Brainpolice : Philosophy, Determinism

False Realism and Utopianism

Brainpolice — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 02:26:00 GMT

Conservatism is a defense of the existing order or past existing orders as "natural". Any potential alternative to the existing order or to the romantisized past order is immediately brushed aside as "unnatural" and "utopian" or "idealistic". In the conservative view, all existing inequalities are "natural" in a sort of deterministic sense. The conservative strongly emphasizes nature over nurture to explain and defend currently existing or past existing conditions. On the other hand, utopian left-wing ideologies such as Marxism strongly emphasize nurture over nature and hence attribute the vast majority if not all currently existing conditions and inequalities to political, economic and cultural influences in a deterministic sense. Nothing short of a significant transformation in human nature can possibly obtain the ultimate end sought of a purely egalitarian society, and the desirability and implications of such a purely egalitarian society is alarmingly questionable upon reasonable reflection.

The conservative errs in considering the existing order or past orders to be inevitable into the future or that they can possibly sustain themselves perpetually. They tend to ignore the extent to which inequalities are the effect of influences such as state intervention and bureaucracy. The conservative tends to defend the unequitable effects of state intervention as if they came about naturally on the free market, and therefore concludes that currently existing disparaties between various groups of people are both inevitable and justified. When anyone proposes or attempts to change such conditions or the existing order in general in a significant way, the status quo is defended by the conservative. The conservative has little to no concept of the dynamic nature of society over time and fails to see the potential changes that can be made and the advantages that can be reaped. Conservatism can be seen as a very pessemistic view in a sense, particularly pessemistic towards the future.

The marxist engages in the opposite error. They blame all existing inequalities and negative conditions on the non-existant free market and then arbitrarily proclaim that it's just a phase of history that will inevitably be surpassed by a collectivistic utopia, if only all the workers magically take over the state and somehow voluntarily dissolve it. The marxist does not recognize the degree to which state intervention is the primary cause or enabler of the inequities that they have so much distain for. They put themselves foreward as being proponents of change in the right direction, but what they ultimately have to offer is more of the same: state intervention and centralization. The actual cause of the problems which they aim to solve is precisely what they propose as a solution, and therefore their "change" isn't a meaningful or beneficial one. They propose what in some ways amounts to an authoritarian heirarchy as the solution to authoritarian heirarchy or dictatorship as a solution to dictatorship.

The distinction between and reliance upon nature and nurture is often a false dichotomy. That which involves human influence is often characterized as "nurture", yet human beings are a part and product of "nature". The real question is a matter of which particular parts or aspects of "nature" are influencing other particular parts or aspects of "nature". There are some issues with the use of the term "natural" to begin with. In a certain sense, everything and whatever the current state of affairs happens to be is "natural". The only alternative to something being "natural" would be for it to not exist, unless of course one is proposing that there is some kind of supernatural realm which would still ultimately reduce to non-existance. That being said, it is definitely nonsensical to consider all present conditions and all present forms of organization to be inevitable and a permanent state of affairs. Stasis is not "natural". Organizations and organizational forms are never permanent in the grand scheme of things, so it would be more genuinely "realistic" to propose that the eventual dissolution of the existing order is "natural" and inevitable at some point.

While the conservative puts themselves foreward as a realist, they are truly nothing but a proponent of either stasis or "turning back the clock" to "the good old days", which becomes their own romantic utopia. The extent to which they see current affairs as moving in an "unnatural" direction causes them to become reactionaries, desparately trying to cling on to old traditions. On the other hand, the marxist sees the present as "unnatural" and proclaims an inevitable utopian future to be a "natural" progression. They've drawn erroneous conclusions from the basis of the hegelian dialectic, philosophy of history and social evolutionary theory. Both involve the bastardization and politicization of science as a handy rhetorical authority and a misguided appeal to either nature or nurture.

On Human Nature

Brainpolice — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 04:43:00 GMT

It is common for humans to be presented as being separate from and even antagonistic with nature. In particular, some radical environmentalists portray human beings as inherently waging war on mother nature, that our existance is intrinsically destructive to nature. But this is erroneous. Humans are a product of and part of nature themselves. There is no separation between humans and nature in this sense. The ecosystem ultimately absorbs us back into it. It is a dynamic system. Whatever effects modern civilization has on the ecosystem are ultimately trivial. It will adapt to us and we will adapt to it. If anything, the relationship is symbiotic, not a one-way street.

