Rule of Law, As a Legal Philosophy, Is on the Side of Undocumented Hispanic Immigrants, Not Those Trying to Deport Them

Stuart K. Hayashi

As right-wingers cite “the rule of law” as a reason why undocumented Hispanic immigrants should be deported, those right-wingers invoke a legal philosophy that means the exact opposite of what they assume it means.



The Immigration Skeptics’ Misunderstanding of Rule of Law
They assume that the doctrine of Rule of Law means, The law is the law, and you have to follow the law! This assumption that we have every duty to follow every statute would actually preclude any civil disobedience against unjust laws. Anyone who took this seriously would assume it was wrong for blacks and whites to associate with one another in the South during Jim Crow; it would assume it was wrong to participate in the Underground Railroad; it would assume that it was wrong for entrepreneurs to flout Prohibition by distributing and selling alcohol. It would even assume that the American Revolution was wrong; the Boston Tea Party defied statutes.

Nowadays right-wingers invoke the term “Rule of Law” when demanding punishment of Hispanics who immigrate the United States without getting a visa first, a visa being a license for long-term immigration. They sputter that if you are not keen on deporting a peaceful person who immigrated without a license, you are, at best, being arbitrary in what laws you think should and should not be enforced and, at worst, an anarchist. That is the implication from Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign website when it proclaims that deporting undocumented immigrants is all about enforcing the Rule of Law, obviously ignoring the fact that Ted Cruz was just fine with how Kim Davis brazenly broke the law. On many instances where I defend the rights of undocumented immigrants, right-wingers (here is an example) tweet at me that I am disrespecting the Rule of Law. These right-wingers who try to use “the Rule of Law” as a club with which to bludgeon undocumented immigrants demonstrate that they do not know what the Rule of Law is or what it means.

The Rule of Law has always been a legal philosophy and, thanks to the British legal scholar Albert Venn Dicey in the nineteenth century, it came to be widely known in the West as a distinctly classical-liberal legal philosophy. And this philosophy, taken to its logical conclusion, comes down on the side of the undocumented immigrants and not on the side of those wishing to deport them.



What the Rule of Law Actually Is
An early usage of the term comes from the ancient Roman historian Livy (Titus Livius) who, in the introduction to Book II of his History of Rome, enthused that the Roman republic was finally going through a period of "rule of law, not of men." By this he meant that the Roman republic was clamping down on the arbitrary powers of the Head of State and began placing more emphasis on enforcing a consistent legal code on everyone. The idea also gained currency with John Adams, who wrote that constitutions were to ensure a "government of laws, not a government of men," again with the latter term referring to arbitrary powers on the government’s part. Yet the term Rule of Law gained most renown from the British legal scholar and jurist A. V. Dicey, who said that the Rule of Law has three planks. They are, in my words, not Dicey's:

1. The law must be codified and available to all literate residents of a realm to read and study. That is, it is not sufficient to have a monarch saying that he keeps track of all the laws in his own head without spelling out for everyone else what the laws are. That is arbitrary power -- what Titus Livius and John Adams called the rule "of men."

2. The law applies equally to all residents of the realm. Livy, John Adams, and Dicey most specifically mentioned this because they resented that government officials felt that laws which they enforced on other people did not apply to themselves and their relatives. For example, suppose the governor cracks down on burglars. Then the governor learns that his own nephew is among the burglars. The governor decides, "I will prosecute all burglars, except for my nephew, because I know that his being prosecuted would upset my whole family." That is arbitrary power and not the equal application of the law to all residents of the realm. Hence, it would be a violation of the rule of law and be an instance of “the rule of men.”

Note, however, that there is a wider application of this plank. Dicey said that the law must apply equally to all residents of the realm and not divide them into separate legal classes. That is, he said that it is not the case that members of one class be treated one way by the law and that there be another (second- or third-tier) class treated differently by the law. We will revisit this at the end of my essay.

3. The final plank states outright that your individual rights -- your right to live peaceably with your property, as described by Locke -- are more important than any and all written laws, more important than statutes and even constitutions. As Albert Venn Dicey says, "The 'rule of law,' lastly, may be used as a formula for expressing the fact that with us the law of the constitution, the rules in which foreign countries naturally form part of a constitutional code, are not the true source but the consequence of the rights of individuals, as defined and enforced by the Courts; that, in short, the principles of private law have with us been by the action of the Courts and Parliament so extended as to determine the position of the Crown and its servants; thus the Constitution is the result of the ordinary law of the land" (emphasis added).

The Classical Liberal Freedom, to Do Anything That Is Peaceful, Outranks All Statutes and Even Constitutions
By the third plank, Albert Venn Dicey meant that the individual rights described by John Locke -- to live peaceably with your property, not aggressed upon by the State -- come first, and legislation is valid only to the degree that it protects those rights.  As Dicey puts it, "...each man's individual rights are far less the result of our constitution than the basis on which that constitution is founded." That is, your liberty to do anything that is peaceful is superior to -- outranking -- any statute or ordinance, and even constitutions. Dicey, being a jurist, held more confidence in courts than in statutes, and hoped that courts would overturn -- or at least refuse to enforce -- unjust statutes that violate your right to do anything that is peaceful.

Applying that principle already nullifies the political Right's arguments against undocumented Hispanic immigrants. Applying the third plank means that if you want the law to send armed men after undocumented Hispanic immigrants, you have to do more than say, "They acted contrary to statutes!" You have to show actual violence done to someone else's person or property.

Dicey stated that although he was concerned that people might arbitrarily decide to flout just about any sensible statute they disliked, the principle of Rule of Law could not preclude the moral justness of defying particularly repressive statutes:  "No sensible man can refuse to admit that crises occasionally, though very rarely, arise when armed rebellion against unjust and oppressive laws may be morally justifiable. This admission must certainly be made by any reasoner who sympathises with the principles inherited by modern Liberals from the Whigs of 1688."



How Practicing the Rule of Law Would Preclude Treating Undocumented Immigrants Differently from the Native-Born
However, we can also return to the second plank, the one about how the law must apply equally to all residents of the realm. One might try to interpret it as narrowly as saying that government officials must not be held above the laws they enforce on citizens, such as in my example of a governor refusing to prosecute his nephew for the same infraction for which he prosecutes non-relatives. But Dicey's explanation of this plank is not as narrow as that: "It [Rule of Law] means, again, equality before the law, or the equal subjection of all classes to the ordinary law of the land administered by the ordinary Law Courts..."

If we apply the third plank Dicey mentioned -- prioritizing your right to live peaceably above any statute -- and also apply the second plank, we can see that Dicey's Rule of Law doctrine disapproves of how undocumented immigrants are treated as a different legal class as the other residents of the realm. Recall that the third plank would have the law err on the side of allowing anything that is peaceful, and that because citing statutory law or even constitutions is not sufficient to prove that a party of people must be prosecuted, the Rule-of-Law doctrine would not consider a Mexican immigrating to the USA without a visa to be a sufficient reason for U.S. government action against that Mexican immigrant. However, the fact that undocumented Mexican immigrants are undocumented puts this peaceful group of citizens in a different legal class from other peaceful residents of the realm. The government treats peaceful, undocumented immigrants differently from peaceful native-born Americans. It is discrimination on the part of the State. That therefore violates the second plank of Dicey's Rule-of-Law Doctrine: "equality before the law, or the equal subjection of all classes to the ordinary law of the land..."



