[DJP]

Fabian wrote:

I know that personal property in socialism will be respected. My question is why? What is the justification for people having the right to personal possessions that socialists adhere to?

The answer is quite simple. Socialism is a system for the direct fulfilment of human need therefore it is not some abstract appeal to property rights that will offer people protection but the fact that each persons well being and security has become the interest of all.

[DJP]

Perhaps this passage can help our friend Fabian?

Quote:

The end of propertyWhat is property? This is not so simple a question to answer. Witness the polemic between Marx and Proudhon. The latter had proposed that ‘property is theft’. Proudhon well understood that property does not originate in nature. It is the product of a society where reign relationships of power, violence and the appropriation of the labour of others. It is said that property is theft, while theft is only defined with reference to property; this is to turn round in circles.The problem becomes more complicated when you go on from property to the abolition of property. Should all property, whether involving means of production or personal possessions, be abolished? Should it be done selectively? Should there be a radical break with all property and anything that resembles it?Communism chooses this last proposition. It is not a question of transferring property titles but of the simple disappearance of property. In revolutionary society no-one will be able to ‘use and abuse’ a good because they are its owner. There will be no exceptions to this rule. Buildings, pins, plots of land will no longer belong to anyone, or if you like, they will belong to everybody. The very idea of property will rapidly be considered absurd.Will everything then equally belong to everybody? Will the first-comer be able to put me out of my house, take my clothes off me or take bread from out of my mouth just because I will no longer be the owner of my house, my clothes or my food? Certainly not; on the contrary, each person’s material and emotional security will be strengthened. It is simply that it will not be the right of property that will be invoked as a protection, but directly the interest of the person concerned. Everybody will have to be able to satisfy their hunger – and be housed and clothed – at their convenience. Everybody will have to be able to live in peace.http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1979/no-899-july-1979/world-without-money

[DJP]

Fabian wrote:

Quote:

You don’t even seem to have grasped the basic ABCs of anarchism.

Please explain them to me. What did I say that isn’t consistent with anarchism?

Better still here’s Alexander Berkmanhttp://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-berkman-what-is-communist-anarchism

[DJP]

Fabian wrote:

Are you kidding me? You’re talking about a world where there is abundance of everything and it’s all free for everyone to take, even if they don’t contribute, and that kind of a system will sustain itself by I don’t know what kind of magic, and I’m ridiculed for accepting moral norms? That’s not even utopianism, that’s basically a fairy tale. 

This seems to be a strange comment, as do some of your others, for someone who introduced themselves to the forum as an anarcho-communist. You don’t even seem to have grasped the basic ABCs of anarchism.

[DJP]

Not sure about the others but I’m an orthodontist. 

[DJP]

Fabian wrote:

Appeal to authority is a fallacy, and most “experts” are ignorant in their own field of expertise, it’s something of a rule.

Here’s Strawson’s full ‘Pessimism’ argument, make of it what you will.

Galen Strawson wrote:

One way of setting out the no-freedom theorists’ argument is as follows. (1) When you act, you do what you do, in the situation in which you find yourself, because of the way you are.It seems to follow that(2) To be truly or ultimately morally responsible for what you do, you must be truly or ultimately responsible for the way you are, at least in certain crucial mental respects. (Obviously you don’t have to be responsible for the way you are in all respects. You don’t have to be responsible for your height, age, sex, and so on. But it does seem that you have to be responsible for the way you are at least in certain mental respects. After all, it is your overall mental make up that leads you to do what you do when you act.)But(3) You can’t be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all, so you can’t be ultimately morally responsible for what you do. Why can’t you be ultimately responsible for the way you are? Because(4) To be ultimately responsible for the way you are, you would have to have intentionally brought it about that you are the way you are, in a way that is impossible.The impossibility is shown as follows. Suppose that(5) You have somehow intentionally brought it about that you are the way you now are, in certain mental respects: suppose that you have intentionally brought it about that you have a certain mental nature N, and that you have brought this about in such a way that you can now be said to be ultimately responsible for having nature N. (The limiting case of this would be the case in which you had simply endorsed your existing mental nature N from a position of power to change it.)For this to be true(6) You must already have had a certain mental nature N-1, in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you now have nature N. (If you didn’t already have a certain mental nature, then you can’t have had any intentions or preferences, and even if you did change in some way, you can’t be held to be responsible for the way you now are.)But then(7) For it to be true that you and you alone are truly responsible for how you now are, you must be truly responsible for having had the nature N-1 in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you now have nature N.So ( You must have intentionally brought it about that you had that nature N-1. But in that case, you must have existed already with a prior nature, N-2, in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you had the nature N-1 in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you now have nature N.And so on. Here one is setting off on a potentially infinite regress. In order for one to be truly or ultimately responsible for how one is, in such a way that one can be truly morally responsible for what one does, something impossible has to be true: there has to be, and cannot be, a starting point in the series of acts of bringing it about that one has a certain nature; a starting point that constitutes an act of ultimate self-origination.There is a more concise way of putting the point: in order to be truly morally responsible for what one does, it seems that one would have to be the ultimate cause or origin of oneself, or at least of some crucial part of one’s mental nature. One would have to be causa sui, in the old terminology. But nothing can be truly or ultimately causa sui in any respect at all. Even if the property of being causa sui is allowed to belong unintelligibly to God, it cannot plausibly be supposed to be possessed by ordinary finite human beings.http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwVariousStrawsonG.html

[DJP]

 

robbo203 wrote:

I find it difficult to believe that you have not come across this particular usage.   The SPGB, for instance sometimes criticizes biological or genetic determinism which tries to explain human behavior in terms of genetic endowment .  When the party does this it is not attacking  the idea that “events have a cause” but is attacking what it sees as a simplifcation of reality –  the view that human behaviour is “determined” by our  genes – genetic determinism

Like I said ages ago

DJP wrote:

The problem is not ‘determinism’ per se but ‘economic determinism’, ‘technological determinism’, ‘genetic determinism’ etc which take one factor as the sole explanation of others.

robbo203 wrote:

Changing the subject slightly, there is also something called called “soft determinism” or compatibilism which argues  that free will and determinism are compatible.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism)  I guess that would make me a compatibilist in that case!  The notion that we have no free will whatsoever is just as ridiculous as the notion that we have absolute free will, in my view.   The truth lies somewhere in between…..

