I notice that almost every time “privilege” is cited like this on social media, it’s seldom the case of the citer merely asking others to be mindful that the achiever had privileges that others didn’t. For instance, it would make sense for someone to say, “Having been born into wealth made it much easier for the nineteenth-century British chemist Henry Cavendish to discover particular chemical elements before other people did. That doesn’t take away from the fact that he made wise choices, of course, that other rich men had not.” Rather, the citation of privilege is almost always done to deny the achievement outright. It’s almost always along the lines of “The arrogant white businessman thinks he deserves the accolades because of what he accomplished. But it was his privilege that put him in the position in the first place where he could accomplish anything,” and then that’s where the rhetoric concludes.
For example, maybe you will be waxing about how impressed you are by Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak having founded Apple Computer. An anti-capitalist will chime in that this is actually because of privilege. The main reason, that anti-capitalist tells you, why the Steves were able to do this — as opposed to other people — is that the Steves were going to school in an area that was geographically close to the capital of the USA’s engineering talent. After all, Wozniak had the privilege of being the son of an engineer who worked for Lockheed-Martin. That gave him access to tools, equipment, and specialized education that other people did not have. That area had already been Silicon Valley since the Great Depression when Hewlett-Packard was founded.
As promulgated by U.C. Berkeley linguist George Lakoff, “Every businessman has used the vast American infrastructure, which the taxpayers paid for, to make his money. . . . He got rich on what other taxpayers paid for: the banking system...and the judicial system...” On that account, Lakoff concludes, “There are no self-made men!” That, of course, is the “You Didn’t Build That” Fallacy, which I skewered over here. In the citation of privilege, the implication is, You didn’t build that; your privilege made that happen. At the very least, the credit you receive for an accomplishment had more to do with your preexisting privilege than did any proactiveness on your part.
When an anti-capitalist “corrects” your praise of an achiever like Steve Jobs, you might notice something conspicuous about the correction. Contrary to what the “correction” falsely insinuated, your praise of the Steves’ achievement was not something you were contrasting against other people. You weren’t saying, “Steve Jobs achieved this, as opposed to you. Steve Jobs achieved it, andyou didn’t, you dummy!” Rather, you were impressed that anyone did this at all. But rather than be satisfied that the good act was done at all, it’s not unusual for anti-capitalists to misidentify it as some zero-sum game where any one person’s gain must come at the material expense of everyone else.
More to the point, here is why “Privilege, or it didn’t happen” is a fallacy. Even if it is true that the achiever was born into privileges that gave the achiever a head start, it doesn’t invalidate your premise that the achiever still made choices for which accolades are deserved. The reason is that many other people were born into the same privileges as the achiever, but, on account of different choices, did not perform the feats that the achiever did.
In the case of Stephen Wozniak: the fact is that there were hundreds of other white boys his age, who were the sons of Californian engineers, attending schools in the same state that were similar to his own. But those other sons of Californian engineers did not invent the Apple II. Stephen Wozniak did. Even if the “privilege” made it easier for him than it otherwise would be, the privilege was not sufficient. The missing pieces that needed to be added were the choices of Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak, the initiatives they undertook.
I would argue that there are cases where some people’s privilege can enable them to overshadow others in terms of who gets the credit. I think sexism did play a part in how, for decades, Rosalind Franklin’s role in the discovery of DNA’s double helix structure had gone overlooked. One might say that it was because of white male privilege that James Watson and Francis Crick got more attention than she. But I think such a concession is not satisfactory to someone who keeps citing privilege. The privilege-citing anti-capitalist can say that it was because of Rosalind Franklin’s own privilege that she, as opposed to some nonwhite gentile, was in a position in the first place where she could ascertain an image of the double helix structure.
Unearned social privileges do exist. But when someone — even a very privileged person — accomplishes an important feat, it’s usually the case that there were many other people who bore those same privileges but refrained from that feat. The choices of individuals are still what make the difference. And for that, they still deserve credit. To the degree that you make your own choices — choices not made and risks not taken by people from backgrounds similar to your own, and who have the same privileges that you do — you are indeed self-made in character.
