How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

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GE Morton
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by GE Morton »

Belindi wrote: December 17th, 2022, 1:05 pm
I and others like me learned freedom and equality from Xian culture and Xian theology.
Not likely. Neither of those concepts were ever prominent, or even acknowledged, by Christianity historically. Indeed, it accepted and even promoted submission to "authority," especially the authority of the Church, and endorsed social class divisions (aristocracy, peasantry, etc.), not to mention the subordination of women. You may, of course, have learned it from modern "liberal" theologians who have struggled to re-write Christian history to make it appear to be compatible and supportive of those modern notions.
Leontizkos
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by Leontizkos »

GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 9:00 pm
Belindi wrote: December 17th, 2022, 1:05 pm
I and others like me learned freedom and equality from Xian culture and Xian theology.
Not likely. Neither of those concepts were ever prominent, or even acknowledged, by Christianity historically. Indeed, it accepted and even promoted submission to "authority," especially the authority of the Church, and endorsed social class divisions (aristocracy, peasantry, etc.), not to mention the subordination of women. You may, of course, have learned it from modern "liberal" theologians who have struggled to re-write Christian history to make it appear to be compatible and supportive of those modern notions.
Morton, you know at little about Christianity as you do about philosophy. Freedom is a central concept in both the Old and New Testaments, beginning with Exodus. Equality isn't far behind, for most all of our conceptions of equality are traceable to the Judeo-Christian notion of the imago dei, and rise or fall in relation to that Judeo-Christian inheritance. God's special concern for the orphan and the widow, for example, is a clear example of an assertion of equality precisely where it is most often neglected.
GE Morton
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by GE Morton »

Leontizkos wrote: December 17th, 2022, 3:13 pm
Ah, you seem to have missed the point already. "What is due" and "what is merited" are two different things, two things which you carelessly conflate again and again.
Missed the point? Even though it is discussed (and quoted by you) below?
Even your own posts in this thread are full of holes. In your first post you began your argument on the basis of two dictionary quotations, only one of which mentioned merit:
GE Morton wrote: December 8th, 2022, 8:30 pmSorry, but the first definition cited "what one is due." What one is due also depends upon merit, upon some action taken by the subject (you're late to the party; we've covered this in previous comments).
Apart from what I already said above, it seems I must repeat myself yet again. Merriam-Webster gives two possibilities of justice, call them A and B: "1a: the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by (A) the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or (B) the assignment of merited rewards or punishments."

After citing Merriam-Webster you erroneously collapsed the definition into B, entirely ignoring A, "Justice is inextricably intertwined with the concept of merit." Yet MW gives no indication that the "impartial adjustment of conflicting claims" is based on merit. Indeed, later in the thread you admitted that it is in fact not based on merit in the case of contracts. You are not even paying attention to the sources you pretend to follow.
Er, how do you suppose that impartial adjudicator of conflicting claims goes about resolving those claims, other than by weighing them on their merits?
GE Morton wrote: December 9th, 2022, 3:19 pmentirely[/i] dependent upon merit, i.e., upon the claimant having fulfilled his own obligations under the contract.
No, the terms of a contract (as well as the deserts that accrue) are in no way based on merit. They are based on consensual agreement. If we write a contract which says that you will give me five pigs for one horse, then I am due five pigs and you are due one horse, and this is based on consent and will, not merit. To claim that contracts are reducible to merit is a rather silly and inaccurate extension of the definition of 'merit' beyond its bounds. The reachings of an ideologue.
Yikes. We must have some different understandings of what constitutes "merit." I take it to denote actions having "worth," "value." I.e., an action is meritorious if it results in some product or state of affairs considered beneficial, useful, valuable, desirable. The person in your example is only due 5 pigs IF you delivered a horse --- an action he considers useful, valuable. The contract may be a product of "will," but what is due under it depends entirely upon meritorious actions by the parties. You are not due 5 pigs if you did not deliver the horse, regardless of what the contract says. Contracts merely express intentions. The actions taken under it determine what the parties are due.
No, I here asked about an unwed woman who presumably has an obligation to not commit adultery with a married man. Will you pretend this obligation does not exist as well?
Yes, although the woman, not being married cannot commit adultery herself *, she does have an obligation not to facilitate adultery by someone else (adultery being a violation of a contract, or promise). That is just one example of the general duty not to "aid and abet" another's immoral acts. (BTW, you did not mention in your previous post that the woman was unmarried; indeed, it implied the opposite).
Your account of natural rights has failed often in the past, and your stipulated relation of morality to justice is mistaken, but let us simply examine the error from a single angle.
Oh? "Failed" in what way? Where was that "failure" shown? Please explicate.
You wish to accept the classical definition where to act justly is to render to another what is their due. Now since to not-murder another person is to render them their due, not-murdering is, by your own definition, an act of justice. Since it is their due, and you believe all dues are predicated upon merit, then how has Alfie merited his due to not be murdered? What has he done to so merit this due?
Answered in previous posts. All persons are due respect for their status as moral agents and for their natural (and common) rights. What they are not "due" (from anyone else) is life, or the objects of any other natural right. The notion of justice central in this thread has been distributive justice, i.e., the apportionment of rewards and punishments distributable by moral agents. But no questions of distributive justice arise with regard to the distribution or possession of those natural assets; they only arise with violations of them. Though the things one possesses by natural right (one's life, body, talents, abilities, etc.) were acquired without actions on the agent's part, they still satisfy the first possession criterion --- he acquired them without inflicting harms or losses on other moral agents.
If you posit dues unrelated to justice then you have abandoned your definition of justice in favor of an ad hoc appeal to some equivocal definition of justice. If Alfie has a due then to render that due is justice. Given your own definition, you cannot claim that some dues relate to justice and some do not.
Respecting Alfie's right to life involves no "rendering" of anything to him. He is due respect for his right; i.e., that it not be violated. He is not "due" whatever the right is to.

