proximoception | (no subject)

I find incoherent Zizek's critique of Harris' argument, in The End of Faith, that torture should be permissible on utilitarian principles - i.e. in cases where there's reason to think the harm done while torturing will be less than the harm diverted by whatever info's obtained. Zizek claims this makes other people objects, not Neighbors, thus disregarding "the abyss of the infinity that pertains to a subject." But math can be done using infinites, after all - allowing X number of people to die abandons X numbers of infinite abysses to implode (or evanesce or whatever) for the sake of not harming X+1 minus X. That's so obvious even he must see it - he must ultimately mean some kind of sacredness should be respected. Which of course it should, but that doesn't help with questions of setting things right when it hasn't been, when questions of suffering in abyssal subjectivities are live. Harris wasn't arguing for punitive torture, after all. So how can this line of thought not fall apart? Unless he's suggesting, which he never seems to be, that "suffering shares the nature of infinity" (Wordsworth) but death is no big deal. Is Zizek an idiot? I don't know enough about Zizek, though he did print a good piece on European atheism in the wake of this that put him a lot closer to Harris et al. than to (e.g.) Eagleton and Mieville.

Personally, I accept that Harris is correct, but would argue that this is never a right we should cede to Them, the people that would be in charge of the permitted torture. We need it to not become a precedent, in fact need the punishment of people caught ordering and committing it to be the precedent, not because torture could never hypothetically work to prevent greater harm, but because we're too likely to be lied to by those in charge about the circumstances warranting the torture. Like we are about war, of course, but the threat of being able to wage war is probably foundational for states, hence until states have imploded or evanesced is a power necessarily yielded to the (delegated) ruling Few, whereas torture is not - unless you include any form of imprisonment under the torture umbrella.

We can of course vividly imagine examples where a state's very identity is threatened by knowledge withheld by some single, torturable individual - someone who knows the location of a nuclear weapon set to wipe out central D.C. or Manhattan, is the standard thought problem. But we can even more vividly imagine, having seen it, how a state's very identity can be threatened by the mission creep of treating situations that can lead to that hypothetical situation as being on par with it. And of course since the criminal code is ultimately aimed at a) disincentivizing dire misbehavior and, relatedly, b) empowering discretionary suppression of dire misbehavior, if That Situation ever does happen then presumably legal disincentives, and whatever law enforcers are on hand, will not stop the law-breaking torturer. The possible disincentives won't outweigh the obvious, exigent incentives to torture, for one thing, and any law enforcers in the room will likely help. If it can be made at all clear to anyone what you meant to accomplish by the torture, the Greater Good defense will be a shoe-in. Utilitarianism's built into, or rather laid under, the law already.

Hell, there should probably be a jury system in place to decide whether we should go to war. Alongside every other control we've been ignoring in the U.S. for sixty years.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Compassion may be a given, but what is universal is a compassion for one's friends, one's family, one's neighbors. Equally universal is a desire to see one's enemies punished. Neither of these impulses should be the basis for any rational argument.

Sure I would want to see my friends protected from bombs. But I know that if this were war (and a jihadist certainly thinks this is war) then the death of enemies in the face of progress might seem, to my compassion, permissable. A jihadist is trying to protect his people, and the countless generations of his people to come, from unjust hegemony. Yet, you say torture should be permissable while murder should not. Why is that? Because my people are the ones being harmed? Because the ends justify the means? That way fascism lies, and no matter how you try to bury it under committees it's still fascism (benign, inert fascism). And the only surprising thing is that I'm the only one taking the time out to point out how you're wrong.

There should be limits to what we can and should do, no matter our intentions. What no human being should be allowed to say is "I am more right than you, therefore I should be able to treat you like an object."

notes: 1) Your critiques of the random axioms are all opinions, and although I agree with most, I would not put them in any supposedly rational argument unless I wanted to sound like a preacher yelling down from a place of moral certitude. 2) Educated people are no more moral than uneducated people. If anything the opposite. I come from uneducated poor people and let me tell you we tip very well.

