How about no theory of justice? :) Philosophers should learn from scientists here: if you have no good explanation, none at all is more honest than a bad but seductive one. As a working hypothesis we could consider our hunger for justice and fairness an evolved instinct, a need, emotion, a strong preference, something similar to the desire for social life or romantic love, it is simply one of the many needs a social engineer would aim to satisfy. The goal is, then, to make things “feel just” enough to check that checkmark.
“to each his own” reading Rawls and Rawlsians I tend to sense a certain, how to put it, overly collective feeling. That there is one heavily interconnected world and it is the property of all humankind and there is a collective, democratic decision-making on how to make it suitable for all. So in this kind of world there is nothing exempt for politics, nothing is like “it is mine and mine alone and not to be touched by others”. The question is, is it a hard reality derived by the necessities of the dynamics of a high-tech era? Or just a preference? My preferences are way more individualistic than that. The attitude that everything is collective and to be shaped and formed in a democratic way is IMHO way too often a power play by “sophists” who have a glib tongue, good at rhethorics, and can easily shape democratic opinion. I am atheist but “culturally catholic” enough to find the parable of the snake offering the fruit useful: that it is not only through violence, but also through glib, seductive persuasion, through 100% consent, a lot of damage can be done.
This is something not really understood properly in the modern world, we understand how violence, oppression or outright fraud can be bad, but not really realize how much harm a silver tongue can cause without even outright lying, because we already live in socities where silver-tongue intellectuals are already the ruling class, so they underplay their own power by lionizing consent and freedom of speech as institutions that can reasonably considered to lead to good results.
I mean, for example, a truly realistic society would censor arguments that feel good. This sounds super weird: we are used to either complete freedom of speech or to censorship based on imputed harm or untruth, but censor even true and useful ideas if they feel too good? Yes, as long as we understand censorship as a cost not an impenetrable barrier: putting a cost on ideas that feel good would neutralize that feeling and thus enable us to judge the idea on a rational basis, without an affective bias.
Compare that to the real world and realize we are living in a sophists paradize where feel-good ideas have power through democratic consent.
I would want a way more autist-friendly world than that, and the way I would imagine it is some clear fences, Schelling points, whatnot, some kind of a “this is mine, this is yours, and these things are not subject to the political process or democratic-collective consensus, only those and those things are subject to that”. This would by own risk-aversion: to have some minimal insurance against the loss “sophists” can enact on me by persuading public opinion.
Thanks for the explanation. Do you have any alternatives?
How about no theory of justice? :) Philosophers should learn from scientists here: if you have no good explanation, none at all is more honest than a bad but seductive one. As a working hypothesis we could consider our hunger for justice and fairness an evolved instinct, a need, emotion, a strong preference, something similar to the desire for social life or romantic love, it is simply one of the many needs a social engineer would aim to satisfy. The goal is, then, to make things “feel just” enough to check that checkmark.
“to each his own” reading Rawls and Rawlsians I tend to sense a certain, how to put it, overly collective feeling. That there is one heavily interconnected world and it is the property of all humankind and there is a collective, democratic decision-making on how to make it suitable for all. So in this kind of world there is nothing exempt for politics, nothing is like “it is mine and mine alone and not to be touched by others”. The question is, is it a hard reality derived by the necessities of the dynamics of a high-tech era? Or just a preference? My preferences are way more individualistic than that. The attitude that everything is collective and to be shaped and formed in a democratic way is IMHO way too often a power play by “sophists” who have a glib tongue, good at rhethorics, and can easily shape democratic opinion. I am atheist but “culturally catholic” enough to find the parable of the snake offering the fruit useful: that it is not only through violence, but also through glib, seductive persuasion, through 100% consent, a lot of damage can be done.
This is something not really understood properly in the modern world, we understand how violence, oppression or outright fraud can be bad, but not really realize how much harm a silver tongue can cause without even outright lying, because we already live in socities where silver-tongue intellectuals are already the ruling class, so they underplay their own power by lionizing consent and freedom of speech as institutions that can reasonably considered to lead to good results.
I mean, for example, a truly realistic society would censor arguments that feel good. This sounds super weird: we are used to either complete freedom of speech or to censorship based on imputed harm or untruth, but censor even true and useful ideas if they feel too good? Yes, as long as we understand censorship as a cost not an impenetrable barrier: putting a cost on ideas that feel good would neutralize that feeling and thus enable us to judge the idea on a rational basis, without an affective bias.
Compare that to the real world and realize we are living in a sophists paradize where feel-good ideas have power through democratic consent.
I would want a way more autist-friendly world than that, and the way I would imagine it is some clear fences, Schelling points, whatnot, some kind of a “this is mine, this is yours, and these things are not subject to the political process or democratic-collective consensus, only those and those things are subject to that”. This would by own risk-aversion: to have some minimal insurance against the loss “sophists” can enact on me by persuading public opinion.