John McCone : Philosophy For The Future

Philosophy For The Future

Philosophy

Some Important Truths Are Scientifically Unprovable

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Juliann/Shutterstock.com

Can every important issue be scientifically investigated and, by comparing enough experiments with mathematical theories, answered conclusively? Can no philosophy uncover truths beyond the reach of science?

Here I argue that, despite the great service it renders humanity, certain biases, intrinsic to science, must be investigated from outside it. I will mention two examples where philosophical considerations can identify limits to the scientific method:

  • Freewill
  • Neurochemical Evaluations of Happiness

 

Why Free Will Is Scientifically Unprovable

 

An increasing number of scientists and psychologists reject the existence of free will. Indeed 86% of philosophers reject libertarian free will, with most believing that all our actions, down to the most minute decisions, are ultimately determined by circumstances outside our control (though compatibilists believe, so long as our desires align with our actions, we are acting freely even though we could neither act nor desire otherwise).

Is this slide towards determinism due to scientific discoveries… or is it the result of a bias in the scientific method itself?

Let us review what science is:

Science is a process whereby relationships of cause to effect are hypothesized and framed as competing theories. Some important predictions of these competing theories are then tested through experiment and observation. The theory with the greatest predictive power is then provisionally accepted while theories with lower predictive powers are usually rejected as false.

In other words, science is the inherent activity of deriving laws with ever-increasing predictive power. The game of science is the game of prediction. Yet prediction is only possible in a deterministic system.

Trying to use the scientific method to prove the existence of free will is like trying to use an earth excavator to fly to the moon. How can an intellectual activity that grants credibility to new hypotheses based on their predictive ability ever possibly grant credibility to a hypothesis that our behaviour is somewhat unpredictable due to our choices not being fully predetermined?

Science can only disprove free will and prove determinism – it is structurally incapable of the reverse. Science can only validate free will to the extent it fails to prove determinism – or runs up against its own limitations.

And yet…

…despite the inherent tendency of the scientific method to accept ever more deterministic descriptions of the physical world, and the unprovable nature of free will, it’s hard to see how our current scientific knowledge based upon experiments could be more favourable to libertarian free will.

The requirements of libertarian free will are quite philosophically demanding. If every action was exactly determined by preceding circumstances, then there would be no freedom, yet if every action was completely uncorrelated with subsequent actions, there would be no will. The notion of will is that an agent’s wishes determine some of its important future actions so as to materialize that wish in reality. These simultaneous requirements seem almost self-contradictory, yet a system whose behaviour is predictable – and heavily predetermined – in the short term, yet unpredictable in the long term, would satisfy the necessary criteria for a modest interpretation of libertarian free will.

Absolute free will (including the freedom to teleport yourself to Mars) is omnipotence. No advocate of libertarian free will, or any sane human being, would seriously claim we possess this. Libertarian free will is simply the modest claim we possess some free will; that our brains can make some important conscious decisions; that some conscious decisions, which arise from our minds, produce physical actions with physical outcomes that were not always predetermined; that we could have decided differently and – had we done so – a different physical action and outcome could have arose as a result of that different decision (that if you wind back the clock far enough to the same past condition and run reality again – a different outcome could result).

The uncertainty principle, states that the position and momentum of particles is fundamentally undetermined. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is more than just a limitation in our ability to measure particle position, as theses diagrams of electron orbitals in the hydrogen atom show. Each orbital represents the spatial probability of finding a single electron in a particular location in the atom. The p-orbital, for example, contains two dumb-bells of finite probability separated by an infinite plane of zero probability. The zero probability plane completely separates the finite probability regions from each other. There is no possible path for the electron to get from one finite probability region to the other without crossing the zero probability plane, yet if the electron didn’t cross the zero probability plane, the electric field and chemical characteristics of the hydrogen atom would be different. Thus, the electron must simultaneously exist on both sides of the zero probability plane.

3D representation of p-orbital probability cloud

Some theories appeal to an infinite number of unprovable parallel universes to interpret wave function collapse as being deterministic, but if we go back to the core value of science: experimental data is king. And experimentally, wave function collapse is non-deterministic.

While the short-term wiggle room for free will is limited to one atomic radius, the butterfly effect means very small differences in initial conditions can give rise to large differences in final outcomes. Here is the first observed example of a computer model exhibiting divergent trajectories in phase space.

Lorenz Experiment: The first time the Butterfly Effect was detected

The initial conditions vary by less than one part in a million, and, initially, the evolution of the system in both cases seems identical, but, after a period, the trajectory of both runs start to diverge and, eventually, they exhibit some important yet completely different behaviours.

 

The combined scientific observation of fundamental quantum uncertainty and long-term divergent behaviour from similar initial condition is conducive with short term macroscopic determinism and long-term macroscopic indeterminism. In other words, quantum uncertainty, when combined with the Butterfly Effect, leaves room for free will in psychology.

It is hard to imagine a physical description more favourable for the philosophically demanding requirements of libertarian free will than those routinely used to describe the behaviour of complex natural systems.

However, this may indicate free will has a long actuation time, which the Libet experiment cannot refute. Total short term freedom would, after all, negate the existence of a meaningful will.

Therefore, scientists who reject free will do not do so due to any scientific discovery (indeed discoveries in physics could scarcely infer a universe more favourable to free will) but rather due to of biases innate to the scientific method itself.

To complain there is no causal  mechanism for free will and, therefore, that it doesn’t exist is to completely miss the point. Causal mechanisms are, by nature, deterministic. A causal mechanism for free will is an oxymoron and demonstrates how the tool box of science is fundamentally unequipped to prove the existence of free will. If no scientific experiment could ever falsify determinism, then claims for determinism are as unscientific as claims for free will.

 

Neurochemical Evaluations of Happiness

 

Given the importance we place on happiness, it’s worth asking: “What exactly is happiness?”

 

Understandably, many neuroscientists and psychologists have brought their expertise to bear on research in this area. Scientific enquiries into conditions for producing happiness are both valuable and important. But is there any hard limit to the authority and expertise that progressive experimental discoveries could convey to researchers studying happiness (and other subjective feelings like misery)?

 

Consider this thought experiment:

Jim walks into an MRI scanner where his brain activity is thoroughly analysed. After emerging from the machine, the researchers, who have decades of experience studying neurochemistry, say to Jim: “We’ve analysed your brain chemistry and the results are conclusive. You are acutely depressed.”

Jim responds: “But I feel happy! I rarely get depressed.”

To which the researchers respond: “You are clearly mistakenly evaluating your own experience. The results of the MRI are conclusive. You are acutely depressed. You must register for a happiness enhancement course. It’s for your own good.”

Jim responds: “But I don’t need a happiness enhancement course, I already am happy.”

To which one researcher responds: “Jim, I have a 1st class degree in neuroscience, a Phd. in evaluating the neurochemistry of happiness and depression. I have spent the last 15 years looking at different people’s brain activities and evaluating them for happiness, or misery. The other 10 researchers on my team all have similar levels of experience and, after analysing your brain activity, we have all reached the same conclusion: that you are thoroughly depressed. How much experience do you have in analysing brain patterns?”

To which Jim responds: “None.”

The researcher then asks: “So why do you think you’d have more knowledge about your brain patterns than a team of researchers who’ve spent decades of their careers measuring and analysing brain patterns to decide whether patients are happy or miserable?”

 

Question:

Could any amount of scientific advances, cranial measuring equipment or AI data analysis techniques in an infinitely sophisticated future ever conceivably make it possible for the team of neuroscientists to be right and for Jim to be wrong?

 

I take the view that, for any sensible definition of happiness or misery, the answer to this question is “no.” All happiness evaluations must begin with a questionnaire. Now through comparing questionnaires with measured brain activity, facial expressions or other kinds of behaviour, we may find reliable markers that correlate well with reported happiness (dopamine levels, serotonin levels, activities in particular brain centres etc.). In the future, neuroscientists may, by monitoring brain activity, be able to anticipate reported happiness with 99%, 99.99% or 99.99999% accuracy. So, if neuroscience can achieve such accuracy in predicting how someone reports feeling, what happens when that one person reports a very different feeling to what the instruments tell the scientists he should feel? Are the scientists wrong about how the subject feels – or is the subject wrong about his own feelings?

Given that reported feelings are the foundation for correlating brain activity to subjective experience, subjective present experience must always have absolute sovereignty.

 

One could, of course, scientifically define happiness in terms of dopamine levels much like we define force as mass times acceleration, but such a definition would be irrelevant to the inherent philosophical value of happiness as a subjective sense of satisfaction, joy, pleasure, freedom from suffering, etc., etc., And there probably is a danger that, in the future, overzealous neuroscientists might favour scientific definitions of emotions like happiness, anger, sadness, depression that are easier to objectively measure and stick into computer models, even if such definitions are less relevant to the subjective emotions that we feel and value. There’s also a tendency in some fields to ignore outliers, in order to get journal papers published. All of this, if unscrutinised, could result in experts overriding people’s subjective experience.