Reading the local newspaper, I have been troubled, but not surprised, to see letters to the editor trying to whitewash Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and their abuses of individual rights. One especially creepy letter came at the end of February in 2024 by one Lane Yoder. Mr. Yoder has had a role in the Libertarian Party of Hawaii. I met him face-to-face years ago. Although it is clearly a self-contradiction for a self-proclaimed advocate of liberty to whitewash someone such as Donald Trump, I found it consistent with how Mr. Yoder has behaved in the past.
I wrote a letter in response, which the Honolulu Star-Advertiser published on March 4. First I will show the version the newspaper printed. Below that I will provide the version I sent to the newspaper.
A recent letter poses, “After railing against Donald Trump as a compulsive liar, those with Trump derangement syndrome are lecturing us to ‘take him literally’ when he says he will encourage Vladimir Putin to attack countries that are delinquent in their NATO payments” (“Make up your mind on Trump’s credibility,” Star-Advertiser, Feb. 22).
Far from what the author insinuates, there is no internal contradiction there. When someone who has shown himself to be both dangerous and wishy-washy issues threats, erring on the side of caution means still having to take those threats seriously.
It is not advisable to cave in to Trump’s extortion. And the actual “Trump derangement” is not a legitimate concern about his dangerous actions, but the insistence on excusing them.
Stuart K. Hayashi
Mililani
____________
What I sent to the newspaper:
In his Feb. 22 letter, Lane Yoder poses, “After railing against Donald Trump as a compulsive liar, those with Trump derangement syndrome are lecturing us to ‘take him literally’ when he says he will encourage Vladimir Putin to attack countries that are delinquent in their NATO payments.” Far from what Mr. Yoder insinuates, there is no internal contradiction there. When someone who has shown himself to be both dangerous and wishy-washy issues threats, erring on the side of caution means still having to take those threats seriously.
Mr. Yoder then challenges, “If they really believe Trump’s word has somehow become gospel, why aren’t they devoting their energies to warning delinquent NATO countries to pay up?” Simple. It is not advisable to cave in to Trump’s extortion.
And the actual “Trump derangement” is not our legitimate concern about his dangerous actions, but this insistence on excusing them.
I have previously written (1, 2) of the ethical problems of trying to justify governmental actions by appealing to the idea that there is a “Social Contract.” I especially warn of the horrors that come with the interpretation advanced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes. The alternative interpretation of Social Contracts that is promoted by John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Paradise Lost author John Milton, and Aristotle is more benign and pro-liberty, but remains ultimately inadequate. In reality, having a morally-just constitutional liberal republican Night Watchman State does not hinge upon any sort of Social Contract.
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The Fundamental Difference Between Governmental and Nongovernmental Action
The big-governism interpretation of the Social Contract, as advanced Rousseau and Hobbes, is implicitly a rebuttal to any free-enterpriser’s objection to intrusive governmental action. We free enterprisers advocate a constitutional liberal republican Night Watchman State. Free-enterprisers recognize what is the fundamental distinction between action that is governmental versus action that is nongovernmental. Civilians are supposed to be peaceful. True, sometimes the government can delegate some authority to specific private citizens to carry out specific forms of violence. That is what the Confederate States of America did for private slaveholders — delegate to them the authority to wield violence against slaves. But, for the most part, except for such cases, violence by private citizens is unlawful. Hence, when Private Citizen A initiates the use of force against Private Citizen B or her private property, it is proper for the government to apply retaliatory force against Private Citizen A.
In contrast to private citizens, the ability to threaten and exercise violence against those who oppose its will, is inherent to the institution of government. If you break the government’s laws, the government will punish you. The more you resist compliance in receiving the punishment, the more the government will escalate the degree of physical coercion. That applies even if the initial penalty is a civil fine. Someone who consistently refuses to discharge a civil fine is deemed to be In Criminal Contempt of Court. The government does send armed men after those who are in criminal contempt. Someone who resists police too vigorously will be met with violence. That is the reason for deaths that come from altercations with police.