Yes there is something called compatibilism and yes your position would be that. But to me this position seems untenable once you follow the logic closely. Either you end up re-defining ‘free will’ as something far removed from what is usually meant by the term, so why use it? Or you have real problems explaining how the will can escape the world of causality and become a self causing cause.

[DJP]

Fabian wrote:

Infinite regress problem has to do with connectedness of things successive, like they being caused by the other, or being the foundation of other, not with them simply being successive, like you here enumetaring successive moments of existence of some free will.

Like you say “being the foundation of other” so IF to have free will in the present moment you HAVE to be responsible for yourself in the moment before THEN the moment before is the foundation of the present moment.It is definitly an infinite regress. But you could have undermined the argument by saying that you can have free will but don’t have to be responsible for the moment before.

Quote:

Quote:

At least thats what Galen Strawson says…

Then this Galen guy not only doesn’t understand what the infinite regress problem is concerned with, he doesn’t seem to know what metaphysical libertarianism posits in the first place, because it simply says that the will is free, in the sense of not being determined by anything except itself, to act, and is thus responsible for it’s acts. So metaphysical libertarianism just posits that the will is free and not determined, not that it created itself- and it’s creation is it’s own act, which is assumed in the nonsensical objection to free will that you just put forward.

Galen Strawson is one of the leading figures in philosophy of the mind so I really doubt that it is the case that he doesn’t know what libertarianism is, come on this is all really basic stuff.But if ‘free will’ does not create itself it must be created by something else, so in that case ‘free will’ must be determined, that is caused by something else.

[DJP]

Fabian wrote:

There may not be a beginning or an end in some theoretical, untangible things, but otherwise, infinite regress is impossible.

Indeed. But the concept of ‘free will’ leads to an infinite regress also:If you have free will then you must be responsible for your mental states in the present moment. But to be responsible for your mental states in the present moment you must also be responsible for those of the moment before it, and those the moment before that one, and the moment before that one, ad infinitum. So at some point you must be responsible for the creation of yourself. At least thats what Galen Strawson says…

[DJP]

ALB wrote:

Looking for something else, I came across this contribution to a discussion of this same theme on our other forum in 2000:http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/WSM_Forum/message/1905I don’t think his article did get published in the Socialist Standard.

Any idea what happened to the author? Is he still a member?

[DJP]

I agree that infinite regress is usually held as a problem in philosophy.I think in this case the general ‘first mover’ is usually taken to be the ‘big bang’ but taking this position is not without it’s problems also.The problem may be more to do with humans minds wanting to seek a beginning and end when there may not be one.

[DJP]

Fabian wrote:

Quote:

Broadly speaking it just means “the doctrine that every event has a cause”.

Then we could say that metaphysical libertarianism is a type of determinism, being that it is the opinion that people’s thoughts and actions are caused by free will.

You couldn’t because the libertarians would say that ‘free will’ is not caused by anything prior. 

[DJP]

robbo203 wrote:

Perhaps I’m nitpicking

Yes you are!

Quote:

I was saying that determinism implies more than just causality.  It also implies directionality. – some things are causal agents; other things are effects – and hierarchy – some things are more determining than others, etc. So a non deterministic model is not necessarily one that is a-causal.  It’s the pattern of causality that makes it deterministic…

I don’t know where you’re getting this definition from. None that I’ve came across define it so narrowly, or with so many caveats. Broadly speaking it just means “the doctrine that every event has a cause”.But I’m getting the feeling this discussion has passed it’s usefulness now…

[DJP]

robbo203 wrote:

But the fact that you cannot produce direct empirical evidence for the existence of consciousness does not mean it does not exist.  This is problem with positivism , it precludes all other sorts of knowledge and epistemological approaches such as rationalism and phenomenology

This is not what I said “Harris says that consciousness is the only self evident truth, or something like that.” Can you not read?

Quote:

The example it gives of such a cascading event is the 3 domino pieces. Push one and it knocks over the other which knocks over  the final piece .  There is in other words a sense of directionality which is implied in the very idea of a “cascading” event.  A deterministic system implies more than just the universality of causality. It implies a hierarchy or a sense of temporal priority. So the third domino piece tippling over can  be explained by the first domino piece toppling over which affects the second and thus the third.  However the third cannot account for the first toppling over.  To that extent we have a one way deterministic account.

Yes that is because in the example we are moving forward in time, spooky hey? That surely never happens in real life?Again you’re not reading the whole article and quoting bits out of context, look at the other examples given for deterministic systems. Would you be happier if instead of “determinism” I used the word “causality”?

[DJP]

Fabian wrote:

Are there party documents that adress these topics?

I would have thought so for most of them. You could use the ‘search’ box at the top right of the page. If any topic is missing let us know.

[Author]

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