Let me clarify further: With respect to rewards and punishments apportioned/distributed by moral agents, what each is due depends on merit. But persons are also due respect for their equal moral status and for the rights that ensue naturally from that status.
Well, there is no "justice-equality principle" (that I've ever heard of). Those are two different principles. I agree that all moral agents must be treated in accord with the Equal Agency principle, which asserts that all moral agents are equally subject to the same moral rules and protections and to "equal protection of the law." But that does not entail that all moral agents be treated equally. How they are treated (as long as their rights are respected) will vary with their actions, i.e., according to merit (if they are to be justly treated).
We have a thread about that principle (<link>), but I figured it would go over your head . . .
LOL

* Who can be charged with adultery varies by jurisdiction. In some US states only the married party can be criminally charged or held civilly liable; in others both parties can be charged if one of them is married.
GE Morton
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by GE Morton »

Stoppelmann wrote: December 17th, 2022, 6:55 am
Racial segregation through Jim Crow Laws is a dark point in American history that ended far too recently. The slaves were freed in 1873, yet black and white Americans were segregated in living memory. Segregation in the sense of Jim Crow Laws and the physical separation of races in facilities and services ended in 1964. After almost 100 years of increased tensions and racial inequality, President Lyndon B Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in response to the growth of a powerful Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

With only natural rights, this wouldn't have happened.
Oh, au contraire. Those legal rights were only granted because they were thought (correctly) to ensue from the natural rights to life, liberty, and equality of moral status --- the the "creed" to which Martin Luther King referred:

"When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness . . . So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/12270126 ... s-entirety
Leontizkos
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by Leontizkos »

GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm
Leontizkos wrote: December 17th, 2022, 3:13 pmEven your own posts in this thread are full of holes. In your first post you began your argument on the basis of two dictionary quotations, only one of which mentioned merit:
GE Morton wrote: December 8th, 2022, 8:30 pmSorry, but the first definition cited "what one is due." What one is due also depends upon merit, upon some action taken by the subject (you're late to the party; we've covered this in previous comments).
Apart from what I already said above, it seems I must repeat myself yet again. Merriam-Webster gives two possibilities of justice, call them A and B: "1a: the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by (A) the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or (B) the assignment of merited rewards or punishments."

