Liberty is not freedom.
But I am at liberty to say otherwise.
It is a condition of freedom.
It is identical to it.
To live freely is to be, in the words of philosopher Joseph Raz, the author of one’s own life.
& to enjoy liberty is to be, in the words of me, the auteur of one's one life- unless one has a wife.
For those of us who are blessed with liberty, that means not just indulging but taking control.
But prisoners too can stop indulging in wanking and take control by making their cell mate their bitch. If one is truly blessed with liberty one needn't take control of shit. Indulgence is the way to go.
Affluence – and it is time we recognise that most people in our part of the world are affluent –
which is why they are giving blow jobs at truck stops. They just happen to like swallowing jizz. Indeed, they'd pay for the privilege because they are affluent.
does something to you: it enables you to do as you like.
No. Financial independence is not affluence. A guy with a million dollars in the bank is financially independent provided he is content with a disposable income of 50,000 dollars. That is scarcely affluence. By contrast, a person with an affluent lifestyle might be ten million dollars in debt.
But we already know, because Aristotle told us, that “doing what one likes” is a false conception of freedom.
But we already know that Aristotle was wrong about everything.
More recently, the Indian economist Amartya Sen has said of someone who is merely shrewd in getting what he wants that he is a “rational fool” and as much a victim of repression as the enslaved.
Not even Sen said anything so stupid. He merely said that a narrow view of utility theory (which nobody actually held) such that it depended solely on what was consumed by the agent for his own physical needs or personal pleasure would lead us to predict foolish behavior. He never mentioned repression or slavery.
A slave can be bought and sold though no doubt a shrewd slave will be able to get a good master. That slave may be more affluent than a free citizen. He may oppress the citizen in various ways. But a slave he remains.
For years I have been examining what it takes to turn liberty into real freedom.
Those years were wasted. The answer would have been the same as if he had examined what it takes to turn freedom into true liberty, or happiness into true joy, or cats into true felines.
In my research I have hunted for the secret of “good government”.
There is none. There are canons of taxations and canons of justice and canons of administration and so forth. However, whether or not a government is good depends on the fitness landscape.
Democratic governments protect the freedoms of citizens,
Not necessarily. A democratic government can fuck up a lot of its citizens- if that is what the majority of voters want.
but what kind of freedom should democracy advance?
Whatever the majority of voters want unless this leads to a war which the democracy is bound to lose or some other such predictable catastrophe.
As a government servant (in the Norwegian Ministry of Justice) I know that governments seriously restrict liberties. How to square that with democracy’s duty to protect freedom?
A democracy may choose such a duty, or claim to have done so. But no such duty arises in any other manner than by its own free choice.
I have tried to answer this question by unpacking the insight that people who demand liberty to indulge unexamined impulses are slaves.
No! They are purple pussycats which form unconscionable connections of a deeply repugnant sexual kind with plutocratic penguins! The fact is most slaves were not subject to 'unexamined impulses'. They cost money and could be sold for money. They were used in an economical fashion. You might subject a free citizen to your unexamined impulses, if you thought you could get away with it. But if you kept sodomizing your slaves and chopping off their noses, you would be lowering the value of your own estate.
I have tried to put the flesh of real freedom on to the skeleton of liberty.
Said in a Norwegian accent, a statement of that sort would scare anybody shitless.
For me this is a practical concern more than an abstract philosophical one.
The good folks at the Norwegian Ministry of Justice are constantly flaying and filleting free people so as to uncover their skeleton. Then they try to put the flesh of true liberty onto those skeletons. They fail. Still, it keeps them happy.
After liberty, the second condition of freedom is control, specifically the self-control that is required to avoid becoming a prisoner of one’s own immediate desires.
Norwegians need to avoid becoming the prisoner of their desire to immediately flay and fillet anybody they meet so as to get his skeleton on which they will then true to attach the flesh of true liberty. It takes a lot of self-control to stop Norwegians doing so- till they join the Ministry of Justice.
While we have created the condition of liberty – if not for all for the majority – we have failed to understand the second condition of freedom: the need to develop self-control which might enable us to use our liberty to address our pressing problems: social fragmentation, global warming and inequality.
No doubt this involves a lot of flaying and filleting so skeletons can be assembled.
We could even end world poverty!
