RoR: Forum

Tibor and Joe's equivocation over 'explain' and 'justify' baffles me. Why go to such effort to blur the difference between distinct meanings?

I was going to give a simple individual-level example, but see Mark already gave an excellent one. Consider Alex killing his wife Susan for having an affair. To say that the affair is part of the explanation - that it was Alex's motive - of course does not justify his action. I'd like to hear from anyone who can't seem to tell the difference between the two terms on this simple example.

"Of all of the factors that went in to these murderers choices, Ron Paul decided that the only significant one was the US foreign policy."

That's false, misrepresenting Paul's views to set up a strawman. He said that US foreign policy was a contributing factor. That jihadists - the crazy Bob in this case - are insane and dangerous is also key and not in question. If anything, Paul's statements in the debate sound like he thinks others underestimate how crazy Islamists are - "We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics."

Post 21

Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 11:39am

Put another way, if America supported Israel but Muslim countries had no oil reserves and thus no cash flow, Muslims would have no way of aggressing against Israel or America?

interesting supposition.....

Post 22

Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 12:29pm

I assume that you are too young to remember Israel bombing Osirak, The Oil Embargo, waiting 6 hours to get a tank of gas, or Munich '72

Both of which are unrelated, so I will explain them as such.

First, the gas rationing... Well, that one pretty much due us to being stupid and relying on a set of backward, mercentalistic nations (OPEC nations) for our oil. We have lots of oil in this country. Most of it is untapped. Why? Because of EPA laws, local regulations, and generally federal law bs that gets in the way ("Oh the poor people in that X won't be able to feed Y if we drill our own..."). Hell, I live in Kansas, we have lots of oil here, some of it is actually usable in gasoline production, but we don't touch it because of legal entanglements. Take away those legal entanglements, then OPEC mercentalism won't matter. We'll just laugh and drill, and have lots of money at the end of the day.

The second was a terrorist attack, and to which I do not condone. Yet, is it standard to take lone gunmen as the standard by which we become aggitators[sp?] of war? Not really, if that were the case we'd have way too many wars. They were thugs, and they should have been dealt with as thugs. But to go on and say, "Well that means we need to occupy X region to prevent this..." is really stupid, to be honest. How about we occupy South Central LA due to the 1990s spread of the Blood/Crip wars? How about we occupy NYC now because of the concentration of MS-13 and Latin King gangs? None of those make much sense do they? They're local problems, they're dealt with by the police, not by the army. So, really, give me a real case of where we need to take over the region the arabs call Palestine? Give me one good reason outside of Straussian pre-emptive violence.

And as for Carter, he was a joke, everyone knew it. Hell, it was his choice to back Saddam Hussain that wound us up in this current entanglement in Iraq (Thanks Jimmy, go back and plant your damn peanuts!). So, I say, you're spot-on with that fellow, no questions about it, but does it really change anything in regards to what Ron Paul would do? No.

Ron Paul voted for the bill to go after Usama Bin Laden. Lemme state that again in a proper context, Ron Paul wants Usama's head on a platter with garnish. Now, is that even analogically equivalent to Jimmy Carter? Not in the slightest, so whatever attempt at comparison to Ron Paul's policy versus Jimmy Carter's policy is now flamed and char-broiled (Turn it over before its over done! ;) ).

And the comparison between America's apologetic behavior toward the USSR and tyrants in general in the past is not what Ron Paul is for either. If they make a funny move toward us, we squash them. That's what the old Doc is saying, but he's also saying no fancy entanglements. No nation building at all (No more trying to take the bush out of the bushman, let him be a bushmen and if he tries anything stupid against us we squash him.).

Now, that all being said, I still want you to explain to me why pre-emptive war is constitutional. Why pre-emptive war is acceptable under Rand's definition of NAP. And so on.

Understand this, neither me nor Ron Paul are pacifists, we're NAP (Non-Aggression Policy/Principle) adherents. And according to the work of Ayn Rand, so was she... Geez, ain't it a small world after all... ;)

-- Brede

Post 23

Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 12:31pm

Merlin, both Tibor and I both said that justify is not the same as explain in all cases. If you read my post, you should have realized that I made a very specific point about when they are the same. That is, when the "explanation" necessitates the human action. Even Tibor was clear that he's talking about human affairs.

