In certain pious people I have found a hatred of reason, [...] But to stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors [the concord of things through discord] and all the marvellous uncertainty and ambiguity of existence, and not to question, not to tremble with desire and delight in questioning, not even to hate the questioner–perhaps even to make merry over him to the extent of weariness–that is what I regard as contemptible[...] The Gay Science, Aph 2.

I am glad to get that off my chest.

AC1

Here are a few general ideas, they might want to consider to actually get back on track:

• Military forces should be used as the last resort. The democratic route should be preferred. The rhetoric states this is policy, but clearly it isn’t.
• Don’t perform military actions in other countries or kidnap people across boarders (“rendition”) – this undermines the rule of law. Drone bombings are extra-judicial killings. (US 14th Amendment – due process and all that)
• Highlight human rights abuses then they are conducted by our “allies” (Saudi Arabia, Israel, Russia, Pakistan) and not just by our “enemies” (Cuba, Iran, China). (Remember when Canada listed the US as a country that practices torture? The truth hurts.)
• Replace military forces in occupied countries, particularly if against the popular will, (Iraq, Afghanistan, Tibet) with a UN force or withdraw completely.
• Stop support (military, economic, diplomatic) to countries that occupy territory by force or use disproportionate force (Israel by US, North Korea by China)
• Prosecute people who order or perform torture. (This applies to all countries, and it is where Obama’s credibility evaporated from my perspective.)
• Encourage resolution of occupied territories – this could be achieved in Palestine by the US if they had the will. (See the US record on UN resolutions with respect to Israel)
• Pay reparations to countries that you messed up with military action, supporting coups, etc. (Most colonial powers and the US would have a long list of candidates here.)
• Don’t use collective punishment on countries using sanctions or military action (did someone say “war crime”?). (US on Cuba, US on Iran, US on just about everyone, Israel on Palestine.) This is taken to an extreme when countries elect the “wrong” government and are punished in consequence. Don’t ignore governments with popular support just because they are distasteful. (Hamas)
• Prisoners are to have fair trials in civilian courts or the Geneva Conventions apply. Also the UDHR applies. In all cases, coercion should not be used.
• Ban nukes.
• In short, cut the double think and hypocrisy.

Oddly, most of these are already law or have been discussed many times at the UN. Unfortunately very little will be done until other issues are resolved: dependence on oil, the influence of businesses on politics and reduction of propaganda. I also read Media Control, which is more of an introduction to all of the above. It is very short – more pamphlet length than book length and not hard to read (in fact a bit too light compared to his other works).

Anti Citizen One

PS Chomsky always gets me in the mood for Rage Against the Machine: “I am the Nina, The Pinta, The Santa Maria”!

An article on the BBC outlines the Jewish school situation: can a convert to the religion attend an orthodox school that insists on Jewish decent on the mother’s side? Is this a case of freedom or of racial discrimination?

Other faith schools may be affected by the presidence in the above case. For example can a Catholic school insist on church attendance for admission? I am interested by the possibility that non-attendance might make a person more Christian based on the writings of Blake, Kierkegaard, etc. I was trying to recall the basis for church going on the Bible (within the New Testament) and I could not recall any; until I remembered I only have passing familiarity with the gospels and hardly anything in acts, etc. There does seem to be a contrast in institutional religion between the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. Every instance of Jesus going to the Temple seems to highlight the gulf between what he stood for and what organised religion represents… Not to mention: “Beware of the scribes, which desire to walk in long robes, and love greetings in the markets, and the highest seats in the synagogues, and the chief rooms at feasts[...]” Luke 20:46

I was on a bit of a rant there after C S Lewis’s pro-institutional views….

Anti Citizen One

“I would almost feel… it is unpatriotic because he is talking in foreign media and not representing, in my view, the views of the vast majority of British people and actually, I think giving an unfair impression of the National Health Service himself, a British representative on foreign media.” Andy Burnham

Now, I find it odd that he presumes that politicians may not to talk to journalists that are from beyond the UK and also that politicians may not disagree with public opinion. And to voice disagreement with public opinion is “unpatriotic”? Very worrying signs… (hello, thought police…) Perhaps it would be better for Andy Burnham to stick to the topic of discussion without resorting to name calling.