The Man Who Popularized “Rule of Law” Explicitly Condemned Statutes That Restricted Migration As Contrary to Rule of Law
Here, the "immigration skeptics" will probably say I am nitpicking. They will say that Dicey was merely advocating that all citizens be treated equally, and that his Rule-of-Law doctrine is inapplicable to resident aliens, as resident aliens are non-citizens. It is therefore instructive to read what Dicey said specifically about immigrants. In the first decade of the twentieth century he denounced a proposed restriction on immigration to England. This was the Aliens Act of 1905. David Glover writes that Dicey "came to see the Aliens Act as just one among a variety of recent laws through which the state was tearing asunder the fabric of personal freedoms..." In Dicey's own words, governmental restriction and regulation of immigration "shows an indifference to that respect for the personal freedom, even of an alien, which may be called the natural individualism of the common law."

In short, "immigration skeptics" are misappropriating a term. In an attempt to undermine support for the freedom of immigration, these right-wing anti-immigrationists invoke a legal doctrine that, from the very beginning, championed what the right-wing anti-immigrationists are trying to destroy.


__

Update Notes -- July 14, 2016: Added the quotations about rebellion and rights being the basis rather than the result of the Constitution.  On January 12, 2018, I corrected some grammar and some links, and added the infographic at the top.

No, Mexican Government Officials Deporting Central Americans Doesn't Make Hypocrites of Undocumented Mexican Immigrants in the USA

Stuart K. Hayashi




I keep hearing this collectivist argument. I heard Rush Limbaugh express it, and, to my consternation, the humorous advice columnist Amy Alkon, who has often sided with laissez faire, has spouted it as well. It is quite ubiquitous. It is largely to this effect:

We're told to accept undocumented Mexican immigrants into the USA. But Mexico doesn't accept undocumented immigrants from Central America; Mexico denies them freedom of speech and frequently deports them. If that policy is good enough for Mexico, why is it not good enough for the USA? And since Mexicans want us to accept them, when they deport illegal immigrants, Mexicans who come to the USA illegally are hypocrites.

You have to be a social collectivist -- not an individualist -- to find that argument convincing.

You do know that a country isn't a single person with a single personality, right? You know that people are individuals, right? 😑

Yes, the situation in several Central American countries is so severe that Mexico can sometimes seem freer by comparison.  Therefore, many Central Americans illegally flee to Mexico.  And, as Rush Limbaugh said, the Mexican government restricts many freedom and opportunities that even undocumented immigrants from Mexico can enjoy in the United States.

And it is plain that the Mexican government officials who deport Central Americans are not the same individuals as the Mexicans who illegally cross the border into the United States.  If you settled in the United States for the long term, you wouldn't be able to eject people bodily from Mexico, now could you? No, citing the policy of the Mexican government is not evidence of hypocrisy on the part of Mexicans who come to the USA absent of any visa.

Secondly, whether or not the Mexican government treats Central American immigrants harshly has no bearing on whether that should be the policy of the U.S. federal government. The U.S. federal government has no obligation to mirror the policies of other countries. Rather, I ask that the U.S. federal government act in accordance with the Enlightenment-era classical liberal standards upon which the U.S. republic was founded. The Declaration of Independence says that all men have the same equal rights -- that all peaceful people have a right not to be physically molested by the State. It says "all men" have these rights; not "these rights are non-applicable to those born outside of our borders."

As for those who keep yelling that "illegals" still "broke the law" -- specifically, federal immigration restrictions -- it should be noted that Thomas Jefferson pointed out that the rights described in the Declaration are of higher priority than any statute.

When I implore that the United States practice open immigration for all peaceful people, that is not expecting the USA to live up to the Mexican government's standards but to the standards set by such U.S. Founding Fathers as James Madison and George Washington.

I do not mean we need our present governmental system to emulate every U.S. Founding Father directly -- no staunchly laissez-fairest Constitutional scholar would find that plausible. Not all U.S. Founding Fathers agreed on everything, and, more importantly, even the U.S. Founding Fathers lived with and practiced some illiberal customs from their own times, such as slaveholding. But none of that diminishes the legitimacy of the Enlightenment-era classical-liberal political philosophy they studied and expressed, and which remains applicable to our own era.

 Some "immigration-skeptic" right-wingers try to quote the U.S. Founding Fathers about how they wanted immigrants to be "assimilated" into the preexisting white American culture.  Then these right-wingers declare that because right-wingers do not consider undocumented Hispanic immigrants to be "assimilated," the Founding Fathers probably would have wanted the Hispanic immigrants deported. Instead of falling prey to such right-wingers' pedantry, I beseech you to focus on the philosophic essence of what the U.S. Founding Fathers said and then apply it peaceably to the modern context.

Congressional documents record James Madison acknowledging, "America was indebted to emigration [immigration] for her settlement and prosperity. The part of America which had encouraged them most, had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture, and the arts." (I learned of this from an excellent video on immigration by "Maus Merryjest"). Note how immigrants continue to play an important role in agriculture at the present moment.




 Likewise, George Washington held no qualms about immigrants supposedly having an adverse effect on the employment of native-born Americans. He wanted work done on his house, and wanted to hire immigrants to perform such labor. As archives betoken, Washington inquired to a friend,

I am informed that a Ship with Palatines [Germans] is gone up to Baltimore, among whom are a number of Tradesmen. I am a good deal in want of a House Joiner and Bricklayer, (who really understand their profession) and you would do me a favor by purchasing one of each, for me.

I would not confine you to Palatines. If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans [Muslims], Jews or Christian of any Sect, or they may be Atheists.

The father of this country was inclusive to all peaceful individuals, not holding their race or national origin against them. If only people living today could be so bold...


UPDATE FROM September 11, 2016:  Here is a meme I made on this topic.

It's OK to Be 'Pro-Business' and 'Pro-Corporation,' Silly ^_^

Stuart K. Hayashi

You silly left-wingers think I am a "pro-business" shill for corporations! But I am "pro-market," not "pro-business" or "pro-corporation"!  I am for capitalism, and you mistake capitalism for something we both oppose:  corporatism.  Learn the difference!

That is a frequent rejoinder from libertarians. Marian Tupy of the Cato Institute employed it. Even some non-libertarians, such as the controversial YouTube vlogger Carl Benjamin (better known as "Sargon of Akkad"), have as well.  Some persons hostile to libertarianism, including Ralph Nader, do too.  For some years I employed that rejoinder as well in face-to-face conversations. I do so no longer.  Although I do not go around calling myself pro-"corporatism," I have dispensed with throwing around corporatism as a pejorative. It is unhelpful to apply the term corporatism to taxpayer-funded, governmental assistance to specific corporations at the expense of other businesses.



Yes, Mussolini Called His System "Corporatism," But That's Not Exactly What You Call "Corporatism"
First off, much of the way in which corporatism is used by libertarians and too many Objectivists is misleading. Libertarians often say that corporatism was coined by Benito Mussolini to describe his political-ecosystem system in which specific corporations were given government-enforced monopolistic franchises and cartels. If the government provides favors to multinational corporations like McDonald's or Monsanto, that is ostensively Mussolini's corporatism in action.  Even Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has expressed animus toward the Cato Institute, has offered that point on page 194 of this book.

But to say that U.S. government favors to business are forms of "corporatism" reminiscent of Mussolini is misleading. Both types of "corporatism" violate laissez faire, but they are dissimilar enough to place in separate categories.

