You don't understand mutualism?

Miscellaneous General
21

In a rush, this is off the top of my head, can’t double check post:

Stuff exists and we interpret it. Stuff can be imagined (wings on a horse) in combinations but it isn’t “believed in” it is just stuff with stuff that doesn’t exist.

In this specific case, I am saying mutualists simply don’t know what they are talking about when they say the word “government”, “hierarchy”, and “interest stopping will come naturally”. They can, to be sure, imagine wings on a horse,call it Pegasus, and say such a thing exists, and we can verify that, hell we may even be able to create it somehow if it doesn’t exist.

What we can not do is “believe” that usury will “naturally” stop once “government” is abolished. It is impossible to believe due to the fact that it is impossible to tell with intersubjective human actions. All that is done is the spouting off of some grand abstract arbitrary legal theory. Usury can exist or it can not, this is a simple fact. There is nothing other than law that can outlaw it. In fact the argument can be made; what the hell is the motivation to make a loan if one can not collect interest on it? There is nothing to believe in.

The very words “anarchy” and “government”, I think, throw peoples mind way off track into the land of chasing ghosts. The fact is “anarchy” as a word in itself has probably been undermined in a very severe manner. It should probably mean “inherently bad social chaos”, as it always had until the 19th(?) century. And the word “anti-hierarchical” can mean nothing outside of a legal framework. These are words that have obfuscated clarity, in my opinion.

So when I say mutualists can’t believe that the world will naturally not accept usury, I claim bullocks. There is no belief that can be had. There is no such thing as a social/market mechanism that can be “believed to non exist” in anarchy. I can picture people not charging interest obviously, but I can also picture them charging interest as well. Usury does exist, it is custom, it (to me) seems to be an obvious function. There is nothing to believe in, There is just stuff which exist and can be employed or not employed via custom.

22

that’s an interesting belief …

23

Belief is not a philosophically valid term. It is outside the scope and language of philosophy, it can only obfuscate and confuse things.

If it is used to mean “calculating within ones power about an uncertain future” within the language of economic science so be it, even there though, I think it fails on economic grounds for mutualists, as they speak gibberish.

24

isn’t is just a word to describe whether some person ‘holds’ some proposition to be ‘true’ or ‘false’ ?

25

William,

What you’re saying may or may not be what BP or others hold (do they hold (believe) the belief that you can’t hold beliefs? ; head explosion), but when I look at the wiki of mutualism, they make a very clear statement about what they regard as morally right and morally wrong.

Mutualism is based on a labor theory of value that holds that when labor or its product is sold, in exchange, it ought to receive goods or services embodying “the amount of labor necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility”.[3] Receiving anything less would be considered exploitation, theft of labor, or usury.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_%28economic_theory%29

So I don’t think you’re talking about mutualism here. I do think you are correct that people like BP are very anti, which means they have a lot of criticism which is why they’ve denounced religion and the state; but this is also why you won’t hear them actually describe and carefully try to explain what they do believe in, because they’re not very interested and do not see the beauty in markets and production and cooperation. Instead they will see hierarchy and exploitation and other words that do not actually describe something moral and are explainable but do satisfy the emotional desire to make negative statements about the world. In an anarcho-capitalist society there is obviously no hierarchy. People will create a reputation and legal system that make it just as impossible for a rich man to murder as it is for a poor man. People will be equal before the law and no man can influence the law. They can only impoverish themselves if they think they are better than others.

26

the belief that you can’t hold beliefs?

This is something I am just trying out, it isn’t central to my case. That is praxeology does not make “belief” statements correct? In that same sense philosophy does not either. The language of philosophy ought to exclude belief statements in that sense of the word, otherwise it starts to “Hegel” things up and confuse language. Philosophy should either make truth statements or act as something to sort out proper languages and “untangle” any confusion.

We can put the phrase “I believe” before anything, and it ends up sullying thought and language. If I hold up my hand I could say either “I Believe I am holding up my hand” or just simply “here is my hand”. The phrase “I believe” though is unnecessary as we are still making a truth statement, and opens up the door for a false and useless skepticism.

Like I said, this is just some Wittgenstein stuff I am fooling around with/ parroting poorly at the moment and it is not central to what I am stating. I am just kind of testing myself.

So I don’t think you’re talking about mutualism here

I have done a very basic “machine gun” type of approach to my peeves with “left” libertarianism/ mutualism and brought up usury and “mutualism as just a moral system” perhaps I didn’t state it clearly, and in that sense I still think of it as nonsense. I honestly don’t know if I am talking about mutualism or not though, as even if you mention LTV or usury to a a mutualist all I have seen is…“you are misrepresenting my position”. My gripe is I have yet to see mutualism define itself in scientific terms, philisophical terms(hence my belief thing), or anything.

If it is a moral system, fine. It is spurious religous nonsense

If it is an anti usury economic system that claims the LTV is something, fine. Than it is a spurious pseudoscience that can’t state anything but nonsense.

If it is some"legal theory", fine than it is a practiced art built only off of intellectual fantasy.

