>There's this thing called the general will
>It is the will of the people when taken collectively
>It is distilled virtue
>Except when it does things I don't like
>Then it's not virtue
>It's actually bad in that case
Why did anyone ever take """"""""enlightenment""""""" philosophy seriously?
Even a pseudo-scientific rambler like Aristotle could have destroyed this navel-gazing French faggot.
This has always confused me as well. People make fun of Evola but the philosophical foundations of liberalism are really tenuous and bad. The fact Rawls "veil of ignorance" argument is considered some "heh, checkmate bigots :-)" tier argument is astonishing and shows just what a nauseating echo chamber western philosophy has become.
I for one is happy that you made it clear that Rousseau is the only enlightenments philosopher and that his work can be summed with a few meme arrows, I always had this nagging feeling that Hume and Kant never existed or that you had to read their works before looking like an idiot commenting when commenting on them.
see:
All you need to know about liberal philosophy is that Rawls is considered a genius.
That really does say it all.
What's wrong with the veil of ignorance thought experiment?
An eight year old could demonstrate its stupidity.
Guess that makes you dumber than an eight year old.
1. The individual behind the veil is divorced from all frames of reference, so how can he conceptualize Rawls' choices which are informed by specific ethical philosophical points? My understanding is that Rawls informs his person behind the veil through utilitarianism - but this is still a value system, and the way liberals envisage utilitarianism (individual liberty prioritized as a moral good and so on) is still highly subjective and informed by specifically western views on ethics. Someone else may choose other values they believe lead to more successful civilizations, as outlined below.
2. The veil of ignorance puts an individual behind a chanced lottery where outcomes are divorced of individual talents, genetic predispositions etc. It's an attempt to incentivize the person behind the veil to minimize their own personal loss, rather than look at society as a whole and what's best for it (stability comes from hierarchy after all), which leads me on to:
3. Why should an individual make the choices Rawls desires anyway? In my mind, the sort of society I want to be born into given the normal ebb and flow of macrohistory is a stable one, not one where the golden rule is writ large, that's just chaos. For example, someone could say that death penalty is a fair sentence for some crimes and when enforced rigorously leads to more law abidingness, even if this person risks suffering from it, while another person would have a dissenting opinion about it.
4. It presupposes individual values. Personally I wouldn't want to live a life on welfare even if liberals assume this is some sort of net utilitarian benefit for me. It's a waste of a life. I'd rather just kill myself than waste away for 50-60 years. Life isn't intrinsically sacred.
>City dwellers hate him
>Find out how this rustic enlightenment philosopher absolutely DESTROYED the snooty Parisian intellectual establishment with one simple argument
I'm simplifying your arguments, so please correct me if I go too far.
> It's a rehash of the golden rule.
> The golden rule fails to produce a just society if we can't even agree on what 'just' should look like.
If two groups of people cannot agree on the bedrock principle of what morality is, I'm not aware of any morality test that's likely to work. At that point your only two options are likely to be separation, relocation, or war.
Veil of ignorance requires a relatively widely shared view of what is or is not moral.
>The individual behind the veil is divorced from all frames of reference, so how can he conceptualize Rawls' choices which are informed by specific ethical philosophical points?
They're not, they have the exact same frame of reference as before they enter. They do not, however, know what individual they will become in said society.
>The veil of ignorance puts an individual behind a chanced lottery where outcomes are divorced of individual talents, genetic predispositions etc.
They're not. Their outcome won't be divorced from individual talents, genetic predisposition etc. however they won't know what their traits will be. As such it's in your interests to agree on a society where people with bad luck are taken care of while still given the chance to succeed and earn a lot of fame and money if you happen to, as an example, be extremely good at soccer.
>Why should an individual make the choices Rawls desires anyway?
He doesn't desire any specific outcomes, only argue that the society he describes is one a rational agent would desire when behind the veil of ignorance.
>It presupposes individual values. Personally I wouldn't want to live a life on welfare even if liberals assume this is some sort of net utilitarian benefit for me. It's a waste of a life. I'd rather just kill myself than waste away for 50-60 years. Life isn't intrinsically sacred.
This point argues against your first point where you claim that they're divorced from all frames of references, since your frame of reference include ethical dispositions and reasons behind them. Never the less, the fact that you now don't want to live a life on welfare doesn't mean you won't want to live a life on welfare once you step out of the veil.
Liberals in general haven't read Nietzsche. If they did, they would've cried themselves to sleep.
