" in this situation, they would have to have absolute control over everyone else, to the point where no other person had a decision of how to act.
Alright, I'll take you at your word. And just for the record, let me say that I never intended to defend the argument in question, so it doesn't matter to me whether it succeeds or fails, and I would certainly not base my own conservatism upon it. However, I wanted to make clear that it doesn't fail due to (again, I trust) what I wrongly perceived to be the criticisms of it in this thread.
Quoting csalisbury
Nonsense. The south today is based on the same damn principles and institutions as the north at that time: free trade, non-slave labor in the agricultural industry, etc, so there was always a firm understanding of what it would become. There was no other alternative.
Quoting csalisbury
Explain.
Quoting csalisbury
This is where you are. The "at" is not needed in this sentence. Pet peeve, sorry.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I blame Anatoly Lobsterman.
Quoting Bitter Crank
An utterly breathtaking connection you've attempted to make here. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Yeah? So if the USSR said the US should become communist, the US claiming its own economic system couldn't - or shouldn't - transition into a communist system would be irrelevant? (note, please, this isn't a defense of communism. It's saying that you can't use the Northern attitude to the south without allowing that the validity of communist attitudes to a capitalist country. And if you want to make the point of 'well it worked, in the end, didn't it?', that line of argument doesn't jive with Marquez' in the least.)
[quote=thorongil]Explain.[/quote]
Explain my understanding of basic institutions or the understanding of Marquez? (my understanding is more or less his, so it amounts to the same thing. But I also don't know what you're asking me to explain.?)
That's just not digging idiomatic usage, and idiomatic usage don't care. Sorry! All of American English is idiomatic usage, so it seems you've just cottoned to the way people talk in a certain time and place. I don't a give a pig's brisket what you think of it, it works, and that's all it needs to do.
Not trying to dodge it, but I honestly don't understand what you're getting at with this question.
Quoting csalisbury
The latter, of course.
Quoting csalisbury
And nor do I care what you think about what I think of it. I merely had to point it out. It's like a reflex for me, and I would be greatly annoyed if I just let it slide.
I'll take your word for it.
I think the OP is about this question: what principles guide us in making changes to social institutions?
Fundamentally, a liberal is guided by pure, simple morality. A conservative is guided by practicality.
ideally, society partakes of the expertise and wisdom of both. The OP lays out some thoughts that underpin the conservative approach. Some of it is just straight common sense.
I can see how some might be inclined to sniff out the dark side of conservatism and accuse it of amorality that's easily co-opted by the corrupt. It's when the attempt is made to paint all of conservatism with the ugly brush that the bullshit starts flowing.
Liberalism also has a dark side. But that's another story.
Like people who can't stand prepositions at the end of sentences? As Winston Churchill said, in defense of the sentence ending preposition, "Prepositions at the end of sentences are something that I will not up with put!"
If the USSR won some global economic war it could also claim, as you did, that the US today (in the 'today' where the US is communist) is based on the same damn principles and institutions as the USSR at 'that time' (i.e before the US became communist). 'There was always a firm understanding of what the US would become' the USSR intelligentsia would say, 'there was no other alternative.'
Ok, I'll draw from his essay.
[quote=Marquez]We have reason to conserve certain basic institutions (systems of property or political rights, family structures, etc.) not because these are intrinsically valuable, but because we have little knowledge about both the actual consequences of existing basic institutions and the potential consequences of alternatives. [/quote]
It's quite clear that he considers systems of property or political rights to be 'institutions.' And I think it would be very hard to argue that the plantation/slave system of the south wasn't a system of property or political rights
Quoting csalisbury
The USSR? wtf? Back to Thorongil.
Of course. Had the Confederacy won the war, things would have been different. But the south lost, and the Union intended to force more changes in the southern economy than it actually accomplished in the mid-19th Century.
Victors dictate the terms of the post-war regime. Before WWII ended, the Economic War Group began planning the deconstruction of German cartels, which had involved quite a few US, British, and French companies, and companies elsewhere. Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie (I-G Farbin) et al had been suppressing production of critical war materials in the US through inter-corporate agreements since 1920. Getting rid of the cartels was necessary if the rest of Europe (and the world, for that matter) was to recover economically.
The Union project resumed in 1954 when the Supreme Court ruled that Separate But Equal was unconstitutional (largely because separate was equal in theory but was decidedly not equal in fact). Little Rock High School was integrated in 1957 with the assistance of Federal troops (during the Eisenhower administration). Troops forced other integrations, as well. Various federal actions were again forced on the south in the mid-20th Century--like the Voting Rights Act, which has been undermined of late.
