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What would you accept as evidence? [guest post by dicentra]

I jumped in on an interesting an ultimately distressing little conversation on Twitter yesterday. Most of the exchange is here, including what came before I jumped in. (I haven’t read it all and don’t need the headache.) I’ve also inserted things that Twitter didn’t thread. My interlocutor, @SettlerColonial, is writing a PhD thesis, and we got into the nature of property rights. @SettlerColonial has stopped responding to my tweets, so I can’t push some of the questions that interested/worried me.

Notice that @SettlerColonial has the intellectual wherewithal to distinguish accurately between categories — including the correct use of “begs the question” — but then has hinted at some astounding inferrences that reveal equally astounding blind spots.

@SettlerColonial Why would you labor give you ownership over anything to trade?

@EricStrobel Why would you think it DOESNíT? I *create* wealth by using seconds of my life in labor.

@SettlerColonial That’s an assertion, not an argument. What’s this connection between time, labor, and wealth you’re assuming?

@dicentra33 I. Perform. Tasks. In. Exchange. For. A. Paycheck. I create things that did not exist before.

@SettlerColonial You’re begging the question of why tasks are “yours” to trade and what that even means”

@dicentra33 My company needs a task done. I volunteered to perform the task in exchange for money. Explain why that’s problematic.

@SettlerColonial How is what the task produces “yours” to exchange?

@dicentra33 Am I entitled to the fruits of my labor or not? And if not, who is?

@SettlerColonial Maybe you are, but you have to tell me why. “Because God said so,” or “it’s self-evident” aren’t evidence; they’re assertions.

@dicentra33 It’s the Little Red Hen principle: she performed all the labor, took all the time. The loaf of bread is hers.

@SettlerColonial You’re begging the question. The question is *how*.

@dicentra33 Are you challenging the very concept of ownership?

@SettlerColonial No, I’m asking you to provide an argument for your version of it. So far you just keep repeating the assertion.

@dicentra33 And I need to know what paradigm you’re operating from, because it’s nothing I recognize. What would qualify as “how”?

@SettlerColonial Locke said labor translated into property rights because of God. Do you assert God as the source of your property rights, too?

@dicentra33 Are you saying that because God is nonexistent, so are property rights?

@SettlerColonial No, I’m saying if you don’t have God as the source of your property rights, you have to fill that explanatory gap with somethin.

@dicentra33 Why isn’t “I produced this with my own mind/hands” good enough?

@SettlerColonial No, it’s assertion that begs the question. Which is why Locke had to have the story about God granting ownership.

@dicentra33 Ultimately, you will always come to an assertion that must be accepted as true. And then it’s turtles all the way down.

@SettlerColonial So you’re admiting that your vision of property rights is dogmatic (i.e.: has no supporting arguments; is a first principle)?

@dicentra33 Of course it’s dogmatic. But operating under that dogma has particular consequences that I find desirable.

@dicentra33 If one’s own labor insufficient, then ownership of things goes to whomever is strong enough to take it. Such as the State.

@dicentra33 Ergo, we can settle on the assumption that property rights come from labor and its tokens, or we can go with warlords.

@SettlerColonial False dichotomy. Labor theory and ‘might makes right’ theory aren’t our only two options. But let’s get back to the question…

@dicentra33 What does history show? Either you have the rule of law or the rule of the strong. What else has existed?

@SettlerColonial So property rights are an agreement in order to avoid chaos? A social compact to insure that its not an anarchist free-for all?

So this is what he was getting at: the concept of property rights does not reduce down to evidence. Doy. No kidding. But watch where that leads him:

@dicentra33 Yes. Is that a problem?

@SettlerColonial Nope. It just puts property rights in the same category as Christian faith in the Resurrection and original sin. That’s fine.

Yup. that’s where he went. He does manage to negotiate his way out using valid methodology, but then ends up in a worse spot:

@dicentra33 Hardly. The Resurrection is alleged to be a genuine historical event, happening in space & time to an individual.

@dicentra33 Putting it in the same category as any other distant historical event that may or may not be true.

@dicentra33 The “dogma” of property rights is a philosophical assumption on which you can base an economic system.

@dicentra33 Don’t be confused by the connotations of the term “dogma,” or the fact that “unprovable” has various categories.

@dicentra33 If we had a video recording of the Resurrection, it would not be dogma, it would be historical fact.

@SettlerColonial I’m not talking about the object of belief, I’m talking about the nature of belief in the object.

@dicentra33 But you SHOULD talk about the nature of the object. Belief in true things has a different effect than belief in false ones

@SettlerColonial Yes, well that’s why we ask for evidence of existence, which you failed to provide in reverting to assertion of existence.

@dicentra33 What would you accept as evidence of Labor = Property Rights?

@dicentra33 “Property rights” is not a historical event and therefore cannot be shown to have happened. #CategoryError

@SettlerColonial Don’t disagree. Again, not talking about the object of the belief, but in the nature of the belief in the object, ie, dogmatic.

@dicentra33 What’s the nature of a dogmatic belief?

@SettlerColonial That the belief is held with no supporting evidence, but rather, as evidence to support other beliefs.

@dicentra33 A foundational assumption is what you build other ideas upon. Otherwise, it’s infinite regress to find “evidence.”

@SettlerColonial Yes. That’s fine. I don’t mind that labor = property rights is your unquestioned starting point.

@dicentra33 Is there an equivalent starting point that has the force of “evidence” to support it?

@SettlerColonial Those models that rest on agreement and social norms rarely make the kinds of metaphysical claims that libertarians do.

@dicentra33 So what’s the point? You’ve established that labor theory of property is a foundational assumption. I already knew that.

@SettlerColonial Point is that as dogma it should be tolerated but shouldn’t be given too much weight in political decision-making, nor religion.

Do you see that? There’s something aside from “dogma” that should inform politics.

@dicentra33 What you just said? Pure assertion. Where’s your evidence?

@SettlerColonial They were normative claims (notice: “should”) not positive empirical claims (ie, my labor product *is* my property).

@dicentra33 Can we replace one normative claim with another? Maybe we can dispense with the concept of ownership altogether.