After citing Merriam-Webster you erroneously collapsed the definition into B, entirely ignoring A, "Justice is inextricably intertwined with the concept of merit." Yet MW gives no indication that the "impartial adjustment of conflicting claims" is based on merit. Indeed, later in the thread you admitted that it is in fact not based on merit in the case of contracts. You are not even paying attention to the sources you pretend to follow.
Er, how do you suppose that impartial adjudicator of conflicting claims goes about resolving those claims, other than by weighing them on their merits?
You are here equivocating on the word "merit." The merits of an argument or a claim are different from a meritorious action (and the ad hominem fallacy is based on this distinction). For example, an heir may place a claim in favor of some inheritance, and although his claim may have "merit" this does not mean that he merited the inheritance (for being born to a particular man was not an act that he performed as an agent). Further, one may lay claim to their right to life in a case of attempted murder, and their claim may have "merit" even though they performed no meritorious action in order to establish their right.
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm
Leontizkos wrote: December 17th, 2022, 3:13 pm
GE Morton wrote: December 9th, 2022, 3:19 pmentirely[/i] dependent upon merit, i.e., upon the claimant having fulfilled his own obligations under the contract.
No, the terms of a contract (as well as the deserts that accrue) are in no way based on merit. They are based on consensual agreement. If we write a contract which says that you will give me five pigs for one horse, then I am due five pigs and you are due one horse, and this is based on consent and will, not merit. To claim that contracts are reducible to merit is a rather silly and inaccurate extension of the definition of 'merit' beyond its bounds. The reachings of an ideologue.
Yikes. We must have some different understandings of what constitutes "merit." I take it to denote actions having "worth," "value." I.e., an action is meritorious if it results in some product or state of affairs considered beneficial, useful, valuable, desirable. The person in your example is only due 5 pigs IF you delivered a horse --- an action he considers useful, valuable. The contract may be a product of "will," but what is due under it depends entirely upon meritorious actions by the parties. You are not due 5 pigs if you did not deliver the horse, regardless of what the contract says. Contracts merely express intentions. The actions taken under it determine what the parties are due.
You persist in your error only at the cost of focusing on the exchange to the exclusion of the contract. It is false to claim that "the person in your example is only due 5 pigs IF you delivered a horse." The sine qua non for the due is the contract itself. The horse in isolation will not suffice. In the case of a contract there is a secondary form of merit via a stipulated rate of exchange, but this secondary form of merit does not suffice to explain the due apart from the contract itself. And if both parts (exchange and contract) are necessary to produce the due, and only one part pertains to merit, then it is folly to pretend to claim that the whole is nothing more than a matter of merit.
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm
Leontizkos wrote: December 17th, 2022, 3:13 pmNo, I here asked about an unwed woman who presumably has an obligation to not commit adultery with a married man. Will you pretend this obligation does not exist as well?
Yes, although the woman, not being married cannot commit adultery herself *, she does have an obligation not to facilitate adultery by someone else (adultery being a violation of a contract, or promise). That is just one example of the general duty not to "aid and abet" another's immoral acts.
I will simply repeat my question: What action has the (unwed) woman performed which obligates her to act in such a way?
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm(BTW, you did not mention in your previous post that the woman was unmarried; indeed, it implied the opposite).
Wrong again, and this is a good example of your lack of reading comprehension. The original quote spoke specifically about an unwed woman (<link>). Even if it were possible to edit posts on this forum, the account on which that post was written no longer even exists.
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm
Leontizkos wrote: December 17th, 2022, 3:13 pmYour account of natural rights has failed often in the past, and your stipulated relation of morality to justice is mistaken, but let us simply examine the error from a single angle.
Oh? "Failed" in what way? Where was that "failure" shown? Please explicate.
Initially in <this thread>.
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm
Leontizkos wrote: December 17th, 2022, 3:13 pmYou wish to accept the classical definition where to act justly is to render to another what is their due. Now since to not-murder another person is to render them their due, not-murdering is, by your own definition, an act of justice. Since it is their due, and you believe all dues are predicated upon merit, then how has Alfie merited his due to not be murdered? What has he done to so merit this due?
Answered in previous posts. All persons are due respect for their status as moral agents and for their natural (and common) rights. What they are not "due" (from anyone else) is life, or the objects of any other natural right. The notion of justice central in this thread has been distributive justice, i.e., the apportionment of rewards and punishments distributable by moral agents. But no questions of distributive justice arise with regard to the distribution or possession of those natural assets; they only arise with violations of them. Though the things one possesses by natural right (one's life, body, talents, abilities, etc.) were acquired without actions on the agent's part, they still satisfy the first possession criterion --- he acquired them without inflicting harms or losses on other moral agents.
This is a remarkable failure to answer the argument in question, which is a central argument.

If all dues are predicated upon merit, and Alfie has a due to not be murdered, then what has he done to merit this due? You have chosen a definition whereby justice is the rendering of what is due. If you now wish to equivocate and shift to a different definition of justice, please explain. (As your definition and the examples show, this thread is not solely concerned with the question of distributive justice)
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm
Leontizkos wrote: December 17th, 2022, 3:13 pmIf you posit dues unrelated to justice then you have abandoned your definition of justice in favor of an ad hoc appeal to some equivocal definition of justice. If Alfie has a due then to render that due is justice. Given your own definition, you cannot claim that some dues relate to justice and some do not.
Respecting Alfie's right to life involves no "rendering" of anything to him. He is due respect for his right; i.e., that it not be violated. He is not "due" whatever the right is to.
Are you really so ignorant of the classical tradition of justice? The just man acts justly by avoiding injustice as well as by performing positively just acts. When a murderer contemplates murdering Alfie, but then decides against it, he has acted justly. He has rendered Alfie his due, and it may be precisely this due which swayed him. What use is there in denying such an obvious fact? The very definition you started with is taken from a treatise on Roman law and jurisprudence, and it is the just man who abides by the law by avoiding unlawful and unjust actions.
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pmLet me clarify further: With respect to rewards and punishments apportioned/distributed by moral agents, what each is due depends on merit. But persons are also due respect for their equal moral status and for the rights that ensue naturally from that status.
So you finally concede that there is justice apart from merit?
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by GE Morton »