It's that very question which is incoherent. When making a change (or not making a change), the principles that guide us aren't separate form the reason we are acting. Liberals are not guided purely by morality. Conservatives are not guided by practicality. Both are seeking to run society in an ethical way, to form particular social organisation, with particular division of labour, power, status, values etc, etc., to attain a society which functions in a particular way.
The virtue of acting "conservatively" is, for example, ethical. Avoiding destructive revolution which descends into a chaos of self-interested warlords battling over territory in the chaos isn't a merely "practical" consideration. It's an ethical one. Society is better if we don't burn it all down, only to have it replaced by something which has all the same problems and more. When we act conservatively, it's because we ought to.
The problem with the OP is that it has no means of doing this. What it offers not the virtue of acting conservatively, but straight out worship of what is already the case. "The basic institution" that works could be anything. Slavery. Death Camps. Dictators. Monarchs. All that matters is the traditions of society run as they have been doing. Moreover, any tradition tends to think it's working-- no matter how extreme or intolerable it has become. Those gulags in Siberia certainly worked to prevent political challenges in the USSR. It is nothing more than an apology for the present power, a rubber stamp to however institutions and people in power are exercising their freedom in the present, a politics not based on what's happening in society, but on the image that whatever power is practised now is successful.
Hi! I think I agree with your general criticism but as I understand what the author says when he's talking about slavery etc, he's not treating it as a basic institution, he sees it as less basic, which is subject to change through more basic institutions. It's more a matter of policy change rather than basic institution change. Not that this makes your criticism invalid. When such policies are far reaching and integral to basic institutions, even if they are not basic institutions themselves, the difference is not that great and probably the same argument could be be used as justification for not changing them. Also, what do you think about the criticism I provided earlier? I think that we are close, but I'm not sure!!
C'mon BC. Look at the posts that led up to this. Do you see the parallel? You can't just follow the details, the texture, the anecdotes. You have to see the line of thought.
Now I respect and admire figures like e.g. Joan Didion, people who say, like she does, that they are constitutionally averse to giving into the Hegelian impulse, to the need to see the universal in the concrete. People who say that they, instead, see the way things are, that they see the world in all its particular glory. I appreciate that (tho I think that people who say things like this are often more Hegelian than they're aware of) but that doesn't change the fact that you're on a philosophy forum, arguing philosophical points. You have to trace the argument itself.
You kept bringing up Un's point, which is basically that there is no true legitimacy because of the existence of the helpless. So for instance: money is an institution that can be made of pure confidence. Per Un, this confidence is a lie because the average person has no power regarding it. Which is true... it's definitely collective confidence that makes the magic.
The fact that you allied yourself with a viewpoint that is profoundly antagonistic to civilization itself and then talked about situations that couldn't possibly exist without civilization (and its history of conservatism) made it a little difficult to follow you.
OK. I'm done.
Still don't get it. If the US were communist, then the USSR, upon defeating it, would make it communist? When does the US become communist in this scenario? In any event, using the USSR as an example doesn't work because it lasted less than a century. It meets very easily the criteria for being intolerable.
Quoting csalisbury
On the contrary, I think it would be very easy for him, and anyone, to argue that human beings are not property and that one does not and ought not have the right, political or otherwise, to own them as such.
I do see some issues in regards to slavery and woman's rights, as he mentions. However, I don't think what he refers to as "basic instutions" are things like slavery. It's not what counts as property that is basic, but rather the concept of private property. It's not what Americans would consider conservative economic principles, but rather free market driven economics in general.
I do think there is a problem with not defining "intolerable" with more precision. As Bitter Crank, unenlightened, and others point out, there can be a lot of "people feeling powerless and people making the decision to persist another day, rather than challenge a normally intolerable institution.
The relevant sense of 'helpless' in my argument is that people are helpless to actually change the basic institution. Because it is only the non-persistence of a basic institution that affects it's so called legitimacy, according to the thesis. Plenty of people have opposed the institution of property in thought, word, and deed. That it persists does not imply acceptance, except the acceptance of the facts s something to be opposed, and the failure to effect change does not imply legitimacy, except the legitimacy of habit. As if we cannot have been getting things fundamentally wrong for thousands of years. Opposition is not proven illegitimate whenever it is ineffective.