>genetics
>bad luck
It is mendelian inheritance
People don't randomly become pregnant. Family formation is almost always a choice. The "genes = randomness" meme needs to die. If you're dumb, it's almost certain your parents and their parents were too.
>All you need to know about liberal philosophy is that Rawls is considered a genius.
That's because the only real "conflict" liberals have had to deal with in academia is between economic liberals and marxists, in short - they are intra-party disputes between different aspects of enlightenment philosophy.
In short they've gotten lazy and haven't actually had to face real philosophical criticism of the sort Nietzsche offered in a long, long time. Which is why non-arguments like those of Rawls are considered some sort of game-set-match moment.
>implying genes don't have randomness
t. Blue eyes with green eyed sibling.
That's not randomness. It's variance within a spectrum.
By that logic rolling dice isn't random. Don't give me that.
>don't give me that
Give you what?
Either you believe in Mendelian Inheritance or you believe in pseudo-scientific leftist stuff like Lysenkoism, or you just adopt the standard US libtard position of accepting genetic inheritance but believing that environment somehow "cancels it out".
Genes aren't random chance.
>implying you understand fuck all about human genetics
muuuuuhhhhhh social darwinism. neck yourself for the betterment of the species you care so much about bitch
Who said anything about "social darwinism" you blithering pre-programmed idiot?
Genes determine a big part of who we are and our propensity towards certain things.
Mendelian Inheritance doesn't always holds true, it's a simplified model.
There is also the whole part with random mutations fucking you up either way.
>genes are like muh 0s and 1s
Why are social darwinists always autistic fucks inside?
The outcomes aren't random. We know every possible outcome from rolling dice.
It's debatable if true "randomization" even exists.
Enlightenment and Renaissance philosophy are both Greco-Roman-sucking piles of crap.
Why is the 'reason' meme correct? The Greeks and Romans thought ti was divinely-inspired, so clearly it must be!
CLEARLY what is best is what MOST people want, it is SELF EVIDENT MONSIEUR...!
Hume and Kant are the worst.
>muh tru-RNG circlejerks
you are the worst type of regurgitating pseud spewing about subjects you don't know anything about, pretending you know shit about genetics in one breath and advanced particle physics in another. Clearly, you are le renaissance man of our times!
Off yourself.
>mutations
Those mutations still hold to the rules of genetic inheritance in the next generation.
>He believes genes play a role in human behavior
>Therefore he is a social darwinist
Liberals are unironically creationist-tier.
In fact they're worse since most creationists accept micro-evolution is a fact.
But Plato and Aristotle were vastly more realistic about human nature than the enlightenment tards were.
absolutely moronic
>Those mutations still hold to the rules of genetic inheritance in the next generation.
What does it matter for the one who inherited a horrible random mutation though?
>Greek philosophy
>of any value
Bunch of retards who couldn't even properly formulate basic laws of gravitation.
> micro-evolution
> he fell for this meme
>“The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. I shall give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. Their effects are known well enough: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic — every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization.”
Blown the FUCK out.
Libtard powdered-wig tier salon philosophers wish they had even 1/100th of his insight.
>But Plato and Aristotle were vastly more realistic about human nature than the enlightenment tards were.
Irrelevant, they were just as bad, just far less annoying.
Gravitation does not exist.
>What does it matter for the one who inherited a horrible random mutation though?
I'm not sure how this relates to my point?
You seem to think genetic mutation means mendelian inheritance is irrelevant or something.
>"I think I know man, but as for men I know them not."
>- Rousseau
This perfectly sums up liberal autism. Rousseau's conception of people was a schoolyard exercise abstraction of humans as interchangeable cogs with nothing prior to them (Locke's tabula rasa has a lot to answer for too in this regard).
As de Maistre said, "a constitution made for 'men' is fit for no one, there is no such thing as 'man', only Frenchmen, Englishman, Persians..."
>I'm not sure how this relates to my point?
It literally relates to your first point with
>genetics
>bad luck
You fucking retard
>You seem to think genetic mutation means mendelian inheritance is irrelevant or something.
You seem to think mendelian inheritance doesn't really on randomness or that you can just use Mendelian Inheritance when dealing with human genome.
>For Rousseau, virtue was a species of moral intoxication. Translated into the political sphere, Rousseau's ideas about freedom and virtue are a recipe for totalitarianism. "Those who dare to undertake the institution of a people," Rousseau wrote in the Social Contract, "must feel themselves capable, as it were, of changing human nature,... of altering the constitution of man for the purpose of strengthening it." Man is "born free," Rousseau fatuously wrote, but is "everywhere in chains." Alas, most men did not, according to him, truly understand the nature or extent of their servitude. It was his job to enlighten them--to force them, as he put it in one chilling epithet, to be free. Such "freedom" is accomplished, Rousseau thought, by bringing individual wills into conformity with what he called the "general will"-surely one of the most confused and tyrannical political principles ever enunciated. "If you would have the general will accomplished," he wrote, "bring all the particular wills into conformity with it; in other words, as virtue is nothing more than this conformity of the particular wills, establish the reign of virtue."
