Leaked: Info on US Data Collection Programs

[K. A. Pital]

I asked you C why not abolish language? It is not 100% comprehensible and context-independent and clear, yet we rely on it to communicate.

By the way, I'm certainly more of an anarchist, but these arguments are not doing you justice, you can do better I think; utopianism ends where you actually try to work out a realistic way of implementing the utopia and see if that works. So far, I've only seen an argument why the law should be abolished, but not how this can be accomplished. Without the how, the why is just a pointless remark about the law being imperfect. Unless there's a way of eliminating the imperfection and still maintaining and not compromising the core humanist values that you hold to, e.g. the default value of human life, I see no real way for you to win this argument.

Seriously. Just think about it for a bit.

[loomer]

loomer- Again, a question of pragmatism. Human rights exist regardless of problems in their way.

I'm sorry, but here you yourself make the error you've repeatedly accused me of. You have failed to perceive and address your inherent biases. The idea of a right is a legal fiction that by its nature requires an entire web of legal concepts and philosophical enquiries to have been undertaken. The idea of human rights as a whole require even further philosophical thought and legal fictions to justify.

So, please explain why this legal fiction should hold any water, given that human rights exist solely in law as a reflection of the thoughts of jurists and philosophers, and you have repeatedly said you do not need or want to use the work of other jurists or to allow philosophy into law.

[Simon_Jester]

While there are a thousand complaints we could have about the political philosophy expressed by Heinlein in Starship Troopers, there's a quote applicable here:

“The results should have been predictable, since a human being has no natural rights of any nature.”

Mr. Dubois had paused. Somebody took the bait. “Sir? How about ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’?”

“Ah, yes, the ‘unalienable rights.’ Each year someone quotes that magnificent poetry. Life? What ‘right’ to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What ‘right’ to life has a man who must die if he is to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of ‘right’? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man’s right is ‘unalienable’? And is it ‘right’?

As to liberty, the heroes who signed that great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called ‘natural human rights’ that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.

“The third ‘right’? — the ‘pursuit of happiness’? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can ‘pursue happiness’ as long as my brain lives — but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.”

While the concept of natural rights can make sense, more so than the speaker Dubois claims in this novel, there's a practical truth here: a human desire cannot be said to be a right without context.

Carinthium appears to be trying to work without context; I cannot imagine why he would do so, unless he is simply too uninformed to be aware of that context. He's trying to re-think thoughts that have already been covered quite thoroughly, and struggling to re-ask questions that were answered almost at the very beginning of philosophy.

[Carinthium]

Before I start, let me point out why gut feelings are valid for ethical questionsand why pragmatism should be ignored.

Without gut feelings, there can be no ethics. Ethics is either Strong Foundationalist (incoherent- memory argument), Weak Foundationalist (incoherent- recursive reasoning), Infinitist(but how do you complete the infinite chain?) or Coherentist.

A Coherentist ethics must of necessity involve gut feelings (which, incidentally, is how I was persuaded out of moral nihilism). It also cannot be utilitarian as utilitarianism contradicts gut feelings. The only remaining candidate is deontology.

A deontological ethic and an ethic which incorporates pragmatism are incompatible, most easily proved by the fact pragmatism leads to utilitarianism.

MetaHive:
Are you seriously claiming that the massive amounts of accumulation of Federal power over time happened because the Constitution was really set out that way despite the Founding Fathers, who should know what they intended and what they wrote better than to get it so vastly wrong, running things very differently?

I was discussing the quotes, not the Nazis. The Nazis failed because of racial delusions, underestimating the Soviet Union, and falling for U.S provocation (in basic). Not everything they said was wrong.

Stas Bush:
Language does not necessarily command people to act- law, in general, does. Any laws which never compel anyone to do anything would be exceptions, I suppose.

loomer:
Human rights are a natural extension of deontology. See my top argument.

Simon Jester:
See my top argument.

[loomer]

Before I start, let me point out why gut feelings are valid for ethical questionsand why pragmatism should be ignored.

Without gut feelings, there can be no ethics. Ethics is either Strong Foundationalist (incoherent- memory argument), Weak Foundationalist (incoherent- recursive reasoning), Infinitist(but how do you complete the infinite chain?) or Coherentist.

A Coherentist ethics must of necessity involve gut feelings (which, incidentally, is how I was persuaded out of moral nihilism). It also cannot be utilitarian as utilitarianism contradicts gut feelings. The only remaining candidate is deontology.

A deontological ethic and an ethic which incorporates pragmatism are incompatible, most easily proved by the fact pragmatism leads to utilitarianism.
loomer:
Human rights are a natural extension of deontology. See my top argument.