@dicentra33 What would you give weight to?

@SettlerColonial Whatever I can find agreement on. I don’t require God or Nature or anything as a foundation for political order.

@dicentra33 Then you’re OK with arbitrary power? Rule of the mob? Shifting consensus? Manipulation? All that can be agreed on.

@dicentra33 In other words, your beliefs are based firmly on a void. Shifting sands. Best argument wins.

@SettlerColonial You’ve given the game away there in your reference to “best” arguments.

@dicentra33 Come again?

@SettlerColonial You lament shifting sands (by the way, welcome to politics) and then speak of the possibility of a “best argument”. Best, how?

@dicentra33 I didn’t mean that it WAS the best, only that sophistry wins the day. I’m making the case FOR dogma.

@SettlerColonial You’ve just engaged in a performative contradiction, making the case for the evils of “making the case”.

@dicentra33 If you don’t hold truths to be self-evidentóif you don’t establish a rockóyou have nothing left but sophistry.

@dicentra33 Unless you’re saying that I just made the best damned argument ever on Twitter (low bar to clear). In that case, Thanks!

@SettlerColonial Sure, but don’t make the additional claim that the background assumptions you hold to be self-evident must determine politics.

@SettlerColonial That’s when you end up with arbitrary uses of brute force to squash disagreement on first principles.

@dicentra33 When did I do that? Where was the MUST? That was a different interlocutor.

@dicentra33 So if we get rid of “dogma,” brute force goes away? They’re not dogmatic in Chicago politics, right?

@SettlerColonial Well, if you don’t believe that, then you must see politics as a place of negotiation between people with different truths.

@dicentra33 Could that be the foundation of our Constitutional Republic? Self-rule according to the dictates of our consciences?

@dicentra33 HOWEVER, some “truths” are mutually exclusive and cannot be worked out. We tried with slavery; ended in war.

@SettlerColonial Yes, that’s the general theme of my PhD dissertation.

@dicentra33 How did I know you were a grad student in a non-STEM field? #SoWasI

@dicentra33 Are you assuming that Being Sure About Something Makes People Dangerous? That religion is a de facto danger?

@SettlerColonial Nope.

Good, because if he were going there, I’d have reached through the screen and pummeled him. Though on second thought, that might be exactly where he’s going.

@dicentra33 Then?

@SettlerColonial Then what?

@dicentra33 What’s the thesis of your thesis?

@SettlerColonial I critique the privileging of the ‘voice’ model of agency & legitimacy in democratic theory and political theory more generally.

@dicentra33 Voice model?

@SettlerColonial The orthodox model of public reason that posits articulated perspectives as responsible for preference shift and emergent norms.

@dicentra33 “It ain’t so that people are convinced by other people’s words.” #translation

@SettlerColonial More or less.

@dicentra33 Does it follow that Rush Limbaugh did NOT cause McVeigh to blow up OKC?

@dicentra33 In your model, where is the locus of meaning: in the intent of the speaker or the interpretation of the listener?

And there it ends. I won’t assume at this point that he chickened out, because all Twitter exchanges must evenutally end, but I would very much like to continue exploring that last question as well as the following:

“@SettlerColonial False dichotomy. Labor theory and ‘might makes right’ theory aren’t our only two options. But let’s get back to the question…” If the dichotomy is false, what are the alternatives? I mentioned eliminating the very concept of ownership, which underlies theoretical communism (not the USSR version, which was Socialism). I mean, look at the guy’s bio: “Anti-Oppression Satire and Commentary.” He’s writing a dissertation wherein he gets into pomo weeds (or appears to). Where ELSE is it going to go?

Also, if we’re to eliminate dogma from political decision-making, what the hell do we use? As I tried to point out, every single thing we believe can eventually be reduced to a baseless assertion, and all we can do is look at the consequences of upholding such an assertion to decide where to go. I asked him straight-out about the “Certainty Is Dangerous” thesis and he denied it, but where else can his assumptions go? How hard is it for people to say, “That’s DOGMA! Out with it!”

OR, worse yet, “That’s when you end up with arbitrary uses of brute force to squash disagreement on first principles.” I wonder what he’s thinking about, which examples he’s basing his model upon. I can only think of the Civil War, whereupon the North “used ‘arbitrary’ brute force to quash disagreement with first principles.”

Well, I was wrong about where he was going in a couple of instances, so maybe I’m wrong about that. But I can’t stop thinking about it.

The country’s in the best of hands.

113 Replies to “What would you accept as evidence? [guest post by dicentra]”

  1. The Monster says:

    @dicentra33 Are you challenging the very concept of ownership?

    @SettlerColonial No, I’m asking you to provide an argument for your version of it. So far you just keep repeating the assertion.

    At this point, you should have flipped the script:
    If you accept that ownership exists, but disagree w/ “my version”, what is YOUR version?

    Get him to define his version of ownership and see if there’s room to talk at all.

    Personally, I think the idea: “The person who makes something exist gets to control it.” has a lot going for it. The practical enforcement of the right of a creator to proprietary interest in his creation is the Galt Shrug. If creators stop creating, there’s no wealth to “redistribute”.

    Ultimately, there are two ways to get someone to do something: trade them value for value, or threaten them with harm if they don’t provide value. History has shown that the former produces wealth and the latter destroys it.

    This is why supposedly providing for the poor is old and busted, and the new Leftist hotness is downsizing our carbon footprints and turning everyone into public-transit-riding vegan localvores. They don’t even pretend that their ideas make people wealthier; they now assert that wealth itself is evil.

  2. sdferr says:

    I critique the privileging of the ‘voice’ model of agency

    (So first, “I critique” is a new one on me . . . yet his ‘possession’, I suppose, and he’s welcome to it as I want no part of it) The ‘voice’ model is the one where only listening to Kate Upton — in distinction from staring intently at her breasts — is valued? ok, uh, right.

  3. geoffb says:

    Once you have also thrown out science, math and geometry as based on assertions taken as true without evidence but on faith alone or usefulness what does he have left to stand on?