 

But:

It is certainly possible that, in the future, neuroscientists will gain sufficient understanding of the workings of the brain to anticipate your future subjective experience, or evaluate your past subjective experiences, better than you can yourself.

 

The absolute sovereignty of the individual in evaluating their own experience, only applies to their immediate present experience. Expertise can (and probably someday will) anticipate people’s future subjective experience with greater accuracy than they themselves can. And there is already some important evidence that we aren’t good at objectively evaluating (or accurately remembering) how happy we were during an extended past period. People’s evaluation of their level of happiness over their entire lifespan varied noticeably based on whether they had recently found a few dimes left by a photocopying machine, suggesting our present mood strongly influences how we evaluate past emotions.

Experts may also understand why a subject reports an experience better than the subject’s own belief for the reasons of his experience. Numerous experiments clearly demonstrate that people can frequently give erroneous accounts of the reasons for their motivations and, perhaps, even feelings.

But this does not alter our absolute knowledge of our immediate subjective experience itself.

But being able to predict what people will subjectively feel themselves in the future, or why they feel what they feel, better than they can themselves, is distinct from being able to dictate what people feel in the present, better than they can themselves.

 

There may also be a one-to-many problem that runs both ways, where many different brain-states in different people lead to similar subjective experiences, while nearly identical brain-states in different people may occasionally give rise to significantly different subjective experiences.

So the evaluation of people’s present experience through evaluating neurological activity is an example of where science can only catch up with, but never surpass, common personal experience.

 

John

 

Do You Have a Burning Desire To Make a Comment?

 

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Idolatry – The Forgotten Sin

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Idolatrous Worship
Michael Rosskothen/Shutterstock.com

To many, the very notion of idolatry seems quaint and out-dated. Yet to monotheistic religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam idolatry forms the basis of the divine order of their moral universe. Are they simply mistaken? Or is idolatry a sin that is still conceptually relevant to modern thinking?

This article interprets the monotheistic tradition as humankind’s quest to understand, as best we can, the one, true overarching divine order which governs our universe and find our proper relationship to it as limited beings. In this respect, modern science is simply an extension of the monotheistic project, and many early enlightenment scientists were deeply religious and pursued science in the service of God speaking of “the creator’s own stamp upon creation” ( Francis Bacon ) or asserting that “Nature is the book of God written in the language of mathematics” ( Galileo ).

Johannes Kepler even wrote:

“May God make it come to pass that my delightful speculation have…the effect which I strove to obtain in the publication; namely, that the belief in the creation of the world be fortified through this external support, that thought of the creator be recognized in its nature, and that his inexhaustible wisdom shine forth daily more brightly”

Yet, there are many examples of the sin of hubris in the Bible, where time and time again, Jews were drawn to worship golden calves, and other idolatrous practices, in the high places. Indeed, many Muslims regard adoring images of Christ, Mary, and the Saints as a slippery slope towards idolatry.

What draws people, reared to believe in God, towards idolatry time and time again?

I believe the origin of idolatry is twofold:

  • A fear of the infinite
  • A desire to Self-Worship by Worshiping our Creations

 

Fear of The Infinite And The Sin of Idolatry 

 

Everyday, we must make decisions to survive and sometimes those decisions must be right. Is this berry edible? How much food should I store in case of a drought? Should I take out a loan to expand my business? Is now a good time to sell those stocks? How should I treat my child’s illness? Are enemy submarines hiding along this shipping route? On occasions, the wrong choice can produce horrifying results, the bankruptcy of a business, the injury or death of a loved one or infant, the collapse of a civilization.

When stakes are high, we must be sure we are right. Yet certainty is impossible in an infinitely large, infinitely complex and infinitely subtle universe. We can only try our best to make decisions based on the highest comprehension we can achieve in the allotted time – and hope it’s good enough. But however much we may hope that our decisions are good enough – this is never guaranteed. We might always miss something out: with dire consequences.

Any attempts to represent the infinite with the finite is a subtle form of idolatry. Our minds constantly tempt us to simplify and try to encapsulate infinity in something relatively simple – or at least comprehensible. Something we can perceive. We then delude ourselves into thinking, that through fully understanding the false idol we use to represent infinity, we fully understand infinity itself.

This idea is both seductive and comforting. But it can also distract and instill a false sense of security and hubristic omniscience. The idol captures the worshipers’ entire attention who become convinced that nothing else is relevant. This blinds them to the rest of the world – including things of critical importance.

Idolatry breeds ignorance – and ignorance can be fatal. This is one of two deadly sins central to idolatry – a refusal to perceive reality or God on His own terms.  The idolatrous instead insist that He must simplify Himself to accommodate our limited cognition (which won’t happen).

Our need to avoid this fatal tendency is as relevant today as it was at the time of Abraham, Christ or Muhammad.

We must keep our mind open and prepared for new occurrences that signify important events, even unexpected ones.

 

Idolatry: Self-Worship by Worshiping Our Creations

 

We take pride in our creations, often viewing them as extensions of ourselves. The craftsman who creates the false idol, in some subtle way, has an idolatrous sense he has created God. By worshiping our creations, we subtly worship ourselves. If something we have crafted is grand enough to create the universe – how much grander must we be? Of course no one who fashions Holy works will admit this, but deep down they feel an idolatrous pride in them.

Beyond idolatrous pride, there is control. A false sense of molding the powers which mold our universe.

Not everyone fashions idols directly, but when a community worships the idols it creates, that community tacitly commits a kind of self-idolatry.

As the comprehension of idols induces a false sense of idolatrous omniscience, so the crafting of idols induces a false sense of idolatrous omnipotence; a false sense of power.

In truth, humankind cannot fashion, or mold, most of reality. We only control or influence a tiny portion of it. By clearly understanding what we do and don’t control, we can affect what we can control to prepare for what we can’t. Trying to mold what cannot be changed directs resources and effort away from what can. Instead of building a giant statue to bring future rain, it is better to devote our energies to building a warehouse to store grain and prepare for times of drought.

The seductive opportunity to feed our self love through worshiping the idols we create adds to our primal desire for simplicity and total comprehension and strengthens our adoration while blinding us to everything beyond the idol.

 

The divine order of the universe is what it is. It cannot be remolded by remolding clay idols.

 

Not All Idols Are Made of Clay

 

Not all idols are made of clay. Anytime we fixate on, and worship, a portion of creation – especially a man-made one – but ignore the rest, we commit idolatry. This portion can even be a Holy Book. To speak of “The God of The Bible” or “The God of The Quran” is to commit idolatry. It suggests God somehow “belongs” to a particular book. This is an absurd, idolatrous attempt to subject the infinite to the finite, to subject God to the scribblings of men.

 

Indeed, verses within the Quran itself declare the limitations of the text and warn the reader against taking it as the totality of truth:

“And if all the trees on earth were pens and the oceans were ink, with seven oceans behind it to add to its supply yet would not the words of Allah be exhausted in the writing: For Allah is exulted in power, full of wisdom”

Luqman, 31/27

…that’s a lot more ink than the Quran contains.

 

Yet if instead of talking about The God of The Bible we speak of The Bible (or Quran) of God, this still doesn’t overcome the problem of focusing on a tiny portion of the infinite while ignoring the rest.

What’s wrong with the rest of creation? Is one Holy Book the only thing that belongs to God? What about all the other books? If God created everything, does not everything belong to Him?

To revere one Holy Book above all else is to implicitly devalue the rest of the universe.

 

One can also find secular strains of Idolatry…

 

The Social Sciences, which focus on mankind, intrinsically risk ignoring the physical universe which exists independently of human thought and society. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s book, published in 1966, The Social Construction of Reality,  almost suggests that objective reality is entirely created by human thought and interaction. Other social constructivists like Humberto Maturana and Kenneth Gergen assert as many truths on any one topic exist as there are communities to construct them. This view of human society as the sole creator of reality and arbiter of truth dangerously resembles the second form of hubristic idolatry, and runs the same fundamental risk of drawing our attention away from the physical environment and lulling us into falsely believing we can “deliberate” away all our problems as any social consensus will work since no reality exists outside society.

Economics is another social science that believes in the omnipotence of the crowd and “the invisible hand of the market” (represented, interestingly, by a golden bull) which can make us become infinitely rich so long as we frantically compete against each other and only care about ourselves. Consumers are assumed to be omnipotent and infallible. We are paying the price for running the world according to a discipline that ignores everything except human desire with environmental destruction – and possibly a future climate Armageddon.

 

Still think idolatry is irrelevant today?

