Political Theory

Re: Are libertarians inherently thick?

Drew — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 00:34:33 GMT

conza88:
But then it's not just me. How about this. Was this addressed?

Sorry Conza, I stopped following this post after I wrote that.

conza88:
Pretty simple, aye? If you exchange goods with someone and it turns out the person was a thief & they were stolen goods... then unbeknownst to you, or even if you do know - you've semi supported crime (we'll just go ahead and assume the best case argument for the opposition here)... the thief got money for his transaction.

Yet when you deal with government - WHAT DO THEY GET? HOW DO THEY BENEFIT? The notion is yes - they get votes. Absolutely correct. But as a libertarian, you can choose NOT to give that too them.

And so Walter Block's article on the matter, makes complete sense. Great point.

Now that you mention it I'm not really in favor of taking money from the government. That sounds easier said then done, I live in Canada and all my education "was free" up till now. Sorry for not replying earlier.

Re: Are libertarians inherently thick?

liberty student — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 17:11:48 GMT

Conza88:
Really? Even though veduka surmised as much and he's new?

He's new and doesn't know me. You should know better.

Conza88:
I also find that kind of hard to believe considering I directly quoted your question and pressed the respond button to your post twice.

Conza, I rarely reply to your posts. I rarely reply because they are hard to read (sourcing authority is not a discussion), don't usually address the issue to my level of interest and your quoting style is incredibly difficult to read. It's not just these posts, I skip over nearly all of your posts. That doesn't justify you acting like a hurt child when you feel you're being ignored. I've given you a lot of my time on instant messenger, obviously ignoring you is not my usual mode of operation.

Conza88:
If you read the post

Again, I didn't read it. When I read your first response to my third post (after the new guy pointed it out), I thought "Cool, Hoppe makes my point, but I don't think Conza gets it" of course at this point, I had little inclination to discuss with you at all.

Conza88:
But then it's not just me. How about this. Was this addressed?

Looks like you are talking to someone else. Am I supposed to reply to every post you make?

Conza88:
I didn't see any response to it, which considering it's content & argument - which I thought was pretty good - was that the reason it wasn't replied too - was because no-one has a good response against it.

That's an argument from ignorance. I have already explained to you why I don't reply to all of your posts. They are hard to read and you more often than not make my point accidentally. If you're feeling marginalized, maybe the lowest common denominator is you, not everyone else.

Conza88:
And yet as someone who strives for the truth, it annoys me when people continue on with their position in the thread / life and just pretend it doesn't exist. When people also try take the morale highground -whilst they are acting in this way - well that to me is... well pathetic.

Your pursuit of the truth completely misses the point about communication between humans. Your issue (and it was once mine) is that because you think you're right, you think that's good enough. It isn't. You can shout until you are blue in the face, but if you can't convince people to listen, then it is all for naught except to build a suspicious mind. Come down off your high horse, and sit among the rest of us. Learn to speak clearly and directly to individuals. Respect prior relationships and try to understand the other party's point of view.

If you wanna have a debate about my ethics vs yours, I'll do it. but you're going to be sad about how it turns out because at this time, you're unable to separate your sense of righteousness from your desire to communicate, and if this didn't do it, that will probably cost you a friend.

Have a nice day.

Re: Are libertarians inherently thick?

Micah71381 — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 12:08:04 GMT

The reason I think we are running into word definition issues is because you are using statements like "consequentialist ethic" but I don't see consequentialism as being an ethic at all. It is simply a shorthand way of stating that I believe my net utility would be higher in a libertarian society than it would be in a statist society. I am making no ethical claims, simply stating a personal belief about my own predicted future utility given two hypothetical options (libertarianism and statism).

This statement can not, therefore, be invalid or an "absudity" because it is simply me making a prediction on future utility and acting toward it (being a proponent of libertarianism). Deontological libertarianism on the other hand (as I define it) describes people who don't look at libertarianism as a predicted net utility gain but rather look at it as morally right. They believe in private property rights being a natural law and extend that into believing libertarianism is the only political system which allows that law to go unbroken (or at least minimizes it's breaking).