When Mussolini called his politics "corporatist," he was describing something with important differences from the notion of the government favoring an entity like McDonald's or Monsanto. The "corporations" of Mussolini's corporatism were state-enforced monopolies that were confined to a single nation-state; they are not what one would presently call a for-profit multinational corporation.  Corporatist "corporations" were nominally private but Italians under Mussolini still recognized these entities as largely appendages of the government.

"Corporations" under Mussolini were comparable to electrical utility monopolies, the U.S. Postal Service, the Federal Reserve, and Amtrak. Analogous "corporations" under FDR's New Deal would be the Resolution Finance Corporation, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Also think of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Note that none of these are multinational or transnational organizations; because of their quasi-governmental status, they are confined to specific nation-states.

These are also the sorts of organizations that Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, and Andrew Jackson criticized when they spoke unfavorably of "corporations."  They meant large government-enforced cartels against which no independent party could compete legally; they meant guilds out of the Middle Ages, somewhat comparable to modern government employee unions. It is therefore disingenuous when leftists such as Noam Chomsky and Jeet Heer proclaim that Adam Smith's complaints of "corporations" imply that Smith would necessarily denounce multinational for-profit firms such as McDonald's.

 While employees of these organizations might bristle at being called government employees, their institutions cannot easily be confused with multinational corporations in the vein of McDonald's, Monsanto, Solyndra, Tesla Motors, and Goldman Sachs. This is the reason why Mussolini favorably compared his system of government to the New Deal -- a compliment that the architects of the New Deal did not reject.

Mussolini's "corporatism" is therefore distinct from a system where the government favors specific multinational corporations like McDonald's. Both systems are variants of statism, but it is misleading to say that governmental favors for McDonald's and other multinational corporations are an application of Mussolini's "corporatism." That is, if the political economy under Mussolini is what we call corporatism, then U.S. governmental favors to McDonald's and other multinational corporations is not corporatism.

And there is a more fundamental complaint.



Corporatism, As a Pejorative, Implies Modern For-Profit Corporations Are Generally Bad
If your term for a negative phenomenon is "X-ism," your use of X- as the prefix implies that X is the party or entity primarily to blame for the problem. That is even more apparent with the epithet corporatocracy. I say "statism" or "etatism" (actually, I coined governism) because I think that the State is the institution that is to blame for such initiations of the use of force on the part of government employees. Now we have this corrupt system where corporations that buy favors from politicians receive such favors and corporations that refrain from buying favors end up the target of governmental retribution. If we designate this as corporatism, then the implication is that corporations are the institution that is most to blame for the problem. Given that it is the politicians who are extorting favor from corporations, I find it unfair to insinuate that corporations and their owners are the most blameworthy institution in this scenario.

It is for similar reasons that I avoid bandying around scientism. Scientism is allegedly the phenomenon of people inappropriately trying to apply rational and scientific methods to areas of philosophy where reason and science ostensibly do not apply. For instance, if you try to say that facts can clue us in on the morally correct course of action, you are accused of scientism because reason and science supposedly cannot be applied to philosophic topics like ethics. The implication is that scientism amounts to being too sciency and corporatism is being too corporationy. I dispute Steven Pinker on several respects, but he is correct to repudiate scientism as the smear term that it is.

To illustrate, I object to farm subsidies. I do not agree with the farm subsidy program. But suppose the term I used for this phenomenon was "farmerism." If I referred to this oppressive situation as "farmerism," would it not immediately bring to mind the notion that farmers, and not the governmental regulatory apparatus, must be the main focus of blame for the practice?

I use statism because there is too much "State." I suppose one can turn this around on me, and say, "If you use statism, aren't you implying the State is inherently bad? Are you a Murray Rothbard anarchist after all?" I do not think the State is inherently bad. I do, though, think that when the government initiates the use of force, the government/State is the institution that must be looked upon with distrust. I suppose a more specific term would be initiation-of-the-use-of-physical-force-ism.



"Capitalism" Good; "Corporations" Bad?
I am aware of libertarian arguments that corporations are inherently bad. They say that corporations are evil because of the government recognizing that a corporation has limited liability, supposedly meaning that if a corporation's owner damages you and your property, you can only sue the corporation and not go after the owners' personal assets. These libertarians conclude that a corporation is therefore "a creature of the State."   Stefan Molyneux advances this idea. [Old link went here.  --S.H. on 24 Jan. 2018.]

I once fell for those arguments.  Yet it is actually not true that if corporate executives victimize you, you are unable to go after their personal assets in a lawsuit. If justice requires that you not only sue a corporation for its assets, but also seek redress by targeting the corporation owners' personal assets, such methods are available. That is called "piercing the corporate veil." Lawyers have told me that this is a more complicated process. Still, the possibility exists.  As a historical case study, Charles B. Matthews, a cofounder of the Buffalo Lubricating Company, filed a lawsuit against the Vacuum Oil Company (a subsidiary of Standard Oil) and filed personal lawsuits against Vacuum shareholders John D. Archbold and Henry H. Rogers.  Matthews did not win those suits, but it was entirely legal for him to attempt to lay claim to Achbold's and Rogers's personal assets as he also sued their corporation. I do not think the complications under the present legal system are sufficient reason to judge corporations as inherently violent institutions.

While I do not go around calling myself "pro-corporatism," I am unabashedly pro-corporation.

Moreover, if one is a libertarian who has general distrust for big institutions, then it does not make sense to assume that the word capitalism necessarily comes closer to describing the laissez-faireist position than corporatism does. Capitalism was coined as a pejorative in a manner very similar to the way in which libertarians and leftists apply corporatism as a pejorative. Contrary to Thomas J. DiLorenzo's inaccuracy (page 1 of this book), it was not Karl Marx, but a Marxist contemporary of Friedrich Engels' -- Werner Sombart -- who coined capitalism (see page 237 of Fernaud Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism volume 2: The Wheels of Commerce).

Sombart intended for the expression to be an insult. He said that people who agreed with him were "socialist" because they were social, and "communist" because they were for the "community" in their "commune." He then set up the alternative as a foil to that. If you disagree with Sombart, you are for "capitalism," meaning money-ism. Instead of being social, your priority is money and the factory machinery that the money purchases; you prioritize that over your fellow human beings, the workers. And who held all the capital? Big banks, big institutions, big corporations. In Sombart's time, to rail against "capital" was the same as to rail against "corporations." If you called yourself a capitalist, it meant you sided with capital over human beings, just as now libertarians and leftists tell us that to be a corporatist is to side with multinational corporations over human beings.

It is a testament to the horse sense of the American people that, rather than be cowed and intimidated by the insult capitalist, they took it as a badge of honor. Sombart's name-calling backfired. Americans rejected the idea that socialism is synonymous with "social" and that communism is synonymous with "community." Hence, even Americans who are actually rather hostile to the free market, such as Bill O'Reilly, consider socialist to be demeaning and think it is preferable to be pegged a capitalist.

That Americans are less intimidated by the term capitalism than corporatism, though, does not change that when you look at the roots of these words, capitalism does not have a meaning more suited to the anti-corporate libertarian's ideology than corporatism does.  That is why the Rothbard-influenced anarchist Kevin Carson pronounces himself a "free-market anti-capitalist."



