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It is good a for pretty simple reason. If you don't have freedom then there's a possibility that you won't have the option of doing the right thing. If you have freedom then you always have the option of doing the right thing.
That logic can work both ways. If you don't have freedom, and the control factor is good, than there isn't a possibility that you can do the wrong thing. Freedom could be said to be bad exactly because the wrong option is available.
I don't think morality is so black and white that you can put actions into boxes and say that these are good and those are bad. Trying to enforce morals is wrong from the start off.
Then there's the trouble of being submitted to an unjust authority. In such a situation lack of freedom will only worsen the problem.
I take freedom to mean the possibility as doing as one chooses. In the start I said that morals aren't black and white - I do believe that - but there's still some actions that are predominantly bad, say killing people. We obviously have to restrict freedom to the extent that people won't do these predominantly bad things, but no further. Freedom is worth too much to be restricted excessively.
Very good question, and if we try to answer it in the wrong terms, it is essentially impossible to answer given my premises . The way I see it, an unjust authority is an authority that is not in tune with the reality of things.
Firstly, that is an authority that has no respect for the principle that things aren't black and white.
Secondly, it's an authority that tends to decrease living things right to prosper and to happiness - disturbs the natural order of things instead of maintaining it.
Both is needed to establish that an authority is unjust. While the first one is rather trivial to prove, the second one is basically impossible. This is exactly because nothing is black white. Good and bad doesn't really exist as much as rational and irrational decisions does. There's always things we would deem good and bad in a situation, and in every good and bad aspect of situation there's further implications and consequences - all of which are either 'good' and 'bad'. We can't ever conclude that an authority is good in terms of which morale prescriptions it makes, because every situation is unique, and what is rational in one situation is irrational in another.
Essentially, it's impossible for a third party to conclude which course of action is the right one. We have to take every situation for what it is instead of simplifying it so we can put it into neat little boxes made by a government. We need to judge our course of action in a wholesome view of reality, no through prejudicial, mechanical simplification. Day to day decisions can't be made by governments, it can only be made by individual people and their communities. People will never be able to lay back and just do what authority says.
Sure they can give "rules" which are meant not to be broken, but every now and then there will be times when it would be rational to break them. It appears to me that the only way an authority can avoid falling into the second criteria of injustice would be if it tries to educate it's population. An authority needs to educate it's population to have a wholesome view of life and a wholesome view of their decisions. An authority is unjust if it influences people into making irrational, uneducated, unwholesome decisions. An authority is just if it educates people into living harmonious, rational lives. It's not about making people into machines, it's about making people deeply aware of their connection to their surroundings.
Essentially, it's impossible for a third party to conclude which course of action is the right one.
Now we get to the crux of the matter. By right action I assume you mean rational action. What we are finding is that it is similarly impossible for the acting party to make rational decisions. I posted about this on the other side of the debate at the top.
While it is true that rationality requires context for specific occasions, context is not required for forcing a rational broad direction.
An authority is unjust if it influences people into making irrational, uneducated, unwholesome decisions.
Can it then be said to be just if it forces or influences people into making rational, educated, wholesome decisions?
Can it then be said to be just if it forces or influences people into making rational, educated, wholesome decisions?
That's the beauty of it. You can't force people to do these things, it has to come from the individuals own willingness.
What we are finding is that it is similarly impossible for the acting party to make rational decisions.
It's impossible in the same sense that reaching the speed of light is impossible. The closer you get to the truth of a situation the harder it is to progress. The difference lies in the fact that the authority practically wouldn't be able to know as much as the individuals who has an immidiate connection to the situation.
context is not required for forcing a rational broad direction.
I think you are right. An authority could say that it would be a good idea to move in this or that direction, but they mustn't force a population to participate. Goals can only be achieved if it comes from the populations own capacity to see that the goal is desirable. For instance a government could propose that we need to work together towards terraforming Mars, stopping pollution or stopping war. People would do this if they could see that it would be the right thing to do.
It's impossible in the same sense that reaching the speed of light is impossible. The closer you get to the truth of a situation the harder it is to progress.
People are systematically irrational about specific things.This is different than the light analogy.
You can't force people to do these things, it has to come from the individuals own willingness.
North Korea forces irrational behavior. Why couldn't the same mechanism force the opposite?
An authority could say that it would be a good idea to move in this or that direction, but they mustn't force a population to participate.
Your argument became circular. You're saying that the authority mustn't force, because you believe that freedom is good, but I'm not convinced.
If the broad goal is rational and moral, but people won't go freely, than freedom can't be said to be good. At least not when a better goal is reached through force.