    There is an actual reality out there with causes and effects from those causes. It your axioms do not run in accord with that reality then eventually what is built from them will be destroyed by that reality. Calling “Gods of the Copybook Headings.”

    Maybe he would be happier living in an Islamic fundamentalist society where all of reality is created moment to moment by the will of Allah and there are no other assertions, no causes or effects, than that all is gods will.

  4. sdferr says:

    which examples he’s basing his model upon

    You discussed religion, over which disagreement is plentiful and current. Not for nothing does Al Qaeda focus on “. . . a conflict between Crusaderhood and Zionism on the one side and Islam on the other”, while ignoring for the time being any concern with attacking the Japanese, say.

  5. Darleen says:

    admittedly, I do not have any degree above a bachelor’s (and that in business) … I was fascinated by the verbiage of the exchange because #1 di, your ability to engage in such is amazing to watch (your patience, too) and #2 Settler’s use seems much more designed to obfuscate what I take as his goal … solipsism as the only Truth.

  6. DarthLevin says:

    So under @SettlerColonial’s model, s/he should have no problems whatsoever putting my name on it? I mean, it would be the zenith of antidogmatism to declare that @SettlerColonial’s thesis didn’t belong to it.

    I mean, there’s a reason Euclid didn’t try to prove “a straight line can be drawn between any two points”. Some things just are. (Although Euclid did try to prove it, and came to the conclusion that you can’t prove what is self-evident).

  7. BigBangHunter says:

    “@SettlerColonial False dichotomy. Labor theory and ‘might makes right’ theory aren’t our only two options.

    – Being the simple sort I am, as well as a physicist, I’m aware that we’re limited to that which we can think and reason out with our minds in the abstract, and so our “descriptions” of reality are just models, the best models we can devise and refine, but in the end models, not reality that we can assert in any meaningful way. We defend this situation by stating “Well the model is predictive”. Just another example of the ends justify the means.

    – Some people never get past the dissapointment of that discovery, and it informs their tendency to rebel against the idea of neccessary dogma. Dogma seens so arbitrary and “unfair”, particularly if you lack the means to assert your version of things, the underdog, which is always the case with people who argue for “mitigation”.

    – Once invested, they will cling to that belief bitterly for obvious reasons.

  8. languageaddict says:

    Imagine if the South had won the Civil War. Given how far we have “evolved” our Constitutional framework, there’s no reason to suppose that the South’s victory wouldn’t have been able to be fit into that framework but leaving our country with a very different history and narrative. I think this was what your interlocutor was hinting at. There is a school of thought that man is not a rational animal but a rationalizing animal, reacting first to stimuli and then finding the reason why after the fact.

    “It ain’t so that people are convinced by other people’s words?” – “More or less.” One way of interpreting this – that seems to be borne out by our experience of debate on the internet: People listen to what they already believe and use it to harden their beliefs; they listen to what they don’t believe and choose to mis-hear it while hardening their rejection of what they have chosen to mis-hear.

    When you ask about the locus of meaning, the answer is that meaning exists independently for the speaker and hearer. People who play Wittgenstein’s language game well and fairly can still come close enough to shared meaning for us to call it communication. But those who choose to mis-hear create situations where the viewpoint of the most powerful interlocutor is that which rules: When truths collide, the one which is shouted the loudest (metaphorically speaking) prevails. If you believe in right, wrong and immutable truths, this kind of thinking is anathema. If you don’t, this kind of thinks explains everything except for why nihilists seem to think it’s so important to convince everyone else that nothing is true.

    You said foundational truths were necessary. Your interlocutor said they weren’t good enough, but left it to you to come up with something better. He did so because if it exists, he doesn’t have it, even if he hints he might.

    Coming back to Wittgenstein, when he was young he said “That of which we cannot speak we must pass over in silence,” arguing that what logic couldn’t explain didn’t merit logical examination. Later, he realized this was clever and seemed to tie up all the loose ends in philosophy perhaps, but it also made philosophy meaningless. Your interlocutor is halfway there.

  9. BigBangHunter says:

    Some things just are. (Although Euclid did try to prove it, and came to the conclusion that you can’t prove what is self-evident).

    – Actually he came to the conclusion that you can’t prove anything, self evident or otherwise, but that is so tutorial most people just scoff if you assert that because its soooo intellectually “unsatisfying”.

  10. Blake says:

    If I don’t own the fruits of my labor, or, rather, the fruits of my labor belong to others, doesn’t that make me a slave?

    Perhaps I’m a bit simplistic, however, it seems to me that once property rights are removed, the only other option is slavery.

    Or am I making a mistake when I conflate labor and property rights?

  11. Libby says:

    “I critique the privileging of the ‘voice’ model of agency & legitimacy in democratic theory and political theory more generally.”

    So this is how widked smaht people talk nowadays, huh.
    And after this thesis what will SettlerColonial do with his/her PhD.? Maybe get a job with the Obama admin or one of the federal agencies critiquing other “unprovable” truths such as my right to decide what to consume, whether or not land ownership actually exists, or who exerts more ownership over my child – me or the state. We’re screwed.

  12. geoffb says:

    There would still be property rights, but only for the masters who “own” the slaves. With State slavery no person owns anything, the State owns all and is not a person per se, only controlled by persons who have the use of State property as long as they remain useful to the State. This of course whizzes right by the assertion that the State exists and has a consciousness that decides what “useful” is.

    There is always a rock that the turtles ground out on buried deep though it may be.

  13. Drumwaster says:

    It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.

    #AllIGot

  14. Jeff G. says:

    Naturally meaning exists independently for the utterer and the audience, because we use a second-order system of signs to convey meaning, relying on context, convention, code, and other clues to determine the meaning as it was intended. But trying, as a listener, to correctly divine what was intended by the utterer is the only legitimate form of “interpretation” as we use the description to refer to uncovering originary meaning. That is the key to communication. The rest isn’t communication; it’s masturbation married to power and rationalization. One can do many creative things with texts that they will pretend are “interpretation.” But what they really are are personal rewritings.

    Noting that every decoding becomes another encoding — unlimited semiosis, if you will — is like much of what passes for modern philosophy: a jargon-guarded way of making what is obvious seem arcane, insightful, clever.