Silly, It's OK to Be "Pro-Business"  😊
For reasons comparable to their contrived capitalism-corporatism distinction, I also hear libertarians defensively propound, "Stop calling me 'pro-business' or 'pro-corporation'!  I am 'pro-market'!  Get it straight!"  Steven Horwitz of Bleeding Heart Libertarians does this, as does the Cato Institute's David Boaz.  Mark Ehrenfeld says that University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales thinks of President Donald Trump's policies as pro-business rather than pro-market. Even the Evonomics website, which is not friendly to laissez faire or libertarians, says this.

Again, these pundits mean that to be "pro-business" and "pro-corporation" is for the State to give preference to some businesses and corporations over others, subverting laissez faire by the imposition of government regulations, in the form of tariffs and tax-funded subsidies. But to refer to these measures as pro-business and pro-corporation is misleading. When the State affords privileges to some businesses and corporations, it forcibly detracts from the well-being of other businesses and corporations.

As a case study, one might say that it was anti-free-market but "pro-business" when George W. Bush and Barack Obama each placed tariffs against foreign steel.   Supposedly these U.S. Presidents were pro-business in how they advantaged domestic steel producers and domestic steelworkers unions. But they certainly were not pro-business in helping international steel producers. Insofar as international steel producers were concerned, such measures were anti-business.

Moreover, it was not preferential treatment toward the domestic U.S. businesses that consume steel, such as construction companies, which now had to pay higher prices for steel than they otherwise would. U.S. employees of steel-using companies outnumber U.S. steelworkers 50 to 1. As far as these U.S.-based steel-using firms are concerned, the steel tariffs are anti-business and anti-corporation. Therefore, it is not pro-business or pro-corporation for the State to give preferential privileges to some firms over others.

Suppose that someone got away with stealing because he was the governor's nephew. The governor's nephew would be receiving a privileged status from the State. Would it be accurate to say that the State's special treatment of the governor's nephew was "pro-human," because the nephew is a human, and therefore a human received special treatment? No, it would not be pro-human, because that special treatment allowed the nephew to victimize another human.

By the same token, government regulations that handicap some businesses and corporations over others -- handling them unequally under the law -- is not pro-business. To maintain a free market -- to have all businesses and corporations treated equally under the law -- is pro-business and pro-corporation, just as punishing murderers is pro-human.



Conclusion
Proclamations such as "I'm pro-capitalism and pro-market, not corporatist or pro-business or pro-corporation; learn the difference!" are not worth it. There is nothing in those sentiments to appreciate. I am liquidating the cliche. To value free markets and capitalism is largely to value business and corporations.



On November 30, 2016, this was updated to include the example of Luigi Zingales calling Donald Trump "pro-business" bu not "pro-market." On January 24, 2018, I replaced a link to a quotation from Stefan Molyneux. I should return to the topic of that in the future, because of its implications. 

I've Been Close to Someone Who's Threatened Violence Publicly; Dangerous to Network With This Friend If Friend Isn't Getting Needed Help

Trigger warning:  This blog post discusses issues pertaining to child abuse, violent threats, rape, incest, suicidal gestures, and mental illness.


Stuart K. Hayashi




It was not easy for me to put this information right here. My concern about the danger -- including physical dangers -- outweighs such fears.  Some years ago I became very close to someone who, sadly, is dangerously mentally ill.  My friend has accused other people of being violent toward her, only later to act as if she does not remember the accusations she leveled. Moreover, in the years subsequent to placing a death threat against her mother on the World Wide Web for everyone to read, the archiving and documenting of this death threat remains.  Copies of the evidence are available.

I have contacted police about this on two continents.  On one continent, the police were unresponsive.  On the other, the police were responsive but said that jurisdictional issues prevent them from taking action.  Because my friend has given no indication that she has truly gotten past the obsession with violence, death, and child molesters, I judge that it is best for me to speak out here. What I know is that if I don't speak out about this, the danger is guaranteed to continue.  By contrast, if I speak out about this, there is at least a slim chance that someone might recognise my friend and give her the compassionate intervention she needs.




My Friend Publicly Threatened to Kill Her Mother -- The Evidence Is Archived, Documented, and Copied 
In 2004, in her home country of Norway, my friend put up this threat to kill her mother.  It is in English and it has been publicly available on the World Wide Web this entire time.  It is not one of those dumb, terse threats that people write on Twitter or YouTube, along the lines of, 'You disagree with me? Then I hope you die!'  Though the threat is grammatically inept in composition, it is nonetheless serious in tone and intent.  My friend does not say that she has some long-term plan to kill.  Rather, she envisions that one day she will become so incensed by her mother's nagging that she will take a knife and thrust the knife into her mother.  This is described vividly, as so:

Click on this to enlarge it and make it easier to read

The threat is documented and archived.  There are copies of it available.  This information is now irrepressible and un-erasable.

The very blog entry following it also has homicidal fantasies.  My friend and her on-again/off-again boyfriend at the time, whom she here calls “N,” were apparently on a break, and her boyfriend was pursuing someone else.  This is what my friend wrote about the other girl:

Click on this to enlarge and make it easier to read.

Direct Link | Archived Link

Some people in our respective circles have rationalised that these death threats are 'long past'.  After all, they say, these blog entries are more than ten years old.  Moreover, four months after my friend wrote her death threat about her mother, she wrote a follow-up post on that same thread where she claims to be all better:  '...im happy that i allowed myself to hate her [the mother]. otherwise nothing would have changed. I now love my mom to death like many other precious people in my surroundings'.

But it wasn't all better.  My friend made it all too obvious she is not recovered.




Years After Threatening Her Mother Publicly, My Friend Continues Exhibiting Publicly the Fixation on Violence and Death
When my friend was on Oahu from 2008 to 2012, she continued displaying morbid and even violent gestures, particularly in a public fashion.  Many of these morbid gestures remain on the Web, and have been documented and archived. There are also copies of this evidence available as well.

For example, in late 2010, my friend had another 'friend' (enabler, really) upload onto YouTube a video where she 'jokes' about being a neo-fascist 'of the Fourth Reich'.  My friend said privately it was a joke, but that is not obvious from the very strange video itself, which was listed as 'News and Politics'.  That my friend calling herself a neo-fascist 'of the Fourth Reich' is some joke is especially unclear for another reason: the enabler who uploaded the video is connected to an anti-immigration political group that advocates government force to curb Muslim immigration.  If you don't want people thinking you are a neo-Nazi, it's not wise to associate with that sort of group.  (Sadly, my friend actually first heard of that group from me, before it took on such a strident anti-immigration position.)

Around 2014, the enabler 'privated' the horrible video.  

Since you're probably not my friend's mother, you are probably wondering, 'Why the hell should I care?'  Until my friend confirms that she has returned to psychiatric care on a regular basis, I have strong evidence that she continues to pose a danger to colleagues with whom she networks. That could be you. Explaining this requires more context.




The Beginning of the Story Behind This
Before my friend showed me the murder threat and the disturbing 'Fourth Reich' video, she very slowly gave me clues indicating the danger.  First, she explained why she was born with her mother's last name instead of her father's, her father being an expatriate from the United States.  It was because her father himself had recently changed his last name.  The story behind that is itself bizarre and sad, and seems to have been because he felt betrayed by his own father back in the United States (we will call my friend's paternal grandfather WH here).  My friend laughed and said, 'My mum said to my father, "If we give our baby your last name, how do I know you won't change it again? We'll give her my last name; it's simpler." '  This father is a well-known photographer; his pictures have appeared frequently in the local newspaper and the website of his municipality/kommune, and his photos of the aurora borealis are celebrated throughout the world.