Stoppelmann wrote: December 18th, 2022, 3:59 am
I think I know why you hate Franklin D. Roosevelt; it was he who said, “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
You're right. Because "we" (i.e., the government) has no business adding to the abundance of anyone, rich or poor (because it can only do that by seizing wealth by force from those who produced it and handing it over to others who did not).
This challenge is still a task today, but curiously, we are adding ever more to the abundance of those who have much, despite the fact that the largest growth in the USA was achieved when the wealthiest paid more tax.
That is false. The largest economic growth in the US occurred between 1850 and 1930 --- the period that saw the completion of transcontinental railroads, the development of electric power, the mechanization of agriculture, the introduction of the airplane, automobile, and steam- and oil-powered ships, of telephones and radio, of motion pictures and recorded music --- all of it due to the inventions and endeavors of private entrepreneurs. During that period governments at all levels in the US consumed an average of 7% of GDP (compared to 45% today). The federal income tax was not even enacted until 1913. The highest rate was 15% until the outbreak of WWI, when it increased to 63% for highest income bracket. After that war the top rate fell back to 25%, where it stayed until the onset of the Depression.
This is quite obvious really, because if you compare wealth to blood, it must flow through the organism to keep it alive, just as money must flow to keep a society thriving. When people hoard wealth, it is like a haematoma, and any hematoma that increases in size over time is a danger to surrounding tissue.
Well, that statement reveals your fundamental mistake. You're embroiled in the "organic fallacy." Modern societies are not organisms, or "organic unities." They are not collectives or giant communes, tribes, "teams," or "big happy families." They are randomly assembled groups of unrelated, independent, autonomous individuals who happen, by accident of birth, to occupy a common territory. Their "members" have no natural bonds, no shared personal histories, no common interests, and no a priori obligations to one another, other than to respect one another's rights.
This is especially obvious when America is called a Christian Nation (wrong as it is) by those who deny those people on low wages affordable healthcare, which is a right in countries in Europe, but I’ve heard Americans call it theft, or expropriation.
Yes. Seizing the property of another by force or stealth, without right or permission, is theft, by definition. The definition applies regardless of what the thief does with the money.
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by Leontiskos »

GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm
Leontizkos wrote: December 17th, 2022, 3:13 pmEven your own posts in this thread are full of holes. In your first post you began your argument on the basis of two dictionary quotations, only one of which mentioned merit:
GE Morton wrote: December 8th, 2022, 8:30 pmSorry, but the first definition cited "what one is due." What one is due also depends upon merit, upon some action taken by the subject (you're late to the party; we've covered this in previous comments).
Apart from what I already said above, it seems I must repeat myself yet again. Merriam-Webster gives two possibilities of justice, call them A and B: "1a: the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by (A) the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or (B) the assignment of merited rewards or punishments."

After citing Merriam-Webster you erroneously collapsed the definition into B, entirely ignoring A, "Justice is inextricably intertwined with the concept of merit." Yet MW gives no indication that the "impartial adjustment of conflicting claims" is based on merit. Indeed, later in the thread you admitted that it is in fact not based on merit in the case of contracts. You are not even paying attention to the sources you pretend to follow.
Er, how do you suppose that impartial adjudicator of conflicting claims goes about resolving those claims, other than by weighing them on their merits?
You are here equivocating on the word "merit." The merits of an argument or a claim are different from a meritorious action (and the ad hominem fallacy is based on this distinction). For example, an heir may place a claim in favor of some inheritance, and although his claim may have "merit" this does not mean that he merited the inheritance (for being born to a particular man was not an act that he performed as an agent). Further, one may lay claim to their right to life in a case of attempted murder, and their claim may have "merit" even though they performed no meritorious action in order to establish their right.
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm
Leontizkos wrote: December 17th, 2022, 3:13 pm
GE Morton wrote: December 9th, 2022, 3:19 pmentirely[/i] dependent upon merit, i.e., upon the claimant having fulfilled his own obligations under the contract.
No, the terms of a contract (as well as the deserts that accrue) are in no way based on merit. They are based on consensual agreement. If we write a contract which says that you will give me five pigs for one horse, then I am due five pigs and you are due one horse, and this is based on consent and will, not merit. To claim that contracts are reducible to merit is a rather silly and inaccurate extension of the definition of 'merit' beyond its bounds. The reachings of an ideologue.
Yikes. We must have some different understandings of what constitutes "merit." I take it to denote actions having "worth," "value." I.e., an action is meritorious if it results in some product or state of affairs considered beneficial, useful, valuable, desirable. The person in your example is only due 5 pigs IF you delivered a horse --- an action he considers useful, valuable. The contract may be a product of "will," but what is due under it depends entirely upon meritorious actions by the parties. You are not due 5 pigs if you did not deliver the horse, regardless of what the contract says. Contracts merely express intentions. The actions taken under it determine what the parties are due.
You persist in your error only at the cost of focusing on the exchange to the exclusion of the contract. It is false to claim that "the person in your example is only due 5 pigs IF you delivered a horse." The sine qua non for the due is the contract itself. The horse in isolation will not suffice. In the case of a contract there is a secondary form of merit via a stipulated rate of exchange, but this secondary form of merit does not suffice to explain the due apart from the contract itself. And if both parts (exchange and contract) are necessary to produce the due, and only one part pertains to merit, then it is folly to pretend to claim that the whole is nothing more than a matter of merit.
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm
Leontizkos wrote: December 17th, 2022, 3:13 pmNo, I here asked about an unwed woman who presumably has an obligation to not commit adultery with a married man. Will you pretend this obligation does not exist as well?
Yes, although the woman, not being married cannot commit adultery herself *, she does have an obligation not to facilitate adultery by someone else (adultery being a violation of a contract, or promise). That is just one example of the general duty not to "aid and abet" another's immoral acts.
I will simply repeat my question: What action has the (unwed) woman performed which obligates her to act in such a way?
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm(BTW, you did not mention in your previous post that the woman was unmarried; indeed, it implied the opposite).
Wrong again, and this is a good example of your lack of reading comprehension. The original quote spoke specifically about an unwed woman (<link>). Even if it were possible to edit posts on this forum, the account on which that post was written no longer even exists.
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm
Leontizkos wrote: December 17th, 2022, 3:13 pmYour account of natural rights has failed often in the past, and your stipulated relation of morality to justice is mistaken, but let us simply examine the error from a single angle.
Oh? "Failed" in what way? Where was that "failure" shown? Please explicate.
Initially in <this thread>.
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm
Leontizkos wrote: December 17th, 2022, 3:13 pmYou wish to accept the classical definition where to act justly is to render to another what is their due. Now since to not-murder another person is to render them their due, not-murdering is, by your own definition, an act of justice. Since it is their due, and you believe all dues are predicated upon merit, then how has Alfie merited his due to not be murdered? What has he done to so merit this due?
Answered in previous posts. All persons are due respect for their status as moral agents and for their natural (and common) rights. What they are not "due" (from anyone else) is life, or the objects of any other natural right. The notion of justice central in this thread has been distributive justice, i.e., the apportionment of rewards and punishments distributable by moral agents. But no questions of distributive justice arise with regard to the distribution or possession of those natural assets; they only arise with violations of them. Though the things one possesses by natural right (one's life, body, talents, abilities, etc.) were acquired without actions on the agent's part, they still satisfy the first possession criterion --- he acquired them without inflicting harms or losses on other moral agents.
This is a remarkable failure to answer the argument in question, which is a central argument.

