^ This critique of the rule of law reminds me of a uniquely intelligent libertarian friend I had and his philosophical explanation for his politics. His philosophy seemed compelling to me but I could never relate to how it's proponents seemed to want to apply it in a political arena.

I remember him saying that laws were essentially violent because they allow the state to enforce them through violent means.

I miss his perspective as a counter to my progressive bubble.

losthighway wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 7:45 am ^ This critique of the rule of law reminds me of a uniquely intelligent libertarian friend I had and his philosophical explanation for his politics. His philosophy seemed compelling to me but I could never relate to how it's proponents seemed to want to apply it in a political arena.

Looking at Locke's 2nd Treatise now and here sovereignty appears more fluid and law more flexible. The right to enforce the law belongs to every individual, insofar as some one agresses against their life or property, which is taken to be "breaking the law of nature", the law of nature having the same meaning as in Hobbes - those principles which allow for peaceful coexistence.
Hobbes says natural law is discernible by reason (as if the law were written beforehand), Locke says natural law is reason.
In other words, in accordance with his own reason, each man has the right to enforce the law on offenders by those means considered necessary to secure his own life and property, in so far as this does not threaten peaceful coexistence (he uses disproportionate force or whatever).

This sounds distinctly American and pretty close to the ancap "non-agression principle".

Also in Locke, sovereignty is established "with consent of the governed", while Hobbes makes only a conceptual distinction between sovereignty established by imposition and that established by mutual consent.

I do like the sense of "shall not agress against the life of" better than "shall act to preserve the life of".
Though in both writers the natural law has the dubious prohibition against harming one's own life. I don't get that.

kokorodoko wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 9:59 am "shall not agress against the life of"

Don't tread on me.

kokorodoko wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 9:59 am "shall act to preserve the life of".

From each according to ability, to each according to need.

losthighway wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:10 amFrom each according to ability, to each according to need.

Ooh you're getting at the point. I'm on something of an anti-socialist arc currently. Mainly I seek to elucidate what those liberal principles actually are which socialism started to grapple with and respond to.

The reflexive anti-liberalism of socialists is deeply troubling to me, especially as the expression of this is clearly seen in the conduct of the Soviet Union and other communist states, and how their defenders relate to them (the way protests against arbitrary justice are dismissed with taunts of "bourgeois" and so on), and is made worse by the fact that so few (among the people I come across who claim this label) seem to have any concept of what they're actually talking about, what they are challenging and what they are proposing, so that force becomes the measure of right and challenge is met with derision and hostility, or otherwise by persuasion devoid of actual logic. This is the history of socialist orgs for as long as I've been alive, with a few exceptions, but the basic working always more or less condoned. And this people take on board and just run with because they see a saviour in it and don't even stop to examine it. It's very scary.

Add the fact that a growing contingent of bold-faced reactionaries are flying the communist banner because they think the Bolsheviks were tough and manly and not like the femboys today, and who salivate over the thought of everyone who annoys them being put in labour camps.

Socialists are of course by no means the only ones guilty. This is a smaller part of a wider discursive culture which makes it acceptable to use words solely for their affective content and as a way of reaffirming group-and-ego-identity, with no regard for any underlying concept, in a way that not only holds people stuck in ignorance, but keeps them unaware of this, because their identifying signifiers provide them the semblance of knowledge.

The initial socialist reponse to liberalism seems to have been of two main kinds.
There is the one that recognizes those left out of the "community of free men", those not being able to make use of this freedom, consigned to destitution and servitude, and which seeks ways to correct this. Fine.
Then there is the one which finds the founding principles of the liberal state - the idea that the state exists to allow individuals go about their private lives as they wish - to be irritating in that they do not organize the state toward some higher purpose, i.e. makes use of this novel form of organization to pursue aims that are not simply the aims of individuals. I find this view repellent on the face of it.