    The problem is, habit, as Peirce would note, stops the chain. And the agree upon rules of what we think we’re doing when we interpret is enough, in a reasonable society, to reject outright attempts to usurp another’s meaning by resignifying the signs in ways we know were not intended.

    Language only functions as such when combined with intent, Wittgenstein’s protestations notwithstanding. It takes the intent to see marks as language to believe it such in one instance, followed by the assumption that what we are encountering is language — that is, the coupling of signs meant as signs — in the other.

    Otherwise one can “read” the clouds, or tea leaves, etc., — just as one can pretend a text exists by itself, without any necessary appeal to its original intent. There are certain conventions that have allowed this to pass for interpretation. But it isn’t.

    Agreement upon the framework is how we avoid endless, banal discussions of drift.

  15. sdferr says:

    It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.

    Well, here’s one contextually serious (politically speaking) go at it:

    *** To know now upon what grounds they say there be essences abstract, or substantial forms, we are to consider what those words do properly signify. The use of words is to register to ourselves, and make manifest to others, the thoughts and conceptions of our minds. Of which words, some are the names of the things conceived; as the names of all sorts of bodies that work upon the senses and leave an impression in the imagination: others are the names of the imaginations themselves; that is to say, of those ideas or mental images we have of all things we see or remember: and others again are names of names, or of different sorts of speech; as universal, plural, singular, are the names of names; and definition, affirmation, negation, true, false, syllogism, interrogation, promise, covenant, are the names of certain forms of speech. Others serve to show the consequence or repugnance of one name to another; as when one saith, “a man is a body,” he intendeth that the name of body is necessarily consequent to the name of man, as being but serval name of the same thing, man; which consequence is signified by coupling them together with the word is. And as we use the verb is; so the Latins use their verb est, and the Greeks their esti through all its declinations. Whether all other nations of the world have in their several languages a word that answereth to it, or not, I cannot tell; but I am sure they have not need of it: for the placing of two names in order may serve to signify their consequence, if it were the custom (for custom is it that gives words their force), as well as the words is, or be, or are, and the like.

    And if it were so, that there were a language without any verb answerable to est, or is, or be; yet the men that used it would be not a jot the less capable of inferring, concluding, and of all kind of reasoning, than were the Greeks and Latins. But what then would become of these terms, of entity, essence, essential, essentiality, that are derived from it, and of many more that depend on these, applied as most commonly they are? They are therefore no names of things; but signs, by which we make known that we conceive the consequence of one name or attribute to another: as when we say, “a man is a living body,” we mean not that the man is one thing, the living body another, and the is, or being, a third; but that the man and the living body is the same thing, because the consequence, “If he be a man, he is a living body,” is a true consequence, signified by that word is. Therefore, to be a body, to walk, to be speaking, to live, to see, and the like infinitives; also corporeity, walking, speaking, life, sight, and the like, that signify just the same, are the names of nothing; as I have elsewhere more amply expressed. ***

  16. Drumwaster says:

    I’m gonna need more popcorn…

  17. Blake says:

    Well, the great thing about making interpretation subjective to the intellectual fad of the times is that it allows the self-proclaimed intellectual to avoid uncomfortable definitions.

  18. Drumwaster says:

    Eric Arthur Blair dreamt up an entire bureaucracy dedicated to just such reinterpretations.

  19. LBascom says:

    @SettlerColonial That’s an assertion, not an argument. What’s this connection between time, labor, and wealth you’re assuming

    If there is no connection, may as well spend your time sleeping.

    I wonder why this person is spending time earning a PhD? Does he not expect it to translate into personal wealth?

  20. Blake says:

    LBascom, since @SettleColonial denies that he owns the fruit of his labor, my best guess is that he is foisting his drivel, I mean, generously bestowing his epic tour de force upon the masses in order to further their enlightenment. All he wants in return is to be regularly bedded by adoring young wenches, or lads, (not judging, just saying) a complimentary meal now and again accompanied by a glass of wine. (doesn’t need to be top shelf wine, a nice California Red will do)

  21. Darleen says:

    another Settle comment

    You’re begging the question of why tasks are “yours” to trade and what that even means”

    would seem to be arguing that the effort of labor itself doesn’t “belong” to the laborer by assumption, that somehow one must make an argument against slavery.

    Pretty transparent.

  22. sdferr says:

    What can two or more people possess, hold, have and use at the same time and in the same respect, without anyone of them suffering by the other’s possessing, holding, having and using?

    Shoot, that even starts to look like something seriously common (if it ‘exists’), when you examine it.

  23. sdferr says:

    Quoth SettlerColonial: Not all the money on your paycheck is “yours”. You gotta pay mortgage, taxes, etc.

    It’s odd isn’t it, that he’s so curiously incurious as to the whereabouts of the origin of his peculiarly firm assertion there? (well, no, but you get the gist)

  24. sdferr says:

    Oh, and OT, many a thanks and praise to dicentra for reminding me to listen to Copeland’s Rodeo, which, it’s been too long now.

  25. sdferr says:

    VX at JFK International?

    Maybe, maybe not, depending on what is ultimately accepted as evidence.

  26. leigh says:

    My guess about SettleColonial’s argumentation and his/her PhD aspirations is that hiding out in grad school beats working. Should he earn that PhD, he’ll be one chatty cab driver.

  27. Blake says:

    Thanks for the laugh, leigh. I needed that.

  28. Rich Fader says:

    Just to be clear, is he actually also applying his argument to himself, his labor and the fruits thereof? Does he actually believe that the physical and mental work towards a Ph.D. doesn’t entitle him to ownership of the degree and whatever benefits accrue from it?

  29. Libby says:

    You’re probably right, Leigh, but then look at the vast work experience and wisdom of our young, newly appointed “nudge czar” Maya Shankar.

    http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/nudge_off_VIU0WQzeDw2DwAoy27T5HO/1

  30. sdferr says:

    Is that your hair?

    What, you mean that stranded fiber, floating on top of your soup? I wouldn’t eat it, by the way, if I were you. And no, it’s not mine.