If it claims to be a philosophy, than where are it’s truth statements and why is it a philosophy?

Like I said, I just took a machine gun approach because when it comes to “left libertarian free market anti-capitalists” I get so frustrated because they refuse to say anything. I wouldn’t be surprised if they said that wikipedia article has “misrepresented their position”. I know Austrianism is heterodox but honestly, LTV? Really?

27

Also on belief, there are also approaches such as this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism

YMMV

This may be going a bit off topic though.

28

Right, it’s like putting “it’s true that”, or “it’s the case that”, before a sentence: It’s entirely superfluous in that whatever sentence that you write already contains its meaning. If I say “I’m an idiot”, I’m already communicating that I think that it’s true; so saying “It’s true that I’m an idiot” doesn’t add anything to the statement: It’s just redundancy. Every statement already includes in its meaning that you think that it’s true. But, somebody might interject, how do we say that we think that something is false? Easy, we say that it’s negation is true: “I’m not an idiot.” Indeed, it’s only useful as the phrase “to be honest” is: when you’ve established a track of dishonesty.

But that’s not even to broach the original subject, which was about whether using the word “believe” to refer to what the mutualists say is useful. At first, I read your next reply as saying, “Well, I’m not saying that nobody can believe anything; I’m simply pointing out that what the mutualists say isn’t believable in that it’s just a bunch of empty words.” But then you went back to defending what in the first place I thought that you said (that is, that nobody can believe anything, or at least that it’s not an expedient use of language to say that they do). So let’s get back to that topic. Well, here’s what I think the disconnection is between the first paragraph (where I agree with you), and this paragraph where I’m about to disagree with you. In short, try to say what somebody else believes, and you have no choice but to use a word like “believe”; indeed, I just did. If you just say, “The sun will rise tomorrow”, you’re implicitly attributing the belief to yourself. So of course it’s just superfluous to tack the words “I believe that” in the front of it. But what should you do when you’re trying to ascribe the belief to somebody else? Not adding anything ascribes it to yourself, so you have no choice but to employ a string of words like “they believe that”.

(In case the point got lost in the length, let me put it as concisely as possible: the phrase “I believe that” is redundant, because every statement already implies that; but the phrase “He believes that” isn’t redundant. In fact, saying “He believes that the sun will rise tomorrow” means “I believe that he believes that the sun will rise tomorrow”, which means “I believe that I believe that he believes that the sun will rise tomorrow”, and so on.)

29

Are you agreeing with that position, or just throwing it out here for consideration?

30

Thread split time?

31

But that’s not even to broach the original subject, which was about whether using the word “believe” to refer to what the mutualists say is useful. At first, I read your next reply as saying, “Well, I’m not saying that nobody can believe anything; I’m simply pointing out that what the mutualists say isn’t believable in that it’s just a bunch of empty words.” But then you went back to defending what in the first place I thought that you said (that is, that nobody can believe anything, or at least that it’s not an expedient use of language to say that they do). So let’s get back to that topic. Well, here’s what I think the disconnection is between the first paragraph (where I agree with you), and this paragraph where I’m about to disagree with you. In short, try to say what somebody else believes, and you have no choice but to use a word like “believe”; indeed, I just did. If you just say, “The sun will rise tomorrow”, you’re implicitly attributing the belief to yourself. So of course it’s just superfluous to tack the words “I believe that” in the front of it. But what should you do when you’re trying to ascribe the belief to somebody else? Not adding anything ascribes it to yourself, so you have no choice but to employ a string of words like “they believe that”.

Whoops your right, I completely have two line of thoughts going here. I will agree that my first case of “a bunch of empty words” is the stronger case. And one I am better off discussing. The two lines of thought may have been due to me trying to just take a “machine gun approach” against mutualism, or me just confusing myself.

Than I switched to a different approach for no good reason, which is not my major focus to the mutualist argument. What I was trying to imply, and I don’t know if it works, is that the word “belief” doesn’t work so much as “what they believe” as an act of uncertainty rather it acts as “there is a premise I do not accept or am non cognitive to”, or “that premise makes sense to doubt”. That is to say “they believe 1 + 1 = 3” could be “a premise was asserted that I am capable of doubting”. So “mutualists do not believe in usury” could simply be stated as a proposition in it’s own “language” (which ever language it is claiming to be used in; philosophy, economics, etc) is simply a premise as 1 + 1 = 3 is a premise. I was thinking this was a sidestep on the word “belief”. To sum up; what is the difference between saying “republicans believe that 1 +1 = 3” vs “republicans state that 1 + 1 = 3”, I think the difference may be that the word “believe” is just a confusing word that throws people off. This may be semantic quibbling, or 100% wrong, I was just kind of “throwing it out there”

As for eliminative materialism, I was basically just throwing out there as it seems to be on the rise in academic thought, I only learned a bit about it in 1 cognitive psych class. While I do not think it “self refutes” (which is usually the 1st attack leveled against it), my instinct is it simply doesn’t do psychology, or at the very least it is not some “all purpose” “all encompassing psychological approach”. That is, it may tend to misunderstand what ontological and intersubjective studies are. To paraphrase a Lachmann/ Popper term there is still an unavoidable “world of Nietzsche”, that is perspectivism, that eliminative materialism may not address. But I do think that the word “materialism” may have an “eliminative” type of quality inherent in the word. In terms of “belief”, the word itself may indeed be poorly defined, as one can not believe in things that don’t exist, they can only use empty words. If you want to do a thread discussion on it, I wouldn’t mind. I am no expert on the subject though.