Again, these are my definitions and I have run into people on this forum who do not share these definitions so I have no problem not using them. Hoppe's argument that "consequentialist libertarianism is an absurdity" does not apply though if you insert my definition into the statement because you can not call someone's prediction on future value a "praxeological absurdity".

Conza:

And those people fail to realize the distinction between political philosophy & personal ethics.

I don't disagree here, I tried to argue this point in another thread and it didn't really go anywhere. I was arguing for libertarianism as a political philosophy and not an ethical philosophy while others were arguing that if one didn't ethically follow libertarianism while living in a statist society then they were not a real libertarian.

Re: Are libertarians inherently thick?

Conza88 — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 10:49:57 GMT

"Would you mind defining consequentialist libertarian for me?"

We've already been over this, in this exact thread. Hoppe is using the exact same definition as you supplied earlier. He also takes apart those individuals listed as consequentialist's in the bottom of the link you provided and in this thread alone - two have been specifically stated. I will now repost from earlier:

"As regards the utilitarian position, the proof contains its ultimate refutation. It demonstrates that simply in order to propose the utilitarian position, exclusive rights of control over one’s body and one’s homesteaded goods already must be presupposed as valid. More specifically, as regards the consequentialist aspect of libertarianism, the proof shows its praxeological impossibility: the assignment of rights of exclusive control cannot be dependent on certain outcomes. One could never act and propose anything unless private property rights existed prior to a later outcome. A consequentialist ethic is a praxeological absurdity. Any ethic must instead be “aprioristic” or instantaneous in order to make it possible that one can act here and now and propose this or that rather than having to suspend acting until later. Nobody advocating a wait-for-the-outcome ethic would be around to say anything if he took his own advice seriously. Also, to the extent that utilitarian proponents are still around, they demonstrate through their actions that their consequentialist doctrine is and must be regarded as false. Acting and proposition-making require private property rights now and cannot wait for them to be assigned only later." - HHH, Economics and ethics of private property, p354

By the looks of it, you're a smart guy. I really don't understand what is being misunderstood. If you want to proclaim the benefits of the market, take that persons position on it's own terms and explain what would happen if it went into effect in a value free manner etc. that is what Austrian Economics is for! By all means, remain value free. Libertarianism however is a political philosophy. It also is value free. It is meta-normative it does not deal with 'oughts' or 'shoulds', but 'rights'. Argumentation ethics is one justification which avoids the is/ought gap. I'd suggest you read What Libertarianism Is - as to how it differs from others. Because a consequentialist ethic really is an absurdity.

Maybe this will help?

"Since considerations such as these are irrelevant in order to judge the validity of a mathematical proof, for instance, so are they beside the point here. In the same way as the validity of a mathematical proof is not restricted to the moment of proving it, so is the validity of the libertarian property theory not limited to instances of argumentation. If correct, the argument demonstrates its universal justification. (Of all utilitarian critics only Steele takes up the challenge that I had posed for them: that the assignment of property rights cannot be dependent on any later outcome because in this case no one could ever know before the outcome what he was or was not justified to do; and that in advocating a consequentialist position utilitarianism is [strictly speaking] no ethic at all if it fails to answer the all decisive question “what am I justified to do now?” Steele solves this problem in the same way as he proceeds throughout his comment: by misunderstanding what it is.

He misconceives my argument as subject to empirical testing and misrepresents it as claiming to show that “I favor a libertarian ethic” follows from “I am saying something,” while in fact it claims that entirely independent of whatever people happen to favor or utter “the libertarian ethic can be given an ultimate propositional justification” follows from “I claim such and such to be valid, i.e., capable of propositional justification.” His response to the consequentialist problem is yet another stroke of genius: No, says Steele, consequentialism must not involve a praxeologically absurd waiting-for-the-outcome ethic. His example: Certain rules are advocated first, then implemented, and later adjusted depending on outcomes. While this is indeed an example of consequentialism, I fail to see how it should provide an answer to “what are we justified in doing now?” and so escape the absurdities of a waiting- for-the-outcome ethic.