    No, I mean the long strands growing from atop your head. And what I choose to consume with my soup is none of your business.

    Oh. Well yeah, sure, that’s my hair.

    But I object, you only assert that’s your hair. Look at my enormous tits, and then tell me, where’s your argument?

  31. palaeomerus says:

    It’s very simple: We HOLD these truths to be self evident. We’ve talked it over and we agree that we regard them as self evident. We don’t give a damn if you agree with that and are willing to kill you eventually if you attempt to disrupt it or replace it with things we do not hold to be self evident. Even if you have the biggest army in the world, eventually we will do everything we can to kill you if you materially attack this asserted dogma. We will not seek or value your permission. We do not care if the formulation is impossible outside of your preferred definitions. This is a warning for you regarding what might get us to HOLD that you are a danger and need to be opposed or disposed of if violations of life liberty and property become too serious to tolerate. Did you think that ‘refresh the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants’ was a joke? We are declaring those who disagree are dangers and may be made enemies and destroyed in defense of these truths. A rattle snake making noise that means ‘don’t tread on me’. Sound familiar? And it is a declaration of independence not an ontological proof of independence. It is political not philosophical in intent.

  32. palaeomerus says:

    Dump said lead into a river that you drink water from. Why should I be held reponsible? It’s only an assertion that the lead or its externalities are mine. Indeed the whole concept for benefit and detriment are reducible to assertions. The concept that I dumped lead into a river as history as empirical truth is subject to assertion and if you have video then it is subject to assertion that I am in the video or that the material I dumped is lead even if it is in barrels marked “lead” or “Pb” in some language. That anyone has an authority to punish me is an assertion since their claims of an interest in a lead free river or harm from lead in the water are down to assertions as well.

    The point of an education is that some assertions are more powerful than others and not knowing anything after sitting in a field with Socrates so he can “demonstrate” inherent knowledge that must have been in you before birth thus hinting at reincarnation” is not that valuable ultimately since one came in with assertions and as they were destroyed one left with an equally preposterous assertion that one was not intelligent enough to doubt. We end up with assertions that one either accepts or does not and lots of would be socrates figures tossing rocks at them and trying to pass off different assertions as truth. Of course the PHD likely regards this as a failure of realism so we need to go through the same crap with Decartes, Rousseau, Kant, and eventually we get to Mills and Marx and Po-MO and psuedo-psychology that paints disagreement with pathology and cognitive malfunction, at which point we curiously outlaw stone throwing and pass around the hemlock having found our perfect assertions.

    Fuck it. It’s a scam. It always was.

  33. palaeomerus says:

    “Once you have also thrown out science, math and geometry as based on assertions taken as true without evidence but on faith alone or usefulness what does he have left to stand on? ”

    The hell of it is that there are no circles or triangles to point to. Nature couldn’t figure them out. They only happen in headspace. Even space is curved when you look at the biggest pictures we can take, and indeterminate when you look at the smallest picture which we CAN’T take because we can’t build colliders with the circumference of Jupiter yet. Even matter gets the math wrong.

    And M/Super String theory is in that “not even wrong” category we exiled religion and esoterics to. But suddenly we all love that shit.

  34. Mueller says:

    Darleen says August 11, 2013 at 11:40 am
    admittedly, I do not have any degree above a bachelor’s (and that in business) … I was fascinated by the verbiage of the exchange because #1 di, your ability to engage in such is amazing to watch (your patience, too) and #2 Settler’s use seems much more designed to obfuscate what I take as his goal … solipsism as the only Truth.
    – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=50490#comments

    Yeah. What darleen said.

  35. leigh says:

    Lordy, Libby. Like we need another official telling us to et right and get enough sleep? I thought that was Michelle’s job?

  36. geoffb says:

    We HOLD these truths to be self evident. We’ve talked it over and we agree that we regard them as self evident. We don’t give a damn if you agree with that and are willing to kill you eventually if you attempt to disrupt it or replace it with things we do not hold to be self evident.

    What he, Set-Colon, doesn’t know or understand (or pretends not to) is that this holds just as true for the Left. In fact two groups extant today have shown themselves to be overwhelmingly willing to kill anyone who does not hold with their “truths,” The Socialist Left and the Islamists.

  37. Blake says:

    leigh, did you look at the picture of the kid in Libby’s link? Now, after looking at the picture of the new nudge czar, imagine GW appointing someone that young into such a position.

    Effing 27 years old and thinks she’s old and wise enough to know better than everyone else in the country.

    Every time I think I’m beyond surprise the current administration somehow manages.

  38. newrouter says:

    who is the official pw fu baracky czar?

  39. Mike Soja says:

    –*@SettlerColonial You’re begging the question of why tasks are “yours” to trade*–

    Is it not me that labors? Or is the daft argument that I am not a me, that I am something other than myself, that my actions are not ultimately laid on my own volition?

    If I am not me and me alone, who am I? Some other me? Perhaps, I am them? How did them become them, without starting from a me? If one denies the mes, by what logic does one settle on the primacy of them?

    Weird shit.

    I suppose it comes down to: If you won’t let me be me, fuck you.

  40. Merovign says:

    Occasionally, an argumentum ad baculum is, in fact, valid.

    For example, when dealing with an unreasoning creature, like a shark, or a bear, or a PhD candidate.

  41. McGehee says:

    “You didn’t build that.”

  42. Blake says:

    newrouter, I suspect, collectively and individually, we all qualify for that honor.

  43. newrouter says:

    ot this diane west kerfluffle is interesting to observe. i noted this comment:

    Discussion on American Thinker
    Demagogic Writers and the People Who Love Them

    walternowotny • 7 hours ago

    In 1977 I (like thousands of citizens of Czechoslovakia) was asked to sign a criticism of “Charter 77”. I didn’t because at that time I did not have a chance to read it. I am glad I didn’t sign it ……..Writing a hit piece on something you didn’t read is pathetic….

    link

  44. geoffb says:

    I should add to what I wrote above that the two groups that are willing to kill have to do so as it is the only way they can keep reality at bay because what they are selling for self-evident truth does not align with the reality of humanity of human nature.

