Wednesday, May 26, 2004
More Marching and Sinnercratting
Thason has responded to my response in two posts – “Oh, and one other thing” and “Alright, here's the "short" version” For those of you playing along at home, here’s the first three posts in the thread in chronological order (1 2 3).
I summarize Thason’s points in “Oh, and one other thing” as follows:
Summarizing Thason’s points (as I read them) in “Alright, here's the "short" version”:
On 1.
Victory is mine! Mwuhahaha!
In all seriousness, in any passionate debate the best anyone can hope for is an “ok I’ll think about it.” It’s also a credit to a debater when they are able to concede that a matter merits further reflection.
On 2.
Umm no.
I thought the hyper-libertarian agenda was Savage’s objective in Skipping (i.e., espousing the virtue of leaving everyone to their own devices). In general, if you can present your argument in the terms being used by the opposition, you stand a better chance of persuading your debater and reduce the frequency of talking past each other (also hence Thason’s adoption of some of my terminology) Since I felt Savage’s logic was internally flawed, I felt I could present a case using not only his terminology, but also his logical premises.
If Savage’s premises came across as my true premises, I apologize for not being clearer. However, I did give an example (see my racist example and my specific conditions) of when I thought it was appropriate for the state to impose morals, which would seem to contradict any argument that I was pursuing a hyper-libertarian agenda. Note that my conditions and examples actually correspond fairly closely to the situations that Thason describes.
On 3.
The assumption that the ambition of “Do X because it is wrong” must be present for the correct application of the appellation “sinnercrat” ignores the memetic basis of my thesis. Most memes attempt to propagate themselves as widely as possible. I am using the term sinnercrat to denote those who are using the legal system to propagate the meme that corresponds to the sinner set of morals. It is not my concern whether or not the sinnercrat is consciously engaging in this activity.1 Hence, my thesis does not rest on the motivations of the sinnercrat. However, I would point out, that those who are consciously propagating the sinner meme, believe that they are doing right, not doing wrong, by their set of morals.
Sinners have a set of morals different from those of the virtuous. To be clear, the sinners believe that the sinner morals are good and wise – just as the virtuous believe the virtuous morals are good and wise. However, these morals are in conflict (indeed as commonly defined them, they are logical opposites, i.e. whatever is not virtuous is sinful), and it is only history (and religion and faith) that allows us to place different morals into either the virtuous camp or the sinner camp. For the purposes of my thesis, Adler can sort out which set is actually “good” as it’s not central to my thesis.2
On 4.
In the original discussion about a month ago2, I had made a side point that while there are some virtues that require an activity to occur, virtues largely consist of restriction or moderation of activities. For an example, consider the Ten Commandments which gives 14 moral laws (not 10! It’s really a function of the Decalogue, as its name implies being 10 words not 10 commandments, but I’ll leave that for another day). The following are the 11 virtues which proscribe actions:
So Thason’s request that I produce examples of proscriptive (personal) sinnercrat legislation to prove my point amounts to stacking the deck. Sinner morals are dominated by approbations; proscriptions are rare. Hence any sinner legislation would be significantly more likely to compel an activity – providing benefits to gay and unwed couples, requiring covering contraceptive coverage, requiring pharmacists to dispense abortive pills and so on – than prohibit an activity (you can’t honor your father and mother, you can’t keep the Sabbath holy, don’t labor for six days).
The identification of proscriptive sinner legislation is made all the more problematic because, as I state in the original post, the ascendancy of the sinners in this country is a new phenomenon, not yet widespread, and not yet complete in the areas not yet in sinner control. Thus the sinners have only had limited opportunities to enact sinner legislation in the US.
However, if I am permitted to stray a little from Bork’s and Savage’s arguments4, which are solely based on US culture and legislation, I can provide examples of proscriptive sinner legislation. For example, France, which is far more secular than the US and thus would be closer to Gomorrah according to an application of Bork’s premise, proscribes the wearing of the hijab (as well as other “ostentatious” religious garments) to public school. I think it is fairly clear that there is no compelling sociological reason to pass a law proscribing the wearing of a hijab. In fact, the law appears to have been passed explicitly because the hijab offended secular sensibilities and the secularists believed that the Muslim girls’ would be better off if they discarded their Muslim morals and adopted the secularist morals.
So, I believe that even the approbatic5 French hijab legislators would satisfy Thason’s definition of a sinnercrat. However, by my definition, which is not based on proscription, sinnercrats are already in CA and NYC.