I suppose I will gain a more nuanced view once I start to grapple seriously with Marx, and study those societies more closely.
As it is now, the things I am primarily concerned with investigating are: (i) invididual freedoms and property and how they relate to each other, (ii) markets, and (iii) personal relations and how power plays out in those. All things which I feel are neglected.

I shouldn't be entirely without precedent in this I feel, since liberal sentiments do live on clearly in the anarchist current. (and honestly, probably in many ways in the socialist current as well. Lots of how the Soviet state works can be understood in Hobbesian terms, for instance.)

“Synthetic Proofs” - a journal submission that I am refereeing. Hintikka-style proof-theoretic stuff about there being synthetic proofs. Interestingly, the author claims that synthetic status is not a function of any arbitrary proof system. This is unlike, say, algorithmic information theory. Let’s see….

seby wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 4:02 pm “Synthetic Proofs” - a journal submission that I am refereeing. Hintikka-style proof-theoretic stuff about there being synthetic proofs. Interestingly, the author claims that synthetic status is not a function of any arbitrary proof system. This is unlike, say, algorithmic information theory. Let’s see….

Would like to read this.

A_Man_Who_Tries wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:15 pm

seby wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 4:02 pm “Synthetic Proofs” - a journal submission that I am refereeing. Hintikka-style proof-theoretic stuff about there being synthetic proofs. Interestingly, the author claims that synthetic status is not a function of any arbitrary proof system. This is unlike, say, algorithmic information theory. Let’s see….

Would like to read this.

Happy to flick you a copy when it comes out! Very bad form of me to circulate whilst is is under review : /

seby wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 4:02 pm “Synthetic Proofs” - a journal submission that I am refereeing. Hintikka-style proof-theoretic stuff about there being synthetic proofs. Interestingly, the author claims that synthetic status is not a function of any arbitrary proof system. This is unlike, say, algorithmic information theory. Let’s see….

Wikipedia directed me to the article on synthetic geometry. So I would presume synthetic proofs means proofs in the context of this kind of geometry. Is this what it's about?

This apparently is another name for the "original" kind of geometry, which as the article mentions started to be called such when it was necessary to distinguish it from analytic geometry, which arose with the introduction of coordinate systems. Coordinate systems were introduced by Descartes. So in case you know: Is this what Kant's analytic/synthetic distinction is borne out of?

kokorodoko wrote:Hobbes seems to suggest that there is one circumstance in which commonwealth is possible without a visible power, when men are "governed and directed by one judgement for a limited time", and this is when united against a common enemy.

I wonder if you can read direct action types of things in these terms. The affinity group is formed by mutual agreement and work in common for some end, against a common enemy. Outside the bounds of the sovereign. For as long as they have a reason to exist, i.e. as long as there is an enemy to fight.

That classic essay, The Tyranny of Structurelessness, described how those groups would work fine as long as they had a "common enemy", something they were organised around and engaged in, but as soon as that was over they started fighting each other.

kokorodoko wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 8:11 am

seby wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 4:02 pm “Synthetic Proofs” - a journal submission that I am refereeing. Hintikka-style proof-theoretic stuff about there being synthetic proofs. Interestingly, the author claims that synthetic status is not a function of any arbitrary proof system. This is unlike, say, algorithmic information theory. Let’s see….

Wikipedia directed me to the article on synthetic geometry. So I would presume synthetic proofs means proofs in the context of this kind of geometry. Is this what it's about?

This apparently is another name for the "original" kind of geometry, which as the article mentions started to be called such when it was necessary to distinguish it from analytic geometry, which arose with the introduction of coordinate systems. Coordinate systems were introduced by Descartes. So in case you know: Is this what Kant's analytic/synthetic distinction is borne out of?

This could be from where the author is coming as they are discussing graphical forms of proofs! Presumably you are spot on with regard to the origin of the terms, but history of philosophy really is not my strong point (to put it very mildly).

Not unrelatedly, I just wrote this if you are interested in deep-diving on semantic information more generally:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/info ... -semantic/