The starting point is unjustified [Which rules? Not only the outcome depends on this!]; and the consequentialist procedure is unjustified, too. [Why not adopt rules and stick to them regardless of the outcome?] Steele’s answer to the question “what am I justified in doing?” is “that depends on whatever rules you start out with, then on the outcome of whatever this leads to, and finally on whether or not you care about such an outcome.” Whatever this is, it is no ethic.) pg 406-407 - Hoppe, EEPP

"I disagree. I think we can see just by looking back through this thread and some other related ones on this forum that some people believe in libertarianism as an ethical code which they follow even when the society isn't libertarian while others beleive in libertarianism as a political philosophy but don't follow the ethical code in their day to day lives."

And those people fail to realise the distinction between political philosophy & personal ethics. So if you support the idea of socialism, but you work in the free market - you're not really a socialist. If you support the idea of statism, but you work in the free market - you're not really a statist. If you support the idea of libertarianism, but you work in government - you're really not a libertarian? Riiighhhht, epic reasoning there.

"The truth is inherently practical, and in recognizing an idea as true (or false), a scholar cannot but want it to be implemented (or eradicated) immediately. For this reason, in addition to pursuing his scholarly ambitions, Menger served as personal tutor to the Austrian Crown Prince Rudolf, and as an appointed life-member of the Austrian House of Lords (Herrenhaus). Similarly, Böhm-Bawerk served three times as Austrian minister of finance, and was a lifetime member of the Herrenhaus. Likewise, Mises was the nationally prominent chief economist of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce and advisor to many prominent figures during Austria’s first Republic, and later, in the U.S., he served as advisor to the National Association of Manufacturers and numerous other organizations. Only Mises went even further. Just as he was the first economic system-builder, so was he the first to give the Austrian activism systematic expression by associating Austrian economics with radical-liberal-libertarian-political reform (as laid out in his Liberalism of 1927). Only Rothbard, who likewise served in many advisory functions and as founder and academic director of several educational organizations, accomplished something comparable." - MNR: Economics Science, and Liberty by Hoppe

Re: Are libertarians inherently thick?

Micah71381 — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 08:22:06 GMT

Conza88:

"It seems that we have gotten way off topic and neither of us are actually arguing against each other."

“it would be…impossible to sustain argumentation for any length of time and rely on the prepositional force of one’s arguments, if one were not allowed to appropriate next to one’s body other scarce means though homesteading action, i.e., by putting them to use before someone else does, and if such means, and the rights of exclusive control regarding them, were not defined in objective, physical terms. For if no one had the right to control anything at all except his own body, then we would all cease to exist and the problem of justifying norms-as well as all other human problems-simply would not exist. Thus, by virtue of the fact of being alive, then, property rights to other things must be presupposed to be valid too. No one who is alive could argue otherwise. And if a person did not acquire the right of exclusive control over such goods by homesteading action, i.e., by establishing some objective link between a particular person and a particular scarce resource before anybody else had done so, but if instead, late-comers were assumed to have ownership claims to things, then literally no one would be allowed to do anything with anything as one would have to have all of the later-comer’s consent prior to ever doing what one wanted to do. Neither we, our forefathers, nor our progeny could, do or will survive if one were to follow this rule.” 11 ~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe, EEPP, 206

Your consequentialist ethic in "action".

Would you mind defining consequentialist libertarian for me? The excert you have provided has nothing to do with consequentialist libertarianism as I understand the word to be defined so the most likely candidate for confusion here is that we mean different things when we talk about this subject.

Conza88:

To go back to the OP though - Libertarians are inherently thin.

I disagree. I think we can see just by looking back through this thread and some other related ones on this forum that some people believe in libertarianism as an ethical code which they follow even when the society isn't libertarian while others beleive in libertarianism as a political philosophy but don't follow the ethical code in their day to day lives.

Re: Are libertarians inherently thick?