No. We could pretend to end world poverty by defining very very poor people as above the poverty line. But who would we actually be fooling? If there are people giving beejays for very little money, poverty exists. If some people don't got enough scratch for beejays, they are poor.
We have generated sufficient wealth to do it without eating noticeably into the wealth of the rich nations – but we don’t. Why?
Because it would eat noticeably into wealth of every sort.
It is not for want of means but for want of control. We are unable to make ourselves really believe that poverty should be eliminated. We blame “the system”, but we should look into our own hearts.
If this guy is going around handing out cash and giving beejays to homeless dudes- cool. If not, he is just virtue signalling. He should look into his heart after he has flayed and filleted himself and assembled his own skeleton upon which he can then try to graft the flesh of true freedom.
For freedom, once there is liberty, also needs reason.
Fuck off! You can give freedom to a caged bird or animal. One can let a lunatic out of his padded cell so he can roam free flaying and filleting folk so as to graft the flesh of true liberty onto their skeletons.
And that reason in turn depends on faith.
No it doesn't. Reason depends on not getting killed or not starving to death or avoiding other such pitfalls present on the fitness landscape.
It is conventional to think that reason and faith are in different and competing worlds, that reason is the tool of the rationalist and faith the excuse of the believer. I propose a new understanding of faith in which religious faith is merely a subcategory.
This is not a new understanding. Everybody knows that saying 'I have faith in the plumber fixing the leak' is different from 'I have faith in God who will lift up my immortal soul to Paradise'.
I do not reject religious logic as irrational, and I do not think rational logic can make do without faith.
But it does do so. Axioms aren't articles of faith.
My logic is as follows: reason springs from an inner competence,
as does faith and intuition and suspicion and feelings of affinity or repugnance
from an ability to listen to and be touched and moved by reasons.
so reason springs from...reasons. Do they not know about circular arguments at the Norwegian Ministry of Justice?
It’s the ability to restrain: to temper self-interest in the choice of ends, so as to avoid blind egoism, and to temper single-mindedness in the choice of means, so as to avoid unbridled ruthlessness.
But all of this may have to do with character, or conditioning, not reason. A foreigner who does not know our language and who can't understand our reasons may show these qualities to us.
Such restraint is grounded in values and norms.
Which may be instilled without any appeal to reason. A lion may be conditioned to performing circus tricks. The lion tamer may be able to safely put his head in its mouth. This does not show that the lion is capable of reasoning or that it uses reason to arrive at certain values and norms.
My values and norms are the instruments in my toolbox for forging reasoned choice out of the liberty to do as I like.
What this cretin has done is write worthless shite. His toolbox consisted of turds.
Values and norms are the building blocks that make up a person’s inner competence. They are principles or higher-order rules that make themselves felt from the background of a person’s awareness and inform more specific opinions and decisions, what the sociologist Raymond Boudon calls “axiological beliefs”. Values are beliefs about what is good; they help us to decide on good and bad ends. Norms are beliefs about what is right; they help us to decide on right and wrong in the choice of means.
This is nonsense. Values are what give rise to preference orderings but they are context dependent. You chose differently if the context is a one night stand rather than a marriage. Norms are focal solutions to coordination games or 'costly signals' associated with discoordination games. They too are context dependent. Sartorial norms that apply in the board room, don't apply at the Golf Club.
Our beliefs about what is good and what is right are context dependent. They are not related to our preferences or character traits or visceral emotions. I couldn't bring myself to kill a chicken but have no problem with the meat industry. I would happily throw the switch on a serial killer sitting in the electric chair but don't favor capital punishment- at least in affluent countries which can afford to warehouse scum.
To say that values and norms are beliefs is not to say that they grow spontaneously from inner sources in the soul. They come from somewhere. I cannot form the belief, for example, that equality is a good thing unless I am aware that there is such a thing to consider as equality.
I can't form the belief that equality is a good thing because I'm an economist. Equality is a bad thing. Because of the Price equation, it would lead to a flight of talent and then a Malthusian disaster and entitlement collapse. Why? People will only limit their family size if they are personally better off as a result. If all babies get the same amount of gruel, the Price equation kicks in. You maximize your chance to have descendants.
But for a belief to become a value or a norm for me there must be something more to it than simply knowing about it. I must believe in the belief, so to speak.
This cunt must know Aristotle's Third Man argument. He now faces an infinite regress of believing in believing in believing in ...belief.