 

The problem is that social sciences fundamentally cannot discriminate between knowledge and belief – knowledge being justified true belief. This is understandable, as belief is the sole motivator of human action, so fields that only study how human ideas relate to human behaviour, fundamentally cannot differentiate between true and false beliefs. It is only by paying attention to the physical consequences of an activity on the non-human environment compared to the believer’s expectations, that truth can be discriminated from falsehood. Yet this is a consideration that many, who work in social science, omit from their theorizing.

 

The Piety of Science

 

Attempts by major monotheistic religions to avoid finite distraction and perceive all existence, and our proper place within it, have met with limited success at best and abject failure at worst. Congregations constantly seek refuge from the infinite by fixating upon reassuringly finite prophets, saints, saviours and books with reassuringly human stories of battles, torture, slavery, and men with wings. Perhaps, monotheists are less distracted from the infinite than polytheists, but – let’s face it – monotheistic myths are still pretty distracting.

Monotheism is a step in the right direction…but it still falls short of the mark.

To fully perceive truth, we must abandon all false idols that distract us from the divine order of the universe, and our rightful place within it, dispense with preconceptions that hubristically try to mold God in the image of man and, instead, we must perceive the universal order on its terms and not our own. If we aim to perceive truth, we could do worse than pursue scientific enquiry. Mathematics, in particular, is as close as any intellectual exercise comes to the infinite, as it frequently adds infinite sums of infinitely small quantities. Mathematicians even contemplate different kinds of infinities!

There is much confusion over Atheism. Many atheists do not believe in a universe devoid of order. Indeed, Noether’s Theorem, a theorem that science universally accepts, categorically proves the conservation of energy, momentum and angular momentum imply the order governing our universe is infinite in space, eternal in time (or as old as the universe itself?), and rotationaly invariant.

Many religious people complain science does not answer important moral questions about how to behave, and only describes how things are; not what we should do. This is Hume’s guillotine: that no knowledge concerning natural phenomena can shed light on normative principles. This neglects the fact that science itself is a set of normative principles, a set of beliefs on how we should go about forming our beliefs. This is something that Stefan Molyneaux points out in his book Universally Preferable Behaviour and indeed, by treating words as tool whose true meaning is that which optimizes their traditional function, I’ve argued fairly solidly in The Philosophical Method that preference utilitarianism is the one true morality.

Some also complain that scientism is crassly materialistic, leaving no room for supernatural events. Yet clearly everything which exists can only fall into one of three exhaustive categories:

  • That which we can perceive through our senses
  • That which affects what we perceive through our senses (this includes things that indirectly affect the things that affect the things we can perceive, and so on and so forth)
  • That which neither affects what we see nor affects anything that affects what we see

Science includes the study of both 1) and 2). Science studies the invisible forces that affect materials like gravity or electromagnetism as well as the materials themselves. On a galactic scale, scientific inquiry includes mapping out clouds of dark matter by observing the way they bend the light of galaxies. There are even neutrino detectors to observe a particle that almost (though not quite) fits into category 3).

Thus, if we consider “the supernatural” as everything that is beyond the reach of science, we arrive at the unavoidable logical conclusion that:

The supernatural is only beyond the reach of scientific study to the extent to which it does not affect the natural in any way.

Which would make the supernatural completely irrelevant.

Indeed, the only demand that science makes upon the universe is repeatability. Once something is repeatable, it is scientifically tractable and laws to describe it can be hypothesised and tested.

 

It is worth remembering that at the time of Kepler, many considered his theory that the tides are caused by action at a distance to be an unscientific appeal to occult forces. Thus:

There is no objective distinction between science and magic. The only distinction is subjective understanding.

Magical phenomena are any phenomena which cannot be understood with our existing  knowledge – even at a fundamental level.

THEREFORE

The statement: There is no such thing as magic.

IMPLIES

The statement: Everything we can see or will ever see in the future can be explained using our existing knowledge set.

Which may or may not be true. It’s certainly an ambitious (perhaps hubristic) assertion. However, although scientists might entertain the possibility of magical phenomenon, a magician – an authority in magic – is a contradiction in terms.

A magician is a human being who understands phenomena which cannot be explained by existing human knowledge.

This is an oxymoron.

So, while magical phenomena may exist, magicians, or any other authority figures in magic, do not.

 

Regarding miracles, since anything repeatable can be incorporated into scientific understanding, only unrepeatable phenomena are beyond science’s reach. So it is the religious foes of “scientism” that are advocating a disordered universe run by a capricious God who makes and breaks rules at a whim.

We appeal to miracles as proof of God’s existence. But why must God break His own laws to prove He exists? Surely the order of the universe itself would be the greater proof of an omnipotent, omniscient being than the arbitrary breaking of that order.

Miracles are incompatible with omniscience and omnipotence. An omniscient, omnipotent being who set up the order of the universe would know everything entailed by its initial creation and thus would never need to tweak it. A miracle implies a correction on the part of the creator: “Whoops! I didn’t see that coming! I better add this little tweak to correct the course of events! It’s ugly and sticks out like a sore thumb, I know, but it’s the best I can do!”

While an omnipotent, omniscient being might leave scope for free will, He would know exactly what choices He had created and left open for inhabitants. If He didn’t want people to be able to act a certain way, He would make it impossible a priori. An omnipotent, omniscient creator, by definition, could do this. Free will is not infinite but is bounded within a finite envelope of possibility which the order of the universe defines. To claim an omniscient, omnipotent being had to “step in” because His creations made “the wrong choice” is a contradiction in terms. If an action is acceptable, you create an order that allows people to perform it, if it is unacceptable, you create an order that prohibits it. An omniscient, omnipotent creator would never need to perform a miracle to stop his creations from doing something His original order allowed: “No wait! Don’t do that!”

 

Therefore:

Divine intervention implies divine imperfection.

 

And to believe in miracles is to believe in a less than perfect God.

 

This is the view of Deism.

 

So who’s right? Atheists or Deists?

 

If we stop attempting to mold God in the image of man, deism is only distinguishable from atheism by the belief that the universe was designed by “some kind of intelligence” as opposed to arising from mechanistic processes of cause and effect.

Yet is this distinction significant? Can Deists meaningfully argue with atheists?

“Intelligence” is an ill-defined concept. Do we truly understand where the boundaries lie between the intelligent and the unintelligent? If we reject a God with human-like intelligence, that opens the door for pretty much anything. Intelligence can take a myriad of different forms.

Nor does the atheist position, that the universe arose through mechanistic processes, necessarily exclude deism, for atheists view intelligence itself as a mechanistic process and if intelligence is mechanistic, then some mechanistic processes may possess intelligence.

Interestingly, the google dictionary definition of intelligence as: “The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills” implies an omniscient being is unintelligent as it cannot acquire knowledge by virtue of already being full up! This is an example of the futility of arguing over the existence of an intelligent designer without generally understanding intelligence.

 

Idolatrous Forms of Atheism

 

Atheists come in, not one, but three, different varieties:

  • Scientists
  • Societalists
  • Radical Skeptics

I use the word “scientist” very loosely. By “scientist”, I don’t exclusively mean people actively engaged in research but rather anyone who believes inherent universal truths are independent of our subjective, or even inter-subjective, beliefs and are revealed through careful, direct interaction with the universe while observing and recording its precise response, comparing it to responses carefully observed by others, and assessing its significance through quantitative analysis. Scientists implicitly believe, as Galileo did, that the natural order is written in the language of mathematics. A scientist believes we must question the universe on its own terms, with carefully designed experiments, and then listen very carefully to its response. If no conceivable experimental outcome could dissuade our preconceptions, we are shouting at the universe without listening back. Scientists also believe the universe reveals its secrets equally to everyone, there are no special “prophets” or “messengers” privy to otherwise inaccessible knowledge, but all who ask the same question (i.e. runs the same experiment) receive the same response. This principle of repeatability forms the basis of science.

The second group of atheists are “societalists” who believe human society is the sole creator of all knowledge and truth in the universe. While most (though perhaps not all) believe reality exists without society, in the absence of social interpretation they view this as irrelevant, and many reject the possibility of “right” or “wrong” interpretations of reality at a cultural level. If culture and human institutions are the sole arbiters and creators of truth and knowledge, then the institution can never be wrong. And yet many societalists are revolutionaries who reject existing institutions and believe that by creating new ones – they can create any society they want. They believe that society is infinitely malleable to a sufficiently determined will and reject many natural bounds that religions believe should not be trangressed. Many societalists embrace the relativistic view of morality.