Footnotes
1. Again confusion arises when terms are not clearly defined. This is why philosophers will spend page after page defining the terms they are using before ever launching into whatever argument they are making. Unfortunately, I am not paid to just sit around and think, well at least not about sinnercrats, and thus do not have the time to write a tome on the subject)
2. That being said, of the moral examples being considered, being quasi-religious I fall into the virtuous camp; Thason, being an avowed secularist, falls into the sinner camp. So I believe the moral basis being put forth by the SA and CC is “good” and Thason believes the moral basis of the NYC and CA law/rulings is “good” or at least trump the SA and CC morals. Also note that the virtuous and sinner designations are of Savage’s choosing and the labels “virtue” and “sin” are in the eye of the beholder (not that this stops me from believing that there are some fundamental virtues and fundamental sins). Someday, perhaps 50 years from now when the march to Gomorrah is further along, someone will write a book that switches the appellations.
3. Thason had to know this response was coming, so I presume point 4 was all about prodding me to type this.
4. I ask permission as the following argument comes far closer to being a strawman than what Thason originally accused me of. Specifically, here I change countries and thus am not strictly considering the situation considered by Savage and Bork.
5. Did I just make up a word? For some reason “The Approbatic Acrobats” is now running through my head.
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Thason has responded to my response in two posts – “Oh, and one other thing” and “Alright, here's the "short" version” For those of you playing along at home, here’s the first three posts in the thread in chronological order (1 2 3).
I summarize Thason’s points in “Oh, and one other thing” as follows:
1. There is no ongoing secularization of America because we were not previously a theocracy.All three have nothing directly to do with my Marching toward Gomorrah thesis, so I’ll respond to those another day. (For the record, I strenuously disagree with 1 (though not with the US was never a theocracy part), believe there are exceptions to 2, and agree with 3.)
2. Personal beliefs should not allow people to ignore the law.
3. The SA and CC have the choice of folding up shop in NYC and CA and probably should.
Summarizing Thason’s points (as I read them) in “Alright, here's the "short" version”:
1. Ok, Jody may be right. I’ll think about it some.These were on topic, so I’ll respond to them here (I’m skipping 5 as it’s a faux point not intended by Thason. The actual intended point is a part of point 4).
2. Jody is using religion and faith as a means of sneaking in some hyper-libertarian (my word) agenda.
3. For the term “sinnercrat” to make sense, the sinnercrat must be compelling others to act in ways the sinnercrat also thinks is wrong. Obviously this is not what the sinnercrats are doing. Therefore the term must be wrong.
4. A differentiation between civic and personal virtues, and between compelled and restricted behavior with the assertion that while virtuecrats restrict personal behavior, sinners would/do not. This is concluded by a request for an example of a sinnercrat placing a restriction on a personal virtue.
5. Something bizarre about houses having sex or perhaps people who have sex with houses. That would probably be even scarier than Spanky… (I kid, twas only a typo, though “homesexual” really amused me)
On 1.
Victory is mine! Mwuhahaha!
In all seriousness, in any passionate debate the best anyone can hope for is an “ok I’ll think about it.” It’s also a credit to a debater when they are able to concede that a matter merits further reflection.
On 2.
Umm no.
I thought the hyper-libertarian agenda was Savage’s objective in Skipping (i.e., espousing the virtue of leaving everyone to their own devices). In general, if you can present your argument in the terms being used by the opposition, you stand a better chance of persuading your debater and reduce the frequency of talking past each other (also hence Thason’s adoption of some of my terminology) Since I felt Savage’s logic was internally flawed, I felt I could present a case using not only his terminology, but also his logical premises.
If Savage’s premises came across as my true premises, I apologize for not being clearer. However, I did give an example (see my racist example and my specific conditions) of when I thought it was appropriate for the state to impose morals, which would seem to contradict any argument that I was pursuing a hyper-libertarian agenda. Note that my conditions and examples actually correspond fairly closely to the situations that Thason describes.
On 3.
The assumption that the ambition of “Do X because it is wrong” must be present for the correct application of the appellation “sinnercrat” ignores the memetic basis of my thesis. Most memes attempt to propagate themselves as widely as possible. I am using the term sinnercrat to denote those who are using the legal system to propagate the meme that corresponds to the sinner set of morals. It is not my concern whether or not the sinnercrat is consciously engaging in this activity.1 Hence, my thesis does not rest on the motivations of the sinnercrat. However, I would point out, that those who are consciously propagating the sinner meme, believe that they are doing right, not doing wrong, by their set of morals.