If all dues are predicated upon merit, and Alfie has a due to not be murdered, then what has he done to merit this due? You have chosen a definition whereby justice is the rendering of what is due. If you now wish to equivocate and shift to a different definition of justice, please explain. (As your definition and the examples show, this thread is not solely concerned with the question of distributive justice)
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm
Leontizkos wrote: December 17th, 2022, 3:13 pmIf you posit dues unrelated to justice then you have abandoned your definition of justice in favor of an ad hoc appeal to some equivocal definition of justice. If Alfie has a due then to render that due is justice. Given your own definition, you cannot claim that some dues relate to justice and some do not.
Respecting Alfie's right to life involves no "rendering" of anything to him. He is due respect for his right; i.e., that it not be violated. He is not "due" whatever the right is to.
Are you really so ignorant of the classical tradition of justice? The just man acts justly by avoiding injustice as well as by performing positively just acts. When a murderer contemplates murdering Alfie, but then decides against it, he has acted justly. He has rendered Alfie his due, and it may be precisely this due which swayed him. What use is there in denying such an obvious fact? The very definition you started with is taken from a treatise on Roman law and jurisprudence, and it is the just man who abides by the law by avoiding unlawful and unjust actions.
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pmLet me clarify further: With respect to rewards and punishments apportioned/distributed by moral agents, what each is due depends on merit. But persons are also due respect for their equal moral status and for the rights that ensue naturally from that status.
So you finally concede that there is justice apart from merit?
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by Leontiskos »

GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 9:00 pm
Belindi wrote: December 17th, 2022, 1:05 pm
I and others like me learned freedom and equality from Xian culture and Xian theology.
Not likely. Neither of those concepts were ever prominent, or even acknowledged, by Christianity historically. Indeed, it accepted and even promoted submission to "authority," especially the authority of the Church, and endorsed social class divisions (aristocracy, peasantry, etc.), not to mention the subordination of women. You may, of course, have learned it from modern "liberal" theologians who have struggled to re-write Christian history to make it appear to be compatible and supportive of those modern notions.
Morton, you know as little about Christianity as you do about philosophy. Freedom is a central concept in both the Old and New Testaments, beginning with Exodus. Equality isn't far behind, for most all of our conceptions of equality are traceable to the Judeo-Christian notion of the imago dei, and rise or fall in relation to that Judeo-Christian inheritance. God's special concern for the orphan and the widow, for example, is a clear example of an assertion of equality precisely where it is most often neglected.
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by Stoppelmann »