Finally, there are radical skeptics. Radical skeptics think everyone is full of BS. They believe there is no natural order, no morality, no values, science is bullshit, religion is bullshit, reason is bullshit, society is bullshit, everything is bullshit. Radical skeptics find liberation in universal cynicism and enjoy gratuitously challenging views and revealing treasured beliefs to be nonsense. The universal belief in BS affords a luxury of intellectual laziness. If everything’s bullshit, there’s no need to waste time or calories to rigorously apply reason. Radical skeptics usually have a little stock of generic tricks they can deploy to rapidly dismiss and “deconstruct” the arguments of others. Skepticism, the demand for evidence and justification in support of claims, is an important protection against falsehoods. However, the wholesale (often intellectually lazy) dismissal of everything, including reasoned arguments, takes skepticism a step too far. Everyone has implicit beliefs they need to make decisions, by rejecting everything that could alter them, the radical skeptic gives his own beliefs an infallible status.

 

The radical skeptic treats his own beliefs as unassailable while societalists treat the beliefs of society as infallible. Both these views take man or men collectively as the sole creator of knowledge and meaning, totally unaccountable to a wider reality. Only scientists believe we should take all of reality (and not just the minds of men) into account when formulating beliefs. Therefore, radical skepticism and societalism are both (type 2) false idolatrous forms of atheism while scientism – or humanism – is the one true atheism.

 

John

 

Do You Have A Burning Desire to Make a Comment?

 

Have you found this article thought provoking? Is there some message you desperately want to communicate to future readers but can’t because my comment section automatically closes 28 days after my posts go live?

If so, you might be interested to know that I reopen any comments section to members of my mailing on request as one of the perks of joining.

If you’d like to leave a comment, simply scroll to the bottom of the page, sign on to my mailing list and them email me with a request to reopen the comments section for this post.

Happy Commenting!

John

How Free Should Speech Be?

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Aaron Amat/Shutterstock.com

With police arresting 2,500 Londoners over the past 5 years for sending electronic communications that cause “annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety”, is free speech dead in the Western world? Are we entering into an age of authoritarian censorship? Is Europe fast becoming China?

Censorship and political correctness is not yet as bad in the West as it is in totalitarian China… according to some YouTubers, in certain respects, it’s already worse. As we condemn the Chinese for censoring the internet with their Great Firewall, the U.K. government has raised its own “Great British Firewall” to “protect” us from material that might turn us into terrorists… “terrorist” content like… studies linking vaccines with autism???? (If you’re in the U.K., go to this web page, click on the link in the second line of the second paragraph that says “study” and see what you get). So, to what extent is it O.K. to censor communication? It seems that whenever a government organization is given the power to censor dangerous communication, mission creep will always end with it censoring all information that influences public opinion in ways that politicians don’t like.

(It is not my intention promote any particular position on vaccination, merely to support the right of citizens to read about it without government interference.)

Perhaps there is some truth in John F Kennedy’s warning:

“And there is a very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment”

Without clear red lines that limit government censorship – we in the democratic west will lose everything. Every hard won right past generations struggled for centuries to secure could be lost in a few short decades. Once free speech goes, due process will follow shortly. Once due process goes, absolute tyranny will follow irrespective of any laws on paper.

In this post I will try to identify what aspects of free speech should be ring-fenced at all costs and without compromise. The issue of speech and communication is, unfortunately, a lot more tangled and complex than at first meets the eye, but hopefully people of all political inclinations will see some sense in a few proposals here – or at least acquire food for further discussion.

I will divide speech into 8 sub-classes:

  • Communication between consenting adults
  • Harassment
  • Sharing personal information
  • Communication at organized events and on private property
  • Communication in the Workplace
  • Libel and copyright infringement
  • Misinformation resulting in injury
  • Communication to organize activities that violate the law

 

Communication Between Consenting Adults

 

The free flow of information is as necessary for justice as the free flow of blood is for health or the free flow of money is for prosperity. At the very least, the right of consenting adults to privately exchange information and opinions with each other (unless they are actually plotting to directly violate the law in a tangible way) should be absolute and sacrosanct. Consensual communication should be immune from legal proceedings that relate to causing offence – since participants can avoid offence through withdrawing consent – including disorganized informal expressions of hatred (but not necessarily incitements to violence, property damage, theft or other illegal activities), so long as potentially offensive expressions are not directed at parties who do not wish to see them against their will. Ultimately, most published material is consensual and non-directed whether a book, a film or a blog. Posters in public spaces, billboards in the front of shops, or handing out leaflets to strangers on the street would not automatically qualify as consensual communication.

Even in the case of consensual communication (especially mass-publication), there is still the matter of violating someone’s privacy by publishing someone’s name, date of birth, home address, bank details, or other sensitive information. As well as libel or copyright infringement (discussed later).

 

Harassment

 

One of the most important distinctions between speech that should be immune from the law (or almost immune) and speech that may (though not necessarily) entail a legal responsibility is the distinction between consensual and non-consensual communication. We need to draw a clear line between communication and harassment. No one has the right to demand the time and attention of another human being (even worker-employer relationships are initiated with a job application by the worker), in fact a non-consensual, uncompensated demand on the attention of a stranger is not so very different from making a demand on their labour – a kind of slavery. Harassment is continuing to communicate, follow or man-handle someone after they explicitly tell you they wish to be left alone. In most cases, harassed private individuals should have legal recourse against their harassers.

There are exceptions where harassment may serve the public interest. Reporters might follow people who have acted unethically to publicly shame them. Perhaps a bank manager who gave out dodgy loans, a rogue trader who messed up the houses of clients by doing a shoddy job, a restaurant owner that added rats to people’s food, a CEO, whose company dumped toxic chemicals into drinking water and gave resident health problems, or a politician who embezzled public money. While most disputes where the party who has harmed the other does not wish to engage with them are best dealt with in court, the right of the press to confront some individuals that would rather not be confronted in order to serve the public interest is an important safeguard in a world where justice is imperfect,  judges can be bribed, and courts corrupted. I do, however, reject the notion that just being a celebrity – and nothing else – confers the public, or the press, with some kind of “right to harass”. Although, unfortunately, this seems to be the de facto norm today.

I think people have some right to verbally confront those who bad-mouth them behind their backs, or have damaged them in some malignant or negligent way – so long as a formal minimum level of good-manners is maintained during such confrontations. If you want the right not to be contacted by someone, don’t talk about them.

The other exception is debt collectors or anyone else with whom you have voluntarily entered into a contractual agreement that has not been honoured. Such people also have the right to harass (within limits).

Shouting hate-filled abuse in someone’s face against their will is not freedom of expression. It is harassment. If we make this clear distinction, and give members of the public confidence that the law will protect them from such disturbing experiences, then it should be possible to ring-fence the important elements of free speech and expression from legal censorship.

In addition to talking to someone who doesn’t want to talk to you, other forms of personally directed communication such as phone, snail mail or email, and private messages of all kinds in which the recipient has clearly expressed a desire not to receive them, should not qualify as protected forms of free expression. Neither should material handed to people in leaflets or large billboards in public space (not to say that such activities should be forbidden, but merely that they are more accountable for publicized content than more consensual media). Repeatedly using the @ sign in twitter after the account owner asks you to stop is a grey area. However, other than this, non-directed tweets and other social media messaging to followers who can unfriend or unfollow you at their leisure should count as protected consensual forms of free expression.

Reaching out to strangers from time to time is an important part of business and life. The key issue is when someone has made it clear they do not want to be communicated to either directly informing the communicator in question or by broadcasting a general message such as: No Unsolicited Mail.

But what about someone yelling in public space? There are certain ways of interacting with strangers for the first time that will obviously be distressing. I think the answer here is to collectivise public disorder, whether it be someone who wanders around shouting offensive things a strangers or hands out offensive leaflets. If numerous people complain to the police, the policemen should have the power to speak on behalf of the public and tell the person causing the disorder that members of the public have collectively withdrawn their consent to such an unsolicited form of communication. The police should only have the power to press charges if, after giving the warning, the person in question continues to approach and offend strangers. There should also be and expiry date (perhaps a week) after which said person can resume talking to the public until he is warned again – and so on. The expiry date is important, as people’s ability to approach strangers to initiate contact should be reasonably protected. (Harassment mostly only occurs after someone explicitly says: “Leave me alone.”)

Answering a question is never harassment. If you ask someone a question, then you implicitly permit them to answer it in any way that they want.

 

Sharing Personal Information

 

Gossiping is a part of life. If all gossip was forbidden, life would suck. Nevertheless, some private information classes have zero gossip value and, if shared, could expose individuals to physical or financial harm. Such obviously sensitive information is physical location and financial information. To physically assault someone, you first need to know their whereabouts, so publicizing someone’s whereabouts can expose them to harm. The same applies to financial information, or passwords and usernames in general. Email addresses are a grey area. While it is probably best to show discretion, cc-ing people onto small lists (of, say, less than 10) is often an appropriate form of introduction. Nevertheless, if someone explicitly tells you not to share their email address with others, this must be respected. As lists get larger, it becomes increasingly important not to communicate with those on the list in a way that they have not consented to.