    When your self-evident truths align with reality and human nature then you don’t have to kill others who believe otherwise unless they threaten to do so to you first. Self defense when attacked is different from unprovoked aggression.

    However as we have seen right close up in the Zimmerman case there are those who will label as aggression that anyone does not think as they do. And bend their (& our too) reality to fit what they see in their mind’s eye.

  45. geoffb says:

    Diane West speaking at her own blog. Here, here.

  46. Slartibartfast says:

    @SettlerColonial How is what the task produces “yours” to exchange?

    I would tend to be curious what third party he thinks might have claim to my time.

  47. Slartibartfast says:

    Once you have also thrown out science, math and geometry as based on assertions taken as true without evidence but on faith alone or usefulness what does he have left to stand on?

    Good point. Newton’s law of Gravitation (as well as his other laws) are mere assertions which can be questioned directly.

    Which I dare this guy to try out from, say, a very tall building.

  48. newrouter says:

    i’m left to wonder if it is not a conspiracy to sell ms. west’s book? cynical and misanthropic @ this point in the reign of baracky

  49. newrouter says:

    “Which I dare this guy to try out from, say, a very tall building.”

    “self evident truths” be damned

  50. Slartibartfast says:

    Drumwaster says August 11, 2013 at 1:37 pm
    I’m gonna need more popcorn…

    “You’re gonna need a bigger popcorn popper”

  51. John Bradley says:

    See, I think we’re glossing over a potentially larger issue here:

    sdferr says August 11, 2013 at 4:50 pm

    […]

    But I object, you only assert that’s your hair. Look at my enormous tits, and then tell me, where’s your argument?

    See, I’d never envisioned ‘sdferr’ as having enormous tits. Or tits of any sort, for that matter.

    But now, armed with that important background information, I think I now understand why the bird occasionally falls over and hangs upside-down from its twig. Gravity is a bitch.

  52. newrouter says:

    per tits and the cheese cutter

    Tit (bird)

  53. leigh says:

    Blake, she looks like she’s about the same age as my son, who is 24. He’s brilliant, of course, but has enough sense to know he still has a lot to learn.

  54. leigh says:

    Geoff, I’m skeptical about Ms. West. Ron Rodash has blasted her book on two different forums in the last week: Frontpage Magazine and PJMedia.

  55. geoffb says:

    I’m skeptical of all but will read the reviews and likely the book and “judge”, there’s that left hated word, for myself. She has done some good work on Benghazi among other things. Radosh, Horowitz, and Clarice Feldman too so it’s bound to be a bitch to decide.

  56. newrouter says:

    “. Ron Rodash has blasted her book on two different forums in the last week: Frontpage Magazine and PJMedia.”

    oh my end the discussion ron redesh said sumthing

  57. newrouter says:

    ” Clarice Feldman”

    if she read the book she might be believable. citing args about “historians” undercuts her silly rant. and i distrust 2 “former” commie symps.

  58. newrouter says:

    and i notice that the full time job now of “former commie symps” is to tell classical liberal/conservative folk what to do. screw them and the orangeman they ride.

  59. geoffb says:

    Any delving into the “history” of the USSR and their operations runs into the fact that they were/are the world champs at the LIE. They took lying to heights even Satan would find imposing. With all the smoke, mirrors and dazzling lights finding some truth is a slippery business.

    Likely she is another blind person describing the Communist elephant from what she can feel with her own hands. It will have truths but the whole will encompass all of their truths and be something more than the sum of them.

  60. leigh says:

    oh my end the discussion ron redesh said sumthing

    Where did I say that? I’ve not read Ms. West before and I have read a lot by Rodash who is factual and documented. Like geoff, I’m willing to give both a hearing.

  61. newrouter says:

    on topic

    What does it matter that we guarantee this free work by
    making work compulsory, that its creative aspect, as far as most
    of the nation is concerned, is manifested in seeking ways to shirk
    it, that this foremost vital need is not pleasurable, but a necessary
    evil to earn a livelihood? The only typical and real work is socialist
    work.
    And so a real socialist man necessarily becomes a schizophrenic.
    As a practical politician he fights against the total pervasiveness of
    indifference, bribery, passivity, absenteeism, theft on the job and
    lack of principles, but as an ideologist he oozes enthusiasm over the
    typical aspects of socialist work, socialist commitment, socialist
    unselfishness and socialist integrity. As an ideologist, he is a socialist
    man, but as a practical politician he is given special treatment in the
    government hospital, and he does his shopping in special shops,
    lives in a special residential district and has his children chauffeured
    to school in official limousines.
    As an ideologist he has taken over and almost perfected an
    Orwellian language designed to cloud over the negative reality of
    real socialism and make it positive. Price rises are called ‘adjustments
    in price relations’, legal discrimination against equal citizens
    is called ‘the class approach to law’, the energy crisis is called an
    ‘objective difficulty of intensive growth’, the monopoly on information
    is called ‘freedom of information’, the

    havel @ page 158 potp

  62. newrouter says:

    ” I have read a lot by Rodash”

    me too. he’s soft commie trying to get a new gig.

  63. newrouter says:

    “Likely she is another blind person describing the Communist elephant from what she can feel ”

    nah some “former” commies trying to justify their existence before they die. has horowitz/redesh ever talked about the millions who died by communism? if not why not? forgive don’t forget.

  64. newrouter says:

    i nominate bt as the official ” pw fu baracky czar”

  65. leigh says:

    He hasn’t been a commie for over 40 years and neither has Horowitz. They were Red Diaper babies and got over their delusion. You should congratulate them instead of showing them the back of your hand.

  66. leigh says:

    Have you read any of their books, nr? Start with “Destructive Generation” which is all about the lies of the Left in the 60s and how they are used today.

  67. newrouter says:

    the problem with this kerfluffle is with the dubious args redesh makes are about freaking citations that he may/may not be right unless you’ve read the book. you don’t know. ham fisted book sales i think.