In my description, it's the same reason why "necessary evil" is a flawed phrase. If it's necessary, there's nothing evil about it. It's proper. And if the claim is that the provocative clothing of a woman "explains" the rape, that amounts to a justification. If you say "given this situation, of course they had to act that way", you're justifying it. I don't care if you want to say you're only "explaining it".

For those who find connecting the two ideas offensive, how do you react to my example of the raped woman, and the response to her clothing "Well, that explains it". Do you not find anything wrong with that response? I do. And my reasons are simple. By suggesting the rape was a necessary (or expected!) reaction to her clothing, you're suggesting the victim is the one to blame. And in the process, your removing responsibility from the real source, the rapist, by alleging that his actions were an inevitable result of her clothing.

Aside from semantic games, I can't understand how anyone could suggest this isn't an attempt to justify the actions of the rapist.

Post 24

Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 12:36pm

Joe: "So when a woman gets raped, and someone says "She dress provocatively", the response should not be "Well, that explains it." To suggest her action necessitated that result, or that the rape itself was caused by her clothing, does amount to calling it justified."

Interesting analogy. Let me make one of my own.

Say you're walking along and you see a bum across the street. He's pacing back and forth with a crazy expression, angrily cursing, and shaking his fists. You choose to walk right up to him and demand that he stop. He punches you in the face.

If you told that story to a reasonable person, what would be one of the first things that person would say? It would probably be something like: why the hell did you walk right up to him? You saw he was crazy!

Now, I don't think anyone would claim this person is implying the bum was right to have responded the way he did. However, the person is clearly implying that you should have known your decision would yield bad results.

That's the way I view U.S. government involvement in the Middle East.

Post 25

Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 12:55pm

Jon, I don't want to disagree with your analogy. I do think in terms of saying what explains you getting punched, the insanity of the guy would be highlighted first and foremost. But ignore that for a minute.

I want to highlight the fact that we have to make these people literally insane or almost animal like in order to pull off this explain/justify nonsense. I've pointed out (as have others) that too often when people discuss the murdering muslims they treat them as if they are not moral agents themselves. They are treated as metaphysically given, and the blame always ends up pointed at the US as the only moral agent left in the world who can be responsible. Stated by anarchists, we should know better, while they can't be expected to.

The result is to excuse every one of their actions as a necessary byproduct of our choices. Perhaps the confusion here is that Tibor and I have used the word "justify", which gives too much of an impression that they are moral agents acting. "Excuse" might be a better term.

The point though is that to make your example, you have to make the guy really, really crazy, where there's no expectation of a moral agent making a responsible decision. Then going up to the crazy person (or wild animal if we wanted), would seem to be the real problem. After all, that is where the volition comes in.

From my perspective, the real problem is that there is a tendency to see evil in the world as if it were not a volition choice but simply "the way things are". Only by assuming that men are naturally rapists with no moral blame for it could the clothing be identified as the primary explanation. Only by assuming that muslims are violent by nature can we say that Salmon Rushdie's death sentence was "explained" by his writing the book.

And of course, all of this has the effect of excusing evil and blaming the victims.

Post 26

Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 5:48pm

Joe,

Regardless of your points about justify not being the same as explain in all cases, you said they are indistinguishable in the case of Ron Paul's comments in post 15 twice. That explains and justifies my earlier response. :-)

You also wrote in post 15:

But if the actions of a person are "explained" by reference to someone else's actions, they become equivalent. By saying that action A caused action B, without reference to the person making the choice for B, it's as if there is a straightforward causal path there. It's as if the results were inevitable. I'm not sure how you can argue that a person must do B in response to A, and not call it justified by A

Let A = U.S. intervention in the Middle East. B = the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Ron Paul did not argue that the terrorists in B must have acted as they did. And while he might say "the terrorists justified their acts by A", that doesn't imply he thinks they were justified in his view.

I don't regard the rape analogy as strong as you seem to. It has two parties. The victims of 9/11, the U.S. gov't, and the terrorists make three. Ron Paul didn't blame the victims.