32

I think a discussion of epistemology is relevant to this discussion. Since it is related to mutualism and biology. No need to split this thread. Let it go where it is going.

I think the absence of belief is an interesting idea. I have been reading a lot of the Sufi writers and commentaries on this tradition. Which is very scientific; somewhere between what you’d think of Eastern mysticism and pure empiricism. Some even say that the Enlightenment and scientific revolution is largely due to Francis Bacon and other philosophers having read the work of the Sufis and transporting it to West (defeating the a priori nature of the Greeks and scholastics). They don’t claim to have beliefs: this is how they solve the problem of causation (though having known of it before Hume et al). The elimination of all beliefs. Though, in fact, like in scientific testing, they will try and demonstrate the action of what they are saying. Rather than relying on the explanation or the logic.

There are a lot of parables and poetry and other stories that demonstrate these points. Usually with a bit of humor. One that I thought was rather funny was when a Sufi saint, Rabia Basri, changed the Koran on her own whim based on experience. And said that the Koran was her own property to do with as she wished. Most of them seem to hide within Muslim cultures as a ‘sect’ of this religion. But claim no belief in anything of the sort. Though, it is believed that Muhammed personally endorsed Sufism as a path to truth. And some of the Sufis consider Muhammed as an enlightened Sufi himself… similar to how Buddhists view Sidartha Gautama.

33

Note: the content being discussed right now has practically nothing to do with mutualism and everything to do with me; although it is clear that most commenters probably don’t understand mutualism (but neither do most mutualists).

The more robust definition is essentially what “self-ownership” is supposed to be but isn’t: self-direction or personal autonomy (which relies on an anti-authoritarianism that is more “robust” in that it excludes more than just the modern nation-state). It involves the capacity to make decisions about one’s life without being subjected to arbitrary and absolute power.

I consider my notion of freedom “more robust” because it transcends territorial boundaries and has a wider bundle of requirements (sufficient conditions) for its realizability. For ancap orthodoxy, “homesteading” is sufficient; I think it isn’t sufficient even if it were necessary. What’s “more robust” is the scope of individual action, since I think propertarian notions inherently limit people’s ability to live without being subjected to some authority.

Territorial authority is incompatible with my notion of freedom, which is why I’m a land skeptic. Propertarian freedom isn’t “robust” enough because in such a framework freedom is completely relative to what is allowed by territorial authority. I consider it a mere reformation of everything it has the pretense of being against, re-legitimized by nothing more than property aquisition norms.

I don’t see how one can make this claim about me, especially when I myself have made this complaint about narrow “anti-statists” merely having the goal of being against the state for its own sake without respect to any positive value that can coherantly establish freedom. I affirm plenty of values (some of which are vehemently denied by ancap orthodoxy, making them the “antis”), and one of my main criticisms of libertarian orthodoxy is that it is in fact stuck in nihilistic decadence and relies on ridiculously simplistic and reductive notions. Standard ancap doesn’t require you to believe in that much at all; it is a very simplified system that often functions as an excuse to dismiss considerations that aren’t reducible to a few principles.

34

Ambiguity is an art mastered by many here.

35

I hope this bundle of requirements does not include elimination of physical laws (gravity, thermodynamics, etc.), scarcity, and the elimination of others with similar requirement bundles which, in return, include the elimination of your (and your bundle’s) existence. Or I could be way off, and would be interested in an alternative.

Z.

36

It doesn’t involve the denial of anything that can reasonably be construed as a “necessity” or “law of nature”, although I understand where this perception (or strawman) comes from. Any normative notion of freedom is useless if it doesn’t dwell within the realm of possibility. My position could be construed as pessimistic-realist in that I think such requirements are above and beyond what most libertarians seem to think, but they aren’t impossible or in defiance or necessity either. I don’t think anything worthy of being called a genuine free society will come about at any time in the near future.

37

So what is your approach to use rights of the good land? Why is it different from any other scarce good, and how should we approach use rights of anything?

38

What are they? (You already said plenty about what they are not.)

39

Round and round we go.

40

that wiki article is so fuzzy-minded it’s distressing.

<Some eliminativists argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. Rather, they argue that psychological concepts of behaviour and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level.>

they say folk psych terms are poorly defined, so therefore they should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level. hello mcfly? anybody home? if the terms are poorly defined, they cannot be judged on how well they reduce to anything. you’d have to define them first! either they are ill-defined and cannot be judged, or they are well-defined and can be judged. it can’t be both!