The argument about whether slavery or property or the nation state or smallpox is or isn't a basic institution is an irrelevance to my argument, because it arises as a post hoc apologetic to allow change and illegitimacy to have some limited purchase,given the argument of longevity implying acceptance, implying legitimacy. But my argument is that that argument doesn't run for anything at all, not basic institutions, not non- basic institutions, not superficial habits, not natural phenomena, not anything.
What I don't understand is why he thinks a new argument for conservatism is needed. There are plenty of good arguments around for conservatism, going back to Edmund Burke and beyond. That's provided we interpret conservatism as simply meaning 'giving the benefit of the doubt to existing laws, practices and institutions, so that an onus of proof lies on those that wish to have change'.
Etymologically, that's what 'conservative' means. It's only in the bizarre world of US politics that it has come to mean things like wanting to enforce Christian morality on people, denying anthropogenic global warming, opposing immigration and wanting to wind back labour laws and environmental protections.
It's perfectly possible to be a 'conservative' in the etymological or Burkean sense and yet be a pinko, atheist, commie, greenie liberal on the majority of issues of public debate.
Conservatism of that type is simply a practical way of managing public policy. It doesn't need fancy words like Epistemic to justify it.
I can imagine that, living in the world of political philosophy, you have to deal with a lot of people arguing for complete system overhaul. Marquez wants to emphasize a certain aspect of conservative philosophy, the epistemic uncertainty we face in decision making. This essay is mostly meant for an ongoing debate among political philosophers, particularly as an argument against philosophers who want to argue against democratic republics, free market economics, and private property, which I imagine can be quite common in some circles. Based on previous essays I read, most philosophy works are not monumental works like "Justice as Fairness" or "Anarchy, State, and Utopia", but are trying to argue and refine a position in order to make it stronger. I found the essay insightful, though I never read Burke, so maybe it is just treading old ground.
Which is precisely to argue that the Southern plantation system was an illegitimate system of property and political rights. & Marquez has some very piquant things to say about legitimacy, if you recall.
Yeah, I'll eat my words and admit this wasn't a clear illustration A better one would be the US govt and native american tribes.
Maybe he can't. But we certainly can. I already said I'm not trying to defend his argument per se. I'm only trying to defend him from certain accusations which would be absurd and uncharitable to lay on him.
Is this definition in common use? To me it seems quite strained.
As if one were to say, the "factual legitimacy" of oppression and coercion consists in the persistence of oppression and coercion. Or, the "factual legitimacy" of an act of aggression consists in the victory of the aggressor.
Quoting Kazuma
As if one were to say, the "factual honesty" of a lie is in part a function of how much the lie avoids producing outcomes in which it is considered contrary to a sincere assertion of truth.
Quoting Kazuma
Can you clear up this distinction?
I suppose "normatively intolerable institutions" are institutions said to be intolerable, or institutions that are in fact at odds with current normative limits of tolerance. Norms of tolerance would trigger actual intolerance, radical rejection of actual institutions, when there is a perception that the actual institutions have passed a threshold with respect to those norms. Is that the idea? In that case, it seems something like the perception of legitimacy, or the assessment of current "tolerability", plays an important mediating role between "norms" and "facts" of legitimacy or tolerability.
I wonder. Does it seem more correct to say that there is in fact, in each context, a threshold beyond which conditions become "intolerable", and that to pass this threshold is to impose a new norm of action -- e.g., of active rejection of the status quo? Is it always clear in advance where that threshold stands? Arguably, the location of that threshold is not the sort of thing that is predicted by "norms", but is rather a thing determined by changes in actual circumstances. It seems the norms may shift along with the circumstances.
Quoting Kazuma
A lie's having passed unchallenged is evidence that the lie has avoided producing suspicions of insincerity and falsehood.
The persistence of strangling is evidence that the strangler has avoided producing circumstances that would have led the victim to escape or gain the upper hand....
Quoting Kazuma
The evidence that lies and strangling have succeeded in the past is evidence that they may succeed in the future.
Quoting Kazuma
What does "scope of regulation" mean?
Quoting Kazuma
I'm not sure how this view of yours is connected to the argument you attribute to X. Marquez. However:
Isn't "improving current institutions" one way of "changing the status quo"? Isn't change always change in some "direction"? Isn't a desire for improvement a desire for one sort of change, and a desire for change in a particular "direction"?