Then, for the first time, my friend sounded vulnerable. She said that she put on a front of bravado to hide her insecurities.  She admitted that she tries to make herself appear to other people that she is in a position of authority and responsibility, because she believes if people see her in such positions and seeming very confident and professional, they will not question her judgment or sanity.  No red flags went off for me; I reassured her that there was nothing unusual about nursing self-doubts.




The Accusation Against the Classmate 
In the weeks that followed, my friend increasingly showed an obsession with child molesters.  The first joke she ever told me happened to be what she identified as her favorite signature on online postings:  'The internet is where men are men, women are men, and small children are undercover FBI agents', alluding to online sting operations against child predators.  Then my friend would reminisce about an ex-boyfriend back in Norway.  She said that he was a deep, caring person who empathised with everyone, a man of upstanding good taste.  Then she stared at the ground and giggled, 'He always joked that he was a pedophile trying to lure kids into sex with him'.

Then in February of 2010, my friend came to a professor and me, and told us a troubling story.  She said that a classmate of hers in that professor's class had sexually propositioned her and, when she rejected him, he grew angry.  Based on his boasting about killing people in war and about his womanising, she was afraid he wanted to rape her.  They got into an argument and my friend had grown direly afraid of him.  A week later, my friend came to the professor and me and said that she was proven right to fear the classmate as violent, because he threatened her, 'If you tell anyone what happened that night, I kill you!'

My friend insisted that we not go to the police (in retrospect, I should have reported this to the police against her wishes) but that she wanted the professor to keep the classmate and her separate from one another.  She did not file any formal complaints with Hawaii Pacific University, but she did go around informally circulating this accusation among several other schoolmates.  I completely believed the accusation at the time.  Then my friend told the professor, several other schoolmates, and me a troubling story where she accused her writing instructor of invading her personal space as he flirted with her.  Again, she did not file a formal complaint and sternly insisted that none of us confidantes do so, either.  I completely believed this accusation as well.




The Obsession With Child Molesters
One night in April of 2010, when my friend and I were going out for an evening stroll, she said, out of nowhere, 'Why are people so bigoted when a convicted child molester moves into the neighborhood?'

My eyes shot wide open and I sputtered, 'Whah? . . . Wh-wh-wh-what do you mean?'

She explained, 'Whenever someone who, as an adult, had sex with a small child moves into the neighborhood, people immediately want to run him out.  They should consider that the child consented to the sex.'  She argued that a prepubescent child should be recognised as contractually competent to consent to sex with an adult caregiver.  She would not be swayed from this opinion, at least not this night.

Later, she also told me that when she was thirteen, she was groped by her then-best-friend, also thirteen years of age at the time.  She attributed her fear of men to the incidents of her friend groping her, though those incidents did not explain her obsession with child molesters in particular, nor her apparently fearing American-born men more than Norwegian-born men.




The Danger Posed to Colleagues (The Latest News Indicates This Danger Is Ongoing As This Is Posted)
Another night that same month, my friend was telling me about her day and then she said, very casually, that she bumped into the classmate.  I mean the same classmate she previously accused of threatening to kill her.  I was alarmed.  As calmly as I could, I asked her to go on.  What happened?  My friend said that she and the classmate had a nice talk, and he was just a nice, fun, friendly flirt.  Then she started into space, giggled, and said, 'Hee-hee! I . . . like [Classmate's name]'!

I was stunned.  I couldn't say anything in response.  My friend only responded to the awkward silence by changing the subject.

She also frequently talked about how she has had a long history of wanting to die.  At school, she threatened to kill herself several times.  Moreover, she mentioned hating her body and that this hatred for her body goes back to her early childhood, long before the boy groped her when they were both thirteen.  She mentioned that ever since she was little, she thought that female anatomy is disgusting because it makes her vulnerable to predatory males.  She did not elaborate on whether she felt threatened by one or two predatory males in particular.

The next day, I went to the professor to talk about her talking up that classmate as if she did not remember her allegation about him.  The professor brushed off my concerns.  Even as my friend made increasingly obvious and public morbid gestures, which he saw up close, the professor acted as if it was safe and acceptable.  For those reasons, I have lost a lot of respect for this man.

Throughout May of 2010, my friend switched back and forth in her memory of the classmate. First she switched back to saying he violently threatened her, and she went around telling other schoolmates about this.  The next day, she again talked about the classmate being just a nice, fun flirt. Two days later, she switched back to saying he was violent and dangerous.  Every time my friend changed her story, she sounded as if she did not remember what said the previous time, even if that previous time was no more than the day before.

By the autumn of 2010, my friend became very insistent on wearing the same garment to university class almost every day.  She took me to her apartment and she showed me all her clothes. It was not that she had lots of garments that looked alike.  This was the same black garment every day.  Then -- encouraged by the same enabler in Norway who uploaded the horrid 'Fourth Reich' video -- my friend uploaded photos of herself photoshopped to have a chalky white face like a corpse.  Two of the corpse photos even went on my friend's LinkedIn account, next to her résumé.  I think some people tried to assume my friend was 'just being a Goth or a Black Metal fan'.  However, my friend has a history of wanting to be dead literally.  For that reason, I could not dismiss this as my friend 'just being a Goth'; I had to take this seriously.

'A Lot of Abuse in My Family's Past[,] Including Sexual Abuse' 
By this time, I already didn't trust the judgment of my friend's American-born father. I did notice, though, that on Twitter he was following an eccentric woman from the same home state in the USA that he was from.  What got my attention was that the woman's website purported to be for a charity she set up, one for helping at-risk teens and twentysomethings (my friend's age range at the time).  All of the mental illness symptoms the woman's website described were the same as what my friend had either admitted to having or had exhibited to me directly. I thought, 'Who is this strange woman? Is she perhaps a psychologist with whom my friend's father consulted about my friend's problems in Norway?  About symptoms that are now becoming strong and publicly visible once again?'

I contacted this strange woman. I told her I was interested in her website, because I had a friend in her twenties who was exhibiting the symptoms the website described.  I mentioned to this strange woman, though, that I am worried that if she is a psychologist, she might consider it a conflict of interest for me to describe my friend's situation, as I think this strange woman knows my friend somehow.  The strange woman replied she is not a psychologist and it is OK for me to tell her what concerns me.   I told the woman about the morbid gestures but had not yet mentioned anything about the accusations about the classmate, the fear of men in general, or the obsession with child molesters.

It turned out that this strange woman is the paternal aunt to my friend.  The aunt remarked that my friend's situation was both familiar and unfamiliar.  The situation was unfamiliar in that, this entire time, the aunt was unaware that her Norwegian niece was going through all this. Yet, the aunt continued, what I described was indeed familiar in one respect:  when the aunt described mental illness symptoms on her own website, she was describing her own symptoms, and she was startled by how my friend's symptoms were similar to her own.  (I will not link to the woman's website, but rest assured that the website's URL is archived, its contents documented.)

Before I could say anything about the child-molester fixation or the accusation about the classmate, the aunt asked me whether my friend exhibited a prominent hang-up about sex.  I asked her what she meant.  The aunt replied, 'There is a lot of abuse in my family's past[,] including sexual abuse'.  Throughout the months, the aunt revealed that both a cousin and uncle of hers killed themselves, though in different ways. The cousin very deliberately committed suicide by throwing himself off a bridge. The uncle, named Delbert, sexually assaulted the aunt and later killed himself.  Later, the aunt mentioned that the father of both herself and my friend's father -- WH -- sexually abused the aunt and her sister.  As far as what the aunt said, though, my friend's father getting mad at WH and changing his own last name in protest -- to that of his mother's maiden name -- was unrelated to the sexual abuse.  Indeed, the aunt added that when she tried to talk to my friend's father about their own father sexually abusing her, my friend's father replied -- rather unconvincingly -- that he knew nothing of this when it was going on.