A common idea, derived in part from Hobbes, is the notion that humans are inherently in a conflicting state of nature, and that we have developed the capacity to form "society" as to leave this state of nature and enter a state of civilization in which we interact for our mutual benefit. But in reality humans never leave a "state of nature". We are always in one. The real question is "what will we make of this state of nature?". Civilization is still a product of and a part of a state of nature. The notion that we have the power to overcome nature in this way is utopian in that it assumes that we can "plan" a change in our own basic natures. But no matter what form of social organization we opt for, human nature remains the same.

The question as to wether humans are inherently good or inherently bad is a false dychotomy. Humans are inherently neither. What they are is inherently free, capable of choice. Wether or not they are good or bad can only be determined as a result of the choices that they voluntarily make. Humans are capable choosing both good and bad. Without choice, good and bad are meaningless as concepts, for we would be no more responsible for our actions than a rock falling down a cliff. Morality ceases to exist in the absence of choice. So both Hobbes and the uber-optimists are wrong. Humans are not naturally "war of all against all", and neither are they naturally virtuous. They can only be virtuous as a result of their free choices. Man is a rational animal, meaning that we possess the capacity to choose either path.

Determinists, particularly biological determnists, seem to make the error of thinking that nature dominates humans in the absolute. Radical subjectivists seem to make the opposite mistake of thinking that humans determine and dominate nature in the absolute. The truth lies somewhere in between these two extremes. On one hand, humans cannot act in any way that violates the laws of nature. We are bound by the confines of physics and biology. We have freedom to act, but freedom does not equate to power over nature. For a human being relying solely on their natural faculties, there is no such thing as the "freedom" to leap 1000 feet or fly into the sky. Humans cannot simply wish whatever reality they want into existance.

Of course, none of this validates the premises of the determinists. The fact that we must function within the confines of nature does not mean that our actions are causally predetermined in the absolute. Nor does it mean that we are entirely bound by our instincts. We possess a capacity to defy our insticts. If this were not so, men would mount every woman they see, noone would go on fasts and noone would commit suicide. Humans possess volition; the capacity of self-awareness. While the individual's faculties are determined by biology, their use of those faculties is up to them. They must be exercised through an act of will, and if they are not exercised then they will atrophy over time. A strong man can choose to not use their strength, and an intelligent man can lay their intellect to waste. On the other hand, a weak man and an intellectually hampered man may push their abilities to their limit.

While a human being is born into a particular environment that they did not choose, they are presented with a multiple of possibilities as to what to make of that environment. Praxeologically speaking, they may choose among multiple possible means to desired ends. We act in order to remove a source of disatisfaction, otherwise we would not act. And to choose to do nothing is still an action. Acting consists of ranking our desired ends in a particular order and persueing means towards those ends, in a process of trial and error. Over time, we may change the ranking of our desires and modify the means that we persue towards obtaining them. Desires are theoretically infinite, while existing resources and the means towards obtaining them are scarce. Therefore, there is always a compelling reason for acting. Our nature is set up so that we cannot reach a stalemate in which no action is possible, unless of course we are afflicted with a serious mental disability.

The Rational and Individualist Case Against Racism

Brainpolice — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 10:50:00 GMT

I'd like to state upfront that I am not an egalitarian, which is to say that I am fully aware of the fact that people are inherently unequal with respect to their mental and physical capabilities as individuals, and I despise the politically correct way in which racial questions are often treated in public discourse. I do not support affirmative action or any attempts to force people of different racial groups to associate with eachother. However, I intend to make a decent criticism and refutation of the ideology of racism itself as well as its goals.

Like all forms of collectivism, racism treats entire groups of people as if they were individual entities in themselves. But only individuals exist, think and act. Responsibility cannot reasonably be assigned uniformly to entire races or abstract concepts. In the same way that the entire caucasian race cannot be blamed for any particular blunders done by certain white people in the past, the entire negroid race cannot be blamed for any particular blunders that certain black people may engage in presently. The notion of ancestral guilt is morally bankrupt, for it assigns moral responsibility to certain individuals who took no part in the thing in question for merely being descended from those who may have engaged in the thing in question. The notion of collective guilt is morally bankrupt, for it assigns moral responsibility to everyone within a given group for the actions of particular individuals within that group.

