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From: berman@psuvax1.UUCP (Piotr Berman)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Force is the Opposite of Reason (long form)
Message-ID: <1943@psuvax1.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 27-Dec-85 21:52:01 EST
Article-I.D.: psuvax1.1943
Posted: Fri Dec 27 21:52:01 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Dec-85 20:44:32 EST
References: <1578@hound.UUCP>
Organization: Pennsylvania State Univ.
Lines: 177

I abbreviated the text of Bob as faithfully as I could.
The words introdueced by me in the process are in [] brackets.

>                         CONCEPTS OF REASON AND FORCE
> 
>                            Reason as a Potential
>     Reason is the faculty [of man] that identifies and integrates the 
> material provided by man's senses.  
>     To speak of man's faculty of reason is to speak of his potential to 
> reason.  Man also has other potentials, such as the faculty of vision-- 
> 
>                            Reason as an Actuality
>     When the proper conditions are met, the actuality of reason can be 
> realized.  
> get me to do something I don't want to do."  I will say more on this later.
>     What mental process is identified by the concept of reason?  Such an 
> idea does not subsume daydreaming or wishing, for example.  One 
> distinction between the process of reason and other acts of consciousness 
> is the product of the process--its output, [another is its method].

> 
>                             The Result of Reason
>     The output of reason is a state of consciousness--a mental product 
> --e.g., a conclusion--something that has the potential of being 
> knowledge.  A conclusion that 2 + 2 = 4 would be knowledge; a conclusion 
> that 2 + 2 = 5 would be an error.  Knowledge is an identification of a 
> fact of reality by a consciousness.  This identification is a state of 
> consciousness consistent with a fact of reality.  A conclusion identifying 
> a fact of reality is reasonable; a false conclusion is unreasonable or 
> irrational.
> 

>                             The Method of Reason
>     What conditions must a process 
> of consciousness meet in order to be classified as reasoning?
>     Reason is a process of consciousness that has the potential of 
> producing states of consciousness consistent with reality.  Perceptions 
> are automatically consistent with reality.  But most of man's knowledge 
> is held as abstractions--as integrations of percepts into first order 
> concepts and [subsequently] into higher order (more abstract) concepts.
> 
>     Reason is the process of consciousness that produces abstractions 
> consistent with reality.  To do this, reason must meet two essential 
> criteria.  First, to qualify as reasoning, a process must deal in 
> abstractions ultimately based on the evidence of the senses.  Second, a 
> process of reason must ensure that new conclusions integrate 
> non-contradictorily with all previous knowledge of the reasoner.
>     A process that starts with an arbitrary assertion [which] has no 
> sensory tie to reality does not qualify as reason.  ([If one] reason[s] 
> from such a starting point his conclusion will say nothing of reality.)
>     Similarly, a process that knowingly tolerates contradictions is not 
> reason.
>     Emotions are products of consciousness with somatic consequences,
>  while they are a valuable and enjoyable aspect of being human, they 
>  are not tools of cognition.
> 
>                               Reason vs. Force
>     All the aspects of reason discussed thus far apply [to] a single human.
> But the concept of force that is the opposite of reason does arise 
> when more than one person is involved.
>     Force is the use of physical means by one person (or group) to cause 
> another person to act against his reason.  Force is contrasted with 
> reason--getting someone to act by transferring knowledge (states of 
> consciousness consistent with reality) from one person's mind to another.
> 
>     This is the sense in which force is the opposite of reason.  Force 
> cannot even be defined or grasped except in opposition to reason.  Your 
> earliest concept of force might refer to having to do things you don't 
> want to do.  As you mature you will learn that not everything you want to 
> do is necessarily reasonable.  Later you will differentiate instances 
> where you change your actions because you are influenced by physical means 
> from instances where you are influenced by the force of an argument--by 
> reason.
>     Reason, in this context, refers to the process by which you get 
> someone else to reach a conclusion.  If you use a process of 
> reason, you would point out contradictions in the conclusions of the other 
> person *and* correct your own conclusions when contradictions are revealed.
>     Force bypasses reason.  Force says some private inaccessible-to-others 
> state of consciousness justifies using physical means to make someone act 
> as if they had reached a conclusion by reason.
>     It is in dealing with others that force--physical force--is the 
> opposite of reason.
>     Attempting to gain values by the use of force because you feel you can 
> do so violates the essence of reason that says to start with reality--not 
> arbitrary states of consciousness.
>     A policy of trying to live by force is unreasonable if you value 
> happiness.
>     The values needed to sustain human life must be created by applying 
> reason to the problem of survival.  A policy of trying to gain values by 
> initiating physical force will lower the productivity of the victim--and 
> the victimizer has produced nothing.  Initiation of force to gain value 
> cuts one little tie to reality in the mind of the forcer (as he acts 
> against the cause--the victim's use of reason--while desiring the 
> effect--the values produced) and one link to reality of the victim (whose 
> actions but for the intervention of the forcer's arbitrary contents of 
> consciousness would have yielded him a value).  If you want to know the 
> results of such a policy carried to extremes, see 
> the Nazi concentration camps.  If you 
> want to see the existential effects on productivity, compare the relative 
> productivity of the more free (from force initiated by others) countries 
> with culturally similar but less free countries--say West Germany vs. East 
> Germany, or South Korea vs. North Korea.
>     In the field of social interaction, reason produces values and force 
> destroys productivity.
>                       FORCE IS THE OPPOSITE OF REASON.
> 
> -- 
> Bob Stubblefield ihnp4!hound!rwsh 201-949-2846