>"If you would have the general will accomplished," he wrote, "bring all the particular wills into conformity with it; in other words, as virtue is nothing more than this conformity of the particular wills, establish the reign of virtue."
It's amazing how anyone can take this stuff seriously, and yet the thinking of this self-indulgent twit dominates the entire western world. Foreign adventure wars are fought in the name of this sort of crap. Elections fought on who is closer to his navel-gazing delusion.
>You seem to think mendelian inheritance doesn't really on randomness or that you can just use Mendelian Inheritance when dealing with human genome.
Both of these statements are true. Take a behavioral genetics class.
By the way, how do liberals reconcile their belief that intelligence isn't heritable with macro-evolution?
In other words, if intelligence isn't substantially heritable - how did human beings and other species ever evolve it in the first place?
>"If you would have the general will accomplished," he wrote, "bring all the particular wills into conformity with it; in other words, as virtue is nothing more than this conformity of the particular wills, establish the reign of virtue."
wow_its_fucking_nothing.jpg
The funniest thing is where he goes on to explain how when this general will produces morality he doesn't like, it's not valid and not actually a general will.
It boggles the mind liberal principles are never really attacked in the west, they stand on such shaky ground logically and empirically speaking.
>Both of these statements are true. Take a behavioral genetics class.
Ok so given a cross between regressive/dominant and regressive/dominant. What will the child be? It's random, It's simplified and the expression of for example intelligence can't just be shown by thinking of one locus with smart/dumb.
>By the way, how do liberals reconcile their belief that intelligence isn't heritable with macro-evolution?
Ask them
>In other words, if intelligence isn't substantially heritable - how did human beings and other species ever evolve it in the first place?
Denying randomness in evolution is fucking retarded. Entire fucking process when simplified is a bunch of traits deviating from the baseline in random directions and then natural selection hopefully cutting down or slowing down the propagation of the ones less suited for the environment. Inheritance in itself is sufficiently random. There is a reason why there exist degrees of inheritance for various traits. Intelligence is heritable - to a degree.
Weighted random systems are still random.
>In other words, if intelligence isn't substantially heritable - how did human beings and other species ever evolve it in the first place?
Listen you motherfucking racist piece of shit. If you think you can use science then I'd advise you to listen to a man called Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the world's leading space scientist.
>Take a behavioral genetics class
'le science' is the worst bullshit in history.
>What will the child be?
The child is still a product of the variation available from the parents' respective genome.
How the fuck do you think embryo selection works you dolt?
>Denying randomness in evolution is fucking retarded.
There's nothing random about it. Take one of the most basic facts of divergent evolution: Different colored skin. Why did it emerge? Because the differing environments selected for the most adaptive traits available in the cold north and hot south.
>The child is still a product of the variation available from the parents' respective genome.
And how do you know where on the spectrum of variation the child will be found?
>How the fuck do you think embryo selection works you dolt?
The same way rolling dice and choosing the nicer number works?
>There's nothing random about it.
Besides random mutations, right?
>Different colored skin. Why did it emerge? Because the differing environments selected for the most adaptive traits available in the cold north and hot south.
Do you think environment just slaps your genes and tells them to make you black? Natural selection is something that works and "directs" entire populations, but not individuals. An individual randomly deviates from the baseline of his parents without anything to do with natural selection.
>And how do you know where on the spectrum of variation the child will be found?
We don't. But it's not pure randomness because it exists within a constrained spectrum. It's not like children born to two black parents regularly come out looking like Dolph Lundgrenn for example.
>The same way rolling dice and choosing the nicer number works?
No. You map the genome of each embryo and, as best as possible given present limitations, identify which has/doesn't have adaptive/maladaptive traits and predispositions.
>Besides random mutations, right?
Even mutations aren't random.
>Do you think environment just slaps your genes and tells them to make you black?
No. I think gradual selection pressures over the course of tens of thousands of years do.
Can you stop strawmanning now and go back to watching Bill Nye instead?
>An individual randomly deviates from the baseline of his parents without anything to do with natural selection.
No, an individual's genome falls within a spectrum mapped out by both of his parents' genomes.
