Re: Dan's Comments On Collectivism →
That’s a great definition. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t using a definition like this one that requires centralized control. We can disagree on whether centralized control is necessary or inevitable when people are attempting to benefit some sort of collective.
It’s not just people attempting to benefit some sort of collective. People do that all time — from football teams to families. The difference is this is a political philosophy. And centralized control does follow from political collectivism in practice, just as you may see communism defined as a totalitarian state because that is its practice whereas the ideological justification is rather different.
I see quite a few social pressures toward selflessness and helping others that aren’t enforced by the state.
There’s no such thing as selflessness, but if you mean doing things that help other people at your expense materially e.g. giving to charity, helping strangers, etc., yes that happens all the time and is not enforced by the state.
You also seem to be using coercive and political somewhat interchangeably. I don’t think they’re synonymous.
With regards to the institutions as described by political philosophy, they essentially are. However if you want to argue for noncoercive i.e. individually voluntary “collectivism,” go ahead.
I still think you’re misreading Arrow. Arrow demonstrates that regardless of our voting method, we can’t be guaranteed to get an accurate picture of popular desire. In photography terms, we might say that no matter how carefully you focus the picture, something in it will come out a bit blurry. And you’re taking this conclusion and using it to claim that photography is incoherent nonsense.
If Arrow had merely demonstrated the “imperfection” of voting in expressing collective choice, it would have been an incredibly dull exercise. Nobody would claim it produced a perfect expression in the first place. He did not. He demonstrated the impossibility of collective choice via voting even under perfect conditions. It is called the Impossibility Theorum for good reason, and it covers a lot more than elections. It speaks to the very concept of collective reasoning itself, when coming from the top-down as aggregating individuals, and demonstrates its incoherence. (To quote Arrow: “Choice is only individual.”) And when one looks at the many other paradoxes of representative democracy, and the real-world model of elections, anyone who is not at least cynical is delusional.
If we have a problem like global warming, we could focus on individuals and their choices—but the real impact is made by large groups of people acting in concert. We could instead pay attention to firms or countries or markets.
When people pay attention to “countries,” they’re looking at what the individuals who control the coercive monopolies will do, and how that will affect individual decision-making on the part of individual heads of production firms and individual consumers in the fuzzy conceptual aggregates we call “markets.” The micro is primary. Talking about what nations qua nations are doing is nonsensical (though common).
Are individuals primary? Primary for what? If your axiom simply states, “We can focus on individuals and their choices,” then fine. It’s a reasonable axiom.
Individuals are the basic unit of society and thus the primary unit of analysis, as has been stated a number of times already.
But stating that we must focus primarily on individuals isn’t true.
If you wish to talk coherently and logically, you must (unless you can demonstrate how talking about collectives holistically is logical and coherent, which you can’t). However there are no objective “musts” and you can do anything you want.
Fine. I’ll grant that people who intentionally make decisions intend to make those decisions. If we define conscious actions to be those done with a purpose in mind, then yes, conscious actions have a purpose. We can roll your third axiom into your first axiom. A = A.
A=X where X=A is a sound rebuttal to “A=X therefore A=not(A).” However, that’s not quite what the axiom of purposive action is demonstrating. As you brought it up, I think I should explain how “tautology” works in logic.
“Tautology” in the pejorative sense is unnecessary repetition of the same thing by definition in a figure of speech. Something like “that wife is married.” However, it is only unnecessary if there are no substantive, tangential implications of statement. Furthermore, it is only a tautology if the repetition is due to definition and not fact. So “inefficient government” is not a tautology as the inefficiency of government, though universal, is a matter of fact and not definitional (a praxeologist might disagree). By deductive logic, all derivations from a given axiom are tautologies in the sense of being true by definition, by logical form. It makes little sense to attack a deduction as “tautology” per se as the same attack would apply to the derivation of basic mathematics, etc. For someone to dispute deductive logic, they need to (A) dispute the applicability of the axiom to the real world (i.e. dispute the axiom), (B) show an error in derivation (i.e. show that it is not in fact “tautological”), or (C) show that the tautological derivation or tangential implication was unnecessary insofar as it tells you nothing substantive. For example, 1+1+1+1 = 4 = 1+1+1+1 may be unnecessary tautology whereas 1+1+1+1 = 4 = 2x2 may not be, especially to demonstrate to some that 1+1+1+1 is = 2x2. By basic usage, ALL deductive logic is tautological as Wittgenstein pointed out. Deductive logic is nothing but the clarification of self-evident propositions.
The axiom of purposive action is self-evident, though not tautological in the pejorative unnecessary sense you seem to be applying. Conscious decision making => purposive action => revelation of purpose in seeking ends => revelation of subjective ends marginally via consciously-decided action. This could obviously not be rolled into A=A, though it is premised on A=A (the law of identity).
Do you know what the child values better than it does?
Nope, but the child’s brain is still physically developing and it may not know the means to its ends or be able to articulate its ends to itself. Hence children are usually given increasing freedom to make their own decisions as they get older, otherwise they tend to rebel, and controlling parenting isn’t particularly successful.
But what creates value?
The axiom of subjective value is epistemological, not ontological. Nobody knows “what creates value” and that is a question for neuroscience. It is likely affected by many things, from genetics to culture.
And if I were forced to run ten miles a day, I might be a happier person. So, tell me, do I want to exercise?
If you could voluntarily join an organization (e.g. football team, gym program, marines, sado-masochist club, whatever) that forced you to run ten miles a day, would you? If not, I am not logically justified in forcing you to as I am removing your choice and the method by which such a preference would be revealed.
Or let’s take the case of the anti-gay activist who, it turns out, might be gay.
I don’t understand the point of this example or why it’s relevant
It is not axiomatic that we necessarily know our own desires better than somebody who can see them at a critical distance.
This paragraph does not follow from anything you wrote. You have not yet logically disputed the axiom, though you’re somewhat misstating it. Nobody can “see” your desires sans your revelation of them. Again, this is epistemological (and thus methodological) and not ontological.
Nor should proponents of individual choice and individual freedom claim that it is. If we say that it is so obvious that no right-thinking person would even dream of disputing it, we fail to articulate why individual choice or individual freedom is important.
Individual choice is important precisely because subjective value is axiomatic. If one could know a priori your values better than you—i.e. objectivist value theories e.g. Marxist classism, Rawlsian welfare aggregation, democratic collectivism, etc.—they can logically take away your freedom for your own subjective good. This has no sound logical basis, is incoherent, and thus individual self-determination is important.
We simply assert that it is and have no room to engage anybody who disagrees.
What? I’m engaging someone who disagrees right now..