 

Communicating At Organized Events and on Private Property

 

If someone walks away from you and you needlessly pester them and get in their face – that’s harassment. But what if many people simultaneously attend an event that they feel they will get value from, and other participants spoil their experience? They may not like what you say, while remaining in the event for other reasons.

Interactive events, question and answers sessions, clubs, conferences, and organizations in general, are a fundamental component of civil society with great importance and value. A place where different people can meet and discuss things with others, where introductions and, perhaps even new friendships, can be made, yet whenever lots of people get together, there will always be the danger of agro. Some participants may take great offence at what others say or do. And if both opponents wish to remain in the venue, or meeting place, things might get nasty.

One solution is to give the organizer total sovereign power to exclude anyone they want from any event they are organising. While such dictatorial power may appear to introduce an inequality between organizer and participant, everyone is free to organize their own events. An event’s size is simply determined by the number of participants who decide to attend. Organizers of large events want people to attend and if they unfairly exclude people, participation levels will drop precipitously. The greatest punishment participants can dole out to an event organizer is to walk out in large numbers. So while giving dictatorial exclusion powers to organizers may seem unjust – competition between different organizations will keep such dictatorial powers in check.

It is worth mentioning that repeated, deliberate physical contact, against the will of the person being contacted at an event, is not the same as speaking to someone against their will and can count as harassment – irrespective of any position taken by the event organizer. Organizers have a responsibility to take reasonable measures to ensure the physical safety of participants.

Beyond that, I would like to add two details: the person who pays for a space (either by owning or renting it) takes precedence over the organizer if they are different people. Say, for example, a group regularly meets in a café, and the person organizing the meeting excludes one attendee, but that attendee remains in the café. If the café owner says they can stay, that decision should supersede that of the meeting organizer. Social networks, where users build up long term value (such as connections to friends or followers), should have complete discretion in setting the policies they adopt. However, once they commit to a policy, they must not exclude members in a manner that violates their own policy. The terms of service should be as binding on the writer of a contract as they are on the readers.

Moderators of comments have a similar level of discretion over which comments they publish.

In a similar way, what if some performer at a venue offends an audience who attended to see someone else? While members of the audience may complain to the venue organizer and while the venue organizer may, at their discretion, exclude the performer, this decision is the sole discretion of the venue organizer. The venue which the organizer creates, can be viewed as a consensual form of communication that participants can choose to accept or reject in totality. Although if attendants bought tickets there might be some cases where they could claim their money back due to false advertising.

There is a case for punishing organizers that consciously oversee venues that systematically incite participants to engage in violence, theft or any other illegal activities. Though, as with the press and harassment, on occasions inciting the public to break the law may serve the public interest (such as if the law is unfair or immoral). Laws against incitement should only apply to physical events and not digital publications, as physically attended events have a greater effect in swaying people’s minds and initiating mob activity.

There are probably some other modifications to the extent that event organizers should be given dictatorial exclusion powers, but this post is long enough as it is.

 

Besides events, there is private property. If you are on someone else’s property, whether residential or commercial (such as a shop), then the owner of that property has the right to communicate with you while you are on their property. Furthermore, the owner can delegate the right to communicate to anyone they wish (such as a shop assistant or security guard who does not own the shop). Broadly speaking, the same principle applies to places of work. The owner of a workplace has the right to communicate with employees who work there, even against their will, so long as they remain on the premises (which they have a right to leave) and to delegate that right to others.

Needless to say, the owners or renters of private property also have the right to expel whoever they want.

This also applies to digital space. Email providers have a right to send emails to accounts that are registered with them (even against the will of users), the same applies to the right of Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to send messages to the users of their service through their internal messaging systems (even against the will of users). However, unlike physical venues, digital service providers should not get dictatorial powers to allow other users to send unwelcome messages to each other.

 

Communication In The Workplace

 

The workplace is a special kind of venue, as employees often cannot leave without great financial sacrifice. As such, giving “the venue organizer” (i.e. the boss) total unregulated dictatorial powers of exclusion won’t work, as it is often much harder to find a new job than join a new club. And so competition between workplaces will have less of a moderating influence since the labour market is currently a buyer’s market (hopefully The Countryside Living Allowance  could change that).

On the one hand, sweeping anti-harassment laws would make workplaces totally dysfunctional, toxic environments. If you have agreed to work at a job for money, that implies agreeing to interact with your colleagues professionally. Balancing the law to protect employees from workplace bullying while enabling frank and effective communication, and a workplace environment where people don’t feel they’re in constant danger of getting sued, is a delicate matter which a single blog post cannot disentangle.

 

Libel and Copyright Infringement

 

There is a serious danger that creeping copyright infringement and libel laws could kill free speech and democracy through the death of a thousand cuts. People’s ability to complain, when they – or others – have been abused, swindled or when their neighbourhoods and the planet get damaged, is essential for justice and democracy. Yet this necessarily involves accusing other people of causing harm and damage. Laws that allow individuals to sue for libel and defamation threaten our ability to shine the light on injustices that cause damage and suffering.

The problem with complex laws, that are open to interpretation, is those with money to hire good lawyers usually win. Furthermore, even if complex laws protect someone’s ability accuse someone else, many victims, who do not understand the legal system, may still be intimidated into self-censorship for fear of libel and anti-defamation lawsuits. Without affordable legal advice, they cannot know if they are protected.

Similar problems lurk behind copyright laws. The ability to criticise and quote the works of others is essential to informed political debate. If someone writes a book, makes a film, or has an interview, where false or misleading statements are made, it is important that others can criticise their quotes and set the record straight. Yet if they are not allowed to quote them, for fear of infringing their copyright, this will be impossible. Many documentaries, which draw attention to a range of important human rights and environmental issues, often need footage from a wide variety of sources. Overzealous copyright laws could stifle these works.

We live in an age where everyone and everything is surveilled all the time. There are vast archives of data…but who owns them? If only a tiny subsection of society owns the copyright to most of it, they will have a monopoly privilege to slice and dice it into narratives and propaganda of their choosing to convince anyone of anything while those without copyright may not be able to critique it without getting sued for infringement.

Fair Use legislation is there to defend against this, but it is quite ambiguous and the penalties for falling on the wrong side of it are severe: $30,000 per infringement. It is critical that people become fully aware of the ramifications for justice and democracy if we let Fair Use get chipped away.

This is the problem: Most people go about their daily lives not worrying about copyright. Most don’t consider copyright law or anti-defamation law when they vote in elections. Yet if these laws creep in the wrong direction, they could provide an ideal backdoor route to restrict free speech.

…and yet…

Should someone’s business be ruined because someone else tells a lie (or even reveals an embarrassing truth) about them?

It is right that someone should profit from another’s work without paying the creator a penny?

When it comes to defamation, the issue is complex.

But one way to stop copyright from smothering documentary makers and other creators of compilations would be to only let infringed parties sue for a portion of the profits of works that quotes substantial portions of their creation and to set a floor that guarantees that those who incorporate portions of other people’s work into their work receive at least 50% of their compilation’s  profits. The sum total of aggregate royalties to all parties that sue for copyright infringement in a compilation should never exceed 50% of the net profits derived from the compilation. $30,000 fines for statutory infringement in compilations should be eliminated completely – the danger of destroying freedom of speech, expression and the use of quotes and other source material in informed debate far outweighs the danger of not compensating creators for the value of their creation.

 

The general public needs to pay a lot more attention to legal creep in these critical areas of law before it smothers their free speech entirely. The big problem with “leaving it to the experts” is that rich people and corporations are usually the ones paying experts to lobby to modify these areas of law in ways often at odds with public interest.

 

Misinformation Resulting in Injury

 

While spreading lies and misinformation may not be generically illegal, on occasions when it causes damage to life and property, the legal consequences can be severe. Perjury is a crime that relates to lies in court and the punishment is years behind bars. Beyond that, there is a grey area between giving out damaging financial advice and confidence trickery. Certainly, someone who falsely poses as financial adviser and misrepresents the risk of an investment can face lawsuits from investors who’ve lost millions from the advice, along with fines and imprisonment. Someone whose misinformation on health issues results in a loss of life can face consequence of similar or greater severity.

This all may seem very reasonable, yet sometimes punishing people for spreading damaging misinformation can be problematic. A big issue is health advice. When standard medicine has a tried and trusted cure for an ailment with minimal side effects, going with the treatment prescribed by your GP is a no-brainer. However, for many health conditions, such as cancer, standard treatments are not 100% effective, and even if you follow your GP’s advice you could still die. Many chronic health conditions require continual doses of medicines that are expensive, have dangerous side effects, and reduce people’s quality of life. In cases where the standard treatment for an ailment is unsatisfactory, it is understandable that some people will search the internet for better solutions either in addition to, or in place of, prescribed treatments.

The internet health scene spans the full spectrum from charlatan snake oil salesmen who charge big up front money for non-cures to simple, incredibly helpful, cheap, life changing advice, to terrible advice that is downright dangerous. It is understandable that some people would want to shut it down to protect public health.