Do we have some reason to suppose the consequences of changes involved in "improvements" are more "predictable" than the consequences involved in a "change in direction"?
I don't think it makes sense to talk about the "legitimacy of oppression" here.
Legitimacy played an especially poignant role in European history because of the way it could effect military ventures. The soldier needs to believe he's fighting for a legitimate ruler because otherwise he's committing blasphemy (fighting against God's Chosen One.)
This explains how Joan of Arc ended up influencing events in France. She showed up claiming that the French Dauphin was the legitimate King (this had been in question since his parents disowned him). Subsequently the Dauphin-supporters fought more vigorously with the belief that she really was in touch with divine forces.
So you can see how the meaning of the word changes pretty significantly post-Enlightenment. An American in 1810, for instance, may believe that the American government has its anchor in Nature (another word for God), but he doesn't believe the government has divine blessing necessarily.
Post 1870, a lot of Americans would understand legitimacy as having to do with this:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
– Gettysburg address
:)
Neither do I.
In the context you cited, I used those terms to paraphrase a passage supplied by Kazuma, in an attempt to show how "strained" I found the passage.
Consider the original context of the paraphrase:
Quoting Kazuma
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
I thought the absurdity of the statements in the paraphrase might shed some light on the significance of the original passage (pushing especially on the role of "actual acceptance" in that passage). I continued commenting in this manner with analogies to lying and strangling.
Perhaps that way of proceeding was too flippant or unclear.
I'm confused by talk of "legitimacy" in general, and also by some ways of talking about "rights". "Perception of legitimacy" and "(actual) threshold of tolerability" seem less troublesome.
The line of thinking cited and attributed to Marquez by Kazuma is even harder for me to fathom than most talk about legitimacy. For it seems to characterize "factual legitimacy" as if the fact that a population has not successfully overthrown its government, or not successfully rejected an institution, should be identified with the population's de facto "tolerance" of the government or institution, and "correlated" with the de facto "legitimacy" of the government or institution. This strained alignment of terms is used to support claims about the correlation of "actual endurance" and "normative" principles.
Admittedly, the strengths of the proposed correlations are diluted with phrases like "in part the function of" and "there is some connection"; and it seems the argument aims to establish merely that "actual endurance" provides some evidentiary support, not conclusive support, for claims about a vaguely construed relation between the endurance and "normative legitimacy" of institutions.
I'm inclined to resist the whole line of thinking, despite the mollifying effect of that vagueness.
Right. It's just that it's a strawman. That passage was simply saying that institutions that endure have a history of acceptance. Nothing world shattering. In fact the OP isn't so much presenting an argument as simply laying out how conservatives see the world.
Could an institution be oppressive and endure? Couple of answers:
1. For a while, yes. If that's happening it could be because there is no known alternative or people perceive that the alternative isn't something they can choose. But where that's happening the situation is unstable. It's like an ailing machine that will clunk along until some critical point is reached and the machine falls apart.
2. Looking at the question a different way, any institution might occasionally be afflicted by oppressiveness, corruption, immorality... what have you. Yet acceptance exists and that acceptance is real. The reason we might not want to claim that this is false legitimacy is that if we dream of some correction, some alteration, some advancement toward the ideal, those dreams will require some accepted institutions. One would only abandon legitimacy altogether if one is adopting a late-Chomskyesque attitude: that all human civilization is fundamentally evil. I don't know where on the political spectrum that attitude lies, but it's in a zone of complete irrelevance.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
That's fine. As I said: it's not saying anything startling, but it's certainly not saying anything ridiculous either. I spent of lot of years thinking about how everything one says and thinks contributes to bigger successes and failures. I think all governments are basically democratic (granted I was camping in the woods at the time.)
Perhaps some conservatives do think along those lines.
If any such advocate understands the significance of the argument in the way that you and I seem to, I might call him a "marketing strategist for the oppressors" instead of a "conservative".
Quoting Mongrel
Another option: The people don't perceive themselves as oppressed.
This can mean something like: The proportion of people in the population who consider themselves, or who consider "the people", to be oppressed is insufficient to support a successful rejection of the status quo.
Another option: The people anticipate that the cost of oppression is not high enough to merit the likely costs and risks associated with potential attempts to reject the status quo.
I suppose considerations like these are relevant in assessing "perception of legitimacy" and "de facto threshold of intolerability".
Quoting Mongrel
I'm not sure this must be the case. It seems perhaps optimistic to say so.
