Ideal or impartial observer theories commit the intensional fallacy. Even if the extension of the intension 'ideal observer' is non empty, it is unknowable. Either there is a way to tell what observation is ideal- in which case there is no need for an ideal observer because one can just keep generating observations till everyone says 'that observation is the one an ideal observer would have', or there is a way to know who is the ideal or impartial observer in which case there is a method to cultivate the traits that observer would have. Once again, the observer is not required. The problem is there is no observation everyone would agree at all times is 'ideal' nor is there any universally accepted method of cultivating the traits the ideal observer would have.
A Gandhian might say, abstaining from sex and spinning cotton will make you more and more ideal. But everybody else admits that Gandhians have shit for brains.
Speaking of shitheads, Amartya Sen writes of Rawls's stupid original position.
closed impartiality and parochialism That closed impartiality in the form of the original position can incarcerate the basic idea – and the principles – of justice within the narrow confines of local perspectives and prejudices of a group or a country was discussed earlier.
Nothing can 'incarcerate' an idea- basic or bullshit as it may be. To assert otherwise is merely an expression of prejudice or stupidity.
As for 'parochialism', we can't escape it. Wherever we choose to live or choose to visit, there will be local laws and norms. They ought not to be 'universal'. You should be allowed to do certain things in the forest- e.g. pee on a tree or bush- which you should not be allowed to do in a City- unless, obviously, it is Calcutta.
To that discussion I want to add three particular points here. First, we must give some recognition to the fact that procedural parochialism is not universally taken to be a problem at all.
Nonsense! It is obvious that, if 'jurisdiction shopping' occurs or 'extradition' or 'extra-territoriality' obtains, then 'procedural parochialism' or bias diminishes the value of having a juristic mechanism. The same is true, if your judges have a reputation for illiteracy and your lawyers spend most of their time giving blowjobs at truck stops.
Sen is talking nonsense. Courts can't afford to be too shite coz otherwise they will be disintermediated. Parishes have to compete with other parishes. This is what militates for convergence to isonomia- at least for contiguous parishes or parishes between which there is 'Tiebout sorting'- i.e. migration to enjoy better 'local public goods' including justice provision.
In some approaches to social judgements there is no particular interest in avoiding group leanings – indeed, sometimes quite the contrary.
But this problem diminishes if there is competition between jurisdictions. We may say there is 'local arbitrage'.
To illustrate, some versions of communitarianism may even celebrate the ‘local’ nature of such priorities.
Only if there is no risk of disintermediation.
The same may apply to other forms of local justice. To consider an extreme case, when the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan insisted, before the military intervention, that Osama bin Laden should be tried only by a group of Islamic clerics, all committed to the Shariah, the need for some kind of impartiality (against offering personal favours or partial treatment to bin Laden) was not denied, at least not in principle. Rather, what was being proposed was that the impartial judgements should come from a closed group of people who all accepted a particular religious and ethical code.
This is also what happens when a country seeks to extradite a criminal from some other country. Its judges have to approve the action even if there is an extradition treaty. However, if there is none, there still may be universal jurisdiction. In this case, under Shariah law, that obtained. The difficulty was that the US did not recognize the Taliban regime. Indeed, it still doesn't. However, Gen. Hamid Gul's prediction has come true. The Taliban wanted the US to invade so as to get its hands on seven billion dollars worth of military equipment. Currently, the Afghan GDP is only fourteen billion!
There is therefore no internal tension in such cases between closed impartiality and the underlying affiliative norms.
Yes there is. In this case 'affiliative norms' required treating a Muslim as superior in all respects to a Kaffir.
The broader tensions, related to the acceptability of confining attention only to locally sequestered reasoning, do of course remain.
But, for any practical purpose, those 'tensions' can be resolved. The Taliban could have let the Saudis chose the Judges. Similarly, where there is an extradition case, the request originating country can stipulate milder punishment and fast track adjudication of a superior type.
And those difficulties and limitations are the ones that came under Smith’s scrutiny.
No they don't. Sen is making this shit up.
Indeed, when we leave the world of locally confined ethics, and try to combine a procedure of closed impartiality with otherwise universalist intentions, procedural parochialism must be seen as a serious difficulty.
Only in the sense that the fact that human beings are not gods or dogs or walruses is a serious difficulty. The fact is, any decision or deliberation which occurs in one place and amongst a particular set of people will be 'parochial' except in so far as it makes a lot of effort to be otherwise.
Smith knew that Scots law was different from the law in England & Wales. He also knew that the East India Company was happy to apply 'Gentoo' or 'Islamic' law in territories it controlled.