Later, it turned out that yet another brother, both to WH and that uncle Delbert, was also credibly accused of molesting a girl over whom he had authority.  The aunt said that this third brother 'drank himself to death'. That means there are credible accusations against three brothers on the paternal side of my friend's family.

The aunt went through the following pattern.  Every few weeks, she told me she would have a compassionate conversation with my friend about the public morbid gestures, and about their having so many symptoms and traumas in common.  But, last minute, the aunt would delay this.  Then she would start talking to me about something else, such as her co-workers irritating her.  Eventually she told me that she would have the compassionate conversation after she had her own confrontation with WH and her mother -- WH for sexually abusing her and with her mother for being an enabler who "looked the other way."  The aunt planned on confronting her parents with this through a snail mail.  She typed up a draft and e-mailed it to me.  I still have the entire draft in my possession.  It, too, is documented and archived, and copies of it have been made.

At the last minute, though, the aunt decided against mailing the letter. She rationalised that her mother was in poor health and the confrontation would worsen it.  Then she became uncommunicative and rude, and I do not think the compassionate conversation with my friend ever happened.  I suspect, at this point, it finally dawned on the aunt that if she looked further into the matter with my friend, she might uncover something incriminating not merely about WH, but about my friend's father himself, and that would undermine any remaining 'plausible deniability'.




Having to Go It Alone
It was up to me to have a compassionate conversation with my friend.  Most other people in our circles noticed the public morbid gestures but were too intimidated to say anything; they became perfect sycophants who helped my friend pretend that all of her public morbid gestures were safe and acceptable.

When I tried to talk to my friend about this, she feigned memory loss, pretending not to remember what she had told me about her obsession with child molesters and death and fear of men.  Then she added that by raising the topic, I had shown myself to be more evil and frightening than the classmate who threatened to kill her.  She added that my confronting her about this was more evil and hurtful than all of the misogynistic epithets her ex-boyfriends hurled toward her.  Soon after saying all this, she again feigned memory loss, this time pretending not to remember being angry just minutes earlier.  As if she didn't know how the conversation started, she began talking casually about her day and then put on a smile and asked me how my day was.  I reminded her of what our conversation was about -- her violent and morbid gestures.  She then grew enraged again and intoned ominously, 'This is not over!'

For the sake of my physical safety, I had to cut off ties to my friend. But I never stopped caring.




BiggerPockets.Com:  Where the Danger of Continued Violence Remains
Some months ago, when I looked at a real-estate investing website, my friend -- of all people -- popped up.  She talked about how she is a big shot real-estate investor who owns a parking garage in Norway and who is interested in New York.  She finally stopped using the horrid corpse pictures for her avatar.

However, she changed her name; she now goes by her father's last name.  To someone unaware of the context, that must seem a touching tribute to a man of obviously large meaning in my friend's life. But based on what my friend kept saying, and also based on what her aunt said, I am afraid that the name change appears to be yet another morbid gesture.  :'-(
 

If you network with her as a colleague, it would be prudent to remember her behaviour with respect to her classmate and the writing instructor.  As long as my friend refuses to take responsibility publicly for her public morbid gestures -- including, but far from exclusively, the still-online murder threats and photoshop-corpse photos -- there is probable cause in concluding that the danger remains. Indeed, if you work at a particular IKEA Service and Pick-Up Point, you should be very concerned.

I have to bring this up publicly.

First off, falsely accusing someone of a violent crime is itself an initiation of the use of force.  The reason is this.  If X goes to Z and accuses Y of having committed violence against X, then Z may easily respond with violence toward Y, either doing the violence himself as retribution or going to the police (remember that government action is backed by the threat of violence).

Furthermore, every impassioned public threat of violence -- such as the one my friend put on the Web publicly for her mother -- must be taken seriously.  Serious public threats of violence count as an initiation of the use of force.  The reason is that, although not all violent threats are acted upon, there is probable cause to judge that the person who issued the threat might still act upon it one day.

Even if my friend never does violence to her mother, she has given enough reason for people to suspect she might do something equally dangerous or retributive to someone else to whom she feels emotionally attached. You cannot justly hide behind the phrase 'This is my privacy and none of your business!' when the matter involves violent threats you have issued publicly against your own mother. That is particularly when you have continued, throughout the years, issuing public gestures indicating a continued obsession with death and violence.

If you have come into contact with my friend and truly care about her well-being and the safety of those around her, please, please, please confront her compassionately and firmly -- pardon that redundancy -- about how her happiness, her being able to accept herself and her past, without all these evasions, is most important, and that the courage to return to regular psychiatric care is worth it.  It is the part of me that retains confidence in my friend -- that part of me that holds onto the hope that she finds inner peace, authentic happiness, and the hope that she is capable of gaining it -- that asks this both of her and of you.




On May 17, 2020, I added the paragraph about that other brother to WH also being credibly accused of child sexual abuse. On August 15, 2020, I added the information about my friend posting her violent fantasies about her romantic rival.

Unfortunate Titles

In retrospect, the titles of Bill Cosby's children's books raise unfortunate imagery. O_O

Immigrants and Terrorists in Ancient Athens

Stuart K. Hayashi

In her book Darwin's Ghosts, Rebecca Stott pointed out something I had not previously considered. Back in the days of ancient Athens, anyone from outside of your city was a foreigner. Someone who came to your city and was not originally from there, was an immigrant -- what was then called a metic. Aristotle was born near Macedonia, and he came to Athens. He was an immigrant.

The Athenians did not understand freedom the same way we laissez-faire liberals do: to Athenians, to be "free" mostly meant "not being a debt slave," and the Athenians were quite comfortable with the institution of debt slavery. Aristotle himself had debt slaves. But I think it is fair to say that the Athenians were generally more freedom-loving than were the Macedonians. To put it in our sort of modern terminology, the Macedonians were of a culture that did not respect freedom as much as the Athenians did. Aristotle came from a comparatively primitive, illiberal culture.

Eventually, Philip of Macedon began conquering neighboring city-states, and the Athenians reasonably feared that they would be next. They began to regard all Macedonians within Athens -- including Aristotle -- with suspicion. They feared these Macedonians might be subversives and spies secretly loyal to Philip -- the terrorists of their day.

Not wanting their freedom destroyed by outsiders, the Athenians began to presume Macedonians within Athens to be guilty of treason and they violently persecuted them. They harassed Aristotle and destroyed his property, driving him to flee from Athens. Thus, Aristotle fled to Lesbos, becoming a refugee, ironically, from one of the freest societies of Europe at the time.

At the lagoon at Lesbos, Aristotle made new and important discoveries, and therefore we might rationalize that we ultimately benefited from Aristotle leaving Athens. But we could also consider how, in their own time, the Athenians might have benefited from Aristotle's wisdom more immediately had they not driven him out.

There is a lesson in this. As the movie Ratatouille observed, "Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."