AJ — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 05:40:09 GMT

Micah71381:

AJ:

But even insofar as language itself influences thought <...>, I do not see any way in which it is integral (necessary?) to thought.

To me it's an extension of the theory. Assuming you accept that the language you use influences the way you percieve the world then if you take that to an extreme how does that effect the way you perceive the world? Some of the research indicates that some things are more influenced by language than others. So perhaps there are a set of concepts that humans can think about and conceptualize without the need for language while there are others that require language in order for them to exist. I don't remember what the generalized categories were but things like temporal concepts (past, present, future) seem to be influenced by language while other things (don't remember again) aren't influenced by language.

In a language that forces you to constantly note time and tense, you would think about such things more...but that's true by definition. If I create a new language that forces you to end every sentence with an expression about how comfortable your feet are at that moment, on a scale of 1 to 100, by jove you will get really good at scoring things on a strict 1-to-100 scale and you will be probably become keenly aware of your bodily sensations in all their different degrees.

I am willing to grant that language can and does have a significant influence on how people think, like any other thought process you are forced to engage in to communicate with people on a daily basis. But that is a far cry from it being integral to thought. I would bet money that every single one of those "generalized categories" that supposedly are only accessible through words, are just incoherent concepts that really are just words with no set meaning behind them (like "justice"). That's to be shown. Temporal categories, for example, are accessible by anyone who has the ability to visualize a movie, which I think includes young children.

(As an aside, the bilingual speakers thing just doesn't work out like it might appear. Unless every single one of each of the test participant's friends and family spoke both English and Indonesian in all situations, there would be no way to remove the cultural factor. Both being learned in the same culture only covers some base factors. Even from within the same culture, do they study math in both, watch movies in both, adore and mimick Hannah Montana in both, get angry in both, make love in both, get drunk in both, talk to themselves in both? Surely such individuals exist, but they are extremely rare.) And when you get into Hannah Montana you might start to see the fundamental problem. There is an entirely different set of associations betwen the languages, no matter how similar and equal one tries to make use of them.

Re: Are libertarians inherently thick?

Conza88 — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 04:04:27 GMT

"It seems that we have gotten way off topic and neither of us are actually arguing against each other."

“it would be…impossible to sustain argumentation for any length of time and rely on the prepositional force of one’s arguments, if one were not allowed to appropriate next to one’s body other scarce means though homesteading action, i.e., by putting them to use before someone else does, and if such means, and the rights of exclusive control regarding them, were not defined in objective, physical terms. For if no one had the right to control anything at all except his own body, then we would all cease to exist and the problem of justifying norms-as well as all other human problems-simply would not exist. Thus, by virtue of the fact of being alive, then, property rights to other things must be presupposed to be valid too. No one who is alive could argue otherwise. And if a person did not acquire the right of exclusive control over such goods by homesteading action, i.e., by establishing some objective link between a particular person and a particular scarce resource before anybody else had done so, but if instead, late-comers were assumed to have ownership claims to things, then literally no one would be allowed to do anything with anything as one would have to have all of the later-comer’s consent prior to ever doing what one wanted to do. Neither we, our forefathers, nor our progeny could, do or will survive if one were to follow this rule.” 11 ~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe, EEPP, 206

Your consequentialist ethic in "action".

To go back to the OP though - Libertarians are inherently thin.

Grundnorms.

"The libertarian seeks property assignment rules because he values or accepts various grundnorms such as justice, peace, prosperity, cooperation, conflict-avoidance, and civilization.[14] The libertarian view is that self-ownership is the only property assignment rule compatible with these grundorms; it is implied by them."

[14] "Grundnorm" was legal philosopher Hans Kelsen's term for the hypothetical basic norm or rule that serves as the basis or ultimate source for the legitimacy of a legal system. See Hans Kelsen, General Theory of Law and State, trans. Anders Wedberg (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1949). I employ this term to refer to the fundamental norms presupposed by civilized people, e.g., in argumentative discourse, which in turn imply libertarian norms.