GE Morton wrote: December 19th, 2022, 12:35 am
Stoppelmann wrote: I think I know why you hate Franklin D. Roosevelt; it was he who said, “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
You're right. Because "we" (i.e., the government) has no business adding to the abundance of anyone, rich or poor (because it can only do that by seizing wealth by force from those who produced it and handing it over to others who did not).
Obviously, Americans have a different understanding of how to create a cohesive society, but if you look into it, it causes the biggest conflicts. I can’t remember which theory Jordan Peterson quoted regarding the accumulation of wealth, but it stated that from a certain point, the accumulation proceeds automatically, and unless the wealthy person does something stupid, it continues until the limit of expansion is reached. He then said, which I agree with, that is the true purpose of people on the left, is to point to the incongruities that causes, because an economy has a certain size and if ever less people have ever more wealth, the majority will end up destitute. The job of the left is to provide some semblance of balance because it is clear from history, that poverty is rife for revolution.
GE Morton wrote:
This challenge is still a task today, but curiously, we are adding ever more to the abundance of those who have much, despite the fact that the largest growth in the USA was achieved when the wealthiest paid more tax.
That is false. The largest economic growth in the US occurred between 1850 and 1930 --- the period that saw the completion of transcontinental railroads, the development of electric power, the mechanization of agriculture, the introduction of the airplane, automobile, and steam- and oil-powered ships, of telephones and radio, of motion pictures and recorded music --- all of it due to the inventions and endeavors of private entrepreneurs. During that period governments at all levels in the US consumed an average of 7% of GDP (compared to 45% today). The federal income tax was not even enacted until 1913. The highest rate was 15% until the outbreak of WWI, when it increased to 63% for highest income bracket. After that war the top rate fell back to 25%, where it stayed until the onset of the Depression.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos 2019, Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computers, was asked about the idea of raising the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent. (It’s now 37 percent.)

He said—to laughs—that from his personal perspective it would be a bad idea. But he also thought it would be bad for the country’s growth. When the moderator, Heather Long of the Washington Post, asked him to explain why, Dell said, “Name a country where that’s worked. Ever.”
Sitting on the same panel was the economist Erik Brynjolfsson, of MIT, who spoke up immediately to say: actually, there is such a country. It is the United States, through most of its post-World War II expansion.

As you’ll see in the chart on the link, through the entire administrations of presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter, the top-tax-bracket rate was at least 70 percent, and for long periods was much more. (John Kennedy’s tax-cut plan of the early 1960s took the top rate from 90 percent down to 70 percent.)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... os/622220/
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GE Morton
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by GE Morton »

Leontiskos wrote: December 19th, 2022, 4:01 pm
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm
Er, how do you suppose that impartial adjudicator of conflicting claims goes about resolving those claims, other than by weighing them on their merits?
You are here equivocating on the word "merit." The merits of an argument or a claim are different from a meritorious action (and the ad hominem fallacy is based on this distinction). For example, an heir may place a claim in favor of some inheritance, and although his claim may have "merit" this does not mean that he merited the inheritance (for being born to a particular man was not an act that he performed as an agent). Further, one may lay claim to their right to life in a case of attempted murder, and their claim may have "merit" even though they performed no meritorious action in order to establish their right.
I've already acknowledged (several times) that moral agents are "due" certain things that derive from that status, i.e., respect for their rights, and not from any meritorious action on their parts. They are not "due" any distributable goods merely because of that status, however. Nor is anyone "due" any gifts, including inheritances. However, once given, the recipient has a right to a gift, and is "due" respect for that right. Merit, BTW, is entirely subjective with respect to gifts --- whether the recipient "deserves" it or merits it is solely for the donor to judge.
No, the terms of a contract (as well as the deserts that accrue) are in no way based on merit. They are based on consensual agreement.
That is true. Whether anyone is due anything under it, however, depends upon performance by at least one of the parties, or when one party has incurred costs in reliance on performance by the other party:

"If one party deviates from the terms of the contract, and the other party does not agree to this deviation and the deviation is serious enough to make a real difference in the intended result of the contract, then the deviating party is said to have breached the contract. Their justified prevention or interference with the performance of the other party is also a breach.

"Of course, if one party fails entirely to perform the contract, or totally prevents performance of the other party, the situation is straightforward. The situation becomes more complex when the argument is over the quality of materials, the timing of work, or a similar subject.

"When a breach of contract occurs, the breaching party can be sued for damages by the other party, and the non-breaching party is no longer held to their previous contractual obligations.

"To help support their claim for breach, the non-breaching party should have fulfilled their contractual obligation up to the time the breach occurred and should not have interfered with the other party's performance in any way."

https://www.upcounsel.com/lectl-nonperf ... f-contract
I will simply repeat my question: What action has the (unwed) woman performed which obligates her to act in such a way?
Already answered. The unwed woman has no obligation to act in any way. She does have an obligation NOT to act in a certain way, namely, in a way that aids and abets another's immoral act (as do all moral agents).
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm(BTW, you did not mention in your previous post that the woman was unmarried; indeed, it implied the opposite).
Wrong again, and this is a good example of your lack of reading comprehension. The original quote spoke specifically about an unwed woman (<link>). Even if it were possible to edit posts on this forum, the account on which that post was written no longer even exists.
The post you cited certainly exists. You said there, "Why must the soldier, in order to act justly, not abandon his post? Why must a woman not commit adultery, if she is to be just? To these and other questions the meritocratist might attempt to respond that the soldier or woman has merited such an obligation. Yet this is highly implausible, given things like compulsory military service and arranged marriage."