It is sheer folly to dismiss someone as a burden, or, worse, violent, based on that person coming from what we judge to be a primitive or illiberal culture. In an underwater robotics competition, a team of brilliant engineers beat MIT's team, doing what MIT's robot could not. Every member of this team was an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. One of the world's foremost brain surgeons first came to the United States illegally, working as a migrant farm laborer. When we shut out people, we might be condemning the next Aristotle to death before he makes his big breakthrough. When we close ourselves off from refugees, we imperil not only them, but ourselves as well.

Chris McKenzie Turns Zeno's Paradox Against Itself

The first sections of this post were written by Chris McKenzie and Robert Nasir respectively. I published those sections on March 15, 2016. Below those sections, over time, I added my own thoughts. On Tuesday, May 6, 2025, I added an essay of my own authorship to put everything together.
—Stuart K. Hayashi 

This is Bartolomeo Carduci's fresco of Zeno of Elea (he is the old man leading the young men).

Chris McKenzie explains:

Zeno's Paradox is as follows.  The ancient Greek philosopher Zeno stated that in order to cross a room, one must first cross half the room. In order to cross the remaining half, one must cross half the remaining distance, and so on -- infinitely. Zeno concluded that one can therefore never cross the room.

Let's change Zeno's numbers but keep his intent: In order to cross a room, one must be first cross 99% of the room. In order to cross the remaining 1%, one must cross 99% of the remaining 1%, infinitely.

Zeno has a problem though, and it's one he's smuggled in. Why does Zeno think you can cross 99% of the room? After all, if you treat 99% as a whole, you must first cross 99% of the new whole. The end result is that you can't move at all because in order to move you must first move through 99% of whatever infinitesimally small space you've chosen to move through -- say the first 1% of the distance.

Now to the claim that "nothing is certain" or we can only be 99% certain. It's easy to explode this claim with a single question: Are you sure? However, we can see that the 99% certainty claim suffers from the same problem as Zeno's room: In order to be 99% certain, you must first be 99% of 99% certain. Which is to say, you must be wholly certain of a certain whole (the first 99%).

Or, you could just walk across the room and proudly claim, with 100% certainty, "I did it." 

_______________

Stuart K. Hayashi adds:

As Chris said, we can turn this around on Zeno.

Every fraction is, in another context, one whole. That is, Y may be a fraction of X, but Y is still one whole of Y. If the room is 30 feet across, and I only walk "half that distance," that is 15 feet. But that "half distance" is actually "the entire distance" of another measurement: 15 feet. Therefore, every time you travel a distance, you travel the entirety of that distance. Every measurement is, in at least one context, "100 percent."

_______________


UPDATE  from the Same Day:

Robert Nasir wrote the following comments to me.  I am quoting them here with his permission.

Similarly, if you can travel half the length of a given room, then you can travel what is half of twice the length of the room.

The real issue is the integration of the discrete and the continuous. Everything is discrete. Entities are discrete. The distances they travel (to the extent they're measurable) are discrete.

Mathematics treats space (and time) as continuous. That's fine, it's useful (and arguably necessary) to do so.

But to understand why apparent paradoxes arise, one must never lose sight that math is method, not metaphysics.

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UPDATE: Additional comment from Stuart on January 26, 2018:

I think I have a new way of phrasing this matter:

Zeno's Paradox is based on the false presumption that no measurement can ever be 100 percent.  But the exact opposite is true: every measurement is 100 percent, at least in terms of each measurement being 100 percent of itself.

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UPDATE: Addendum from Stuart on February 9, 2020:

Only today did it occur to me that pointing out that every measurement is “100 percent of itself” is a restatement of “A is A” (here, “1 = 1”).

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UPDATE from Stuart on May 6, 2025 (much longer than the other updates):

After I first published this blog post, I learned that in his Physics, Aristotle himself provided a refutation of Zeno Paradox’s similar to the one I provided above. In fact, the explanation of Zeno’s Paradox in Physics has been, throughout the modern age, an important document through which archaeologists and historians have been aware of this idea having been circulated in ancient Greece.

I will say more explicitly why, years ago, Chris McKenzie started discussing this matter with me over Facebook. The reason is a bromide commonly repeated in the culture, even by scientists and science journalists influenced by Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn in the philosophy of science.

The bromide starts by pointing out that when it comes to forming conclusions, we can err. A big reason for this is often that, in forming the conclusion, we had yet to come across a piece of information that would have provided a more-complete understanding. And because we are not omniscient and cannot know everything that can ever be known, it follows there will always be more learn. It then follows that will always be a risk of error in our conclusions. Therefore, concludes the bromide: no principle should be deemed to be absolute, and we can never be a certain of any conclusion. And if we can never be certain of any conclusion, any and every claim to any knowledge is subject to existential doubt, no better than tenuous.

That is what Karl Popper meant in saying, “...we never know what we are talking about.” In Forbes magazine, physics professor and science writer Ethan Siegel insists, “In fact, when it comes to science, proving anything is an impossibility.”

An interpretation such as Siegel’s concedes that scientists do gather evidence, and that, as evidence accumulates for a particular conclusion, we can legitimately grow more confident of that conclusion. However, goes that interpretation, as no one can gain all data ever to exist, complete confidence can never be achieved. In other words, we can never have 100-percent of all information, which means we can never have 100-percent confidence. Ergo, says the argument, even as we can cite additional evidence to become justly more confident in a proposition, actual complete proof of the conclusion will forever elude us.

Being influenced by Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, the argument above is often provided in introductory science courses in university. The Forbes writer is far from alone, even among science instructors. I know my introductory biology professor gave lip service to it before moving on to aspects of the lecture — about cells and respiration — that he found more interesting. But when people say, “We can never achieve certainty in the end,” the phrasing is terribly misleading.

When I wrote about this on Facebook in 2016, Chris McKenzie replied to me in a comment post that “We can get more confident, but can never achieve complete confidence” is a variant on Zeno’s Paradox. The same applies to “Something can improve but never reach perfection.” These are variation’s on Zeno’s Paradox because the main message of Zeno’s Paradox is, You can gain increments bringing you closer to 100 percent, but no form of 100 percent shall ever be reached.

Here is how “We can’t be certain” is a variation on Zeno’s Paradox. Isaac Asimov, the famed science-fiction author who was also a trained biochemist, told PBS talk-show host Bill Moyers, “...we can’t be absolutely certain. Science doesn’t purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism. It’s a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature.”

Note how Asimov concedes that through science we keep getting closer to the absolute truth. But he warns us that absolute truth itself cannot be reached. Asimov’s statement is a rephrasing of Zeno’s idea that we can get closer to 100 percent but not 100 percent itself. One is “A principle might apply much of the time, but it will never absolute.” Another is “Something can improve, but it will never be perfect.”

Zeno’s Paradox is a fallacy because it is inverse to the truth. The argument is sloppy in terms of how it defines 100 percent, largely conflating 100 percent and completion with infinity. This Paradox is also sloppy in how it treats the meaning of the concept of context.

In reality: in at least one context, every increment is 100 percent. This is because, in at least one context, every quantity is 100 percent. It is 100 percent in that it is 100 percent of itself. That is, “1 = 1.” Phrased differently, “A is A.” That is, every distance traveled is 100 percent of itself. By that same token, a fraction of a Particular Distance C is itself 100 percent of yet another distance, Distance D.