Bob writes:

>     Force is the use of physical means by one person (or group) to cause 
> another person to act against his reason.  

His examples do not explain the following:

If someone is not reasoning correctly (i.e. starts from a whimsical assumption,
tolerates contradictions, etc.), does he act according to reason?
In particular, if this individual is caused to act against its wish,
does it mean that it is forced?

Later I will point to the difficulties involved in this problem.

Bob writes:

> to see the effects on productivity, compare the 
> productivity of the more free (from force initiated by others) countries 
> with culturally similar but less free countries--say West Germany vs. East 
> Germany, or South Korea vs. North Korea.

As one may notice, West Germany has substancial taxes, conscription,
even censorship (one is not allowed to advocate racial hatred).
South Korea, unlike West Germany, is definitely an oppresive country,
yet the rate of economical growth is larger.  This is not a fortunate 
example of force being an enemy of productivity.  

Bob objects to force in three ways:

1.  He defines reason as an individual faculty, then redefines it
    as a way of conveying one's point of view, then claims that
    force as a tool to make someone agree is incompatible with the 
    reason in its second meaning.

2.  He argues that the force as a tool to gain values is ineffective:
    the values gained do not provide happines as large as in the
    case when force is not used.

These two approaches do not address directly force as used by state 
or similar entity.

3.  Force is bad for productivity.

This is not ultimately convincing: some slave societies had larger
productivity than some free ones, this relative argument is downright
dangerous.

Bob is not addressing at all the problem of norms in a society.
It seems that he needs a dangerous loophole: a society must
create rational laws, then forcing people to obey is not forcing
them to act against their reason, since reason should make them to
obey the laws!
This is an opening to "we know better what is good for you" approach,
and consistent with my view that objectivism, if fully developed,
will demand a state of the Platonic form: dictatorship of the wise
over the irrational multitude.  The idea of such a system would not
be questioned, the only requirement would be that the wise should
be wise indeed.  Since objective reasoning is, according to objectivists,
capable of producing conclusions which should be acceptable to ALL
rational humans, the existence of the people sufficiently wise to
be trusted with the absolute rule over the rest need not to be doubted.

If in turn this loophole is not use, then I do not understand how
Bob wants to solve the problem of necessary norms.


Piotr Berman