…and yet there’s a problem with this…

Existing medicine is strongly biased towards researching new chemical compounds with curative properties as opposed to exploring new (previously unknown) curative properties possessed by existing compounds. This is not the most effective use of resources and has everything to do with patent law. The existing compounds cannot be patented, so systematic research into new curative properties of existing chemical compounds is not, for the most part, profitable.

Yet the long term side effects of injesting compounds that can be found in the food section of the supermarket are far better known than the long term effects of injesting a newly discovered chemical compound. At the very least, chemicals contained in regularly eaten foodstuffs have stood the test of time and have been eaten by billions. Conversely, control trials of new chemical compounds are conducted over shorter periods on smaller groups. These can screen for short-term side effects, but can miss potentially damaging side effects of long term dosage on small, vulnerable portions of the population.

 

You can find hundreds of household cures on the internet. Coconut oil for skin rashes and earaches, garlic for flu, someone even testified that he has successfully used a vibrator to cure a chronic case of haemorrhoids!!! Many of these cures have not been systematically tested in large expensive control trials, principally because they cannot be patented. All we can go on is hearsay and personal stories.

Health bloggers have to be careful about what they say. Even if a given remedy really does have beneficial health effects if it isn’t “authorized” by the medical status quo, due to a lack of evidence from control trials, (which is often due to an absence of control trials due to lack of funding) then if someone tries the remedy and suffers as a result, there could be a danger the health blogger might be held accountable.

In all high-stakes fields (engineering, medicine, mental health) there is a severe bias towards the status quo. Conformity becomes a protective umbrella. It is inevitable that from time to time, people will die, but if you follow the best practice standards in your field and someone dies, then you are not legally accountable. However, once you move away from those standards, you enter a world of personal liability. One might argue that this protects people, but the reverse can also be true. If procedure A is accepted as best practice and kills 10% of patients, and procedure B is not accepted as best practice but only kills 5% of patients, then not following best practice could actually save people. Yet, paradoxically, the physician who follows best practice is legally immune from the consequences of the 10% of his patients that die while the physician that did not follow best practice could be held personally accountable for the 5% of his patients that died – and might be imprisoned for negligence as a result.

Thus, while best practice can prevent standards from slipping it is also a huge obstacle to improvement and deters all but the least risk averse physicians from seeking better treatments to save lives.

We should research new curative properties of existing compounds, such as foods and cosmetics, more systematically, but until more funding for such research is made available, reading about home remedies on the internet might be the best we can do. It is always good to first talk to a GP about a medical problem (which is pretty much what every medical website says to cover their arse). Nevertheless, if the remedy a GP prescribes is not fully effective, people must have the right to seek better remedies (if they so wish) on the internet at their own risk. While others must have the right to give advice, so long as they do not misrepresent their qualifications.

And laws that protect people from damaging misinformation must not expand to the point that they suppress information of uncertain helpfulness. Just because it is uncertain whether something is helpful doesn’t imply it necessarily isn’t.

 

Communication to Organize Activities That Violate the Law

 

Attempts to break the law are illegal even if they fail. And communicating to organize others to break a law can be considered part of an attempt. The key thing is to distinguish between an “attempt” and a “fantasy”, evidence such as the level of detail in the communication (such as serious information gathering and analysis), and the physical activities that accompany it, contribute to distinguishing serious attempts from idle fantasies. But there can be no doubt that, in some cases, communication could be the lion’s share of evidence to confirm that an attempt to break the law was serious. So this is a further class of criminal communication.

 

Final Remarks

 

It is understandable why all forms of censorship concern us. You can only censor others if you are more powerful than they. If you have less power than another, you cannot sensor them however much you might want to, so the ultimate decision about what to censor and what not to censor will always rest in the hands of the most powerful actor (be they a person or an institution). Free communication and the innate power of uncontrolled gossip have historically been deployed to curb the shamelessness and impunity of society’s more powerful members and to limit the abuses they can get away with.

And yet, from the above considerations it seems that we cannot ringfence the absolute freedom of every conceivable form of communication. Some forms of communication can do great damage to others and it seems morally necessary to sometimes regulate them (fraud at the very least). Whenever we say: “I believe in absolute freedom of expression” it must always be qualified by something like “excepted in cases of fraud, copyright infringement, perjury and reputation damage caused by libel.”

But can these exceptions be contained within an impregnable bubble, or will a creep in legislative interpretation enable those in power to incrementally warp and expand the sphere of acceptable censorship to the point of acquiring the de facto ability to censor anything they want?

 

John

 

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A Rights-Based Basic Income

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When the topic of basic income arises, people often ask me: “Why should we pay people to do nothing?” We generally think that hard word generates income, and that workers rightfully own that income. The idea of taxing hardworking people to pay those who (might) do nothing seems unjust. Should workers slave for money that mostly gets confiscated and given to others?

Yet not all income is paid to labour. A portion of income is used to rent assets of value. An owner of valuable assets can receive rent from others who wish to use them. This will provide him with an income for little to no work – possibly indefinitely. Some of the value of rentable assets was produced by labour, however a portion, perhaps a third to a half, was not.

I propose (as Henry George once did) that only the value created by labour can rightfully be privately owned. The only assets of value that can rightfully be purchased are assets created by labour, and if labour is only responsible for a portion of an asset’s value, then only that portion which labour produced should be owned privately.

There is no reason why one person should have a greater claim than another to value that is not produced by labour and, therefore, the rental income proceeding from the use of all natural value, by right, should be distributed evenly throughout society. The only way to own something is to produce it or purchase it from the rightful owner. This requires a voluntary exchange of ownership extending back to the original producers of the item of value. The purchaser of private ownership rights to natural value is like a buyer of stolen bicycles – as all private entitlements to natural value were originally stolen from the commons.

This article explores the revenues that a basic income based on equal rights, could generate. An income based on the principle that all people have:

  • An equal right to the unimproved value of land
  • An equal right to newly printed money
  • An equal right to inheritance
  • An equal right to benefit from bads whose quantity must be limited

 

The Portion of Land Value Not Produced By The Owner

 

Anything for which the demand at zero price exceeds the supply has monetary value. For some of these scarce, yet desirable, items (such as a piece of jewellery) the source of value  was the labour of a craftsman, in which case the value rightfully belongs to its creator. Yet in other cases, at least a portion of the value is naturally occurring (a lakeside view, for example). Usually, human labour must mix with natural value to produce the final item. However, some natural resources require less effort to extract value from than others. Consider two coal resources: one far below the surface branching into narrow seams, another deposited on the surface, extractable with open cast mining. The value of coal from both mines is equal, yet one requires far more labour to extract than the other. This will make the mineral rights of the easily mineable deposit more expensive than the rights for the deposit that requires more capital and labour to extract coal from. But when one mining company out bids the others and pays the higher sum for the right to mine these easily accessible deposits, to whom should the money be paid? Who was responsible for that coal deposit being closer to the surface? Who deserves to be paid for this service? No one! It is simply a fluke of nature. And if no one deserves the cash proceeds from selling the rights to this resource, then everyone is equally entitled to these proceeds.

Beyond that, there is value that arises from proximity to other people. It is valuable to live close to shops, restaurants, discos and workplaces from which to earn a living. Yet the land owner creates only a tiny portion of this value. If most people on a street paints their house, the location value of the street will rise even for those who don’t. If a shop or railway station opens up, nearby house prices will go up even if their inhabitants did not build the railway or work in the shop.

We can thus see that, while much of a location’s value does arise from human activity, the rental proceeds from location value are not paid to the creators of that value. Since it is impossible to identify who is responsible for each pound of increased location value, it is better to tax the rental value of location and distribute a per head payment to everyone.

How do we assess what portion of land value arises from its unimproved location value and what portion arises from improvements which the owner has made? The value of the improvements is the cost of producing the improvements. If a house in London costs £150,000 to build and sells for £750,000, then it’s unimproved land value is £600,000. The cash value of the yearly benefit that proceeds from the exclusive use of a location is the location rent (the site rent). The appropriate level to set land value tax (a sum payable to the government for the exclusive use of a location) in a neighbourhood, is therefore whatever level reduces the prices of houses traded in an area to the cost of producing all the improvements present at that location. Mark Wadsworth estimates that a tax on the full site rent of residential property in the U.K. would bring in around £200 billion. Existing business rates offer a conservative ballpark estimate for what a tax on the unimproved value of commercial land could raise – around £30 billion.

Natural resources and farm land would not significantly change these figures.

So an equal right to the rental proceeds arising from the unimproved value of land in the U.K. would split £230 billion per year among 50 million adults and yield a yearly basic income of £4,600 per person.