Let us say we are in a room that is 18 feet long (5.4864 meters). And let us revisit Zeno’s Paradox. We want to cross the room from one end to the other. We travel half the distance (9 feet; 2.7432 meters). We then travel half the remaining distance: 4 feet and 6 inches, or 1.3716 meters. Then we travel half the remaining distance again, and again, and so on. We keep inching closer to the desired destination, and yet if in every interval we travel half the remaining distance, we will never reach the desired destination. How, Zeno asked, can we possibly reach the desired end of the room? Again, the point is that we can never reach 100 percent; every distance traveled is a fraction of a distance and not a complete distance. This means we can never attain something that is one whole; we can never attain something that is a single unit; we can only obtain a fraction of that unit.

By now, we see the fallacy. Half the distance of an 18-foot-long room is itself a distance. The nine feet in our first increment (2.7432 meters) may be a mere fraction of the length of the room, but, in another context, it is indeed 100 percent, one whole, and a complete distance — as is any and every quantity. That is why, as quoted above, Robert Nasir cheekily said that if we are allowed only to walk “half a distance,” then he can offer a work-around. It is that we say we will travel half of twice the length of the room. By walking half that distance, we end up walking the entire length of the room.

In Physics, Book 6, Aristotle already spotted this. As he said it, there is no distance traveled “less than itself for it to traverse first...” Hence, any time we travel a distance that is a fraction of another, the distance we have traveled is already a “distance equal to itself.” Yes, “everything that is in motion ... traverses a distance as great as itself.” Hence, every fractional distance we have traveled is, in at least one context, already one “whole.”

The same principle applies to the concepts of certainty, perfection, and absolute. All of those are contextual. By that, I mean that any time we talk rationally of certainty, perfection, and absolute, those are parameters set by a pertinent context. And, within that pertinent context, every one of those can indeed be achieved.

It is a false philosophic presumption that any claim to true knowledge requires infallibility and omniscience. It is the same false philosophic presumption that perfection and absolute are achieved only when not limited to any parameters, so much so that they transcend context. That false presumption can largely be attributed to Plato, who propounded that certainty, perfection, and absolutes could exist only as ideals beyond human capability, with everything observable in human experience necessarily being of inferior stature. In the modern age, Immanuel Kant popularized the presumption that human fallibility precludes certainty and perfection.

Once you toss away the Platonic misconceptions about them, it happens that certainty, absoluteness, and perfection all exist. They exist within their respective proper contexts, and each are defined by that context.

Whether you reach “100 percent” — whether you have a complete unit, as opposed to a fraction of that unit — is determined by the quantity you defined, in the first place, as 100 percent and a complete unit. In his Paradox, Zeno was equivocal about how he defined 100 percent of a particular length. The Paradox’s upshot is that you can never reach 100 percent of any important quantity, but, as we have identified, the half-the-room’s-length you have walked is itself 100 percent of an important quantity.

Zeno’s sloppiness when it comes to his parameters on exactly what quantity is needed to achieve a goal, is mirrored in platitudes about the impossibility of perfection, absoluteness, and certainty. When people say perfection is unachievable, I reply that their interpretation of it is unachievable for the reason that they are talking of a perfection that can be called such only if it transcends all context. Hence, I call this invalid idea one of Platonic perfection, in contrast to what is actually legitimate: contextual perfection. By that, I mean “perfection within a particular practical context” — which is indubitably achievable.

The same applies to absolutes. People say that a principle cannot be absolute because, for it to be absolute, it must apply in any and every context uniformly. That would mean that the principle applies in such a manner that it transcends all context. I call that sort of unachievable absolute the fallacious idea of Platonic absolute. An actual absolute principle is a contextual absolute. It recognizes that a principle applies consistently within its own pertinent context.

Within a particular purview with clearly-defined goals, perfection is attainable. If “perfectly beautiful” and “perfect morally” are defined no more than nebulously, of course those misconceptions of Platonic perfection cannot manifest. As so many people are vague, at best, on what they interpret perfection to be, it is wholly unsurprising that they repeat clichés about how nothing and no one but Jesus is perfect. But suppose your child in school is given an examination of ten math problems. And suppose your child has gotten the correct answer on all ten problems. In that purview, it is entirely legitimate to say that on that exam your child has gotten a score that is perfect.

That every quantity is 100-percent, by the way, is also why people contradict themselves in their proclamation, with implicit certainty — and with the subtext of that this applies as an absolute — that no proclamation should ever be taken as absolutely certain. (Any science-fiction character who shouts, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes!” must, by his own definition, be a Sith.)

The fallacious idea that we have certainty only through infallibility and omniscience, I identify as the fallacious idea of a Platonic certainty. The foil to that is actual certainty, which is contextual certainty. To achieve a particular life-affirming goal — the pertinent context — we need to have a quantity of knowledge that is sufficient to achieve it. Insofar as applying the pertinent knowledge is consistent in achieving the goal satisfactorily, we are indeed rationally certain of that knowledge. Attaining such rational certainty does not require knowing everything there is to know. It requires only knowing enough that is pertinent to the context and scope in question.

Isaac Asimov elsewhere tells Bill Moyers, “That is really the glory of science. That science is tentative, that it is not certain, that it is subject to change.” Note the conflation of science being “subject to change” with science being uncertain. In light of new information, aspects of scientists’ interpretations are properly subject to change and revision. But that does not preclude contextual certainty. The aspects of conclusions which we gained through rational observation, minding pertinent context — and which continue to withstand challenge repeatedly — are indeed certain.

In the future, we may gain some additional knowledge that provides insight into additional facets of, and nuances regarding, whatever it is we are studying and doing. This new knowledge adds to the knowledge we had already acted upon successfully in the past, and it may give us a new perspective whereby we revise aspects of our prior interpretation. But it does not render, as uncertain, the aspects of our old ideas that we had acted upon successfully in the past and which continue to produce the same results.

Every fraction of Quantity C, is itself one-whole of itself, Quantity D. Perhaps we can imagine a quantity of knowledge that consists of All-Knowledge-That-Can-Be-Had-and-Ever-Can-Be-Had — omniscience — and call that Quantity-of-Knowledge C. And the quantity of knowledge we will accumulate in our lifetimes is only a fraction of that. Ours is Quantity-of-Knowledge D. That Quantity-of-Knowledge D is less than C is not sufficient to render Quantity-of-Knowledge D uncertain. That consideration is the same, in principle, as the fact that our indoor stroll measuring 9 feet, though less than 100 percent of the length of our 18-foot-long room, does not mean that our 9-foot stroll is not 100 percent of any quantity.  

Even if, when it comes to what we think we know at present, in the future we will find aspects mistaken or at least in need of further clarification, that consideration still is not enough to render our Quantity-of-Knowledge D uncertain. The aspects of our Quantity-of-Knowledge D that hold up today, and which continue to hold up in the future, are rationally certain. And insofar as the principles within that knowledge apply consistently within the purview and scope of what we are studying and doing, those principles are absolute.

Thus, the fact that every quantity is 100 percent is something that can be applied to our philosophic guidance over everyday life. For a principle to be absolute in any manner is not contingent upon it applying in every context. It need only be consistent in its own proper context, in its own proper scope. The more dissimilar a new context is from the original, the more it may be that the original principle does not apply to the new context. That does not change the absoluteness of the principle to the original context. Likewise, for you to be legitimately certain in an instance is not contingent upon infallibility of thought and reasoning. Nor is it dependent upon having all knowledge of every pedantic nuance, including knowledge of everything that ever can be discovered. You can legitimately call yourself certain in an instance insofar as your proposition of thought reliably demonstrates itself satisfactorily within, once again, the pertinent context and scope.