This is certainly the case with Rawlsian ‘justice as fairness’.
No it isn't. It is not the case that Rawls's gedanken fails because of cultural differences between people. It fails because it is stupid. Nobody prefers cutting the cake to favor the least well off as opposed to buying insurance just in case one's position worsens.
Despite the thoroughly non-parochial intentions of the general Rawlsian approach, the use of closed impartiality involved in the ‘original position’ (with its programme of impartial assessment confined only to members of the focal group under a ‘veil of ignorance’ regarding individual interests and goals)
except nobody actually was enrolled in any such a group. Either everybody would accept Rawl's argument or, because it was foolish, everybody would reject it in favor of what actually obtains- viz. insurance including compulsory collective insurance of various types. The insurance industry then has an incentive to identify and reduce risk. Thus, the providers of fire insurance lobbied for the creation of a fire brigade.
does not, in fact, include any procedural guarantee against being swayed only by local group prejudices.
Yes it does because there aren't any actual people in the original position. Thus we don't have to worry whether they have B.O or chronic flatulence any more than whether they are 'swayed by group prejudices'.
Second, we have to pay particular attention to the procedure of the original position,
It involves everybody getting a cognitive 'plug-in' of Econ 101, Sociology 101, Poli Sci 101 etc. The problem is that Econ 101 says 'uncorrelated asymmetries' dictate eusocial 'bourgeois strategies'- e.g. buying insurance rather than agreeing to cut the cake in a manner which ensures that no fucking cake will be baked.
and not only to the intentions that may try to prevail over the recommended procedures.
There is no fucking procedure. Either you accept that Rawls is right or, like Harsanyi, you know he was wrong.
Essentially, Rawls's 'lexical preferencing' is, salva veritate, refusing to cross the road just in case you get run-over by a bus. The thing is stupid and can be rejected immediately.
Despite his general universalist inclinations, the formal procedure of the original position proposed by Rawls seems to be geared to allowing little exposure to fresh wind from outside.
It can allow anything it likes. One could say 'men in the original position would prefer than nobody has babies rather than risk that they might end up getting assigned wombs and vaginas'. But it would be easier to just say that the Econ 101 plug-in which everybody receives in the original position forbids maximin because there is a better strategy viz the one we actually choose- viz collective insurance with 'moral hazard' provision i.e. ensuring that unemployment or sickness benefit is significantly less than what can be earned in productive employment. However, for political reasons, this may not be possible in short to medium term. Long term there will be entitlement collapse.
Indeed, Rawls insists that the closed nature of the original position must be, at least in principle, strongly fortified (Political Liberalism, p. 12):
because Rawls came from a rich country. He wasn't suggesting that American prioritize the needs of Bangladeshis.
I assume that the basic structure is that of a closed society: that is, we are to regard it as self-contained and as having no relations with other societies . . .
No. It can trade with them or bomb them from time to time. However, only its own citizens are given a say in how the country should be run.
That a society is closed is a considerable abstraction,
This entire discussion is abstract not concrete.
justified only because it enables us to focus on certain main questions free from distracting details.
The distracting detail in question being that these nutters are talking nonsense.
The question that is begged here is whether considering ideas and experiences from elsewhere are matters of ‘distracting details’ that are somehow to be shunned for the purity of the exercise of fairness.
Rawls's cognitive 'plug-ins' can include ideas, supported by experience, from anywhere at all. Furthermore, there is no 'exercise of fairness' in the original position. Rather, it is asserted, on the basis of a fallacious argument, that 'Justice as Fairness' involves agreeing to stupid shit.
Third, despite these strong grounds for open impartiality, it might be thought that a serious difficulty can arise from the limitation of the human mind and our ability to go beyond our local world.
Sen is able to go beyond his local world because he has multiple identities. Thus, when he is lecturing at Harvard he is also in Bihar presiding over the creation of a great University there.
The plain fact is that local and national governments exist. There is no World State. Rawls thought that the US would be stupid enough to embrace his ideas. But they were stupid and kids who had to study his shite grew up to vote for Reagan and join the Federalist Society. One could say that Diversity Equity Inclusion (DIE) is Rawlsian. We must give first priority to the transgender drug addicted pedophile refugee who is as fat as fuck because they are the most disadvantaged in our society. The parents of kids raped by them need to pay much much more in taxes so that disadvantaged rapists are given a high material standard of living and a chance to further develop their capabilities- perhaps by committing genocide on the host population.
Can comprehension and normative reflection cross geographical borders?
Yes.