Is it just pure coincidence that virtually all of sub-saharan Africa has extremely dark skin?
You're attributing too much importance to genetic mutations when they nearly always (99.9999% of the time) kill the zygote. It's why people exposed to radiation, you know, die rather than turn into supermen.
The overwhelmingly portion of natural variety you see around you, whether it is human races, different species, sub-species etc, is produced by variations on conserved traits. For example the distinction between different types of antlers among various types of deer.
>No, an individual's genome falls within a spectrum mapped out by both of his parents' genomes.
>We don't. But it's not pure randomness because it exists within a constrained spectrum
Randomness within a spectrum is still randomness. It doesn't matter for the individual that he is just a rare deviation from the norm.
>Is it just pure coincidence that virtually all of sub-saharan Africa has extremely dark skin?
It's such a good thing that IQ can very from somewhere around 60-ties to 140 and more whatever race it comes to.
Even if you have intelligent parents your actual intelligence can deviate pretty wildly from the baseline. or you can have a genetic disease, maybe inherited from somewhere deeper your family tree or maybe a shitty mutation. Bad luck either way.
Nobody is saying that deviation from the baseline must be wild.
I am talking here the fate of individual who gets bad end of the genetic lottery, not the actual end effects.
>Randomness within a spectrum is still randomness.
In the same way as saying: Your salary will be between $15,000 and $25,000 is randomness, yes.
>Even if you have intelligent parents your actual intelligence can deviate pretty wildly from the baseline.
But it tends not to.
>or you can have a genetic disease
Uh, sure, but that would suggest your parents were either carriers of it themselves latently or phenotypically.
>It doesn't matter for the individual that he is just a rare deviation from the norm.
I'm not sure what your point is here. What are you even trying to contest? The original point was that genes play a huge role in determining predisposition/behavior, which they do.
>But it tends not to.
Just like people tend to be born healthy, matters little for the actual individual. Hell playing Russian Roulette with 5 friends to the first kill tends not to kill you too.
>Uh, sure, but that would suggest your parents were either carriers of it themselves latently or phenotypically.
And what can you actually do about it? The actual expression is rare and your grandparents couldn't possibly know or prevent themselves from delivering some shitty genes further down the lineage. You also skipped the part further down.
>I'm not sure what your point is here. What are you even trying to contest? The original point was that genes play a huge role in determining predisposition/behavior, which they do.
Original point was that genes aren't bad luck. In fact the first post in the actual argument chain uses the term "genetic predisposition". Now we're arguing that getting "good" genes and getting absolutely horrible can be attributed to luck and randomness. Even if for most of the population it could be just a spectrum of something like 80-120IQ unless some horrible mutation happens.
>Hell playing Russian Roulette with 5 friends to the first kill tends not to kill you too.
Worst false equivelance I've seen on Veeky Forums so far, even worse than that chink who tried to compare foot-binding to women wearing corsets in baroque Europe.
>Original point was that genes aren't bad luck.
They aren't. Luck assumes nothing intrinsic about oneself caused the outcome. But in the cases you described, we're literally talking about intrinsic genetic problems. You can't get more innate than that.
>Now we're arguing that getting "good" genes and getting absolutely horrible can be attributed to luck and randomness.
It's not, 99.999% of the time it is about the genetic health & quality of one's parents. There's a reason why adopted children tend to grow up to be shit.
>They aren't. Luck assumes nothing intrinsic about oneself caused the outcome.
A child before being born technically has nothing intrinsic with the quality of his genes. Last I also checked luck didn't assume that in this case. Last I checked people would still blame their shitty luck if it turns out they get some chronic illness thanks to a shitty gene somewhere down the line.
>It's not, 99.999% of the time it is about the genetic health & quality of one's parents.
We couldn't do shit about our genetic health up until like 20th century. It might as well be luck, and even you asspulled number still leaves a number of cases that are just due to bad luck.
>A child before being born has nothing intrinsic with the quality of his genes
Do you mean in utero? Because you're wrong.
>We couldn't do shit about our genetic health up until like 20th century.
What are you talking about? We still can't do anything about it other than treat symptoms.
You need to check up on your reading comprehension if you think I implied "genes = randomness".
>rolling dice is true random
get a load of this guy
Wow dude I'm so smart I watched a Vsauce video
google.com
It's a dumb distinction and your semantics do not change what random means for statistics.
Statistics.of or characterizing a process of selection in which each item of a set has an equal probability of being chosen.
>I don't see why you're sad Bruce, you didn't have bad luck having your parents killed, it's all in your genes!