I'd want to add to the scenario something about sufficiently many people being sufficiently dissatisfied with the conditions associated with their oppression. In that case we might do away with concept of oppression in the equation, and just say "when sufficiently many people are sufficiently dissatisfied with the status quo, the people tend to reject the status quo". Now say something about how perception of oppression is one of the things that leads to dissatisfaction; and something about how "dissatisfaction" is a motive, or is correlated with motives, for action.
Then we might say: As increasing dissatisfaction increases the motives for action aimed at rejecting the status quo, the situation tends to be increasingly unstable....
Quoting Mongrel
This is perhaps my biggest problem in the line of thinking attributed by Kazuma to Marquez: What counts as, what is entailed by, what is ruled out by, "actual acceptance"? For if all this phrase means is that the status quo has not been to date successfully rejected, it means hardly anything at all, apart from "endurance". Specifically, do Kazuma or Marquez mean to distinguish "actual acceptance" characterized as endurance (or more specifically as the state of not having been successfully rejected), from "normative acceptance" characterized as expressed acceptance (or perhaps as the absence of expressed rejection)?
Consider a case in which
i) most of the people complain about the status quo, say it's bad, wish things were otherwise, profess a desire for change, profess a willingness to act to reject the status quo if only the costs of such action were not so high, or if only they saw a reliable means to that end; and
ii) many of the people do act, and others have acted, toward that very end with the same express motives, but this activity has not, to date, succeeded in rejecting the status quo.
Is this, according to Kazuma or Marquez, a case in which the status quo is "actually accepted" and "factually tolerated"?
I'm not comfortable calling that a state of de facto "acceptance" or "tolerance". Compare: the "tolerance" of a body gradually poisoned to death by lead or gold. The "threshold of tolerance" beyond which a man at last cries out under the whip.
Of course not all cases are like that one. In some cases there is "real acceptance", as you say. The question is, how do we distinguish the cases, how do we define "actual acceptance"?
Right. We can't be too idealistic, and aim to reject, instead of improve, each and every imperfect institution.
How does that pragmatism guide us in defining terms like "acceptance", "tolerance", and "legitimacy" in this conversation?
Quoting Mongrel
It's hard for me to imagine what a speaker as sober as Chomsky might mean by a statement like "all civilization is fundamentally evil." Can you expand on this attitude and its place in Chomsky's late thoughts? Is it somehow connected to "anarchosyndicalism" or to "left libertarianism"?
What do you mean by "abandon legitimacy"? The phrase could mean: Abandon talk of legitimacy, for instance if we found the term to be fundamentally redundant or ungrounded; perhaps replacing talk of legitimacy with talk in other terms for about the same purposes. For instance, we might use terms like "justice", "liberty", "consent", "popular sovereignty", "prosperity", "pacificity", "humanity"... to evaluate institutions in ways that align with our current use of the term "legitimacy".
Quoting Mongrel
I agree that the argument attributed to Marquez by Kazuma is not startling, and that it employs some useful concepts.
Quoting Mongrel
Do you mean that all the speech and other action of an individual contributes to his future successes and failures?
Or that all the speech and other action of each individual contributes to the future successes and failures of that individual, as well as of the communities in which he participates, including the community we call "humanity" and the community we call "all sentient beings"?
Or something else?
Quoting Mongrel
I'm not sure what it means to say that "all governments are basically democratic".
I'm inclined to agree that popular sovereignty seems essential to human nature and human communities, much as it seems essential to chimpanzee nature and chimpanzee communities. This may cease to be the case given the advance of technology. Consider, for instance, Brzezinski's (often misinterpreted) remark that it's recently become easier to kill than to control a million people.
I'd also agree that there seems to be something like an oscillation between oligarchy and democracy in human communities and societies. Typically monarchy is a form of oligarchy: A king with no supporters is no king at all.
The de facto oscillation between oligarchy and democracy continues in a formal hereditary monarchy, just as it does in a formal electoral democracy.
It doesn't guide us. For all practical purposes, you have acceptance of the world as it is unless you are actively seeking to change it or you have recently filled your pockets with stones so as to Virginia Woolf yourself into the river.
The way you understand legitimacy is influenced by your metaphysical outlook. Are you a naturalist? A Christian? Are you a naturalist who smuggles in a medieval Christian view from time to time? My little essay on the history of the term was supposed to convey that.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
His extreme pessimism comes out when he's asked to explain what positive steps he thinks the world should take.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
Bill says his government has no legitimacy. He is fundamentally rejecting its normative influence. Bill could:
1. Move to Alaska and live off the land. Lots of people do it.
2. Stay and just whine all the time. But in this case, the whining is profoundly pointless because Bill has rejected any possibility of making things better.