Racial polylogism is the view that treats different racial groups as having different logical structures of the mind, while simultaneously ignoring the diversity within a given racial group. But in reality, perhaps barring the severely mentally handicapped, there is only one fundamental logical structure of the human mind. Individuals may indeed vary widely in their mental capabilities and how they apply their mental capabilities, but this in no way validates the premise that entire races have different logical structures of the mind than eachother, it only applies to individuals. In other words, even if one could scientifically prove that one race on average has better or worse intellectual capabilities, this essentially has no bearing on the individual members of such groups, who vary among themselves in the first place. And it would do nothing to change the fact that all human beings share the same fundamental characteristics that make them human.

All human beings have a rational self-interest or incentive towards certain basic things, the most fundamental of these being maintaining their own existance and the quality thereof. Each individual is self-aware and possesses the capacity to be rational. The defining feature that sets human beings apart from other animals is our rationality and the expanded capacity for moral choice and knowledge accumulation that it gives us. All people, no matter what their skin color is or any other such unique physical characteristics they may possess, have this capacity to one degree or another. When it comes to this basic capacity, noone, no matter what group identity is attached to them, can be reasonably characterized as sub-human. The biological differences between the races can essentially be reduced to little more than miniscule and superficial physical differences in appearance, and do nothing to counteract the fact that all such people share the same fundamental defining features of being a human.

Racial identity is in many ways an illogical collectivist mindset, for one is identifying themselves with an abstraction rather than as an individual. One is actually sacrificing their genuine identity and unique qualities in order to conform to an ideal and become more uniform with respect to others. Racial identity can lead to the idea that one must act a certain way and that one is entitled to certain privileges merely for being part of a particular group. Treating people differently in terms of rights merely on the basis of what racial identity group they belong to sets up a precedent in which different groups are granted a different set of rights. Thus, racist conceptions of rights may suffer from the fallacy of group's rights just as much as an egalitarian conception does. In practise, the only significant difference between the two is that they place different emphasis on which group gets more rights then the other.

Racists tend to rely on an extreme form of either biological or cultural determinism in order to defend their premises. They assume that one's race uniformly dictates one's ideas and behavior. While cultural marxists may tend to overemphasize nurture in explaining the behavior of people from certain racial or cultural groups, racists may tend to overemphasize nature in their attempts to explain such things. The cultural determinists are somewhat correct in pointing out that people are a product of their environment, although they unfortunately take this view to illogical extremes. But it cannot be denied that there are some biological and cultural differences among the tendencies of individuals belonging to different races. However, racists tend to make the mistake of assuming that correlation equals causation when dealing with statistical data about racial tendencies, and all of their attempts to prove the inherent inferiority of certain races have been debunked scientifically.

Many racists may have an agenda of separatism between races. Some may go so far as to envision a completely ethnocentric culture in which each racial group remains completely hermetically sealed from the other. Unfortunately for the racists, however, this would be counterproductive for them. Even if it were the case that one group is indeed superior to the other, it would still be more advantageous to trade and associate with them than to completely isolate from them. In economic terms, the theory of comparative advantage proves this beyond the shadow of a doubt. Discrimination generally does not benefit the discriminator in the long run, it hurts all parties involved. In economic terms, discrimination is suicidal, because either you're lowing the amount of customers or you're hiring a less qualified worker over a more qualified one, and therefore are accepting lower productivity. Racial discrimination is a suicidal buisiness practise in a modern society.

To add more insult to injury to the cause of the racists, it is physically impossible to have complete social isolation between the races. The history of mankind is in many ways a perpetual history of migrations between territories, and as time passes society naturally, albiet slowly, becomes more integrated. While white pride groups may tend to think of themselves as ethnically pure, in actual fact the history of Europe is full of the intermingling between different tribes, including ones that were originally from places far from Europe. In a profound sense, everyone is a "mut" on some level. The consequences of inbreeding have been shown to be negative, so it may very well be the case that evolution favors racial mixing. In either case, ultimately, racial separatists are trying to accomplish something that is impossible. It is impossible to manage to stop migration of foreign peoples in its track, and it is impossible to economically benefit while persueing a large-scale discriminatory buisiness practise. The movement of people of different ethnicities across land masses and the interbreeding of people of different ethnicities is to some extent inevitable, and will only intensify over time.

In conclusion, racism is not an ideology that has reason or evidence on its side and is ultimately self-defeating.