What I am referring to here is that everything is connected to everything else. We are all different parts of the same massively chaotic system. To arrive at the truth of a situation is impossible because we would have to know everything about everything within our system. It's not entirely like the light analogy, but I do believe we, as human beings, will reach a point where we simply can't hold more information. It's true that people are systematically irrational about specific things, and that is part of the problem. The solution is to know that our ideas and concepts about the world are essentially misleading, though practical at times, they can't take us far enough.
Why couldn't the same mechanism force the opposite?
We can teach people to be systematically biased, yes. You could even say that almost all educational systems do this: We teach people to utilize certain concepts to get some kind of grip of reality. For instance we could teach children that the Standard Model of Particle Physics describes the foundation of the world, and therefore, the Standard Model is the world. But these are just concepts, inherently derived from intersubjective validation. To say that the Standard Model is the world would be to favor the map instead of the territory. The territory is so vastly complicated that so far, no one has even been near in describing it in completeness. You can guide people there, but you can't force them to see it. It's said that you can guide a horse to a pool of water, but you can't force it to drink. It's the same thing. Our problem is that we need to see the territory, not the map. You can guide people there, but you can't force them to see it. You can't teach people to see the world and its scenarios for what it is, it has to come from their own willingness to open their eyes.
If the broad goal is rational and moral, but people won't go freely,
There's truth to what you are saying here. Let's consider a scenario where the broad goal is rational and moral, and the people won't follow. My first question would be "who says so?". Who believes it's a rational and moral goal? Probably the authority, right? So okay, from the perspective of the authority some goal is rational and moral because it is rational and moral in the long term. Why doesn't the population want to go freely? Well, probably because there's a lot of internal problems within the country, like because the economy simply didn't have to capacity for the project, or because there's other pressing matters. There could a be number of reasons, and many of them would probably be on such a small scale that the authority wouldn't have any capacity to solve them. Now the people probably knows more about their own problems then the government does, and wouldn't it be wrong to simply reject the importance of these problems in favor of some 'higher goal'? The people knows when it is ready to achieve broad goals, so why not respect this intelligence? We shouldn't strive to achieve goals, we should let it come out of an effortless pursuit of peace.
OK Nepeling, I'm ducking out. This was meant to be a "devils advocate" exercise. I would have expected more people to argue on behalf of freedom. I commend your efforts.
My personal view is similar to yours. Man is not entirely rational, but that does not mean that another man can make a more rational decision. Lacking context, another person is likely to make a worse decision on your behalf. The various ways that humans are systematically irrational are laid out in books for the benefit of those who wish to overcome their own irrational bias.
Rationality can't be overcome through force since force, in this context, is itself irrational. As evidence one can note that the freer a people have been the more successful they have been historically.
Removing freedom lowers the amount of brain power in operation in a society. While not all brains are equal, more is still better than less when it concerns a society. This explains the immense innovation and productivity of the US in the past as well as its decline today.
Ones own brain is better than another when it concerns a personal choice. While the this statement may not hold for every situation, it is true for most situations.
Anarchism? I posted some debates about it. I'm against it. I think it is over-simplistic and idealist. I think it negates a lot of facts of life.
I also think that it holds freedom as the fundamental good and foundation for its position, which I think is an error. That's part of the reason I created this debate.
In holding freedom as the good, without a deeper foundation for why freedom is good, Anarchy would achieve the opposite of freedom. With anarchy I see a thousand small dictators, not a cooperative utopia.
While context must be considered, there are some things that are right, regardless of whom we are talking about.
Does the janitor working at apple have the freedom to object to the ceo?
Does a priest have the freedom to oppose the pope ?
Does a private in the army have the freedom to oppose the commanding general?
The janitor and the priest have the freedom to quit. Then they can oppose or object all they want. The private signed a contract with the understanding that he could not oppose lawful orders. The military is a totalitarian society, so freedom is restricted.
Freedom isn't the ability to act, it is the absence of coercion to act.
Freedom is the absence of coercion or constraint in choice or action.
It's a bad thing because people are not rational actors, as psychology, sociology, and behavioral economics are discovering more and more. Individuals systematically act in predictably irrational ways.
This means that freedom to choose for ones self is freedom to be systematically wrong. Freedom of choice is freedom to be stupid.
Through careful analysis and study, removing irrational bias, we can discover the right course of action on a broad level.
Removing freedom would allow the proper course of action to be forced.
The fact that forced virtues are not true virtues is irrelevant. The important thing is that the virtue is expressed, whether by force or by choice. It is unlikely to be expressed by choice.
The problem with your argument is that who will decide for us? People. Humans in power have a tendency, in fact a natural tendency to oppress others. I agree, we aren't perfect, but look at every government that is totalitarian. They all claim to do it for the people's own good. Cuba, China in the 40s, Russia in the 50s, Germany in the 30s. How was life in those regimes? I don't know about you, but I'll take freedom and stupidity over tyranny and death any day of the week and twice on Sundays.