The Philosopher Justice

The philosophical problem common to both Plato and Rawls was how to form a just society.  Plato’s solution was to institute a sustainable authoritarian state with the help of a  “philosopher king”. John Rawls’ more modern idea was to build a social consensus around the form of the just society, by imagining  an initial bargaining position, where, each participant, under a “veil of ignorance”,  has  “forgotten”  their own socio-economic status.  The idea being, that by abstracting out socio-economic status, the participants in this imaginary constitutional convention are more likely to agree to principles of equality and justice for all, that, just by coincidence, would resemble the modern welfare state. As a thought experiment, I suppose that is a fine thing to do, but I think the key to understanding what makes a just society is understanding the difference between humans and all other animals; and, (spoiler alert!) that difference has to do with o...

There is no institution of marriage in nature.  Marriage is a human institution, but it is not simply an agreement between two people, it is a collective agreement between everyone in society.  The presence of others as witnesses to the marriage demonstrates this. It’s the social agreement that makes it real, that creates real effects.  If this were not so, then there would be no point in a marriage ceremony. Swans and geese can live monogamously, but they are not in a state of marriage, because their relationship is based on biology, not on acceptance by  feathered friends and relatives.  Chimpanzees, our closest living primate relatives, are promiscuous and ruled by an alpha male and his coalition.  Sexual dimorphism, the difference in size between sexes, is quite pronounced in gorillas, where the huge silverback alpha male rules a harem of much smaller females.  Polygyny  (formerly known as polygamy) in animals seems to be associated wit...

 Around the world, one of the most common stories we tell are stories about animals who have human characteristics and speak languages like humans. Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books are a great example of this tradition. We love to anthropomorphize, which is to project human characteristics onto animals, machines, and even inert objects like chess pieces. But in our world, the human world,we know the rules are different. In our world, “Rules rule.” In the animal world dominance rules, because their world is strictly based on the biological inheritance of acquired traits, and acquired traits are the ones that are passed on by successful reproducers.  Non-human animals act mostly by instinct.  They don’t share rules, they don’t teach rules, they don’t follow rules, and they don’t enforce rules. Any so-called exceptions to this usually involve humans laboriously teaching animals some simple rules such as a sign language. Can the same be said for any  animal in the absen...

We have a yard that gently slopes down from our little yellow house. The yard is about thirty by thirty feet.  It is surrounded on three sides by a six foot tall cedar board fence.   Near one corner, is a pathetic vertically-challenged compost heap.  In the other corner there is a scruffy spruce that we had topped off a couple of years ago.  Beside the spruce, at the very back of the yard stands a tall, slender aspen,  and elsewhere in the yard there is a plum tree, and a siberian pear tree.  In the middle is a shaggy uneven lawn with a couple of piles of dead brush.  Multiple types of berry bush form most of the  perimeter.  Is our yard a system?  If we define “system”  as, “a persistent way of doing things”,  then it is.  We have a way of doing things in our yard, which could be summarized as professional-level procrastination.   (Sorry for the big words here.)  The yard is bounded by a wood house a...

The Universe is the first and oldest system .  All other systems are contained within it and subject to its  universal framework, bound by the forces of gravity and electromagnetic energy. What are Systems?  Let’s call them: “persistent ways of doing things.”  At the end of the seventeenth Century Isaac Newton showed, in his derivation of the laws of motion, that gravitational force impacts the motion of all physical objects. At the beginning of the twentieth Century Albert Einstein, in his theories of Special and General Relativity, showed how the dual forces of electromagnetic energy and gravity determine the very geometry of space and time. The force of gravity and the speed of light define the boundary of the Universe.     Outside the Universe there would be no energy, no movement, and no possible development.   Everything is either a system or a part of a system, starting with and contained within the Universe. All systems d...

I have an ongoing joke with my wife Candace about my “system”.  It’s the way I like to heat the rooms of our little  house in the winter, and it involves turning in-room heaters on or off and opening or closing certain doors at various strategic times. Candace smiles at the arcaneness of my “system”.  Here, where I am  referring to my “system,”  I mean "a persistent way of doing things”. We can call the local weather a "system" in another way.  It is certainly a regular way of doing things, but, unlike my opening and closing doors,  it is not a goal-directed process.  It is a natural, self-organized, physical process that begins in the Pacific Ocean and sweeps across parts of North America, eventually dissipating over the Atlantic. There are many other regional weather systems around the Earth, and these together make up an evolving Global Climate System that is presently warming, but that  last wrapped most of the Northern Hemisphere ...

Machines are a kind of human tool that use energy to perform a pre-designed activity. Machines are built, maintained and have evolved always within the care and guidance of human hands. Simple tools like a hammer require the human body to apply the energy, but many machines run by themselves with the assistance of some power source. A machine like a computer, can execute a human command to fetch or manipulate information all on its own. Machines are a wholly new phenomenon. They did not exist before humans existed. That’s why it is an error to conceptualize living things as machines, as was done by Descartes. Descartes is considered to be the first modern philosopher. He framed the famous body-mind dichotomy for the modern era. Machines don’t have instincts. They require human purpose and guidance in order to survive over time. If you look around at nature, it does not require human purpose and guidance. It’s parts are self organized. The Earth does not require our help to orbi...