Sinners have a set of morals different from those of the virtuous. To be clear, the sinners believe that the sinner morals are good and wise – just as the virtuous believe the virtuous morals are good and wise. However, these morals are in conflict (indeed as commonly defined them, they are logical opposites, i.e. whatever is not virtuous is sinful), and it is only history (and religion and faith) that allows us to place different morals into either the virtuous camp or the sinner camp. For the purposes of my thesis, Adler can sort out which set is actually “good” as it’s not central to my thesis.2
On 4.
In the original discussion about a month ago2, I had made a side point that while there are some virtues that require an activity to occur, virtues largely consist of restriction or moderation of activities. For an example, consider the Ten Commandments which gives 14 moral laws (not 10! It’s really a function of the Decalogue, as its name implies being 10 words not 10 commandments, but I’ll leave that for another day). The following are the 11 virtues which proscribe actions:
1 You shall have no other gods before me…The following three are the only activities the Ten Commandments approbate:
2 You shall not make for yourself a graven image...
3 You shall not bow down to them or serve them...
4 You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain...
5 In it [the Sabbath] you shall not do any work...
6 You shall not kill…
7 You shall not commit adultery...
8 You shall not steal…
9 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor…
10 You shall not covet your neighbor's house…
11 You shall not covet your neighbor's wife…
1. Six days you shall labor...So 3/14 of the actions are approbations, while 11/14 are proscriptions. Virtue is both action and inaction, but it is much more inaction than action. Logically, as sin is the opposite of virtue, a Sinful Ten Commandments would be more approbation than proscription.
2. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
3. Honor your father and your mother...
So Thason’s request that I produce examples of proscriptive (personal) sinnercrat legislation to prove my point amounts to stacking the deck. Sinner morals are dominated by approbations; proscriptions are rare. Hence any sinner legislation would be significantly more likely to compel an activity – providing benefits to gay and unwed couples, requiring covering contraceptive coverage, requiring pharmacists to dispense abortive pills and so on – than prohibit an activity (you can’t honor your father and mother, you can’t keep the Sabbath holy, don’t labor for six days).
The identification of proscriptive sinner legislation is made all the more problematic because, as I state in the original post, the ascendancy of the sinners in this country is a new phenomenon, not yet widespread, and not yet complete in the areas not yet in sinner control. Thus the sinners have only had limited opportunities to enact sinner legislation in the US.
However, if I am permitted to stray a little from Bork’s and Savage’s arguments4, which are solely based on US culture and legislation, I can provide examples of proscriptive sinner legislation. For example, France, which is far more secular than the US and thus would be closer to Gomorrah according to an application of Bork’s premise, proscribes the wearing of the hijab (as well as other “ostentatious” religious garments) to public school. I think it is fairly clear that there is no compelling sociological reason to pass a law proscribing the wearing of a hijab. In fact, the law appears to have been passed explicitly because the hijab offended secular sensibilities and the secularists believed that the Muslim girls’ would be better off if they discarded their Muslim morals and adopted the secularist morals.
So, I believe that even the approbatic5 French hijab legislators would satisfy Thason’s definition of a sinnercrat. However, by my definition, which is not based on proscription, sinnercrats are already in CA and NYC.
Footnotes
1. Again confusion arises when terms are not clearly defined. This is why philosophers will spend page after page defining the terms they are using before ever launching into whatever argument they are making. Unfortunately, I am not paid to just sit around and think, well at least not about sinnercrats, and thus do not have the time to write a tome on the subject)
2. That being said, of the moral examples being considered, being quasi-religious I fall into the virtuous camp; Thason, being an avowed secularist, falls into the sinner camp. So I believe the moral basis being put forth by the SA and CC is “good” and Thason believes the moral basis of the NYC and CA law/rulings is “good” or at least trump the SA and CC morals. Also note that the virtuous and sinner designations are of Savage’s choosing and the labels “virtue” and “sin” are in the eye of the beholder (not that this stops me from believing that there are some fundamental virtues and fundamental sins). Someday, perhaps 50 years from now when the march to Gomorrah is further along, someone will write a book that switches the appellations.
3. Thason had to know this response was coming, so I presume point 4 was all about prodding me to type this.
4. I ask permission as the following argument comes far closer to being a strawman than what Thason originally accused me of. Specifically, here I change countries and thus am not strictly considering the situation considered by Savage and Bork.
5. Did I just make up a word? For some reason “The Approbatic Acrobats” is now running through my head.
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