A second case concerns David Miliband and his comments on Joe Slovo, a South African anti-apartheid activist. When asked if violence (or “terrorism” in the parlance of our time) could be justified in some circumstances:

Presenter Matthew Parris asked Mr Miliband: “Are there circumstances in which violent reaction, terrorism, is the right response?”

Mr Miliband said: “That’s such a hard question, ‘right’ has to be judged in two ways doesn’t it? Whether it’s justifiable and whether it’s effective.

“I think I’m right in saying that one of the ways in which the ANC tried to square the circle between being a movement of political change and a movement which used violence, was to target installations rather than people.

“The most famous ANC military attack was on the Sasol oil refinery in 1980. That was perceived to be remarkable blow at the heart of the South African regime.

“But I think the answer has to be yes – there are circumstances in which it is justifiable, and yes, there are circumstances in which it is effective – but it is never effective on its own.”

He went on: “The importance for me is that the South African example proved something remarkable: the apartheid regime looked like a regime that would last forever, and it was blown down.” BBC

He has come under fire from various sources, including William Hague, for apparently condoning terrorism generally. This is an instance of the slippery slope argument (and an appeal to consequences). But “violence is necessary in some circumstances” is as true as any other statement I care to think of. History of all peoples and places are full of illustrations that this is the case. To claim otherwise requires a total lack of the historical sense and gross double standards.

For example, Churchill planned civilian and military suicide attacks in case of invasion of the UK (Their finest hour, Winston Churchill, p149). Another case is the firebombing of Dresden and the use of atomic weapons against mainly civilian targets. Also the French resistance to Nazi occupation using sabotage and assassination. Attacks are called “terrorists” by one side and “martyr”, “liberation” or “freedom” fighters by the other. Chomsky and others questioned if states are capable of terrorism? Or even is there an agreed definition of terrorism? No, often there is not, because this would implicate many military operations/actions as state terror. (And “operation” is another case of “words as weapons” – implying they are competently and justifiably applied.)

Anti Citizen One

Axioms:
The existence of the concepts of good and evil are accepted by most people.
Humans act in an altruistic manner.
Human altruistic behaviour and the concept of good has not been explained.

‘The argument that most caught my attention, and most rocked my ideas about science and spirit down to their foundations, was right there in the title of Book One: “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe.” [...] Disagreements are part of daily life. [...] each party attempts to appeal to an unstated higher standard. This standard is the Moral Law. [...] Virtually never does the respondent say, “To hell with your concept of right behaviour.” What we have here is very peculiar: the concept of right and wrong appears to be universal among all members of the human species[...]‘

Arguments:
The concept of “good” is analogous to a house that has been designed an architect. The concept of “good” must also have a creator, which is God.
The altruistic actions are analogous to a house that has been designed an architect. The concept of “good” must also have a creator, which is God.

If the Law of Human Nature cannot be explained away as cultural artifact or evolutionary by-product, then how can we account for its presence? There is truly something going on here. Francis Collins

If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe – no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves. Surely this ought to arouse our suspicious? C S Lewis

Axioms: The argument relies on the axiom that the concept of good is universal. Unfortunately for this argument, counter examples exist – just look at existential philosophy. If we still use a weakened form of the argument, “most people believe in good”, we end up with an imperfectly universal “Moral Law” and therefore an imperfect designer. If we argue, “those existentialists are just deluding themselves”, the reverse argument is also allowable “the majority of people are deluded about Moral Law”. I don’t think this could be clearer:

My demand of the philosopher is well known: that he take his stand beyond good and evil and treat the illusion of moral judgement as beneath him. This demand follows from an insight that I was the first to articulate: that there are no moral facts. Twilight of the Idols, FN

So much for the universal concept of Moral Law. If only Nietzsche’s demand was more well known…

The other axiom is that people act in an altruistic way. Collins defines altruism as “the truly selfless giving of oneself to others with absolutely no secondary motives”. He cites Oskar Schindler and Mother Teresa as examples. Well I can think of one motivation: religion (they were both Catholic). Also, these individuals decided “they know best” in how to help people in distress. This generalising of a personal morality on to other cases generally seems very selfish to me!