I don't even know where to start with this. It seems to me that you're not making sense and not listening. First thing you should do is go figure out whether you're a moral relativist or moral absolutist, I'd say, as you alternately sound like one then the other. The next is actually read what I'm saying (what is this murder crap - when did I even mention it?). After that actually confront (answer) the thought problem, in which the intentions of the jihadist do not matter in the slightest, just the foreseeably likely results of their actions. After that look up the definition of fascism.

If you agree with those of my opinions you say you do, you probably do so for reasons. You seem to view opinions as irrational - and also put an extremely strange burden on the concept of rationality because of some pet peeve of yours.

Less educated people are likelier to tip better and support the social safety net because they or those they know well have directly benefited from tips and welfare services. However, less educated people are also more likely to be murderers, rapists, domestic abusers, racists, sexists, homophobes, gang members, xenophobes, and harmers of animals. Which doesn't mean large numbers of them do any of that, but that was the sense in which I cited 'less educated' as a correlate of having nasty restrictions on natural feelings of compassion.

But the compassion thing in general is a near-approach to a valid critique and deserves a longer answer. It's actually quite a complex matter how in-group limitations on compassion are no longer rational, leaving only the compassion, by default, for those able to realize this. But the mess that's the rest of your argument needs to be cleaned up before that's moved on to.

I am saying a number of things, mainly because I disagree with you on a number of levels, and I'm sorry if you're not following it. As for moral relativism and absolutism I am coming out against any mixing of the practical and the moral. It's like trying subtract the color blue from the color orange. It becomes meaningless.

I did answer your thought experiment. A jihadist decides to commit mass murder, you decide to commit torture, you want to save your friends, he waants to save his country, you both have ideological aims and not rational ones. You do not know that if in torturing this person you will end up hurting more people down the line. You have only your hope. Both you and the jihadist would be morally reprehensible for the action.

Saying that the decision is "practical" does not save it. You could say that bombing new york is "practical" from a radical moslem standpoint, that would not save it either.

I agree with some of your stated opinions because of my own opinions, which are opinions, in that they are unproven, untested and based on things like hope and faith. I hope that all of humanity can act like one brotherhood. I do not know if this is possible. I don't know if this is even desirable, or if the yearing for this would only lead to some soviet dystopia. I would never claim that because of my held opinion I had the right to take a life or imprison a mind.

You also have your own definition of "educated," since, for example, the mess of racists who support the Tea Party has on average more education than the average democratic supporter. Or are you equating "educated" with "moral" again?

I don't even know what you mean about mixing the practical and moral. You'll need to explain this less metaphorically.

Let's alter the thought experiment so that you no longer think I want to save my little buddies. Suppose the apprehended person is Dick Cheney, who has a nuclear bomb hidden in Tehran if it isn't found and disarmed. It's hypothetically possible that this nuking of Tehran will stop nuclear war in the future - be impossible to disprove, after all. But do you stop him?

I haven't yet used the word practical, pragmatic, you'll notice, though I'm not sure what the problem with those is either.

I do not care about any 'standpoint' that does not make sense, except to talk sense into the person holding it until it's replaced. The radical Muslim standpoint is based on lies, and I can tell you exactly what many of lies are. except I wouldn't bother because you already know them. You know the Christian lies, the non-radical Muslim lies, the Jewish lies, the Hindu lies, the racist lies, the Dick Cheney lies. These are not 'standpoints' in the sense of being different, equally valid vantage points of some vast, dark truth in an inaccessible middle.

How is anything I'm saying based on the hope that humanity can act in brotherhood? I don't understand why you're even bringing that up.

College educations are getting pretty worthless in some quarters, I agree, so conceivably having a BA might not be proof against Tea Partitude (though I highly suspect you'll find that correlation if you just look at the demographic). Anything above a BA and there is one hell of a correlation, though. And obviously countries whose school systems are better than ours will tend to have governments - both as cause and effect - diametrically opposed to the Tea Party philosophy in most respects.

^ white demographic