Your mention or "arranged marriages" suggests the woman in question is married (the "compulsory military service" presumably referring to the soldier, and the "arranged marriages" to the woman).
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm Oh? "Failed" in what way? Where was that "failure" shown? Please explicate.
Initially in <this thread>.
Ah, that one, the one in which you confuse the (connotative) meaning of the word "right" with the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a right. And also the one in which you agreed with my analysis of "rights":

ME: "I disagree that an empirical fact, e.g. first possession, can logically entail an obligation (or any other moral proposition). That is the "is-ought gap." What it does logically imply is that the thing first possessed was acquired without inflicting loss or injury on anyone else. That is also an empirical fact, but one that has moral import. But it only has moral import because of a prior assumption, or belief, that inflicting losses or injuries on others is morally wrong, and hence that everyone is obliged to refrain from doing that. The moral implications of a right derive from that assumption, not from the bare and morally neutral fact of first possession."

YOU: Okay, well said.
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm
Leontizkos wrote: December 17th, 2022, 3:13 pmYou wish to accept the classical definition where to act justly is to render to another what is their due. Now since to not-murder another person is to render them their due, not-murdering is, by your own definition, an act of justice. Since it is their due, and you believe all dues are predicated upon merit, then how has Alfie merited his due to not be murdered? What has he done to so merit this due?
Answered in previous posts. All persons are due respect for their status as moral agents and for their natural (and common) rights. What they are not "due" (from anyone else) is life, or the objects of any other natural right. The notion of justice central in this thread has been distributive justice, i.e., the apportionment of rewards and punishments distributable by moral agents. But no questions of distributive justice arise with regard to the distribution or possession of those natural assets; they only arise with violations of them. Though the things one possesses by natural right (one's life, body, talents, abilities, etc.) were acquired without actions on the agent's part, they still satisfy the first possession criterion --- he acquired them without inflicting harms or losses on other moral agents.
This is a remarkable failure to answer the argument in question, which is a central argument.
The "central argument" in your para above, as far as I can make it out, is "Now since to not-murder another person is to render them their due, not-murdering is, by your own definition, an act of justice." From there you "conclude" that Alife (per my analysis) must merit, is due, the "act" of non-murdering by all persons, and that those are "acts of justice." Well, first, non-acts are not acts. Murdering is an act, non-murdering is not. Questions of justice arise from non-acts only only someone is due a certain act, not when others merely refrain from unjust acts. And, of course, I agree that Alfie is due respect for his rights (including his right to life).
GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 10:33 pm
Respecting Alfie's right to life involves no "rendering" of anything to him. He is due respect for his right; i.e., that it not be violated. He is not "due" whatever the right is to.
Are you really so ignorant of the classical tradition of justice? The just man acts justly by avoiding injustice as well as by performing positively just acts. When a murderer contemplates murdering Alfie, but then decides against it, he has acted justly.
No, he has not. He has not acted at all. Avoiding injustices normally don't involve any acts (though they may if some positive act is required to escape a course of events that would lead to an injustice, e.g., "You're planning to rob this coffee stand? Let me out of this car!"
So you finally concede that there is justice apart from merit?
Yes, as I've said several times. Justice depends upon merit with respect to the allocation of distributable goods by moral agents (which was the context when that claim was made). But persons are also due respect for their status as moral agents and for their rights --- which are violated when a distributable good is seized from the person who produced it in order to hand it over to someone who did not and has done nothing else to merit it.
GE Morton
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by GE Morton »

Stoppelmann wrote: December 20th, 2022, 7:09 am
Obviously, Americans have a different understanding of how to create a cohesive society, but if you look into it, it causes the biggest conflicts. I can’t remember which theory Jordan Peterson quoted regarding the accumulation of wealth, but it stated that from a certain point, the accumulation proceeds automatically, and unless the wealthy person does something stupid, it continues until the limit of expansion is reached. He then said, which I agree with, that is the true purpose of people on the left, is to point to the incongruities that causes, because an economy has a certain size and if ever less people have ever more wealth, the majority will end up destitute.
Well, that is another leftist myth --- that economies are "pies" of fixed size, and hence if the "rich" receive a bigger slice, then everyone else will get a smaller one. That is patently false. Economies are not zero-sum games. New wealth is constantly created. If Elon Musk creates (and thus receives) $1 billion from sales of Teslas, it will have no impact whatsoever on what you receive. Musk gained that billion by creating it (by creating products with that market value). What wealth he creates has no bearing on what you create or can create. The wealth in a society is not "manna from heaven," a "gift from God," to be shared by all. It is all created by someone, and each person's "fair share" is the share he created.
The job of the left is to provide some semblance of balance because it is clear from history, that poverty is rife for revolution.
Ah, the "torches and pitchforks" argument: "If we don't meet their demands they'll storm the castle with torches and pitchforks." Envy can indeed lead to resentment, and resentment to revolution. But, as the Bolsheviks learned after exterminating the Kulaks, destroying or suppressing the creators of wealth just results in less wealth --- for everyone:

"The Soviet famine of 1930–1933 was a famine in the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, Volga Region, Kazakhstan, the South Urals, and West Siberia. Estimates conclude that 5.7 to 8.7 million people died of famine across the Soviet Union. Major contributing factors to the famine include: the forced collectivization in the Soviet Union of agriculture as a part of the First Five-Year Plan, and forced grain procurement, combined with rapid industrialization and a decreasing agricultural workforce. Sources disagree on the possible role of drought. During this period the Soviet government escalated its persecution against the kulaks. Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin, had ordered kulaks, who were wealthy, land-owning farmers "to be liquidated as a class", and became a target for the state. Persecution against the kulaks had been ongoing since the Russian Civil War, and had never fully subsided. Once collectivization became widely implemented, the persecution against the kulaks increased which culminated in a Soviet campaign of political repression, including arrests, deportations, and executions of large numbers of the kulaks in 1929–1932."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_fa ... %80%931933
At the World Economic Forum in Davos 2019, Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computers, was asked about the idea of raising the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent. (It’s now 37 percent.)