Update: I should distinguish that the belief in a God (irrespective of the validity of belief) is a sufficient explanation in these cases. The existence of God is what Collins uses as the explanation of altruism.

But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Luke 6:35 (my emphasis)

He wishes to succour, and does not reflect that there is a personal necessity for misfortune; that terror, want, impoverishment, midnight watches, adventures, hazards and mistakes are as necessary to me and to you as their opposites, yea, that, to speak mystically, the path to one’s own heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one’s own hell. No, he knows nothing thereof. Gay Science Aph 338, FN

Argument from analogy: this is an unsure method of argument more suited to rhetorics. If the cases that are compared are not equal, the analogy does not necessarily hold. We must be particularly careful if we are comparing something like a house to something like “the concept of good”. On what grounds are we to compare “the concept of good” to any physical object, without invoking the characteristic of “design” which would be merely begging the question in that assumes a designer? This great quote from Hume rebuts comparison between the universe and a house but it might be equally applied to comparing a morality and a house.

…the subject in which you are engaged exceeds all human reason and enquiry. Can you pretend to shew any such similarity between the fabric of a house, and the generation of a universe? Have you ever seen nature in any such situation as resembles the first arrangement of the elements? Have worlds ever been formed under your eye; and have you had leisure to observe the whole progress of the phenomenon, from the first appearance of order to its final consummation? If you have, then cite your experience, and deliver your theory. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume

Argument from ignorance: In some ways, this argument should have been stated first since it is a simple logically flaw and not easily rebutted. If we don’t know where the concept “good” comes from, we can’t form any conclusion based on what we don’t know. If we allowed this, he might become religious based on an argument from ignorance but when an explanation emerges, is he compelled to renounce God? That would be absurd. This has been discussed many times before as “God of the gaps”.

Since this is an argument from ignorance, I could explain the concept of “good” being caused by extra-terrestrial alien interference. Although I don’t believe that theory, the flimsy supporting evidence is better than Collins’s no evidence whatever (in the context of this argument from ignorance).

Infinite regress: If there is evidence of an “architect”, what created the architect? The architect’s designer presumably. And who created that? And so on. I really can’t be bothered to flesh this out since this objection has been known for hundreds of years.

Some points that I found while flipping though the book:

“This principle [Occham's razor] suggests that the simplest explanation for any given probelms is usually best. Occam’s Razor appears to have been relegated to the Dumpster by the bizarre models of quantum physics.”

This is a straw man of Occam’s razor. Does it only say the “simplest” argument is best? No. It doesn’t. And for a practicing scientist to claim this makes me worry. (If this really is Occam’s razor, the best theory would be “the universe is random, any pattern is a coincidence” and we can stop research since we have the “best” theory.)

“If God is outside of nature, then science can neither prove nor disprove His existence. If God is outside of nature, then science can neither prove nor disprove His existence. Atheism itself must therefore be considered a form of blind faith.”

Nice ad hominem tu quoque. But it is easy to restate this argument to say “religion can neither prove nor disprove his existence” and therefore it is “blind faith”. This refutes his own argument from evidence in one fell swoop. On the other hand, if God is “inside the universe”, science or atheists can comment on God’s existence. Oddly Collins seems to alternate between God being “outside the universe” and yet occasionally intervening in human affairs. Is he a deist or theist? From this quote, I don’t think he knows himself.

An alternative analysis I suggest is that “good” is a product of language to express social norms. Social and community norms exist in humans and other animals. Of the animals, we have the most complicated language – if we use a broad definition of “language”. The short cut to refer to community norms in language is what created the concept “good”. Not a big deal – and certainly no proof of God. My suggestion to Francis Collins: get a copy of Hume’s “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” and read it (again, if applicable). I would have liked to have read his ideas on coexistence of science and religion but his first few chapters were so incoherence so I stopped and I don’t think I missed much by not reading on. But apparently he rejects creationism and ID. Perhaps scientists should say away from philosophy? (note to self…)

Anti Citizen One

PS I have less of a beef with religious people who don’t claim rational justification for God. This post obviously does not apply to you.