“Do unto others as you want others to do unto you” becomes a value for me when I adopt that belief as my belief.
No it doesn't because that's a maxim or rule for conduct not a belief. 'Love thy neighbor' is a value. Belief in Christianity can cause you to seek to cherish this value. Faith will help. Beliefs tend to get superseded by casuistic or more convenient beliefs.
The beliefs that I make mine are those that have some power for me. My values and norms are those beliefs about good and right which I have faith in.
A Christian might well say something like this and though the theology might be faulty, it is perfectly acceptable and sensible. We all understand that there is, or ought to be, a 'Higher Power'. Soteriology is doing the heavy lifting here. Sociology merely stands around holding its dick.
I call this faith because in the end there is something intangible about values and norms.
Only if there is a Higher power. Otherwise the things are either 'action determining' or mere epiphenomena.
When a value is established as a value in the mind of a person, it has some force in her mind which cannot be fully pinned down.
But could be with sufficient precision for any practical purpose. Courts decide on such matters every day.
She knows it to express what is good, right or even true. She knows she should live by it. She knows that others, too, should share that value.
No. We don't know that. We may say this is a value worthy of respect by all. We can't say everybody should have it. Why? We are not omniscient. Furthermore, if Evolution is a true theory, then anything not hardwired oughtn't to be imposed on all because epigenetic diversity is needful for 'discovery' on the fitness landscape. Desirable social configurations are multiply realizable. Inquisitions may worsen outcomes.
Faith in this meaning infuses beliefs with power.
No. A mental illness may infuse 'beliefs with power'. So may intoxicants or 'the madness of crowds'. Faith need not entail any type of belief. I may have faith in Santa Claus even if I believe he does not exist. In some sense, the good kiddies get presents though I get none.
Your awareness of a norm makes of it a reason for you to think or do as it says.
Or do the reverse. I know it is the norm for grown ups not to say miaow to kids they have never met. I do so because, if the kid is young enough, he may think I'm a fun Uncle rather than a boring old fart. Actually, the reverse is the case. It doesn't matter what the norm is, we all subvert it in our own way.
Your faith in it starts to make it a good reason.
You may have a reason to do things which make you stronger in your faith. But faith is a mystery. What reasons can it provide? If the heart can have its reasons which reason knows nothing of, why not the soul? Might that reason be Faith? We don't know. The thing is a mystery. It may be a gratuitous gift. It may arise by individual effort if there are indeed such things as individuals.
Faith, firstly, separates those values and norms which you make yours from those you discard.
Reason may do so. Temperament may do so. Bitterness and disappointment may do so. Success and general acclaim may do so. The influence of another may do so. The withdrawal of such influence may do so. But Faith does not do so. Why should it? The Bishop dresses one way and conducts himself in a particular manner. The Friar does otherwise. Their Faith may be equal.
In various ways – from parents, from teachers, from conventions, from laws – society offers you a menu of values and norms to consider.
No. Because of Knightian Uncertainty, information asymmetry, externalities etc. no such menu can exist.
Some recommend to you the belief that equality is a good thing, others that it’s every man for himself.
No. Pretending equality is a good thing or signalling that nobody buys that bullshit is all that is on offer. Recommendations are signals though, no doubt, in some cases there is something worthwhile that could underlie that signal. But some signals which are worthwhile are wholly ontologically dysphoric. They are not at home in this world.
Even values and norms are things people have to choose, if in complicated ways.
Or they don't have to choose in simple ways.
In addition, faith enables you to live sensibly by those values and norms you make yours.
Only if you are already doing so.
It is what enables you to do in fact as your super-beliefs recommend in theory. For example, a speed limit of 70 mph on motorways tells you how to drive.
No it doesn't. I know the speed limit but I don't know how to drive.
We all know that, but we also know that it takes something more to actually do as the rule says. It takes the backing of a principle which I accept as authoritative, such as “it is wrong to not obey the law”.
Nonsense! It is an empirical matter as to whether a given law is enforced. Moreover, there are circumstances where any law may be safely broken.
What makes me accept that super-belief as authoritative is that it is one I have faith in.
There are no super-beliefs or meta-preferences. Faith has nothing to do with Authority though, no doubt, we may pretend otherwise. But that is an imperative, not alethic, type of proposition.