Utilitarianism hardly goes against gut feelings. Utilitarianism goes against the unstated assumptions which underpin your view of the world - a western liberal view. Further, deontology is not incompatible with a limited form of pragmatism that enters when the only choices are both potentially right, and will disadvantage neither party if choice A is chosen over choice B. There, pragmatism enters neatly in a form compatible with deontological ethics and the kantian imperative.

Further, I believe I asked you to EXPLAIN why you put stock in human rights. Your argument does not. Your argument in fact assumes that deontology inherently leads to human rights - an invalid argument with no logic or backing. Human rights are a product of the western liberal ideologies, ultimately stemming from Hobbes and Locke (Locke rather more significantly than Hobbes, and neither pronouncing the rights given to individuals as applying universally to all humans.)

Answer my fucking question, you weaselly little cunt.

[Carinthium]

1- Have you never heard about the respones to the Fat Man problem? They pretty much nail it.
2- For the Supreme Court to uphold, say, a federal right to ban firearms disadvantages the person who was retroactively convicted. (NOTE: As I've said several times, this is in practice a retroactive conviction whether theoretically so or not)
3- I don't justify the concept of human rights directly. However, I did justify from deontology that it is unjust to force a person to obey a law that they cannot understand. To phrase that as "A person has a right to have only laws imposed on them which they can understand" is basically the same thing.

[loomer]

You still aren't explaining why human rights should be an exception to the intrusion of philosophy into law or of jurists into your proposed model. Further, banning firearms does not retroactively convict anyone unless it expressly does so. Allow me to illustrate.

1: The <Whoever> bans guns. This ban includes a mandatory turn-in clause.
2: So long as said clause has a grace period attached, individuals are not immediately criminalized for the possession of a firearm.
3: Individuals who then maintain possession of a firearm after the turn-in period can be charged with weapons offences.
4: Said individuals will then go to court, where a conviction will either be obtained or a suitable defence brought out.

Nothing there is in practice a retroactive law, or in theory.

[Carinthium]

The barrier I advocated against philosophical assumptions into law was on the basis of a right to understandability in the first place- saying that people have a right to understand the law, if that is not a doctrine anywhere in the law but a meta-doctrine guiding what laws are made, does not threaten said understandability in any way.

Let's assume the case in question is in the United States, with it's Second Amendment working as it does at present. Given the ambiguities in the phrasing, it was perfectly reasonable of the accused to assume that they had a right in law to have the weapons because the law banning firearms was unconstitutional. Whether this was in fact the case or not, it clearly was a danger that could easily have happened.

Either way, the Constitution was retroactively amended insofar as it's interpretation took a different route both from what the law actually said and from what was commonly understood.

The alternative is a case where individuals are forced to tiptoe around the law and not do anything with even the slightest possibility of illegality. This is, in effect, the law forcing people to be craven cowards.

[loomer]

Carinthium, what do you think retroactive legislation actually means? Please, provide a better example than 'FIREARMS BAN! RETROACTIVE! somehow.'

[Carinthium]

A retroactive law is a law which, in practice, applies to events prior to it's creation. The Supreme Court ruling that the Constitution could outlaw firearms, for example, was retroactive because it created a new rule that the Constitution could ban firearms. Whenever a law is inherently ambigious enough that there are several possible interpretations with nothing to distinguish between them, choosing any one of them is retroactive.

[loomer]

You got the first part right. Everything after that is wrong.

If I make a law that criminalizes the possession of, let's just go with coffee, from the date of last year then it's retroactive. If I create a law that criminalizes the possession of coffee starting tomorrow, then it is proactive. Do you understand that this latter law is not retroactive? A firearms law would be exactly the same.

The challenge you're looking for would be unconstitutionality or a conflict of powers, not that it would be 'retroactive'. These words have very specific meanings for law.

[Carinthium]

There isn't any other word out there to describe the process of making something apply after the fact. Since a judicial ruling is comparable in some ways to a law (even if not a legitimate law), the term's use is justified.

[loomer]

No, it isn't, especially since your particular example is utterly insane. "The court said the constitution doesn't guarantee free guns! THAT MAKES IT A RETROACTIVE LAW!"

It doesn't. The mere fact that a decision clarifies, reverses or reinterprets a previous matter or statute does not make it a retroactive law. A legitimate example of a judge-made retroactive law is when common law jurisdiction judges reason by analogy to apply an existing offence whose criteria are not properly met to a new circumstance, e.g. in certain obscenity matters or early hacking cases. This is a proper retroactive determination, as it creates a common law offence where previously there was none.

[Carinthium]

You were the one who introduced Holmes into this discussion. Are you now saying you disagree with his thoughts on the nature of judicial law-making?

[loomer]

Actually, I fully agree with his thoughts in terms of realism. Have you gone and read any of him yet?