That the libertarian grundnorms are, in fact, necessarily presupposed by all civilized people to the extent they are civilized — during argumentative justification, that is — is shown by Hoppe in his argumentation-ethics defense of libertarian rights. On this, see Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, chapter 7; Stephan Kinsella, "New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory," Journal of Libertarian Studies 12, no. 2 (Fall 1996): 313–26; idem, "Defending Argumentation Ethics," Anti-state.com (Sept. 19, 2002).

For discussion of why people (to one extent or the other) do value these underlying norms, see Stephan Kinsella, "The Division of Labor as the Source of Grundnorms and Rights," Mises Economics Blog (April 24, 2009), and idem, "Empathy and the Source of Rights," Mises Economics Blog (Sept. 6, 2006). See also idem, "Punishment and Proportionality," pp. 51 and 70:

People who are civilized are … concerned about justifying punishment. They want to punish, but they also want to know that such punishment is justified — they want to legitimately be able to punish … Theories of punishment are concerned with justifying punishment, with offering decent men who are reluctant to act immorally a reason why they may punish others. This is useful, of course, for offering moral men guidance and assurance that they may properly deal with those who seek to harm them.

Re: Are libertarians inherently thick?

Micah71381 — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 03:02:05 GMT

AJ:

But even insofar as language itself influences thought <...>, I do not see any way in which it is integral (necessary?) to thought.

To me it's an extension of the theory. Assuming you accept that the language you use influences the way you percieve the world then if you take that to an extreme how does that effect the way you perceive the world? Some of the research indicates that some things are more influenced by language than others. So perhaps there are a set of concepts that humans can think about and conceptualize without the need for language while there are others that require language in order for them to exist. I don't remember what the generalized categories were but things like temporal concepts (past, present, future) seem to be influenced by language while other things (don't remember again) aren't influenced by language.

Re: Are libertarians inherently thick?

Micah71381 — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 02:58:40 GMT

AJ:

Well this is something a little different. Naturally the words used to frame a task will be suggestive, and there are necessary differences between languages that will affect framing, but those are primarily cultural: one is used to being made to pay attention to certain things when being spoken to in Indonesian vs. being spoken to in English. I am not opposed to such a possibility.

What I am opposed to is the idea that language is integral for scientific/philosophical thought. I would not even be surprised if people tended to draw different conclusions to scientific matters if told to think about a scientific problem in English vs. in Indonesian. That is taking two different socio-cultural reference groups into your mind as you solve the problem. For that matter, though, instructing the participants to imagine solving the problem with their family versus with their university colleages, or with their drinking buddies, would probably result in even more differences.

But even insofar as language itself influences thought (if it is present, how could it not? language is going to be a fairly large part of what someone experiences if the experimenters make it so), I do not see any way in which it is integral (necessary?) to thought.

The Indonesian/English bilingual speakers, as I understand it, learned English in Indonesia (not in America/Europe) meaning they did not get exposure to English culture so there can't be said to have been cultural influences in their thinking process. Their entire cultural experience was Indonesian with English being learned as a second language because it is a very common language in SE Asia. The tests focused on tense differences which means if it was a cultural thing the subject would have to have used English in situations where tense was important compared to using Indonesian when tense was unimportant. It is unlikely that they utilized English in a significantly different environment than Indonesian so I don't see how a claim could be made that it is a cultural influence.

The experiments also indicated that people who had learned english showed signs of recognizing, valuing and remembering tense even when tested in Indonesian. This indicates that just the act of learning the second language influenced the way they thought about problems. This is using a subject pool that is otherwise very similar with regards to cultural and educational backgrounds. To me this succussfully teases out cultural influences.

Re: Are libertarians inherently thick?

AJ — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 02:41:14 GMT

Well this^ is something a little different. Naturally the words used to frame a task will be suggestive, and there are necessary differences between languages that will affect framing, but those are primarily cultural: one is used to being made to pay attention to certain things when being spoken to in Indonesian vs. being spoken to in English. I am not opposed to such a possibility.

