>>"Society" is a term for a number of persons who happen, by accident of
>>birth, to occupy a common territory and are thus capable of
>>interacting.
>
> Support for that claim? Of course not. There is no dictionary sense
> of the term, "society" that supports your transparent lies.
You cited one yourself:
"society, n. 2. a body of individuals living as members of a
community." -- Webster's New Universal Unabridged
Persons are "living in a community" if they are communing with one
another. That is all that is necessary for a society *simpliciter* to
exist. That definition is acceptable, though not as explicit as the one
I gave you (which derives from agent theory).
>>Each of them interacts with such of the others, at such times and for
>>such purposes, as promise to be beneficial for him.
>
> What a laughable load of garbage. Much social interaction is a matter
> of habit, tradition, happenstance, duty, etc.
Doesn't conflict with what I said. Persons develop habits or adopt
traditions because they realize some payoff by doing so (perhaps merely
enjoying the cameraderi or companionship entailed).
>>None of them has any
>>*a priori* bonds, duties, obligations, or any other *a priori*
>>relationships to most of the others, other than their spatial
>>relationship.
>
> More garbage. We all owe an a priori debt for the heritage that
> created us, which we can only repay by our posterity.
Well, looks like you view debts as having undergone a virgin birth
similar to that you imagine for rights.
Debts originate in contracts, which may be explicit or implicit. They do
not appear out of thin air. Speaking of "debts to one's heritage" is
otiose nonsense. A "heritage" is not a moral agent, any more than
"society" is. It cannot owe anyone anything, and no one can owe anything
to it, except metaphorically.
You need to grab a beer, Roy, sit down, and think through all these
metaphors --- all these reified abstractions --- you are unable to
distinguish from persons.
Everything you think you "owe" to this abstract entity, your heritage,
has been given to you by particular persons, freely and without
conditions. If you know how to play chess, it is because someone taught
you, freely and without conditions --- probably because he wanted an
opponent to play against. No conditions were attached. You do not "owe"
him anything, and he does not "owe" whoever taught him. No debts are
incurred by accepting something freely given --- that is what
distinguishes a gift from a sale.
You'll just have to give up these confused notions of "debts to
society," debts to one's heritage," "rights of society," et al. It is
all meaningless gibberish. Any debt that exist is a debt between
specific persons, e.g., between Alfie and Bruno. If Alfie alleges that
Bruno is indebted to him, he will need to produce some evidence to that
effect --- a signed contract, witnesses to the transaction, etc., and
evidence that Bruno has not fulfilled his part of the bargain. If no
such contract or evidence exists, then Alfie's claim is vacuous. When
one of the alleged parties is a sociological or historical abstraction,
the claim is not merely vacuous, it is nonsensical.
>> None of them are present as a result of a pre-existing
>>"social design,"
>
> Wrong again. They exist because society, through division of labor,
> preservation and transmission of knowledge, security of property in
> the products of labor, etc., has made it possible for more than a
> handful of starving hunter-gatherers to exist. If you think that has
> happened without design, you are an idiot.
*Sigh*. Cannot escape those metaphors, can you? If more people are able
to survive today than in previous eras, it is because specific persons
produced or discovered specific tools or techniques which they elected
to share with other persons, usually in exchange for some consideration.
More people survive because Jenner discovered a vaccine for smallpox,
Fleming discovered penicillin, Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and others
discovered how to practially produce electricity, Borlaug and others
discovered how to produce hybrids that increased crop yields, and so on.
You wish to attribute all these advances to your nebulous "society" in
order to bask in the reflected glory of creative individuals, and
justify some "share" in the products of their labors.
And, no, there was no "design" involved. Jenner, Edison, Borlaug, and
all the others were following no scripts, no blueprints, no "social
plans." They followed only their own instincts and imaginations. Nor did
"society" --- the gummint --- finance any of these innovations. They
were financed out of their own pockets or by interested investors. Even
Borlaug's "Green Revolution" was financed mainly by the Ford and
Rockefeller foundations. Any claim that "society" --- if that means all
or most of the people alive at the time --- contributed anything of
substance to those efforts, or are entitled to any portion of the
rewards, would be patently false and gratuitous.
Or are you perhaps suggesting that "society" deserves credit because
most people refrained from murdering those innovators, or stealing their
property, while they did their work?
> They exist in and by the grace of society, and have a
> debt to discharge in consequence.
Oooh --- "by the grace of society" --- does that mean because "society"
allows me to live, I am in debt to it? And who is the "society" that
does the allowing here, and is owed this debt? All persons who opt not
to kill me? Do you owe me some kind of tithe for every month in which I
do not kill you? If so, you're way behind on your payments.
>>Indeed, there are no goals, purposes, interests, or values
>>common to them all, though most will be able to find others who share
>>*some* of their goals, interests, and values. With the exceptions of
>>those identified co-travelers --- kinfolk, friends, some colleagues
>>and co-workers --- they take no interest in one another's interests or
>>projects.
> Again, that is sheer autism with zero (0) foundation in fact. Society
> is founded in the mutual aid, defense, division of labor, etc. that
> are in the interests of all, and in which all who are not greedy,
> sociopathic parasites participate.
Before you can plausibly claim that something X is "in the interests of
all," you'll need to poll each of those persons and confirm your claim
with each of them. Until you have done so your claim is arbitrary and
baseless. And you will find that verifying that unanimity will be very
tough to do, for any X you name.