He said—to laughs—that from his personal perspective it would be a bad idea. But he also thought it would be bad for the country’s growth. When the moderator, Heather Long of the Washington Post, asked him to explain why, Dell said, “Name a country where that’s worked. Ever.”
Sitting on the same panel was the economist Erik Brynjolfsson, of MIT, who spoke up immediately to say: actually, there is such a country. It is the United States, through most of its post-World War II expansion.

As you’ll see in the chart on the link, through the entire administrations of presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter, the top-tax-bracket rate was at least 70 percent, and for long periods was much more. (John Kennedy’s tax-cut plan of the early 1960s took the top rate from 90 percent down to 70 percent.)
During the 70-year period between 1860 and 1930 the US GDP increased by 1090%. During the 70-year period between 1950 and 2020 it increased 802%. During most of that first period the US had no income tax.

https://www.measuringworth.com/datasets ... result.php

(Figures all in 2012 dollars)

The nominal tax rates, BTW, rarely reflect what taxpayers actually pay. Virtually no taxpayers paid those top rates during the 1950 - 1980 period.

See also:

https://www.heritage.org/taxes/commenta ... -pay-taxes
Belindi
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by Belindi »

Equality is mutually inconsistent with freedom. There is a spectrum with absolute equality at one end and freedom at the other. The way to decide one's stance on the spectrum is to hear what individuals have to say about their own personal lives, and decide who speaks true and who tells lies.

Impartiality has a lot to do with activating justice, and it's also the judge's moral responsibility to decide who is telling the truth. It is a big responsibility. Empathy is also important for a judge to be a good judge.
GE Morton
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by GE Morton »

Belindi wrote: December 21st, 2022, 9:20 am Equality is mutually inconsistent with freedom.
Oh, quite the opposite. Freedom and equality mutually entail each other.

But we need to clarify the meanings of both terms. "Equality" here means equality of moral status (all persons are equally moral agents, equally endowed with certain natural rights, equally entitled to respect for those rights, and equally subject to all moral constraints). It does not mean material equality.

"Freedom" means the ability to live one's life as one chooses, as long as one violates no one else's rights, without constraints imposed by other moral agents.

Freedom entails equality: Any infringement of the freedom of one moral agent (who is not himself violating anyone's rights) by another immediately creates a master-slave relationship between the person imposing the constraints and and the person constrained, in violation of equality.

Equality entails freedom: if all persons are equally prohibited from imposing constraints upon others who are not violating anyone else's rights, then all are free.
Ecurb
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by Ecurb »

GE Morton wrote: December 21st, 2022, 11:53 am

Oh, quite the opposite. Freedom and equality mutually entail each other.

But we need to clarify the meanings of both terms. "Equality" here means equality of moral status (all persons are equally moral agents, equally endowed with certain natural rights, equally entitled to respect for those rights, and equally subject to all moral constraints). It does not mean material equality.

"Freedom" means the ability to live one's life as one chooses, as long as one violates no one else's rights, without constraints imposed by other moral agents.

Freedom entails equality: Any infringement of the freedom of one moral agent (who is not himself violating anyone's rights) by another immediately creates a master-slave relationship between the person imposing the constraints and and the person constrained, in violation of equality.

Equality entails freedom: if all persons are equally prohibited from imposing constraints upon others who are not violating anyone else's rights, then all are free.
You're prevaricating again, GE. Freedom means no such thing.
free·dom
/ˈfrēdəm/

noun
the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.
Your nonsense about "as long as one violates no one else's rights" is contradictory to the definition of "freedom". Because you want to laud "freedom" and "liberty", you want to tweak the definition so that it supports your position. This constitutes equivocation and prevarication.
GE Morton
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by GE Morton »

Ecurb wrote: December 21st, 2022, 12:22 pm
You're prevaricating again, GE. Freedom means no such thing.
free·dom
/ˈfrēdəm/

noun
the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.
Oh, stop. In political philosophy "freedom" has the meaning I gave --- freedom from constraints applied by other moral agents. It doesn't include freedom from, say, the law of gravity. Nor does it include the freedom to murder, steal, rape, etc.
Your nonsense about "as long as one violates no one else's rights" is contradictory to the definition of "freedom". Because you want to laud "freedom" and "liberty", you want to tweak the definition so that it supports your position. This constitutes equivocation and prevarication.
LOL. It is you who is doing the "prevaricating," etc. --- by trotting out an irrelevant, out-of-context definition of the term. That is sophistry.
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