Posts from February 2006

Well, this argument: “If…

Well, this argument:

“If God exists, then the sky is orange. The sky is not orange. Therefore, God exists.”

… is invalid. Did you mean for the first premise to be “If God does not exist, then the sky is orange”?

In any case, I think there’s an important difference here. Scott’s argument seems plausible at first glance; the reason why is that premise 4 expresses something that seems like it ought to be true: “If God does not exist, then it’s not the case that if I pray to God my prayers will be answered.” Of course; after all, if there is no God then He can’t be answering prayers. What I suggested to be the problem is that what is meant by the if-then nested in the consequent of the premise can’t be captured by truth-functional material implication, because you can’t deny a material implication except where you’re willing to affirm that the hypothesis is true (~(p—>q) <-> (p & ~q)).

This is obviously just…

This is obviously just material implication run amok.

If “—>” and “if-then” are read as material implication, there’s no reason to believe that premise 4 is true, since what it says is logically equivalent to “If God does not exist, then both (1) I pray to God and (2) God does not answer my prayers,” which hasn’t got any plausibility independent of whether or not I do in fact pray to God.[*] You get the conclusion because whenever p—>q is false, where —> is material implicaiton, p has to be true. But the premise about the answers to your prayers is only plausible if you’re using the nested “if-then” to express some sort of logical or causal entailment (to the effect that if God doesn’t exist, my prayers aren’t efficacious), which material implication doesn’t express. If it is some kind of logical or causal entailment, then inferring 5 from 3 and 4 is just equivocation.

[*] “If both God does not exist and I pray to God, then God does not answer my prayers” is plausible independently of whether or not I pray to God, but that’s logically equivalent to (~G —> (P —> ~A)), not (~G —> ~(P —> A)).

The argument over arbitration…

The argument over arbitration and hypothetical land claims by individual Palestinians has already spiralled pretty far out of the orbit of the comments section of a post about historical gaffes at LewRockwell.com; so I’ve continued it elsewhere, and I imagine the comments section there may be a better forum than the comments section here to continue it in-depth. The short of it is that I think Starr’s defense of third-party arbiters misses the point (because what third party arbiters are good for determining isn’t actually the determination that I was talking about) and that his attempt to suggest that the unjustifiable aggression of some “Arab/Palestinians” (whatever that’s intended to mean) against some Israelis somehow cancels out the obligations owed by different, unrelated Israelis to different, unrelated Palestinians doesn’t exactly undermine my charge that he’s engaging in tribal collectivism. The long of it is at GT 2006-02-09: Collectivism and Compensation.

Assuming, arguendo, “that some…

Assuming, arguendo, “that some of the land in Israel actually was stolen from individual Palestinians in the Israeli War of Independence,” Tim Starr writes:

For one thing, compensation in lieu of returning the property may be more appropriate.

Whether this is “appropriate” restitution for the crime is primarily up to the victims of the crime, not its beneficiaries (that is flagrantly immoral) and not “disinterested” third parties (how would they know?).

Also, is there no statute of limitations for land theft?

No. Why would there be? If I have some land and you throw me off of it in violation of my rights, it remains my land, not yours. Even if you get away with it for a long time. (What would you do that would have made it yours rather than mine? Sit on it? Work on it? Occupancy and use only count towards homesteading if the land is unowned to begin with.)

Furthermore, a good many Jews used to live in Islamic countries that expelled them and confiscated their property — how come that is never brought up by those who want land returned to Palestinians by Israel?

Because it’s irrelevant to the topic at hand.

You have at the most a case for convicting some advocates of Palestinian claims of anti-Semitism, or hypocrisy, or historical ignorance. But that has no bearing at all on whether or not individual victims of land theft have a right to get their own land back.

Do those Jews not have the right to have their property returned, or to receive compensation for it?

Of course they do. But the violations of their rights neither justify nor excuse the violations of individual Palestinians’ rights. Nor does it justify or excuse refusing or delaying restitution to individual Palestinians.

Also, what about compensation to the families of all the Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism?

I’m for it, provided that the compensation actually comes from the property of individual terrorists and their commanders. What has this got to do with whether or not other Palestinians who (we’ve assumed) had land stolen from them have got a right to get that land back?

Israel has also offered tens of billions of dollars in compensation to the Palestinians for any injustices they might have suffered at Israeli hands, but the Palestinians have never offered any compensation to Israel for killing Israeli civilians as a means of achieving Palestinian political goals. … In short, Israel has bent over backwards for peace in the Middle East, and the Islamo-Nazis and their international sympathizers on the commie-left and nazi-right have merely replied to each effort by saying that Israel wasn’t bending over far enough.

“Israel” has not done anything, or offered compensation to anyone. Nor have “the Palestinians” received any offers of compensation. Nor could “the Palestinians” offer any compensation. Individuals act, not ambiguous-collectives.

Maybe you mean the Israeli government has been doing a lot, and some group of people that you’ve designated the collective bargaining agent for all Palestinian people hasn’t done a lot, or hasn’t done anything, in return. Oh well; that may suck from the standpoint of the diplomatic resolution of conflicts between warring states, or quasi-states, or self-appointed states-in-exile. But what has that got to do with the land rights, or other rights, of individual Palestinian people? It’s not their job to compensate individual Israelis for things that they didn’t do; and it’s not their fault if the people who did do it aren’t paying for it.

Your comment is an exercise in shameless tribal collectivism from beginning to end.

Critto: Well, I’m a…

Critto:

Well, I’m a rabid anarchocapitalist, but I’m also a gradualist. This means that I don’t believe in gaining liberty in a momental, rapid event; I totally denounce the violent revolution and I fear of chaos that may spring once the state is destroyed. Therefore, I think that the best way to achieve freedom is to gradually limit the state

That’s all very interesting, but what has it got to do with forcing people to carry “private” insurance? How is implementing more State coercion than presently exists supposed to gradually advance the cause of liberty?

How about that yellow-information-bar-across-the-top…

How about that yellow-information-bar-across-the-top widget that all the cool features are using these days? It gets attention, gives you space to say what you mean, but also can be tuned out as necessary.

Also, you should be able to mash a button to make the notification disappear and Firefox always update automatically when something fresh is available, until you tell it to do otherwise.

“Now a question for…

“Now a question for you: in the context of Iraq, do you agree with Stein that our troops are acting immorally — and knowingly so?”

I think that some of them are and others aren’t; the issue is complicated by the fact that soldiers are not free to stop participating in the war and thus some of them are acting under duress. Those that are willingly doing it are, I think, willingly participating in evil, and I see no reason to celebrate them for that or sanctimoniously declare my “support” for them on that account (even if they do things that require a lot of physical or intellectual skill, and even if they do things that are very daring).

If that makes me an anti-American scumbag, so be it; my main concern here, though, is that the argument over that should be played from where it lies. Your real complaint here isn’t that Stein, Rockwell, Snider et al. don’t “support the troops.” It’s that they don’t support the war in Iraq. Fine; that’s an argument to be had. But fuming about the fact that people who already consider the war to be an unjustifiable campaign of State murder afortiori consider those foot soldiers who willingly carry it out to be murderers, really seemsto me to be a bit much. The debate is better served by arguing over the premises, not shouting back and forth over the conclusion.