To clarify for you, there is no incompatibility with supporting a realist interpretation of the legal system and at the same time drawing a distinction between retroactive laws 'created' by statute, retroactive laws created by judges, and your bizarre 'a firearms ban is inherently retroactive' bullshit.

[Straha]

Without gut feelings, there can be no ethics. Ethics is either Strong Foundationalist (incoherent- memory argument), Weak Foundationalist (incoherent- recursive reasoning), Infinitist(but how do you complete the infinite chain?) or Coherentist.

A Coherentist ethics must of necessity involve gut feelings (which, incidentally, is how I was persuaded out of moral nihilism). It also cannot be utilitarian as utilitarianism contradicts gut feelings. The only remaining candidate is deontology.

A deontological ethic and an ethic which incorporates pragmatism are incompatible, most easily proved by the fact pragmatism leads to utilitarianism.

This is why the human centipede of analytic philosophy needs to be put gently into that long night.

1. Ethics is not a multiple choice question. There are not a set and small number of ethical schools, nor ethical systems. There are multitudes on multitudes of ways of understanding morality and ethical reasoning, and the disagreements between the systems (or the various anti-systems) are wide and varied on everything from the most fundamental questions (is there an individual?) to the most arcane (at what level of detail does ethical decision-making stop?).

2. You use gut feelings without understanding the background of they develop in the first place. Your gut feelings are a product of the intersection of your culture, your subjectivity, various racial and social identities, and much more. To use gut feelings without a questioning and interrogation of these systems is problematic, to say the least, and introduces at an almost axiomatic level a number of privileges and hegemonic thought processes that doom any ethical system before it can get off the ground.

3. Deontological ethics has been dead for generations in the world of moral philosophy. Any and all approaches to deontological ethics founder on a number of very basic questions: the stable approach to identity and subjectivity which ignores the pliability and fluidity of both and the assumption that reason and, more importantly, language can be objective and immutable being the two most major ones.

You are in dire need of some Foucault, Derrida, and probably Judith Butler as well.

[loomer]

I don't think Carinthium would be physically capable of following the logic of Foucault and Derrida, Straha.

[Straha]

Gotta start somewhere, and Discipline and Punish is pretty easy to get into. It just takes a little effort and an openness of thought.

EDIT: And he's got to start somewhere. I'd say that Analytic Philosophy is like a cancer, but cancer is at least living cells that deserve a degree of respect.

[Terralthra]

I mean, he named coherentism and foundationalism as schools of ethics, when they're actually schools of epistemology. So, I'm guessing his reading has been...minimal.

[Carinthium]

I didn't say Foundationalism and Coherentism were ethics. I said that they should be the basis of ethics- without an epistemology an ethics is impossible.

loomer- You already mentioned Holme's view that every judicial decision is in effect a new law. So I was wondering why you agree with that and yet disagree with me that judicial decisions involving a pre-existing ambiguity such that there was no one clear answer beforehand are in effect new laws (which involve a subset of the category). If they are new laws, it follows that they are retroactive.

Straha:

1- I'm talking about the epistemic basis of ethics. There aren't that many options for that.

2-
a- As a Coherentist, how am I suppose to take those into account? I don't see how the theory can be adjusted to do that given the dependence on trusting apparent perceptions.
b- Even if it could, the gut feeling that it is unfair to make humans obey a law if they can't understand exists worldwide- it isn't a cultural thing.

3- Why not put your criticism out for me to see, then?

[loomer]

Have you read any Holmes yet? I'm serious, and you best answer me on this one.

Now, as for the apparent conflict, it's simple. The full definition of law to Holmes (not, mind you, that Holmes is the be all and end all of the American Legal Realists, who I still strongly suggest you become familiar with, you ignorant little cunt. He's just one of the first and the most influential on the whole.) actually does incorporate legislation in a very specific role.

Put simply - I'd offer you the direct words, but you wouldn't understand it because he uses words with ambiguity - the law is what the judge decides, but what may also be considered a form of law (and the most direct and applicable form) are the predictors of a judge's decision. That is, to Holmes, statutes, precedents, and facts. The law is what a lawyer can tell his client the judge will probably decide.

Thus, appreciating the Holmesian view that only judges genuinely make law (as they alone possess the discretion to apply it or not in the specific incidents) does not require that I agree with the idea that every judicial decision in pre-extant ambiguities are by necessity retroactive laws. They will be retroactive only when they criminalize conduct that was not criminal at the time of the offence. If the new finding criminalizes conduct that was not criminal yesterday, then it is not retroactive. It is proactive. Retroactive law, where criminal law is concerned, applies only to those laws that criminalize, decriminalize, or otherwise substantively alter the legal standing of conduct that has already happened. In simple words, the label should only be used for those laws or decisions that take a thing that already happened and change the legal standing of it - not any laws that change a pre-existing ambiguity but do not change the standing of actual prior events.