> Garbage. You cannot find "division of labor" or "mutual aid" or
> "transmission and preservation of knowledge" by looking at individual
> persons. Your premise is that people are all autistic sociopaths,
> just as you are.
Sorry, Roy, but that is the *only* way you can find those things. The
only evidence of a division of labor that you can possibly cite is that
different tasks are performed by different persons. And the only way you
can discover the latter is by examining those persons, one-by-one. The
only way you can validate a claim of mutual aid is by pointing to a
number of persons who are aiding one another. If you can't point to any
such persons, then you've uttered another baseless claim. None of the
personhood attributes you erroneously attribute to "society" can be
validated in any way other than by examining individual persons.
>>Persons have values, interests, preferences, etc. (which vary widely).
>
> They have one interest that does not vary: reproductive success.
Oh, nonsense. Thousands of people in every large society have no kids
and don't want any.
> Wrong again. Societies, being capable of surviving or perishing,
> evolve just as individuals, and have the same interest in survival and
> reproductive success conferred by their evolutionary heritage.
OK, let's take this claim as an example. How do you propose to go about
validating the claim that "society X has an interest in reproductive
succcess"? Or is that just some kind of religious posit you feel
entitled to make *a priori*?
If some evidence is required to support the claim, where are you going
to get it? How will you possibly determine what "society's" interests
are, except by polling the members of that society? Suppose ths society
consists of members {1 . . . n]. When you have finished your poll,
you'll have a list:
1. Y (is intererested in reproductive success).
2. Y
3. N
4. Y
.
.
.
From that list, which of those n interests will you take to be the
"interest of the society"? Whichever answers appears most often? But
that will be the interest of only a subset of n. How do you propose to
morph an interest of a subset into an interest of the whole?
All you will have when you've finished your poll is a list of the
interests of individuals. *There is no rational way to finesse that list
into an "interest of the whole"*. You can only do so by resorting to
metaphor, or to such palpable fictions as a "social contract."
>>The persistence of societies depends upon
>>the survival and well-being of its members, not the other way around.
>
> The dependence runs both ways. The Black Death in some places killed
> the majority of the people, but society went on much as before. In
> many other cases, such as the Taiping Rebellion, societal breakdown
> has been disastrous for individual members of society.
There are no two ways. There is only one --- society exists as long, and
only as long, as some group of interacting individuals exist. It is not
something separate and distinct from them. You are indulging in metaphor
again --- it was not "societal breakdown" which killed the Chinese. It
was warfare. A society beset by warfare, criminality, natural disaster,
is still a society. "Society" has not "broken down." Only peace, and
perhaps some types of interactions which depend upon peace, have broken
down. The society remains, dangerous though it may be, as long as some
people remain who are able to interact.
>>Societies are not sentients or moral agents, yet they can have
>>interests and values. An *interest* is an attribute only of sentient
>>creatures, Roy.
>
> No, stupid. Corporations have interests, stupid. Plants have
> interests (like survival), stupid.
Societies and corporations can be said to have whatever interests can be
found among their members. That is a *metaphorical* sense. Plants have
no interests; they have metabolisms. (Really running rampant with those
personifications, Roy).
> Wrong. Animals are not moral agents, yet they have values (as you
> will learn if you try getting between a mother bear and her cubs).
Wrong again. Animals, being sentient creatures (unlike plants), do have
interests. But because they cannot attribute moral agency to others,
they are only moral subjects (moral agents have some duties to them, but
they have no moral duties).
> I'm not the one who thinks natural resources are produced by human
> labor, stupid. You are.
How a resource is produced is irrelevant. What matters is how it enters
an economy. Until it does, it is *res nullius*, a thing having no
economic or legal existence. That it may exist physically is at best a
datum of physics, and very likely a matter of speculation. It acquires
moral significance when it enters an economy and becomes property.
>>Alfie respects Bruno's rights because:
>>
>>1. He may be killed if he tries to violate them, and
> Children are observed to respect each other's rights long before they
> learn about such sanctions.
Observed by whom? Small children make no distinctions between others'
property and their own. They begin to learn that difference when their
older brother smacks them for breaking his truck or eating his candy
bar, just as they learn not to touch hot stoves by getting burned.
> Wrong again. There is no game theory calculus behind it, other than
> consequentially. The belief that others have rights is clearly a
> priori and genetic in origin.
Wow! A mysterian!
If it is genetic, how do you explain the widespread violations? Some
people are endowed with the "rights-recognition gene" and others have a
genetic defect? How do you account for the disagreements about rights
(such as this one) --- who has them, how they may be gained and lost, to
what things they extend? You're well out into woo-woo land there, Roy.
People acquired the concept of rights initially via a process called
"adaptive consensus." Too involved to delve into here, but it is the
same process by which they learn their native language.
> Can you provide details of the game theory calculation that makes a
> soldier willing to die for his society?
As Patton remarked, "No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country.
He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."
People are willing to risk their lives for all kinds of goals,
especially young men, who think they're immortal --- skydiving, rock
climbing, joining a gang, becoming mercenaries, racing their cars down
mountain roads while pickled in whiskey. To impress their girlfriends,
establish their credentials in a peer group, please their parents, test
their skills, or just collect a paycheck.
"He died for his society" is a euphemism used *ex post facto* to ennoble
the death and deflect blame from the politicians who placed him at risk.
The real reason he died was that he accepted a risk for some reason of
his own, and didn't dodge quick enough.
[Snipped the rest, more of the same.]
You need to work on those metaphors, Roy.
