Eugine_Nier comments on The noncentral fallacy - the worst argument in the world? - Less Wrong

157 Post author: Yvain 27 August 2012 03:36AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (1742)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: DaFranker 27 August 2012 09:15:26PM *  5 points [-]

This implies that there is an intrinsic "wrongness" somewhere inside "theft" itself. Where, then, does the human hand reach into the vast void of existence to retrieve this wrongness to which theft is associated?

"Theft", the word, does not have any wrongness. Otherwise, we could use "Borbooka" instead. Let's do that. Does Borbooka have inherent wrongness? Well, what is Borbooka?

Borbooka is, apparently, when an item, which some animals apparently say verbally and apparently implicitly mutually agree is for the exclusive use of "one particular" animal, is moved from one point in spacetime to another point in spacetime such that another animal gains implicit exclusive use of this item without there being an apparent verbal exchange between animals that would apparently make them all understand that both animals "wanted" this item to be displaced thus.

Where, in the Borbooka defined above, is this mystical "wrongness" you insinuate? Are these not all simple conventions and agreements between said animals? Does Borbooka somehow create or destroy matter, or anything at all? If these conventions were not there and all the animals never had the implicit agreement that one item "belonged" to one animal, would Borbooka still be wrong? Would it still even exist?

I thought this was completely covered by a conjunction of the Metaethics and Guide to Words sequences.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 28 August 2012 05:38:32AM -2 points [-]

Where, in the Borbooka defined above, is this mystical "wrongness" you insinuate?

Because there's an ethical injunction against it.

I thought this was completely covered by a conjunction of the Metaethics and Guide to Words sequences.

You may want to look at this post.

Comment author: MixedNuts 28 August 2012 07:30:06AM 0 points [-]

Given a general case, you should be able to argue about harms. Injunctions only come into play where you have some reason to rationalize a bad conclusion in an unusual-seeming case. As no society has so far collapsed due to lack of injunction against taxes, an injunction against all non-consensual-things-taking is unnecessary.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 29 August 2012 04:05:16AM 0 points [-]

Injunctions only come into play where you have some reason to rationalize a bad conclusion in an unusual-seeming case.

The point is that while rationalizing the conclusion doesn't seem bad from the inside.

As no society has so far collapsed due to lack of injunction against taxes

This is very much debatable. If you look at actual collapsing societies throughout history, a large part of the problem is taxes strangling the economy.