The inner competence to reason rests ultimately in this elusive faculty of faith,
No. Faith survives even when one acknowledges one has lost competency to reason. Many die in the Faith after having handed over control of their estate to their heirs.
a faculty which enables the person to actually believe in his beliefs and practically make them authoritative signposts for his opinions and actions.
but that faculty would depend on another faculty which would depend on another ad infinitum. This is Aristotle's 'Third Man' argument.
For example, most of us today accept that it is wrong to treat people differently because of the colour of their skin,
unless it isn't at all. A Norwegian couple handed a black baby by the maternity ward in-charge will reject it just as a Nigerian couple will complain that there has been a mix-up if they are handed a blonde baby. Oikeiosis is not wrong. It is right.
but the awareness of that norm needs to be backed up by faith in order for us to really stay clear of racial prejudice and discriminatory action.
No it doesn't. A healthy fear of having my head kicked in prevents me from directing much racial prejudice or gender based discrimination at the elderly ladies I've taken to doing aqua-aerobics with.
We need something to resort to in order to find the strength of conviction to accept axiological beliefs as practically authoritative and get beyond only paying lip service to laudable ideas.
Brandy? Prayer and Fasting? How about a nice beach resort in the Maldives?
Faith, then, is a quality of character.
No. Faith may come and go with character leaving unaltered. There is such a thing as a 'dark night of the soul'.
Where character comes from is not easy to say, but a part of the answer must be that it is learnt. We need to be taught not only the facts of the world but also about good and bad, right and wrong.
And our teachers have to be taught and so on. But Universities are shite. This dude teaches at one or two. But the man is a cretin.
Freedom in the sense of being able to live a life that is one’s own life rests on learning, on what the Germans call bildung.
But the German bildungsburgertum fucked up big time. Frege was an even crazier anti-Semitic cockroach than Heidegger. Come to think of it, Quisling was considered a bit of a philosopher. Quakers introduced him to Hitlerism as part of their mission to save Europe from War.
Freedom is about telling pedants to go fuck themselves even if they also work for the Norwegian Ministry of Justice.
If faith starts to make a belief a good reason for choice,
Or Choice makes good faith a belief, or Good makes Choice a Faith, or Faith has a fling with Belief but then decides to shack up with Choice which causes Reason to hang itstelf.
how can I know that what faith puts to me as a good reason really is a good reason?
You can't know shit. Read your own stuff. It is nonsense.
Blind faith is not the stuff of free women and men.
Unless it is. Ukrainians may have blind faith that they will prevail over Putin's hordes. What is certain is that many of them will cease to be free women and men if they stop resisting with what appears blind faith. When the war started I thought Putin a genius and Zelenskyy a clown. But the comedian showed blind faith in his country as did the great mass of Ukrainians- including the Russian speakers who were supposed to welcome Putin's mercenaries.
The alternative to blind faith is evidence-based faith.
No. It is spiritually enlightened faith.
As a rational person you want to invest faith in those values and norms that there are good reasons to have faith in.
Credence is not Faith. On the other hand, maybe these words have different semantic values in Norwegian.
Money is Credit- as economists know- but Credit only works if there is faith in the economic regime whose operation is mysterious. However this is merely a manner of speaking. But it does suggest that, because of Knightian Uncertainty, we pursue a regret minimizing strategy. One may consider theological Faith as arising under maximum Uncertainty- God or no God. Pascal's bet is a backward induction argument for God. But it clearly has nothing to do with actual Christian- or Hindu or Islamic- Faith. It is mere casuistry.
Resort to evidence is the sensible way to decide which, in the larger menu of potential values and norms, to make yours.
Not if you know Statistics. Almost all 'evidence' in the Social Science is junk. Even when it isn't junk, Rossi's metallic laws apply. Any policy intervention based on 'evidence' will have zero or negative impact over a long enough time period.
Evidence comes in many forms. In a scientific age we want to trust science, but scientific evidence about issues of human passion is thin on the ground.
Nope. Science has shown that there's nothing weird about homosexuality or gender dysphoria or oral sex. The correct scientific theory predicts that they will exist.
The law tells us about right and wrong, but the law can be mistaken.
Legal judgments are defeasible.
Prime Ministers and Archbishops tell us what to do and how to live, but trust is thin. There is evidence out there but it is not complete, not objective and not easy to make sense of; it is of many kinds and from many sources, scattered and often contradictory, always ambiguous.