I believe Paul blew it by not saying "no" as his first word when the moderator asked him, "Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attacks, sir?" (The moderator's "we" treats Americans and their gov't as the same). He didn't answer 'yes' or 'no', and Giuliani responded as if Paul had answered 'yes'. He further blew it with a weak response to Giuliani. He seemed too eager to make his point on intervention.

(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 5/25, 3:47am)

Post 27

Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 7:02pm

Removing Saddam was in no way "pre-emptive."

He was already at war with us, having, for a dozen years, been in breach of the 1991 armistice terms. He was always at war, we simply and finally, according to our own treaties and Constitution, did what we had pledged and sworn to do.

That being said, of course, there were people who characterized the use of force as pre-emptive, both a mistake by supporters and a lie by detractors. But the sole fact of Saddam's violation of the armistice (not something sexy enough to pitch to a public with a 10 minute memory span) was necessary and sufficient cause to take him out.

As for the broader point, if you concede that Israel is not America's creature, and that m*slim aggression long predates and is not justified by American action, I'm okay with keeping Paul in Congress. As a pacifist "isolationist-Libertarian" executive (as Krauthammer described him) he'd be a disaster.

We cannot have an executive who thinks cowering and apologizing is a proper response to bullying, or who even presents that image.

We cannot allow m*slim states (or Russia - Litvinenko - for that matter) to wage war against us through proxies and saboteurs and to describe hostile actors as lone gunmen. In acts by foreign nationals, the burden of proof is on the foreign nation through a good faith effort to show their non-complicity. Foreign governments have a duty to aid us when one of their nationals violates our sovereignty, and if those nations do not, but rather deny and stonewall, it is an act of war - whether we recognize it or not.

Ted

Post 28

Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 7:03pm

Merlin, funny! But on a more serious note, I hope you can see why your previous post didn't really address my argument.

In this last one, you say you don't regard the rape analogy as strong. I'm not at all sure why having three parties fundamentally changes anything, except in terms of blaming the victims. I find the rape example to be very potent because it does show how "explaining" is the same as justifying, or if you prefer, excusing. And the reason why it's such an emotionally powerful example (for me at least), is that it clearly demonstrates how "explaining" evil this way is excusing it. It's more powerful because the victim is the one blamed, but the critical idea is that someone else is being blamed for the evil under the title of "explanation".

Explaining an action is trying to identify the cause of it. When you say that the cause of a second person's actions is the first person's actions, you're blaming it on the first person. You're saying the first person's actions is causing the second person's.

The reason I entered this conversation is that so many people found it absurd that "explain" can mean "justify". I think I've shown that it can. I also suggested that if we want to "explain" something, we should do it by referencing the choices of the people making the decisions, and assign full moral responsibility to them as moral agents. An "explanation" that ignores their decision making is not an explanation at all. It's an excuse and a shift of the blame.

Post 29

Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 8:33pm

Ron Paul made perfectly clear to his audience that he blamed bin Laden and radical islamic terrorists for the mass murders of 9/11. He made this point clear by stating that our government should go after bin Laden; by stating that our invasion of Iraq was a foolish diversion from getting bin Laden; by stating that radical islamic terrorists are deeply irrational and therefore dangerous and to be avoided; and by stating that he didn't blame Americans, but did blame our government's policy for creating dangerous circumstances that threatened Americans. As he stated, in the debate, or perhaps in an interview after the debate, (paraphrasing) "Bad policy sometimes leads to tragic consequences."

Joe thinks US policy in invading Iraq is basically good policy; or at least I assume he should, because he has cheered on this military adventure from the beginning. So to Joe, virtuous policy should not be identified as increasing the risks to Americans of irrational and murderous "blowback".

However, a more rational view suggests that US policy in the Middle East has been anything but virtuous over the past 50 years. Our government's very bad conduct includes the US invasion of Iraq, wherein perhaps 100,000 innocent people were murdered; 12 years of deadly sanctions (deadly only to innocent Iraqis, not to Hussein's ruling class), which killed perhaps 350,000; the Gulf War, which inflicted a great many casualties among innocent people probably numbering in tens of thousands or more; subsidizing, helping to arm, and otherwise backing Hussein in his terrible war with Iran, in which 3 million lives were lost; setting up the Shaw of Iran as autocrat and US client, as though the lives of Iranian subjects were merely means to the ends of American foreign policy objectives; getting involved in the feud between Israel and the Palestinians; and more.