What I am opposed to is the idea that language is integral for scientific/philosophical thought. I would not even be surprised if people tended to draw different conclusions to scientific matters if told to think about a scientific problem in English vs. in Indonesian. That is taking two different socio-cultural reference groups into your mind as you solve the problem. For that matter, though, instructing the participants to imagine solving the problem with their family versus with their university colleages, or with their drinking buddies, would probably result in even more differences.

But even insofar as language itself influences thought (if it is present, how could it not? language is going to be a fairly large part of what someone experiences if the experimenters make it so), I do not see any way in which it is integral (necessary?) to thought.

Re: Are libertarians inherently thick?

Micah71381 — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 02:03:11 GMT

Fascinating study (in my opinion): http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.20.1779&rep=rep1&type=pdf

They tease out the difference between culture and language by testing bilingual speakers. The study spanned 4 similar experiments and here are some of the conclusions that I found particularly interesting.

This pattern of findings suggests two things. First, it appears that bilinguals do think differently when speaking different languages. Even though the task was conducted in pictures, setting a linguistic context by providing instructions either in English or in Indonesian changed the way Indonesian-English bilinguals reasoned about the action events in this study.

Second, it appears that learning a new language can change the way one thinks. The Indonesian-English bilinguals who were tested in Indonesian showed a pattern that was somewhere in-between the pattern shown by monolingual Indonesian speakers and the pattern shown by English speakers. Even though they were tested entirely in Indonesian it appears that having learned English may have changed the way they think about action events. Further studies will be necessary to explore this possibility in more detail.

These results suggest that even something as subtle as linguistic context (whether instructions were given in English or Indonesian) can have an effect on how people encode and represent events. Even though subjects were not asked to encode the events linguistically (and the entire task was conducted in pictures), people's ability to remember the tense of events they had witnessed (whether they saw someone about to kick a ball or having already kicked a ball) depended on whether or not tense distinctions were required in the language in which they had been greeted and given instructions just prior to the task.

I highly encourage reading the paper if you are interested in this topic, or at least the summary section at the end if you don't care about the actual experiments. When I first was told about the language and thought hypothesis I was skeptical in all of the same ways as you are but after reading some of the research behind it I have been convinced that there is definitely something to it.

Re: Are libertarians inherently thick?

AJ — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 01:23:46 GMT

Micah71381:
Studies have shown that people who speak a certain language perceive their world in a particular way that is in line with their language when compared to people of another language. That is, if my language describes primary colors as red, green and blue I will have a more difficult time identifying and remembering the color yellow when compared to someone whose language has yellow as a primary color. Similar results occur for people with regards to motion perception, emotion perception, object representation, and memory.

Culture affects perceptions, of course, and culture affects how language is formed for the same reason. I don't know of any study reaching that kind of conclusion that is able to tease out any influence from language as separate from cultural considerations. Language usage alerts people using that language to something the culture deems significant. Like if I hear FUUUUUUUUUUUU!!! a lot, I know that the current culture deems such a word - and the corresponding emotional reaction - as significant, as not just another random emotion, and not as an emotion to be easily conflated with other similar ones. The current culture draws a line between FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!! and Arghhhhh.

What these studies seem to be saying is that if you are in a culture where FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!! and Arghhhhh are differentiated and referred to a lot, you will be more keenly aware of the differences. Yeah, that's pretty much a prerequisite for making friends and such, at least in circles that use such language. But I see no reason to think the language is primary. It seems that the language is only primary as a vehicle. More fundamentally, you have a lot of people feeling the emotions pointed to by "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!" and "Arghhhhh" a lot, and finding these things worth differentiating, so you end up with different words for them. Language doesn't influence people; people influence people. Language is a tool by which people do that, although it does create a sort of ripple effect after that.

From another angle, anyone who speaks a language only can do so because they understand the culture in the relevant ways, and it is culture that determines such things as what colors a person learns to distinguish. In old Japan wearing a certain shade of black was punishable by death. To Americans it's all "black," but to Japanese at the time you bet they knew the difference. If family relations are valued highly in a culture, it will have a lot of words to clarify such relationships and related emotions. Etc.