3. Get a clue and realize that he does accept the imperfect government that stands over him (atrocities and all). Now pick an atrocity and try to do something to help.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
That. Think of Gandhi. We stamp his name on a success that involved the actions of millions of people. Hitler.. same thing except it was a failure.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
If you get that, then you have everything you need to get the OP. How do we know whether to support or fight against X? A conservative says that a lot of the work has been done for us by history. The stuff that has survived the last few thousand years has shown itself to be worthy.
There is a fly in the ointment here, but most of the ointment is exceptionally wise. Give the archetypal Conservative his/her due. We wouldn't be here without them.
A stark characterization of the options. Accept the world as it is, act to change it, or act to reject it by annihilating oneself.
Is it even possible to live in the world without changing it? It may be there are only two options, not three. Then again, from a broad enough point of view, the last option is only a variation on the middle way.
Perhaps we should say there is only one option. The question is not whether we shall act to change ourselves and the world, but how. For that change is always ongoing.
Quoting Mongrel
That essay did a fine job of indicating the way in which norms associated with our concept of legitimacy have varied through the ages. But I wonder whether the word "legitimacy", or some very close term in translation, has always been used in every time and place, or if perhaps our concept doesn't necessarily map on to linguistic terms in every culture in the same way. Extending that line toward one extreme, I would suggest that we can employ our general concept of legitimacy to think about the tenure of an alpha male chimp, and his acceptance or rejection by the chimpanzee band he lords over; though of course the chimpanzees have no words at all for this feature of their psychosocial dynamics.
Moreover, I suppose "metaphysical" views are not the only relevant factors that determine differences in conceptions of legitimacy across cultural contexts. We might have similar views about metaphysics, while disagreeing about rights and justice, for instance.
Quoting Mongrel
It's one thing to be pessimistic about the prospects for humanity, and another to make claims like "human civilization is fundamentally evil".
I vaguely recall Vonnegut saying something about having become more pessimistic as he got older. I believe I've become more pessimistic with age, too. It might be there's a decade, or two or three, before the last stage of youthful disillusionment and the onset of full-grown pessimism.
But you know, anything's possible.
Our increasing pessimism could be a symptom of age, or it could be a sign of the times. Our expectations are based on what might turn out to be a short segment of history's whole trajectory.
Quoting Mongrel
I'll assume that someone who says "This government has no legitimacy" thinks that in general there's good sense to talk in terms of "legitimacy".
This may skip over the point I was making, which you seem to think you are responding to here, that we could use other language to do the work that some of us allocate to the term "legitimacy".
Quoting Mongrel
Do you mean to say that Bill rejects the normative influence of "his government", or the normative influence of the concept of "legitimacy"? In keeping with the assumption I've just noted, I suppose you mean that Bill rejects the normative influence of his government.
What kinds of things have "normative influence"? What do they influence or have influence on?
What does it mean to say "this government has normative influence", and what does it mean to reject that claim?
Do you mean something like: If agent X "rejects the normative influence" of government G, then in X's considered view, the laws of G are not binding for X, have no normative value for X, but figure in X's normative outlook only as facts, such as the fact that X may be more or less likely to be caught and punished if X breaks the so-called laws of G?
Quoting Mongrel
Aren't there laws and a government in Alaska?
Quoting Mongrel
Do you mean to suggest that the only alternatives to "rejecting any possibility of making things better" are indicated in (1) and (3), namely, doing one's best to get off the grid if that's still an option, or agreeing that the status quo "is legitimate" and working to improve it?
I'm not sure I understand the way you've set up the terms here. It seems to me we can deny the "legitimacy" of a government while aiming to change it instead of aiming to overthrow it. On what grounds do you rule out such an alternative?
Quoting Mongrel
What does "accept" mean here?
One might "accept" the fact of a flawed and imperfect electoral democracy, for instance -- accept it as a matter of fact just like gravity or the weather -- while calling it "illegitimate" and acting to reform it, without aiming to overthrow the government or change the constitution, without whining, without succumbing to apathy, and without throwing oneself into a river burdened with stones.
It sounds as if you think we must choose between rebellion, apathy in bad faith, and "acceptance of legitimacy". I'm not sure why.