 

An Equal Right to Newly-Printed Money

 

Any civilization that permits usury must continually create new money to remain stable. The current way that central and private banks create and distribute new money is highly unjust. So who should receive the newly printed money? Newly created money is not produced by labour, we certainly don’t reward private individuals who labour to create money! Forgery, the production of money by private individuals, is a criminal offence. Money is an – albeit useful – artificial monopoly imposed by legal fiat. Because it is produced by legal fiat, rather than labour, all people have an equal claim to the value of newly printed money. In a previous article, I discussed the precise financial policy reforms required to stabilize our system. Suffice to say they involve paying £1,840 to every adult, every year.

 

An Equal Right To Inheritance

 

Imagine a think-tank asked you to summit a design proposal for an equitable welfare system that addresses poverty to a report they were writing. Imagine you proposed a system where the welfare each recipient received was proportional to the net worth of their parents at their time of death. The response of the editor would probably be: “That’s the dumbest, most arbitrary, welfare system I’ve ever heard! Come back when you have something better!”

Inheritance is welfare. It’s unearned wealth some people receive in exchange for no work.

Some people accumulate a great deal of wealth over the course of their lives, which doesn’t go away when they die. So what to do with that value? Since no living person produced it, no living person has earned it. As such, everyone should have an equal claim to the wealth left behind by the dead.

So how much money would an equal right to inheritance bring in?

Let’s neglect land (whose value would already be taxed away) and just include financial assets. The HMRC estimates the total value of financial assets in the UK to be £1.6 trillion. If we take the gap between generations to be 33 years, as Richard Murphy does, this would yield a yearly revenue of £53 billion to be redistributed. Let’s assume, for the sake of being conservative that half of this is avoided or evaded. This would leave ~£25 billion a year, or £500 per person per year.

 

An Equal Right To Bads Whose Production Is Restricted

 

It is impossible to quantify with any accuracy, how much income this would bring in as the extent to which bads are restricted, and how they are restricted, is a political one. A slight modification of David Fleming’s proposal of Tradeable Energy Quotas ( TEQs ) would distribute rights, to purchase CO2 emitting fossil fuels, equally throughout the population. Every time you buy coal in the shop, you would have to surrender a portion of your quota. Companies would not be issued with any carbon ration but would have to purchase it from private individuals who could sell their carbon rations on the market to companies instead of burning it.

An alternative would be to charge a fixed price per unit bad emitted. There is a case for spending this price on clean-up costs rather than giving it to the population in general.

Beyond that, companies must often be approved for a license to engage in potentially harmful activity. The quantity of this activity could be reduced by increasing the cost of the license (whether selling liquor or gambling). The money raised should be distributed evenly throughout the population.

Conservatively, I will add £500 per person per year as the proceeds of the redistribution of fees, duties, rations, licenses, etc., etc.

 

Getting Real About Basic Income

 

Adding it all together, a rights-based basic income, which makes no claim on the proceeds of other people’s productive labour, would amount to about £7,440 per person. That this is far below the average wage should not be surprising for, as Piketty has mentioned, capital accounts for 30% of income (and some of that capital is justly earned), while wages account for 70% of income.

We need to be realistic about basic income. The purpose of basic income is not to enable people to live comfortably without working, rather it is to enable people to live without working in the labour market. If instead of using basic income as something to buy meals and pay rent, you think of it as money that enables you to purchase building materials, gardening and maintenance tools, and fertilizer to which you apply your labour to set up and run a homestead, then an unconditional payment of £7,440 a year could go a long way to enabling a sufficiently industrious person to establish quite a high quality of life for himself without selling his labour to others.

And since no customers or employers are required to give people permission to provide for their own needs, anyone could access this lifestyle. While not everyone would choose it, a universally accessible option of self-provision would greatly strengthen the negotiating position of workers with their employers and increase both wages and employment.

So a modest basic income could go a long way.

My article Basic Income, Self-Provision and Full Employment discussed the higher credit value of basic income as well as it effect on wages and employment in greater detail.

 

John

 

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Is There An Ultimate Purpose Of Life?

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Ultimate Purpose to Life
John Christian Fjellestad/Shutterstock.com

For many, the question: “What is the ultimate purpose of life?” may seem futile, even trite, when so many immediate and pressing issues abound, yet we must at least account for why some ponder this great question so intensely. This question is important because, while we devote most of our energy to our immediate daily concerns, many believe that the ultimate reason to put such effort into living is to do or accomplish something. Others make huge daily sacrifices to rear children who can accomplish something important…but what? If there is no ultimate purpose of life, how can any accomplishment have significance?

The question – Is there an ultimate purpose of life? – seems so straightforward. Yet it exposes the very limits of scientific inquiry – our civilization’s crowning achievement. This question is not scientifically tractable. Scientific inquiry can do a lot:  sensibly answer queries about facts (Do antelopes lay eggs? Do crocodiles eat fish?); answer “why” type questions (Why is the sky blue?) in the context of hypothesized models supported by evidence (because air scatters short wavelengths more than long ones) and determine instrumentally effective options for accomplishing a given desired outcome. (How can I make soap? Answer: by mixing sodium hydroxide with animal fat).

But science cannot tell us what we should want, or what we should do. So we set about life with various purposes in mind which we then try to accomplish. But no amount of scientific investigation can tell us whether these purposes are right or wrong. While we may choose to adopt some life purpose, no methods exist to ascertain whether it is a purposeful purposes, or a pointless purpose. Perhaps we can never know whether we are truly doing something meaningful with our lives – or just wasting time.

And yet, despite these difficulties, many strive to answer this question. Why? The main reason is because the brain’s job is to do things. We wouldn’t have evolved a brain, that consumes half our body’s glucose, if it didn’t do anything. Our brain must also work out what not to do – such as actions that might bring death or injury.

So the question: “What is the ultimate purpose of life?” strikes the core of our mind’s primary reason for being. Namely, to continuously answer that deceptively simple-sounding question: “What should I do now?” And to do it.

Abstract questions on the ultimate purpose of life have disturbingly practical implications. Why punish children “for their own good” if there is no absolute good? What purpose, for example, could disciplining children serve if there is no ultimate purpose? Presumably, when we put effort into rearing children, we are trying to get them to turn out one way rather than another. Why put any effort into child-rearing if all maturity outcomes are equivalently pointless?

Many seek the ultimate purpose of life in the hope of gaining meaningful fulfillment. Perhaps if we knew what the point of our life was we would feel whole, could sally forth, fulfill our destiny, and live life with high spirits and high morale. Perhaps that is the purpose of seeking the ultimate purpose.

And yet… if we seek an ultimate purpose of life in order to attain a sense of meaningful fulfillment and completion, then clearly not all purposes are equal. What if we discovered that the ultimate purpose of life was to sit alone in a dank cave fishing worms out of bat excrement while drinking our own urine? Would that bring fulfillment, comfort or joy? Furthermore, if you knew that an honest inquiry into the ultimate purpose of life would lead to this conclusion, would you still inquire, or would you cease your inquiry forthwith …or, perhaps, try to delude yourself into thinking that life’s true purpose was something more enjoyable and comfortable?

This blog article will not reveal the ultimate purpose of life. However, if the reason we seek the ultimate purpose is to find fulfillment, a sense of meaningfulness and contented satisfaction in what we do, then perhaps a more important question is:

“How do we obtain a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment from our actions in life?”

And, indeed, perhaps the main point of raising and educating children in a particular way should be to enable them to gain satisfaction and fulfillment from what they do in later life.

So how can we attain a sense of satisfaction from what we do?

Let’s make it simple:

The ultimate purpose of the brain is to generate action.

To act effectively on a system you must know:

  • The initial conditions of the system
  • The relationship of cause to effect that governs the system
  • The final desired state you want the system to adopt

 

Science deals with 1) and 2)

 

But without an answer to 3) people feel lost and incapable of meaningfully applying their knowledge gleaned from studying 1) and 2).

One answer to 3) is: “Whatever floats your boat.”

Unfortunately, the pursuit of our own personal, somewhat arbitrary objectives can interfere with other people’s incompatible objectives and annoy (even enrage) them.

This is our great dilemma: how to meaningfully pursue our own objectives without treading on the toes of others too much and to help them instead?

Humanity is, at its core, a social species. Our minds balance self-interest with concern for others. When we seek meaning through our actions, we seek this balance: to protect our own well-being while helping others. Actions that achieve both – feel meaningful.

Yet this correct balance is the essence of morality. We cannot categorically state that life’s objective purpose is to live successfully and morally, but a successful and moral life does at least feel both meaningful and satisfying to those who live it. And while it may be impossible to objectively determine the ultimate purpose of life, objectively optimal strategies for balancing different people’s wills do exist ( which The Philosophical Method thoroughly derives) and the norms implied by this optimal strategy form the fundamental basis of morality.

I posit that scientific norms imply further norms concerning how we should live our daily lives in accordance with an optimal social contract.