If there is any study suggesting otherwise, I'm open to it. But anyway I don't disagree that such influence happens on that level (people influencing people, and the remnants of such actions). What I disagree with is the idea that language is integral to scientific/philosophical reasoning.

Re: Are libertarians inherently thick?

Conza88 — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:05:32 GMT

"Well, that wasn't so hard, was it? I mean, considering how I regard you as a friend, I'm surprised that you would take a passive/aggressive swipe at me online. "

I didn't think it was necessary. It wasn't at you personally, hence it being a general statement. Its happened every now and then over time here on the forums and no sorry I don't have the source to back that up, but if I do come across it will let you know. Similar type threads to this though. Although this time it was your action / inaction that irked me a bit after awhile. Part indirect vent - which is why I was avoiding shouting it from the rooftops... since you are a friend.

"Or maybe I shouldn't be?"

Funnily enough, I referred this to a previous mod of the forum. He asked 'why I was surprised and what did I expect?'

"Remember who started it Conza."

And what exactly was started? I do hope it ends well.

"I had no idea you were talking to me."

Really? Even though veduka surmised as much and he's new? I also find that kind of hard to believe considering I directly quoted your question and pressed the respond button to your post twice. Although I didn't name you (but then I don't usually name anyone - I stopped 'properly' quoting after the forum 'broke down' and it become a hassle) People tend to remember what they wrote and see it being quoted. Benefit of the doubt though considering I added in a response to Merlin, but that was because you agreed with him.

If you read the post I don't see how you could have possibly not seen it being as directed at you. The point about tolerance makes it glaring obvious, does it not?

But then it's not just me. How about this. Was this addressed? I didn't see any response to it, which considering it's content & argument - which I thought was pretty good - was that the reason it wasn't replied too - was because no-one has a good response against it. And yet as someone who strives for the truth, it annoys me when people continue on with their position in the thread / life and just pretend it doesn't exist. When people also try take the morale highground -whilst they are acting in this way - well that to me is... well pathetic.

Anyway, well you know now.

Re: Are libertarians inherently thick?

Micah71381 — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 23:01:30 GMT

Studies have shown that people who speak a certain language perceive their world in a particular way that is in line with their language when compared to people of another language. That is, if my language describes primary colors as red, green and blue I will have a more difficult time identifying and remembering the color yellow when compared to someone whose language has yellow as a primary color. Similar results occur for people with regards to motion perception, emotion perception, object representation, and memory.

This research shows us that the language we speak influences how we think, remember and perceive the world. It also hints at the fact that without language, what does that mean for our world perception? If words have such an impact on our world perception, what does that mean for someone who has no language? How would they perceive the world?

The "common sense" reaction is to say the person would still perceive the world in the same way as we would, just without a means of expressing it. The science hints at the opposite result though, that the person would probably have a vastly different perception of the world than we would and this goes beyond just inability to express it. When shown two colors, they may have significant trouble identifying the difference. When shown two objects they may have significant trouble telling them apart, when asked to remember an object they may have significant trouble picking it out of a group later. This is all hypothetical of course and I don't think there have been any studies with regards to this topic on people who have no language (there are *very* few people who have no language and they are in high demand by cognitive researchers and modern ethics prevents much study on them).

Re: Are libertarians inherently thick?

AJ — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 22:24:53 GMT

OK I agree language influences thought, if only in that the language one uses to describe something tends to be recalled when thinking about that thing. I think the exact mechanism is that thoughts are put into words, then the words are recalled and reinterpreted into the original thought that prompted the words (if you're lucky).

But I don't know what you mean by "language is integral in critical/complex thought (science/philosophy)." It might be helpful as a memory device, but I can't think of an example where a word would be integral (necessary?) to a thought. In aiding the memory, especially though writing something down, I can see how that would help advance science, but then strictly speaking the benefit is coming from having some sort of thought recording device. As a memory aid, I would phrase it more as language is "peripheral/auxilliary" - in the way that a pen and paper are - rather than integral.