How could a reasonable person conclude that this history of violent bullying and destruction--in which our government has shoveled helpless Iraqis and Iranians around like so much gravel and concrete--could not yield a harvest of bitterness and the desire for revenge? Granted that the culture in much of the Middle East is irrational and oppressive, with its own bitter history of imperial ambition: does this defect imply that Muslims and Persians live as people unmoved by the loss of loved ones or the destruction of their homes? Very clearly, US government policy has inflamed the anger and thirst for revenge among many of the people of this region. Many libertarians have warned for years of the predictable dangers of imperial adventuring. Are these observations not relevant to considerations of reforming US foreign policy?

I can only add that this entire discussion floats on a layer of unreality concerning the identity of the murderers of 911. If it happened that the US government perpetrated a massive lie about who did what on that terrible day, anyone who subsequently performed a good faith investigation of that account would eventually turn up a great many contradictions. Such has been shown to be the case.

Post 30

Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 9:05pm

(Edited by Ted Keer
on 5/24, 9:08pm)

Post 31

Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 9:05pm

With all due respect, Mark, your:

"I can only add that this entire discussion floats on a layer of unreality concerning the identity of the murderers of 911. If it happened that the US government perpetrated a massive lie about who did what on that terrible day, anyone who subsequently performed a good faith investigation of that account would eventually turn up a great many contradictions. Such has been shown to be the case."

is the statement of a crank. Even if an investigation provides statements and analyses by multiple parties which happen to contradict each other, the killers themselves made recorded and written statements of their intentions, this was aired on Al Jazeera, not Air America. They studied how to fly, but not land airplanes. The simple number of people who would need to be pafrt of such a conspiracy, and the likelihood that at least one would turn for personal gain in order to expose such a plot shows the absolute insanity of claiming such a plot exists. When Bush was elected and re-elected it was said he would push the elderly off cliffs, round up and arrest blacks and homosexuals, that his political opponents would be jailed. Well, I'm waiting!

Paraphrasing Evan Sayet's How Modern Liberals Think:
Sometimes a man tells you he hates his wife. You figure it's hyperbole, you know he really loves her. But then, as you sit with him in a cafe and see her being beaten up in the parking lot. You grab him and say, let's help her! He says, no, she deserves it. You realize finally, he really doesn't love his wife.

Do you, sir, love America?

A Ralph Nader Voter

Post 32

Friday, May 25, 2007 - 12:06pm

Joe, I appreciate your response.

Joe: "The result is to excuse every one of their actions as a necessary byproduct of our choices. Perhaps the confusion here is that Tibor and I have used the word "justify", which gives too much of an impression that they are moral agents acting. "Excuse" might be a better term."

I'd disagree with the claim that any self-identified Objectivists (or libertarians) "excuse every one of their [i.e., Middle Eastern militants'] actions as a necessary byproduct of our [i.e., U.S. government officials'] choices."

First, we're only talking about acts of international terrorism, not any other actions. Second, the fact that every Objectivist or libertarian I've observed on this issue thinks the perpetrators of such attacks (i.e., anyone who actually carries out such an attack and anyone who actually furnishes resources for such an attack) should be severely punished suggests they don't excuse them.

Joe: "The point though is that to make your example, you have to make the guy really, really crazy, where there's no expectation of a moral agent making a responsible decision. Then going up to the crazy person (or wild animal if we wanted), would seem to be the real problem. After all, that is where the volition comes in."

Well, suppose a stranger across the street who doesn't appear to be objectively insane; he just seems enraged. I still think a reasonable person would wonder why the hell you walked right up to him in that context. Even though the stranger would still be at fault for punching you, a resonable person would think you acted stupidly by closely engaging a clearly volatile individual.

In my view, any Middle Eastern country (with the exception of Israel) is like that irrational, volatile individual. And walking right into it is just as foolish. Even if you just cross the street, knock its bag of assorted garbage off a bench, and give it the finger, I still think you'd be foolishly putting yourself in physical danger.