While some are evidently tempted by the belief that we cannot follow each other beyond the borders of a given community
only with respect to ideographic matters. Nobody thinks foreign Math or Physics can't be assimilated to the domestic variety
or a particular country, or beyond the limits of a specific culture (a temptation that has been fuelled
by the fact that different countries have their own indigenous, buck stopped, judicial, political and administrative procedures. Sen must have noticed that he has an Indian passport not an American one. That's why he can vote in federal elections. Only Americans get to decide whom they will be ruled by just as only Indians decide who will run their country.
particularly by the popularity of some versions of communitarian separatism),
Sen's people ran away from such 'communitarian separatism' in their ancestral East Bengal.
there is no particular reason to presume that interactive communication and public engagement can be sought only within such boundaries (or within the confines of those who can be seen as ‘one people’).
Bangladesh has no difficulty importing ideas and techniques so as to rise up.
Adam Smith argued strongly for the possibility that the impartial spectator could draw on the understanding of people who are far as well as those who are near.
No he didn't. What he said was ' “When I endeavour to examine my own conduct,
which was known only to himself and of little interest to anybody else- more particularly those who were far away
when I endeavour to pass sentence upon it, either to approve or condemn it, it is evident that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were into two persons; and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from that other I, the person whose conduct is examined into and judged of.
This is not evident at all. I don't divide myself when I take a shit even though shitting is not my main activity. Similarly in reviewing my conduct I don't divide myself. I just exercise a different faculty.
The first is the spectator, whose sentiments with regard to my own conduct I endeavour to enter into, by placing myself in his situation, and by considering how it would appear to me, when seen from that particular point of view.”
This sounds like the 'atma/jiva' distinction in Hinduism and is indeed theological. Essentially 'impartial spectator' is being put in the place of 'synderesis' or conscience or 'the still small voice of the soul'.This was indeed a significant theme in the intellectual concerns of Enlightenment writers.
Because they were trying to recast theological notions in 'naturalistic' terminology. But the Law had got to a better result by applying the 'reasonable man' test in the Menlove case.
The possibility of communication and cognizance across the borders should be no more absurd today than it was in Smith’s eighteenth-century world.
What is absurd is suggesting that Rawls considered such communication impossible or undesirable. He was merely saying that the Social Contract, as he envisaged it, wasn't a 'contract of adhesion'. It was one whose terms the contracting parties would themselves arrive at. Sadly, this would only be the case if they were as stupid as shit.
Even though we do not have a global state or a global democracy, Smith’s emphasis on the use of the impartial spectator has immediate implications for the role of global public discussion in the contemporary world.
It has none whatsoever. He merely asserted, falsely, that in exercising the faculty of judgment we 'split' ourselves. This is not the case, we judge our conduct in the same way we judge the conduct of others of our class.
Global public discussion is just as stupid as any other sort. It isn't based on impartiality or observation. It is just talking is all.
In today’s world, global dialogue, which is vitally important for global justice, comes not only through institutions like the United Nations or the WTO,
hilarious! Both are useless. Biden followed Trump in making WTO ineffective. The UN was always a joke.
but much more broadly through the media, through political agitation, through the committed work of citizens’ organizations and many NGOs, and through social work that draws not only on national identities but also on other commonalities, like trade union movements, cooperative operations, human rights campaigns or feminist activities.
i.e. paranoid ranting. That wokeness just got cancelled big time.
The cause of open impartiality is not entirely neglected in the contemporary world.
Some senile fools lecture about it. But we laugh at them because what Smith actually said was that darkies like Sen were stupid, ignorant and barbaric. Don't talk to them. They have shit for brains.
Moreover, just at this time when the world
some fools, not the world
is engaged in discussions of ways and means of stopping terrorism across borders (and in debates about the roots of global terrorism), and also about how the global economic crises that are plaguing the lives of billions of people across the world can be overcome, it is hard to accept that we simply cannot understand each other across the borders of our polity.
Actually, the reverse is the case. The Taliban is back in power. America's path diverged from that of Europe after the crisis. It is likely to diverge yet further in Trump's second term. Global discussions turned out to be mischievous when they weren't stupid and useless.
Rather, it is the firmly ‘open’ outlook, which Smith’s ‘impartial spectator’ invokes, that may be in some need of reassertion today.
The 'open' outlook is to judge actions by results. Talking bollocks about the need for public discussion and taking diverse points of view into account was counter-productive.
It can make a substantial difference to our understanding of the demands of impartiality
there are none unless we are sitting on a jury or are otherwise paid to be impartial
in moral and political philosophy
if these nutters were impartial they would admit 'moral and political philosophy' is useless nonsense
in the interconnected world in which we live.
It is one in which 'moral and political philosophy' aren't connected to anything save senile stupidity.
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