The guy is talking about information. Evidence has to satisfy certain protocols. But those protocols may be wrong. It is the Structural Causal Model that matters.
Persuasive evidence is tested evidence.
No. It is evidence which satisfies a set of protocols. It may not be possible to test it.
Is it for example true that “the nuclear family” is the best basis for raising children?
No. It may be the best basis for a particular couple to do so. But that depends on their circumstances.
I can try to find the answer in my own experience, but I will know that to be a flimsy basis. I am better off by asking others: this is how I’m inclined to see it but what is your experience? If I ask several others and keep an open mind I am on my way to finding a safe opinion. I may ask experts or people I trust. Or I may say, let’s sit down and discuss and explore this difficult question carefully.
Or you needn't bother. The conclusion I came to is the only right one.
In the end evidence is tested by conversation, exchange of information and opinions and discussion: in the philosopher Jürgen Habermas’s language, by deliberation.
This is false. Protocol bound deliberation may result in judgments of a juristic or administrative or institutional type. However, while the deliberation is going on a superior Structural Causal Model may have been found. Plenty of people were deliberating about what was best for Ukraine. There were some influential people who believed Putin's propaganda. The Russian speakers were being discriminated against. Russia had legitimate geopolitical concerns. Zelenskyy was a clown in the pay of an oligarch whom the FBI were after. We must send a signal that we won't do shit for Ukraine. Let Putin invade and chase away the clown Zelenskyy. He can go make slapstick comedies for Netflix. Let's all be reasonable about this. Wiser heads have deliberated on this.
This is no foolproof method. Its quality depends on what information is available and our inclination and ability to deliberate openly and honestly.
But only stupid pedants or virtue signallers will bother with that shite.
But it is the best we have. Tested evidence is evidence that has survived rational deliberation.
But which then turns out to be utter horseshit.
Liberty is a strange commodity. Not having it is tantamount to social death,
Prisoners don't suffer social death. Some are better men and women than most of us. Others may be like us, but were unfortunate. Some may be wickeder than us but they may repent and atone.
but when you have it you find that it does not do much for you.
You have do stuff for yourself.
If you do not use it well, its temptations strike back at you and you find yourself a rational fool living under a dictatorship of desires you just happen to have.
No! You find yourself living under the Imperium of the Ghoul-Vampire alliance of desires! But this has nothing to do with Sen's 'rational fools' who are imaginary beings obeying some version of utilitarianism which nobody ever proposed.
To overcome this we need to develop the habit of restraint.
Norwegians may need to do so. The rest of us don't try to flay and fillet everybody we see so as to get to their skeleton onto which we then futilely try to graft the flesh of true freedom.
But where does this come from?
Growing up. I no longer pee and shit myself and say goo-goo ga-ga except when of strong drink taken.
It is something that is fostered in institutions, most importantly in the families in which children grow up, in the schools in which they continue to learn, and in political institutions of deliberation.
Fuck off! Toilet training is sufficient. Also language acquisition. Then being able to earn while you learn. That's how things have been for the vast majority of the world's population till very recently. If poor people have fewer kids then things can change but only because, now, standards of living diverge save where equal effort is equally productively expended.
Institutions are the settings that protect us from isolation and loneliness, in which we can hone our beliefs about good and bad and right and wrong, and in which we find what I call social anchorage.
But sensible students avoid us. They do STEM subjects and get the fuck out of 'institutions'.
A society of not just liberty but also freedom is a society of strong institutions in which people have belonging and live in community with each other. We little human beings are not just individuals, we are also social animals. For freedom, it is necessary but not sufficient that we have liberty. We must also invest in the institutions we need to live together with solidarity, civility and good sense.
Does this cunt hear himself? To be truly free you must do some stupid shit I pulled out of my arse. Fuck that! Nobody wants to live in solidarity or civility with a brain dead virtue signaller. Tell you what- let's export him to China! Fuck! I just checked on the internet. The Norwegians, with Viking wit, have already panned him off on Xi & Li! No wonder they are pissed off with us. Say what you like, Norwegians have a subtle sense of humor. I was born in Germany. Sadly, I gained only the German sense of humor. I'd be shit at making good cars. No doubt, this is because I was failed by Institutions. This was my own fault. I chose to study at the LSE. Just imagine what heights I might not have scaled had I gone to Pope School. In case you are wondering, I'd be Pope. That's what Pope School is for. Crack a book sometime.
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