Let's use an example here. Let's assume that yesterday, I stole a car. At the time, there was no law explicitly banning the theft of a vehicle. The matter is brought to court anyway and charges filed under the Example Crimes Act of 1766, Section 666: Theft of a Carriage. If the judge rules that a car constitutes a carriage, reasoning by analogy, and finds me guilty, the decision is retroactive. Why? Because at the time the car was stolen, it was not against the law to steal a carriage, and so the new offence is operating on something that already happened.

If, however, I am allowed to go free but parliament then announces that the Act shall be amended (The Cars Are Carriages Amendment of 1851), criminalizing such thefts starting from the day before I stole the carriage, then this is also a retroactive law. But if the parliament dates it to beginning sometime after the act is amended, then it is proactive.

If a court then agrees that this proactive amendment is perfectly valid - as presumably it has passed through the accepted practices for legislation as outlined in the Constitution of Examplestan Act of 1000 - then that law is not retroactive just because it clarifies a pre-existing ambiguity. It remains proactive, because anyone who stole cars before the new amendment came into effect did not break the law, and anyone thinking of stealing a car will now know that such an act is illegal.

Further, you still haven't provided a valid reason why the jurists who created human rights as a legal conception should be accorded any specific respect in your anti-jurist system. Please do so.

EDIT:
Additionally, as an Australian, I'm going to point you to a very important case. Polyukovich v The Commonwealth (1991) 172 CLR 501 deals with a particular piece of ex post facto legislation here in our very own country, with interesting arguments for and against the legitimacy of such legislation based not on the retroactivity (though it does come up), but our constitution's very fabric. As my countryman, you need to know our legal history better than America's.

[Carinthium]

If you think that where I happen to live affects what law I should remember, you're the cunt. I am not your countryman, and you should not pretend I am.

Answer coming tommorow.

[loomer]

I happen to think you should remember your own country's constitution before America's, yes. If that makes me a cunt, then I'll go get that tattooed on my arm. Perhaps I'll use the letters to form the Southern Cross, and add an A for the fifth star. Further, if you are Australian, you are my countryman. Deal with that fact.

Although, having now found that you have autism, I'm going to apologize for calling you names. My bad.

[Carinthium]

No need to hold back because of Aspergers Syndrome- when I turned 18 I promised my parents I would claim no special rights on account of Aspergers, and I intend to keep that promise.

Nationality is a construct so arbitrary that it could be compared to classifying people by zodiac for it's accuracy- hence why I reject it. So as to not insult people I don't go around claiming that they do not in fact have nationalities, but that is in fact the case.

EDIT: To make my case absolutely clear on this one, I will ask anybody who wishes to dispute me to find a correlation between nationality (ethnic or as stated on citizenship) and psycological traits that cannot be explained by the counter-hypothesis of Cultural Groups that do not follow national lines.

[Straha]

1- I'm talking about the epistemic basis of ethics. There aren't that many options for that.

There are. More even than there are ethical schools.

a- As a Coherentist, how am I suppose to take those into account? I don't see how the theory can be adjusted to do that given the dependence on trusting apparent perceptions.

If Coherentism can't account for the world around it the answer isn't to try and force either the theory or the incoming data onto a Procrustean Bed but to reject the theory as inadequate.

b- Even if it could, the gut feeling that it is unfair to make humans obey a law if they can't understand exists worldwide- it isn't a cultural thing.

The law, and conceptions of the law, are not universal. The law as we understand it now it is a relatively recent creation, and is founded in a uniquely Western basis of statecraft and morality.

Let's also turn this question on its head for a moment and return, in a way, to where the detour started. If we take the gut feeling of "I don't like or understand this" as a basis for morality then there would be no way to support abolitionism in the Southern United States in the 1850s. For the slave-owner the slave was an animal, or at best an animalian human, and the idea of granting them protections and equality would be absolutely absurd. They were taught this from youth, understood it to be true, and would object to it in much the same way I imagine you would to me saying I think chickens should have the right to vote (which, by the by, I do.)

Put another way, gut feelings are cultural because what we understand is based on culture. In order to use gut feelings as a basis for anything without incorporating incredible a priori biases you need to deconstruct the preconceived notions that lead to gut feelings which ultimately leads to other, and far more fruitful, lines of philosophy and ethics.

3- Why not put your criticism out for me to see, then?

There are two laid out there above in my last post. The simplest one is this: You can never arrive at an objective epistemology so as to be able to adequately engage in deontological ethics. As long as we engage the world through biases and conceptions (as, indeed, we must) the impartail analysis necessary for deontology can never arise.