In a more philosophical sense, these reforms can avoid the concept of “natural rights” by considering they are “rights of the state” over the individual that must be abolished.

* Scrap ID cards for everyone, including foreign nationals.
* Ensure that there are no restrictions in the right to trial by jury for serious offences including fraud.
* Restore the right to protest in Parliament Square, at the heart of our democracy.
* Abolish the flawed control orders regime.
* Renegotiate the unfair extradition treaty with the United States.
* Restore the right to public assembly for more than two people.
* Scrap the ContactPoint database of all children in Britain.
* Strengthen freedom of information by giving greater powers to the Information Commissioner and reducing exemptions.
* Stop criminalising trespass.
* Restore the public interest defence for whistleblowers.
* Prevent allegations of ‘bad character’ from being used in court.
* Restore the right to silence when accused in court.
* Prevent bailiffs from using force.
* Restrict the use of surveillance powers to the investigation of serious crimes and stop councils snooping.
* Restore the principle of double jeopardy in UK law.
* Remove innocent people from the DNA database.
* Reduce the maximum period of pre-charge detention to 14 days.
* Scrap the ministerial veto which allowed the Government to block the release of Cabinet minutes relating to the Iraq war.
* Require explicit parental consent for biometric information to be taken from children.
* Regulate CCTV following a Royal Commission on cameras. Lib Dems

Basically a work of genius But the existing powers that be are likely to resist this attempt to moderate their influence…

Anti Citizen One

1. The Koran contains statements that call for the spread of Islam and unbelievers to be killed.
2. Act of violence are justified and inspired by the Koran (this is implied visually but not stated literally)
3. Islam wants to impose its views on us [liberal Westerners]
4. Being under threat, we must respond by defeating this ideology (as done to Communism)
5. Muslims should renounce passages that call for violence.

Ban Ki Moon condemned the film for itself being extremist.

I want to add some observations that were not in the film.

• The Koran has statements that non-believers should not be harmed.
• Not all Muslims want to impose their beliefs on others. (On the other hand, extremists would say “then they are not Muslim” but anyway) See also 2:256, 18:29, 109:6
• Getting inspiration towards violence from a holy book depends on the supply of the book, being told to read it and to take it seriously – and also to take a particular pro-violent interpretation. All this takes human influence. To say that words on a page are wholly responsible for violence is an over simplification.
• Just because liberal views are “under threat”, it does not mean we should label the view as “evil” or attempt to defeat it. To do so is the antithesis of liberalism! As long as pressure comes from preaching and political action, why should a liberal society resist? Unless we don’t think liberalism can survive without being hypocritical? (Which is a possibility.)
• Apparently some (most?) Muslim scholars do call for sections of the Koran to be interpreted and not to be taken literally.

When Geert Wilders attempted to travel to the UK to show his film, we was denied entry as he was deemed a “public safety threat”. I’ll tell you what is a public safety thread: a government who censors a descenting voice. If Wilders called for violence (he didn’t – I think?), he would be a loose canon – but it is the protests from hysterical people who feel themselves “offended” that are the threat to public safetly (even if there is a threat at all). The ironic thing is I probably would not have bothered watching this rather superficial film if they had not blocked his visit!

Anti Citizen One

PS There is an excellent audio episode of The Moral Maze concerning the origin of morality. (Titled poorly as “moral relativism”). Also, congratulations to them on the 500th episode broadcasted!

As the debate wore on it became obvious that on most points I was possessed by the spirit of reason. The supporters of monarchy in general could only make appeals to tradition whereas mostly my arguments were based on sound pragmatic opinion.

Then they wheeled out what they consider their strongest argument. Namely “The Royals bring in so much money” i.e. through tourism and as industrial and trade ambassadors.

It is a fairly good argument. Why? Because it sounds empirical – rather than being an appeal to tradition this is an argument based on pragmatic concerns.

There is one problem – basically it is what Wittgenstein would call nonsense. The sentence or proposition though constructed in a way that is similar to an empirical proposition, a proposition about a definite state of affairs, is in fact a clever charade – and according to ‘logical’ rules is a non-argument.

