----- Original Message ----- From: "Justin Schwartz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >Please what? Ravi goes on about sort sort wierd context relative >truth, so I >just quoted Ari's old definition that no one has improved on these >2500 >years. > > >================= > >Truth is more problematic than issues of representing form and we >frankly have no decision procedure for determining whether or not >there is only one form of truth because we have yet to achieve an >exhaustive account of what is and surely an exhaustive account of >what is not is not possible. I have no idea what this means. The only notion of truth I haveever been able to attach any sense to is this boring on Aristotlean notion, maybe as tarted up by Tarski and Davidson. ================= Plenty of critiques floating around of that way of approaching the problem. However, the issue - it seems to me - is not the role of truth in structuring descriptions of natural and social phenomena, but the prescriptive dimensions of social life and the manner in which accredited professionals, lawyers, accountants, economists, physicians etc. seek and sustain control over the prescriptive forms of speech and writing that allow them to secure relations of dominance and rent seeking vis a vis other citizens in the demos. And when those prescriptive assertions lead to the very debacles we see all around us, one has to wonder just where the demarcation between expertise and fraud lies and then open up the debate over who gets to determine the kinds of prescription to ameliorate the problems set off by the collapse of that distinction. That's why I posted the article that remarked on the Enron situation and the defense/evasion of those who were responsible when they asserted "we relied on the advice of experts." How many iterations of experts using their advantages to defraud or, to borrow from Joanna, engage in orgainzed theft, do we have to endure? Surely myself and others can abrogate unto ourselves the ability to assert that the law's empire undermines it's own legitimacy when enough instances of history point out that the law is a veil for classes asserting dominance over other classes and that when they do so by conflating the distinctions between descriptions and prescriptions an even larger form of social fraud is occurring. However, the issue, with regards to >law, is the ontic and epistemic status of *oughts*; the very stuff >of politics. > >> That's philosophy, not law. ================== That's an interesting way of attempting to maintain a disciplinary boundary. I don't buy it. To the extent that the law is constituted by a network of prescriptive commands backed by sanctions it remains an "eternally" open question over how societies shall determine and debate the status of the oughts/prescriptions by which they conduct their affairs. Those are philosophical disputes and the law and the legal profession has no place asserting a privileged perspective. The attempt of professionals to abrogate unto themselves the manners and fora by which those prescriptions are to be determined and diffused into the demos in order to secure advantages unto themselves necessitates that the demos continually assert that no such monopolies of control over the determination of prescriptions shall occur. Thus expertise must remain an essentially contested concept. >> Lawyers don't make these rules, legislators do. It's not our biz. Don't blame us for the stupid laws p[assed your democratically elected representatives. ================== They're your legislators too, and don't be patronizing to the demos. You know all too welll the issue of the tyranny of organized minorities that plague representative government in large societies. I would also note that many of those stupid laws are written by attorneys. One need only look at the 1996 Telecommunications act to see how the legal profession in concert with a bunch of CEO's defrauded the US public of billions of $. Who needs crime when you can get professionals to pull off something like that? Again the issue >of just who is an expert in the realm of constructing and enforcing >the forbidden in the absence of a platonic realm of noughts and >oughts. > Not at all. Legislation is politics, not technical expertise. ==================== Writing legislation in the 20th and 21st century required and requires extensive legal expertise, especially if it is to secure ever greater market niches for lawyers to ply their trade. It's not a mere folk legend that much of the legislation coming out of DC is called "the lawyers and accountants full employment act of year X." Simply compare a piece of legislation from the 18th and 19th centuries with the stuff that's in the TPA legislation. Life is hard. That's what politics is for. *Should* insider trading *really be illegal? >*Should smoking pot land you time in jail? These are questions for politics, not expertise. =============== Agreed. The problem is when experts use their class position as experts to shut out those who demand that the legislature to legislate a different set of prescriptions. The path dependency of the law typically then biases the legal system to abrogate even more privileges and powers unto itself. If we say that the law is merely the outcome of the clash of interests, what independent grounds of justification do we have for saying that those who disagree must comply? Etc. etc. *Is* Windows >better than Macs? Better for what? >So lets talk about the efforts and $ the legal profession exerts to >dumb down juries! :-) Surely a respect for the demos is at work in >their motivations! > What makes you think thatlawyers want dumb juries? jks ================== History. Ian