  68. newrouter says:

    “Have you read any of their books, nr”

    those books don’t matter. i dislike fake outrage and stupidity to sell books, trayvon thug, or anything else. proud pw cynic and misanthrope.

  69. leigh says:

    Who here has read her book? He is complaining that her citations are bullshit and easily verified. She is sticking to her guns about what she said.

  70. leigh says:

    those books don’t matter.

    We’re done here. See you tomorrow.

  71. newrouter says:

    “Who here has read her book? He is complaining that her citations are bullshit and easily verified. She is sticking to her guns about what she said.”

    about book sales i rest my case.

  72. newrouter says:

    “Our 27 year old nudge czar.”

    we have “nudge czars” like front page, pjmedia d. west.

  73. newrouter says:

    “hey i have a new book out let’s start “controversy” within the peeps who might buy it.”

  74. newrouter says:

    has there been a review of this book in proggtardia ? oversite i’m sure.

  75. dicentra says:

    He (and he is a he) is trying to eliminate from public discourse and decision-making anything that has nothing or nothing provable at its core:

    @SettlerColonial Locke said labor translated into property rights because of God. Do you assert God as the source of your property rights, too?

    @dicentra33 Are you saying that because God is nonexistent, so are property rights?

    @SettlerColonial No, I’m saying if you don’t have God as the source of your property rights, you have to fill that explanatory gap with somethin.

    @dicentra33 Why isn’t “I produced this with my own mind/hands” good enough?

    @SettlerColonial No, it’s assertion that begs the question. Which is why Locke had to have the story about God granting ownership.

    This is the basis on which he discredits the labor theory of ownership: Locke articulated it as a God-given right, but because God’s authority is no longer sufficient (given his non-existence) then it’s dogma, and therefore invalid.

    And as Bill Whittle observed, when listening to a Lefty, look for the unearned moral superiority on which their assertions are based:

    I don’t require God or Nature or anything as a foundation for political order.

    Not “it is not necessary to invoke God or Nature as a foundation,” but “I don’t need.”

  76. newrouter says:

    “I don’t require God or Nature or anything as a foundation for political order. ”

    And so a real socialist man necessarily becomes a schizophrenic.
    As a practical politician he fights against the total pervasiveness of
    indifference, bribery, passivity, absenteeism, theft on the job and
    lack of principles, but as an ideologist he oozes enthusiasm over the
    typical aspects of socialist work, socialist commitment, socialist
    unselfishness and socialist integrity. As an ideologist, he is a socialist
    man, but as a practical politician he is given special treatment in the
    government hospital, and he does his shopping in special shops,
    lives in a special residential district and has his children chauffeured
    to school in official limousines.
    As an ideologist he has taken over and almost perfected an
    Orwellian language designed to cloud over the negative reality of
    real socialism and make it positive. Price rises are called ‘adjustments
    in price relations’, legal discrimination against equal citizens
    is called ‘the class approach to law’, the energy crisis is called an
    ‘objective difficulty of intensive growth’, the monopoly on information
    is called ‘freedom of information’,

    @ havel

  77. Slartibartfast says:

    I think getting our hands on his thesis, at some point, might provide us with moments of combined amusement and despair.

  78. newrouter says:

    since he ” doesn’t own it just take it” he be ok without “theft”.

  79. Mike Soja says:

    “@SettlerColonial No, it’s assertion that begs the question. Which is why Locke had to have the story about God granting ownership.”

    No one need have anything granted beyond “I”. I have no reference to anything other than I. If I am a fiction then nothing else stands. If I am not a fiction, anything I do is mine.

  80. palaeomerus says:

    But Mike Soja René Descartes was a priviliged white man! You have to see beyond the lens of his racist colonial penis-centric hetero-normative blinders! He is but a step on the way not the destination! And we have so many obsolete shibboleths of his western patriarchal approach to mathematics to cast off and transcend if we are to make further progress.

  81. palaeomerus says:

    or privileged even…

  82. bbeck says:

    When spit is produced by my saliva glands, it is my spit.

    That is not an assertion, or an assumption, or a dogma, or a political position. I’m not going to confuse any PhD candidates by bringing a larger word like “ownership” into the statement — besides, ownership is established because it is “my” spit — but if any particular brain trust is interested in saying my spit is not, in fact, mine, they should probably put down the thesaurus and pick up a few “Dick and Jane” primers instead.

    I could give my spit away, throw it away, sell it (if I find someone to buy it), even have it taken away…but it would originate as being mine, because I have produced it. My saliva glands performed a function they exist for biologically within my body, and to deny that my spit is not MINE is to say I am not me. Even ~I~ can belong to someone else, but I still originate as myself as does everything my body produces.

    There is no difference between my spit and anything else I produce through the standard biological functions of my body, including the combination of my cognitive skills and my handiwork; any items I produce are MY items. Once again, that’s not an assertion, etc, that’s just the way our bodies work and our language has been structured, in recognition of cause and effect where a person’s bodily functions are concerned.

    It’s really not that much of a leap to see how Who Owns What, unless maybe you’ve been holed away in some institution of naval-gazing for four-plus years and haven’t had the need to occasionally think, having it primarily done for you.

    The most baffling thing about the entire exchange is why this person is a doctoral candidate in the first place.

  83. Mueller says:

    dicentra @9:20
    I think he has an infirm grasp as to what constitutes property and what Lockes actual position is.
    Property itself isn’t necessarily god given, but the freedom to acquire and dispose of property as one sees fit is seen as a natural right.

  84. McGehee says:

    The most baffling thing about the entire exchange is why this person is a doctoral candidate in the first place.

    John Adams was wrong: a single useless person is called a doctoral candidate. Two are a think tank. He was right about three or more.

  85. mondamay says:

    That’s probably the oddest demand for proof I’ve ever seen.

    I suppose that once you throw out the labor theory of ownership, the only defense you have against someone stealing *your* theories is to argue for notions so foolish (not to mention vague and empty) that no one else would ever try to claim them.

    You take away his rather silly demand for proof that the result of your actions belong to you (could someone use that as a “hate speech” defense on a college campus? [sure I said the words, but their meanings, and the listeners’ offense aren’t mine]), and there really is no “there” there.