(Edited by Jon Trager
on 5/25, 3:05pm)

Post 33

Friday, May 25, 2007 - 12:49pm

Ted, you lack the knowlege to know if I'm a crank or a prescient observer of the contempory American scene. The only way you could make a rational determination as to whether or not I'm a crank about 9/11, is if you decided to give careful consideration to the evidence that critics of the official story have gathered. To rule out of the bounds of possibility the premise of a false flag operation by our government, without examining this evidence, is not sound thinking. It simply amounts to pulling the covers over your head.

The evidence refuting the official story consists of established and documented facts that make the official story impossible. This evidence includes the physics of the "collapse" (read: explosion) of the three huge towers of the WTC; the physics of the collision site at the Pentagon; the documented incompetence of the pilot who was incapable of flying a small Cessna, but was supposed to have flown the Boeing aircraft into the Pentagon after performing an extraordinarily difficult maneuver that experienced airline pilots have testified would have been impossible for any but the most skilled and experienced; physical evidence relating to the crash scene of the aircraft over Pennsylvania; and a great deal of evidence that our military "stood down" on 9/11 to permit the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon (this last the most heavily defended building on the planet.)

Concerning the often stated claim by debunkers of "conspiracy theory" (more on this concept below) that too many liars would have to cooperate to make such an undertaking possible, this has been refuted. For the original time line of events on 911 published by NORAD--demonstrated early on by researchers to have been very probably falsified--was altered months later by officialdom. Yet no one from our government spoke out in the months before the change, alerting the public to misinformation.

This important alteration of the timing of events, which is essential to defending the official account of what happened, contradicts a great deal of published on-the-scene eyewitness accounts, from people such as the Secetrary of Transportation, who was in the White House bunker with Cheney early on; the head of the FAA; Richard Clarke, who published a book of his account, and many others. It also contradicts a large body of evidence relating to long-standing institutional proceedures; as subsequent testimony, prior news stories, and institutional information presented on official websites--some altered after 9/11--have demonstrated.

In Debunking 9/11 Debunking, David Ray Griffin carefully presents a vast body of evidence, which he considers and analyzes with restraint and great skill. I recommend the book.

As to the notion that "conspiracy theories" are the exclusive province of "cranks", please consider the following. Virtually everyone--silver-tongued historians, obseqious government bureaucrats, cranks, left-wingers, right-wingers, Objectivists, professors of philosophy, and professional hang-gliders-- make use of this concept every day. For a conspiracy is a secret plan by several peoeple to commit treachery or an illegal act. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, they were engaged in a conspiracy. Other famous conspiracies include JFK's stealing the elction in Cooke County and (with LBJ's assistance) Texas in 1960; the Nazi "final solution" of murdering millions of Jews and Gypsies; the Gulag of Stalin's USSR; and LBJ's Gulf of Tonkin incident. No one is offended by the idea that a foreign state would conspire treachery against another country (Pearl Harbor); or that a foreign state would conspire treachery against its subjects (the Gulag). What offends many is the idea that their own government could conspire treachery against their fellow citizens.

Post 34

Friday, May 25, 2007 - 5:54pm

No Mark, I didn't.
I said it was the "statement of a crank," leaving the door open.
But now I do.

Ted

Post 35

Sunday, May 27, 2007 - 10:09am

The resident 9/11 crank Mark Humphrey said:

As to the notion that "conspiracy theories" are the exclusive province of "cranks", please consider the following. Virtually everyone--silver-tongued historians, obseqious government bureaucrats, cranks, left-wingers, right-wingers, Objectivists, professors of philosophy, and professional hang-gliders-- make use of this concept every day. For a conspiracy is a secret plan by several peoeple to commit treachery or an illegal act.

When I or Ted call you a crank, it's because you ascribe to a particular kind of conspiracy theory that has no possibility of existing. It's not just implausible the government was complicit in 9/11, it is simply impossible. Just as I would call a UFOlogist a crank, or a holocaust denier a crank, or a JFK Assasination conspiracy theorist a crank, I too would call you a crank for believing 9/11 conspiracy theory garbage.

I thought I already exposed the garbage spewed by David Ray Griffin here here?

Post 36

Sunday, December 30, 2012 - 12:41pm