A society which follows the path of objective morality will thrive and meet the needs of its members, keep conflicts at tolerably low levels, and achieve a sufficiently broad consensus over right and wrong, to ensure righteous people get due recognition.

Once we can live successfully and righteously, properly balancing our needs with others, we will satisfy our need for purpose. Indeed, the one of the primary benefits of reading philosophy is the acquisition of working principles to make good decisions in life and establish good relations with others.

Not because our lives will have an objective, ultimate purpose, but rather because we will realise that life never needed an ultimate purpose in the first place, and that our pursuit of “purpose” was simply the pursuit of a mode of living and action that:

  • Gains the goodwill and respect of others
  • Addresses our own needs and desires
  • Will not doom us in the long run

Our “pursuit of purpose” is simply the pursuit of this optimal mode of living.

Rationality is the optimal coupling of action to intention.

Morality is the optimal coupling of collective action to collective intention.

An irrational person is someone whose intentions are not self-consistent. As he pursues one interest, he undermines another. Without carefully thinking about all his different wants and whether they can consistently be accomplished together, he cannot avoid undermining himself at every turn. This leads to a miserable life.

An immoral society is one where the intentions of each member are inconsistent with the others. In such society, people constantly work to undermine each other. No one’s aspirations are safe. What one person builds and values, others will sabotage and destroy. An immoral society is thus a collectively miserable society.

But those who can live a rational and moral life inside a moral society are fortunate indeed and have no need for any objective purpose beyond this.

So perhaps the answer to the question: “Is there an ultimate purpose of life?”

Is: “Strictly speaking, no, but it doesn’t matter as we can gain satisfaction from seeking an optimal and just life – which we can use reason to identify.”

 

John

 

Do You Have a Burning Desire To Make a Comment?

 

Have you found this article thought provoking? Is there some message you desperately want to communicate to future readers but can’t because my comment section automatically closes 28 days after my posts go live?

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John

Why Bother Reading Philosophy?

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What Is The Ultimate Benefit of Reading Philosophy?

We all want to feel proud of ourselves. To gain a sense of ultimate purpose. To feel we are living a good life the right way and, perhaps, through living well, find some way to answer that niggling question: “Why Bother?” To act morally, and with conviction, is to gain a sense of purpose, self-respect and fulfillment.

Many people just chug along in life. They make ends meet, but often don’t know why they should even bother doing what are doing. They exist but are unengaged. A lack of engagement, or sense of purpose, can have knock-on effects that damage us in very practical ways. When we don’t engage with life ourselves, we fail to engage others; we become uninteresting and people start to drift away. To compensate, we try to acquire expensive, interesting things and experiences, desperately hoping to draw people to our possessions in place of our character. The result is over-spending, debt, excess work and stress. This juggling of debt, lack of direction and precarious, eroding relationships leads to stress, demoralization, absentmindedness and tunnel vision which all press in on us and drain our will. We resort to comfort foods, drugs and alcohol with less time for exercise and sleep. A combination of poor physical health along with mental and financial stress can devastate our mental well-being.

While immediate practical problems usually have immediate practical causes (e.g. he had a breakdown due to financial stress, drug abuse and marital troubles) when we dig a little deeper down to the roots of these causes, (Why was he taking drugs in the first place? Why didn’t he manage his money better? – he was paid enough, why didn’t he spend less? Why was he having marital problems? etc.,) we find the origins of many a downward spiral start somewhere far less tangible: an inexplicable inner sense of purposelessness, a lack of value, a sense, which is hard to articulate, that there is no ultimate purpose, that things aren’t adding up… aren’t coming together.

At the core of this feeling is a constant, nagging doubt over the quality of our actions and decisions. At the heart of decisions are rules of thumb, maxims and habits. Many are unconscious, but together they form a kind of “life philosophy” that defines our actions and character. Quite often these implicit underlying assumptions, that give rise to our decisions and actions, are in conflict with one another; acting in accordance with one conviction thwarts another. When our various unarticulated drives, values and motivations become sufficiently tangled up and contradictory, confusion and self-doubt and lack of purpose inevitably arise.

We want to believe that our actions are right; that what we do has value. Yet how can we do what is right, how can our actions bring value, unless we know what “right” or “value” means? Or why we bother doing anything? Without this knowledge, an inner sense of pointlessness is unavoidable.

Hopefully it is now clear that understanding the nature of right and wrong, and acting with conviction in accordance with right principles, is central to a sense of well-being, ultimate purpose and to a life well lived. On gaining that spark of purpose and fulfillment, an inner light ignites, we know why to bother about things and it becomes much easier to reign in spending, take control of our finances, connect with others, and improve how we relate to people, our health and our lives at every level.

So how can we gain that sense of inner purpose?

How can we gain that inner conviction that helps make sense of our lives?

Some people pursue religion. Arguably just believing that something is purposeful raises our morale, even if it’s actually pointless, and, for some people, participating in organized religion can improve their sense of well-being, physical health and social life…

…but if you find religion and spirituality a bit waffly, but still seek to understand what is truly right and gain a sense of purpose…

…then you need to start reading Philosophy!

Philosophy, at its core, is the examination and improvement of the set of principles we use to make decisions. One of the benefits of reading philosophy is that it leads to better decisions, and better decisions lead to better outcomes – across the board!

But know that the path to enlightenment can be difficult and arduous.

Religion supplies answers to all of life’s important questions.

Philosophy supplies the right answers to all of life’s important questions.

Philosophy is harder than religion because it is harder to obtain the right answer to an important question as opposed to any old answer (right or wrong). But the ultimate rewards for those who possess an active, questioning and rational mind are greater.

A major limitation with academic enquiry in the sciences, the humanities, and even in philosophy itself is specialization: the slicing and dicing of reality into ever narrower fields and sub-fields, disciplines and sub-disciplines. When we study the sub-discipline of a sub-discipline, it’s easy to lose sight of the wider scheme.

True Philosophy seeks to understand and piece together the totality of existence. It is only by engaging with reality at the broadest level that a path towards meaningful, fulfilling action and a sense of ultimate purpose can truly be obtained.

Another benefit of reading philosophy is to facilitate meaningful discussions. By discussing issues at the broadest level, a broader understanding of – and deeper connection with – those who join us in philosophical discourse can be developed.

Throughout my life, I’ve striven to devote my intellectual energies to the great problems that humanity faces. I’ve researched magnetically confined fusion plasmas for the first 10 years of my career, to bring plentiful energy to everyone without burning fossil fuels. However, as time progressed, I increasingly perceived the lack of coherence between the different academic disciplines – especially between ethical theories, fundamental truth, and political and economic systems – as the gravest problem that was not being satisfactorily addressed. Eventually I turned my attention to the mammoth task of synthesizing science, ethics, economics and politics – in other words, every important aspect of human thought – into a grand coherent narrative, a logical framework that would help orient and inspire readers, but, most importantly, provide a clear path of action into the future to solve pressing problems such as poverty, war, rights and freedom. This project was the driving force behind what ultimately became The Philosophical Method.

Self-help starts with helping others. Many financial problems arise simply because a costly activity has become someone’s driving motivation. The adoption of less costly habits and hobbies can dramatically improve your financial security. The trick here is to redirect your passions. Social disconnection can often be solved through finding a source of inner motivation, pursuing it with fervour, and connecting with like-minded groups and communities. Participation in these communities can also help you develop a professional network or even find the right romantic partner. Reading philosophy can help you to initial orient yourself. This enables you to take the first step towards pursuing a healthy passion that will allow you to grow as a human being.

But it all starts with finding your inner spark, a driving force that tells you why to bother and motivates you to push forward and take on the world, enabling you to act with a confidence and conviction that inspires others to join your quest.

I hope that by reading philosophy books like The Philosophical Method some people, especially rational analytical types, will find a way to ignite that inner spark and become a powerful force for good in this world. I believe my experience working in research institutions and engineering companies, my discussions with top plasma physicists, engineers, economists and philosophers and my wide-ranging interests in philosophy, biology, physics, technology, economics, history and politics have enabled me to produce a uniquely pragmatic work of philosophy that “plugs in” to the rest of human thought and into the real world.

So why bother reading philosophy?

Because bothering is the first step you need to take to gain that inner sense of direction and motivation.

Because bothering, and caring about the truth, could be your first step towards a better life.

 

John

 

Do You Have A Burning Desire To Leave A Comment?

 

Have you found this article thought provoking? Is there some message you desperately want to communicate to future readers but can’t because my comment section automatically closes 28 days after my posts go live?

If so, you might be interested to know that I reopen any comments section to members of my mailing on request as one of the perks of joining.

If you’d like to leave a comment, simply scroll to the bottom of the page, sign on to my mailing list and them email me with a request to reopen the comments section for this post.

Happy Commenting!

John