  86. Squid says:

    Never mud wrestle with a pig.

  87. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Regarding the West/Radosh kerfuffle, and without having read anything besides the titles of West’s book and Radosh’s FPM review, it’s important to bear in mind that events proved McCarthy to have been right.

  88. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I haven’t waded through all of this (nor do I intend to) But I’m wondering if anyone’s addressed the question of whether or not a person own his or her body?

    You own your labor because you own yourself. If you don’t own your labor and the fruits thereof, it’s because somebody or something owns you.

  89. leigh says:

    McCarthy was right about many of his charges. It doesn’t negate the fact that he went on a witch hunt seeing Commies under the furniture and around every corner.

    My problem with the thesis of Ms. West’s work is that it is a conspiracy theory. She is relying on events that are very remote in time and shrouded in the mists of the former Soviet Union. It would seem that she has no personal experience in Russia, does not speak the language and is relying on hearsay and conjecture. Like many of the tomes and movies about the assassination of JFK, there is much that is in the realm of imagination. From Rodash’s reviews, he is clarifying assertions and correcting information in her book and calling her out for sloppy research as well as repeating her mistakes as fact in the face of proof that she is mistaken. She is digging in her heels. The burden is on her as the author to answer and correct the charges if there is a need for correction and to explain to Rodash and their readers why he is wrong and she is right.

    I’m concerned that she feels the need to get so defensive about her work. It isn’t her first book and Rodash isn’t some wet behind the ears editor at an e-zine. In the words of Henry Lee, “Something wrong here”.

  90. Slartibartfast says:

    @SettlerColonial How is what the task produces “yours” to exchange?

    He’s being weaselly. Note “the task”. Not your task; it’s just some task out there that is unattached to any person. So of course it’s not inherently yours.

    Until you do it, or agree to. Then you own it, as well as the promised reward for doing it.

  91. geoffb says:

    I have her book coming on Wednesday. Meanwhile

  92. leigh says:

    Oh good! I’ll await your report, geoff.

  93. Mueller says:

    But I’m wondering if anyone’s addressed the question of whether or not a person own his or her body? – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=50490#comments

    I think it is a progressive given that you belong to the state and everything that issues from you therefore is the states.
    Look at their stance on taxation. All revenue belongs to the state. The state allows you to keep some.

  94. dicentra says:

    the freedom to acquire and dispose of property as one sees fit is seen as a natural right.

    By what mechanism does a right become natural, he would say.

    There is no mechanism. We either agree to see things this way or we don’t, we accept Natural Rights as a foundational assumption or we don’t.

    But what you accept as a foundational assumption has consequences, as surely as building a house on bedrock or in swampland affects what happens to the house.

    Mr Settler Colonial appears to belong to those who think that his ideations are as good as real, and that if the house collapses into a sinkhole, someone else hollowed out the ground beneath it out of spite.

    Criminey, when I was a kid, I frequently thought up stuff that seemed workable in my head but when I built it, reality asserted itself, and I had to acknowledge that I hadn’t taken all factors into consideration.

    Maybe this guy never did that as a kid. Maybe the entire apparatus of the Left (the drones, anyway) consists of kids who never tried stuff out that the thought of.

  95. dicentra says:

    I think he has an infirm grasp as to what constitutes property and what Locke’s actual position is.

    Property itself isn’t necessarily god given…

    He also appears to be possessed of the adolescent rebellion against religion that some people never grow out of (especially the permanent students), that is rooted in hatred for daddy rather than having come to a particular conclusion based on one’s own inner strivings.

    In other words, the project starts out as a way to stick it to God and his botherers; all else grows out from that.

  96. leigh says:

    dicentra, I’m willing to wager he is also no good at math, being unable to accept axioms and all.

  97. McGehee says:

    “How does the empirical assertion that two plus two equals four prove that it’s true?”

  98. leigh says:

    Feh, you and your “proofs”.

  99. Ernst Schreiber says:

    No doubt he could levitate if he chose to. He chooses not to because The Party, as embodied in Big Brother, wills it that he chooses not to.

  100. leigh says:

    Choose not to be a billionaire. I could if I wished, but I find the taxes too onerous.

  101. John Bradley says:

    Maybe this guy never did that as a kid. Maybe the entire apparatus of the Left (the drones, anyway) consists of kids who never tried stuff out that the thought of.

    I contend, based on nothing beyond a mild grasp of human nature, that Barack Obama has never changed a flat tire. Or owned a socket wrench. Or a soldering iron. B-Ark material, all the way.

  102. McGehee says:

    Nine-tenths of the items on Heinlein’s list, Obama probably doesn’t even know it ever needed to be done — nor value someone who can do it.

  103. Mueller says:

    Dicentra @ 11:15

    Life has a nasty habit of hitting the rest of us upside the head with a good whallop of reality.
    Others…………..not so much.
    Settler will get his Phd and infuse the unfettered mind of our youth with his nonsense.

  104. VekTor_ says:

    The twitter exchange re-imagined as a flash fiction.

    @SettlerColonial: You’ve got nothing upon which to build your edifice… you have no proof.

    @dicentra: These principles are axioms.

    @SettlerColonial: There’s no such thing as an axiom.

    FIN

  105. leigh says:

    Well done!

  106. palaeomerus says:

    “No doubt he could levitate if he chose to.” If he says he levitated and the press says he levitated and Boehner concedes that it’s not entirely unthinkable that he levitated and insisting that he didn’t levitate is not the hill the GOP wants to die one, then he might as well have levitated. OBAMAPHONE!

  107. palaeomerus says:

    the hill the GOP wants to die one-> on

  108. palaeomerus says:

    It all depends on your definition of two from moment to moment as your perspective shifts and the background that informed you perhaps falsely what two was. And we have to consider that equals might not mean the same thing to everyone who hears it. Is he two on the left really equal to the two on the right? Why can’t their be a middle position? And who is to say that their will be a right much longer to have a two occupy?

  109. palaeomerus says:

    ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
    | | | | |
    “How does the empirical assertion that two plus two equals four prove that it’s true?”

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