The proposition reads: we must not abolish the monarchy as they provide substantial income for the nation through tourism and trade and industry ambassadorships.

The objection reads: Can you verify this – and is this open to falsification?

The conclusion is: technically one could only hope to measure the “value” of the monarchy by its abolition and subsequent measuring of financial effects.

Naturally no monarchist is going to vote for its abolition – so the argument is null.

The moral of the story – be careful of making psuedo-empirical propositions. When the falsity of their factual basis is uncovered you may find the validity* of your viewpoint eroding away rapidly.

* Validity depends on the language game being played. Just as Anselm famously said “God is a special case” one may choose to argue that psuedo-empirical propositions are in certain language games still valuable and valid as rhetorical tools.

Because at the end of the day science does not rely on the rationality of a scientist. It relies on the cumulative and self-correcting rationality of the scientific community.

[...]science is such a superior method of extracting information about the world around us[...]

[...]the power of science arises from the intersection of the communal wisdom of tens of thousands of individuals over decades with the nature of the subject at hand. Gene Expression blog

The author implies that no individual scientist is capable of really doing science in isolation.

Granted, there are individual geniuses of great brilliance such as the great Isaac Newton, but the outcomes of his dabbling in alchemy and scriptural hermeneutics should go to illustrate that cognition applied to a fool’s errand only results in glorious foolery.

I picture this as an infinite amount of research monkeys almost randomly striking keys on type writers and the gate keeper of science, the community, allows anything that happens to be scientific. As Newton said, possibly with sarcasm, “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”.

Peer review and the scientific community is not what distinguishes science from other areas of knowledge. After all history community decides what is good history knowledge, theology community decides what is good theological knowledge and the law community decides what is good law knowledge. Since they have similar process for publication and dissemination of knowledge, why are they not also “a superior method of extracting information about the world”?

What distinguishes science from other fields of knowledge is empiricism. Production of scientific knowledge occurs when we use our personal experience about the world to form predictive theories and we attempt to verify them. When Galileo looked through a telescope and saw dots circling Jupiter and him realizing they were moons was a scientific achievement. Since there was no community, it is clearly false to say the community is necessary to progress science.

Referring to the scientific community as this monolithic truth machine is not helpful considering that good science is decided by a very small subsection of the community who have the relevant background knowledge to review cutting edge research. In some fields, everyone knows the other researchers by name. I will admit that science has progressed more quickly because collaboration and teamwork is more efficient than solo working. But teamwork it is not necessary for science to occur.

Anti Citizen One

Everything that philosophers handled over the past thousands of years turned into concept mummies; nothing real escaped their grasp alive. Whenever these venerable concept idolators revere something, they kill it and stuff it [...] (Twilight)

Another mistake of commentators is to say what the will to power isn’t – most typically in relation to the will to existence. I will try not to use this method and positively define the Will to Power. Most of the ideas are Nietzsche’s own but I am contemporized them in places.

1) The Will to Power is the force that determines good and evil. (Read in a footnote but I forget where.)

If I may assume for a moment that morality has an earthly origin, what else can we say of its source? The source by definition must be outside morality. Or more directly, the source of morality is immorality. For example if we say “it is always good to tell the truth”, we are in fact lying since we are just inventing a false objective truth.

My chief proposition: there are no moral phenomena, there is only a moral interpretation of these phenomena. This interpretation itself is of extra-moral origin. WtP 258

Personally, I am greatly influenced by the “it-ought” problem. I have not yet seen a satisfactory solution and I provisionally conclude there is no external source of ought statements. I do accept that “ought” statements are necessary. “Ought” statements provided by society may be tolerated but are not truth. I conclude that morality is completely discretionary. If course I would still suffer the consequences if I was caught breaking the law but there is no truth at work here.

Another theme in Nietzsche is the how much primitive superstition is loaded into language. Morality is not justified by language, rather language is shaped by moral judgments. A linguistic argument for morality is, by definition and by virtue of needing outside definition, not objective and therefore not truth. This foreshadows Wittgenstein’s concept of language games. The Will to Power’s voice is the language game.

Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself — he created only the significance of things, a human significance! Therefore, calleth he himself “man,” that is, the valuator. (Zarathustra, The Thousand and One Goals)

2) The Will to Power is the force that determines knowledge.

Truth is the kind of error without which a species could not survive. (WtP?)

All philosophers love to argue “logically”. Why logic? Why not rather illogical argument? That accusation we can put to all a-priori discussions. The reason for accepting logic is that it seems to be reflecting in the testimony of our senses (a posterior experience). For example, we generally don’t see things as simultaneously X and not X. Therefore any tendency to argue logically is, in fact, an acceptance of the natural world. To disprove naturalism by logic is self contradictory.

Inductive reasoning has the problem of potential over generalization. We may always discover a counter example to a given rule. As Shaw once said “The golden rule is that there are no golden rules”. But we still hold that concepts such as time, space, causality, substance, properties really exist. The ability to do this has no objective basis but we must impose a schema on sensory experience to understand it. To accept that these concepts are real, we must effectively ignore the problem with inductive reasoning – this is an exercise of the Will to Power. We assign value to sensory phenomena and call them arbitrary things: words, language, computer, screen, blog, etc. Note that none of these concepts have any reality except in our minds. But act as if they do – that is valuation.

Science cannot escape the flaw in inductive reasoning but it attempts to mitigate its effect. So called scientific “dogma” is all conditional knowledge and not objectively true – this is an acceptance of the limitation of induction. Also to use valuations of things but to be economical as possible with valuations is an interesting guideline (also known as Occam’s Razor). But since some valuation is necessary to do any science, objective truth via science is unachievable. But ignore the impossibility of the task and do it anyway – that is Will to Power. This economy of valuation causes science to find a description of reality rather than an explanation of reality. The “explanation” could only exist in our minds.

3) The Will to Power is the abstraction of all other drives e.g. Will to Existence, Will to Knowledge, Will to Virtue, Will to Wealth, Will to Political Influence, etc.

4) Will to Power is a discharge of gathered potential for action. The Will to Power is an abstraction of the source of happiness.

What is happiness? The feeling that power increases, that a resistance is overcome. (The Anti-Christ)

This means we should not seek to abolish resistance to our will since it is necessary for exercise of the will. It is therefore a freedom from ressentiment and slave morality (which states what harmful agents are “bad” and should be eliminated). (Note: happiness is not a proof of truth.)

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage; I do not account the evil and painful character of existence a reproach to it, but hope rather that it will one day be more evil and painful than hitherto— WtP 382 Emphasis mine.

5) Existentially, the Will to Power is a rejection of nihilism.

Ironically, Nihilism claims “life is meaningless” or more accurately “life should be meaningless”. That is itself a valuation of life and therefore a use of the Will to Power. The flaw in nihilism is it is a valuation of life that says there is no “true” valuation. There fore it is a self contradiction.
6) All life has the Will to Power. Throughout history, only a few individuals have ever exercised it on a grand scale.

People always get worried when there is mention of imposition of views from one charismatic leader. The comparison is always of a totalitarian leader and guilt by association. This is not logical. Let me state: “you may not impose ideas on others” is this not ITSELF an idea? And it is value imposed on modern society? This is a self contradiction!

All art and all creating is a value judgment “The world lacks X and should have X. I will create it.”

If I may talk for a moment beyond Good and Evil, we have to be more questioning of our ideals. And yes I am questioning of my tendency to be questioning!

Most influential sources of western culture: Equality (Christianity), The soul (Plato), Right to divorce (Henry VIII), Pursuit of branded goods (Marketing departments), Environmentalism (???)…

7) In some ways, the act of defining the Will to Power IS the Will to Power – since it is act of valuation.

As Brian was accused in the Life of Brian, I am also guilty: “He’s making it up as he goes along!” That is almost the point of The Will to Power. Also a bit like the Wizard of Oz himself: the will to lie to maintain so called “truth” as true. It also reminds me of the justification used by parents though the ages: “Why? Because I said so.”

The one who exercises the Will to Power is closely related to the concept of the superman.

Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self–rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea. (Zarathustra)

Anti Citizen One

PS I am half way though Nietzsche’s book called, confusingly, “The Will to Power”. I will explain why sometime later.