Quoting Mongrel
I agree it makes sense to say the actions of each individual contribute to future outcomes for that individual and for the communities in which he participates.
Each of us constantly changes himself and the whole world by existing. And it seems each of us has some say over how.
Quoting Mongrel
I have the impression that we read the OP in two different ways.
Quoting Mongrel
Does a conservative say that a look at history will settle the question of whether to "support or fight" any politician, institution, or political view? That seems a tenuous claim, though of course historical understanding helps to inform anyone's outlook along these lines.
Is it everything that "has survived the last few thousand years" that's worthy, or only some of it? How do we know which parts to preserve and which to amend? Is it even possible to maintain "the same" institutions given the inevitability of change in technology, economic activity, culture, and the whole social order? Isn't the attempt to maintain "the same" institutions over different cultural and material circumstances just another way of changing the institutions?
Suppose the antecedents to this society were "influenced by, produced by, and well-suited to their circumstances". That's one respect in which we may want to resemble those antecedents, one proven principle we may want to adopt as our own.
The consistent application of that principle would require that we change our institutions along with our circumstances. A failure to do so would render our present conduct out-of-line with tradition.
Quoting Mongrel
Perhaps many flies.
Quoting Mongrel
Give everyone his due.
What position do we assign to the archetypal conservative here? If all he has to say is, we shouldn't change too much too fast, I'll sign up right away.
That doesn't tell us anything about what to change and what to conserve.
Does somebody die on the middle way?
No.
Good question. How would you put the meaning of legitimacy into your own words?
Everybody dies along every way.
Quoting Mongrel
I'm not sure that putting it into my own words is a way of answering the question I indicated, which was a question about how other people have used the word, or its closest relations in other languages, across various cultural contexts.
As I've suggested, I haven't heard any generally applicable conception of "legitimacy" that I find philosophically satisfying, and I don't have one myself. I find talk in terms of legitimacy to be quite problematic until we take for granted -- for the sake of conversation, or with respect to something like a national constitution -- some more or less arbitrary characterization of the term.
Taken at face value, the word "legitimacy" suggests that something legitimate is something legal, something made or done in accordance with law. But many people seem to use the word to criticize the law itself, or to criticize institutions established, processes effected, or actions undertaken in keeping with the law.
We may distinguish accordingly: Legitimacy according to the law, legitimacy of the law. Legitimacy according to the government; legitimacy of the government. Legitimacy according to current institutions; legitimacy of current institutions.
In each case, judgment concerning the first sort of legitimacy is a technical matter, for lawyers, public advocates, and other special interests to wrangle over; while judgment concerning the second sort of legitimacy seems to implicate a set of norms held apart from the law (from the government, from current institutions), on the basis of which the law (the government, and current institutions) are criticized.
I suppose that superior set of norms may vary from one cultural context and from one critic to the next, but has in each case a moral and political character that may be analyzed or expressed in terms of values and principles of political organization, or of political justice in a broad sense.
If you mean to ask what values and principles of political organization do I personally consider most relevant to judgments about the legitimacy of laws, governments, and institutions, I’ve given some indication already, in this laundry list:
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
and I suppose we could add more terms to the list and discuss the meaning or relevance of any item in the present context.
I'm not really following you at all here. The meaning of "legitimacy," as used in the OP, doesn't seem confusing or arbitrary to me.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
OK. But the OP is about political theory, right? Wouldn't it be appropriate to narrow focus down to what the word means in that context?
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
Again... not following this at all. Sorry.
It seems we may be speaking at cross purposes.
I'm not sure why you keep referring to the OP as if it were an authoritative source on the use of words in this thread and a clear standard by which to limit the scope of discourse in this thread. I don't believe it is either.
What is the meaning of "legitimacy" in the OP, according to you? And why do you say the meaning of the term, as characterized in the OP, is "not arbitrary"?
Quoting Mongrel
I agree that we're speaking about politics in a broad sense. I don't see how acknowledging this would help us narrow down the meaning of the word "legitimacy" in this conversation any further than we have already narrowed it down.
How would you suggest we narrow it down, in light of our agreement that we're speaking here about politics in a broad sense?
Or is there perhaps some narrower sense of "political theory" that you have in mind, that comes along with a textbook definition of "legitimacy" that is agreed upon by all professionals called "political theorists"?
Quoting Mongrel
No need to apologize.
It seems we're agreed on this point, at least.