Dan, I hope that You and yours and your home are OK. I heard that half of the Houston area is still without power, if you're home I hope you're among the lucky half.
Dan wrote: > > Well, I guess it depends on what you base your understanding of evidence > on, > and to what degree you accept science when it counters common sense. I > would hope that, if I give the results of extremely well verified theories > of science (e.g. theories that give precise results over many orders of > magnitude (IIRC the range is > 10^20) that you will accept such theories as > valid, and common sense understandings that contradict them as limited. > That, if there is a conflict between the two, you would side with science > vs. common sense. An example of this is the fact that evolution shows that > the order in nature does not prove the existence of a creator, > Ok, where on the web can I read about the truth apart from us? Can I find widespread support for the idea among scientists? Or will I find, as Wiki suggests, that "most physicists consider non-instrumental questions (in particular ontological questions) to be irrelevant to physics. They fall back on David Mermin's expression: "shut up and calculate"" > > > > > That we have > > There is no constant, absolute right or wrong. Its the one that works > > best in the given situation with the caveat that in five years or five > > months or even five minutes the circumstances that made it work well > > might change. > > > How quickly and completely did American attitudes and indeed, their > ethics > > change on Dec. 7, 1941 or on 911? > > The question of whether a particular action is right or wrong is dependent > on the circumstances involved. But, look at what you said > > "Its the one that works best in the given situation" > > This, as with Charlie, simply moves the question slightly. What I have > stated repeatedly is the question of how one defines things like best, > worst, good, bad, etc. Self referential statements don't address the > question, they are mere tautologies. Is there no way to define success in evolutionary terms? Wiki describes natural selection thus: Over many generations, adaptations occur through a combination of successive, small, random changes in traits, and natural selection of those variants best-suited for their environment" Is the use of best in that description a mere tautology? Or if I had said best-suited would it have changed the meaning of my statement appreciably? > If in one hand and... But if either of them had won, how long do you > think that they could have kept their conquests under their thumb? Do you > think that their social constructs would have been successful? Well, leaning on a former list member who is a PhD candidate in > international relations, and who believes that a proper study of history is > important to this, the answer is that the evidence is strong that > totalitarian regimes are internally stable. The USSR failed after 60 years > or so, but that was in a situation where it was competing with the US > militarily and ended up spending 40%+ of its GDP in that competition. First of all, I respect Guatam's credentials, but he's been wrong on more than one occasion (remember the guarantee that there would be WMDs in Iraq) so his they aren't impeccable. Second, you state that totalitarian regimes are inherently stable but the only valid example you can give is a regime that lasted less than a century. Thirdly I don't believe it is valid to compare societies from different eras because of the widely varying circumstances. It's like trying to compare experiments that had thousands of uncontrolled confounding factors. So aside from the fatal flaws in your historical analysis that Rich pointed out, I don't believe that that type of comparison is valid in the first place. > > > > Would they have stood the test of time? I have serious doubts that > > they would have, > > Well, then you stand against most students of the field. Can you site an example or two? > In a long term > competition, countries with representative governments have advantages over > totalitarian governments. But, the 19th and 20th centuries demonstrated > that freer societies have long term advantages in productivity, but it took > a long time for those advantages to take hold. > > And, in times of war, the US required a president who went outside the law > to defend the country and then stepped back inside it. Some of what FDR > did > was unneeded: e.g. the internment of the Japanese. But, the pushing of the > boundaries of lend-lease, the use of US destroyers against Germany before > war was declared, etc. was necessary. > > In the case of the Civil war, the illegal arrest of the Maryland > legislators > on their way to a vote on secession from the Union was absolutely essential > to maintaining the Union. The fact that Lincoln could violate the > constitution to save it is amazing. But, it also shows the weakness > republics have; if it were someone like Nixon instead of Lincoln doing > that, > would he then release the power? All the above does a pretty good job of corroborating my argument, and I don't see how they reinforce yours. > > > > but if they did, if their constructs _worked_ you'd > > have to say that their ethics were superior. > > OK, so a totalitarian state would be right, and individual freedoms would > be > wrong, all on a chance. > > Evolution is not goal oriented. There are reasonable arguments that, 30k > years ago or so, humans barely survived extinction. There is a lot of > chance in evolution. There is no better or worse, there is just what > happened. > > So, while your view on ethics has self-consistency, it also has > ramifications. The first is that what is good and what is bad is the > product of pure chance. Just as in evolution, the survival of some species > and the demise of the other can often be dependent on the precise sequence > of environments they face, the dominance of one system over another is a > matter of chance. All correct, but let me point out one thing. The fact that humans were more intelligent than their competitors is the kind of chance you point out above, but the fact that intelligence itself is successful is not chance at all!!! The ability to understand and manipulate your environment is a profound advantage! Furthermore, with the ability to manipulate our environment, we are manipulating evolution itself and in fact removing some of these elements of chance. This remains true in the discussion on ethics. Because we have the ability to understand what the effects of various modes of treatment have on us, and the ability to imagine differing modes of treatment, and the ability to find ways to implement those changes, we have the ability to choose those ethical values we prefer without having to rely on chance. So the fact that Hitler and (ultimately) Stalin lost wasn't purely chance because there were enough of us that could see that these were not ethics that we were interested in adopting, and we did something about it. > > All, true, but the foundation of the ethical system of Judeo-Christianity > has been very close to constant for about 2100 years. And, even before > that, from the time of the Jewish kings on, the prophets proclaimed that > God > judged Israel/Judah on how they treated "the widows, the orphans, and the > strangers among you." Here you fail to separate the ideas from the actual practices. Slavery, the subservience of one sex, the exploitation of children, xenophobia etc. have all been condoned by the written law until very recent times in even the most advanced societies. Hypocrisy fails to describe the gap between the ethics idealized and those practiced. > > Now, folks often/usually failed those standards. They acted in a manner > inconsistent with what they proclaim. Indeed, I know that I fail to live > up > to my own standards. I'd argue that hypocrisy does exist; people fail > their > own standards. > > Jefferson was well aware of this when he admitted that owning slaves was > inconsistent with his ideals. He said (paraphrasing) "Gentlemen, we are > riding a tiger, justice demands that we get off, but prudence requires that > we stay on." > > The ethical standards of the two laws of God proclaimed by Jesus have stood > as goals to be reached for 2000 years. It is true that many folks have > been > hypocrites, many folks denied that they went against Biblical principals > when they did. They even quoted parts of the bible to attack it's root. > > But, the heart was always there, and resurfaced repeatedly. As Peter Gomes > says: it's the principals, not the practices seen in the Bible that > Christians need to pay attention to. > > So, although we all fail it, there is one standard for Christians that has > stood for 2000 years. Ronn has aptly summed the root of human ethics for > Christians several times. So, I'd argue ethics haven't changed over the > years, simply practices have changed. We now are hypocritical about > different things than folks were 100 years ago. > > Finally, our understanding of the facts has changed, changing our > application of the ethics. It was far more moral to embrace Marxism in > 1880 > than 1980, for example, given what happened in between. > > This last section of your post is what stymied my reply for so long. Am I to believe that "love thy neighbor" is the "truth apart from us" to which you refer? I started a rant about the absurdities of this idea, but I guess I really need to confirm that's what you mean before I ramble on. Doug _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