The institution of government is in contrast to the peacefulness that is expected of private civilians. As noted by Mohandas Gandhi, the very nature and job of government — as an institution — is to threaten violence on those who oppose its will. And this violence by the State is at least tacitly authorized by a large enough proportion of the citizenry. That tacit approval is part of the Social Contract argument of Rousseau and Hobbes. However, as we shall see, that tacit authorization is not as strong a foundation for ethical argument as Rousseau and Hobbes presume it to be.
Governmental action is ultimately enforced at gunpoint. For that reason, we free-enterprisers caution that governmental action must be applied only sparingly. Governmental action is only justified properly in response to violence against person or property that someone has started. The State is right to intervene against physical battery, and to stop and punish rape and murder. It is also to intercede against one party poisoning another, whether this poisoning is intentional or not.
Moreover, you cannot live your life peaceably and sustain yourself if others can exercise force to deprive you of control over your physical possessions. Hence, a State is right to penalize property damage, vandalism, and theft. The category of “theft” properly includes violation of a content-creator’s intellectual property rights. Fraud, contract breach, and even defamation are indirect methods whereby a perpetrator deprives innocent victims of their-needed control over their private property. Consequently, the State is right to quash fraud, contract breach, and defamation.
What makes a contract breach so wrongful is pertinent here. The wrongness of an actual breach of contract, after all, is invoked implicitly in support of the version of the Social Contract foisted by Rousseau and Hobbes.
Suppose that Steve and I forge a contract. Steve agrees to relinquish ownership over his car to me. In exchange, I perform a peaceful service for him. First Steve hands me the car keys and I drive off with his automobile. Then I never perform the service. The ultimate result, then, is theft. It is physical coercion in two respects. First, Steve relinquishes control over the car to me only upon fulfillment of a particular condition: that I perform the service. In the absence of my fulfillment of the condition, I am physically possessing and maneuvering the car against Steve’s consent.
And there is a second, more subtle, use of force. Steve handing me the car keys was only willful on the condition that, upon the the mutually-agreed future date, I perform the task Steve wanted. As I failed to perform the service, Steve handing me the car keys was ultimately not something to which Steve consented. Here, Steve placing the keys in my hands was a form of physical force — I manipulated Steve into making bodily movements that did him harm.
When the government comes after someone for having breached contract, then, the government is merely retaliating against the party that started the force. This understanding of contracts, as we shall revisit, is twisted in the version of Social Contract ideology that is propounded by Rousseau and is implicitly invoked by modern politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Rousseau’s Social Contract Rationalizes That You Authorized Every Imposition, and Therefore These Are Not Impositions
Beyond contracts, the sad truth is that much legislation, even in voting democracies, is not to counter the initiations of the use of physical coercion. Nay, the legislation targets nonviolent people, and that means the government is the perpetrator instigating the force. Suppose you are alone in the privacy of the home that you own, and you smoke a joint. And suppose that marijuana is illegal where you live. And imagine that police are sent to apprehend you over this. This is an instance of the government instigating the force upon an innocent person.
And that happens with governmental controls over many commercial transactions. Suppose Jake and I have an arrangement. The law is that no one is to be paid for work for less than $15 an hour. Yet I agree to work for Jake for $4 per hour. Jake and I are not harming anyone physically. Yet insofar as the law is enforced, the government is tasked with threatening punishment upon Jake.
Here is the rebuttal from the version of Social Contract theory by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes. It is as follows. You, sir or madam, think that if you disobey the law but do not hurt someone else’s life or belongings directly, that the State is the party that is starting the violence upon you. You think the government is starting the fight and violating your consent. You think that if you are being peaceful in paying someone an agreed-to wage that is less than the legally mandated minimum wage, that is okay because all parties consented. Likewise, you believe that if you smoke a joint in private on land that you own yourself, even as that is unlawful, it is still the case that all pertinent parties consented. But no, that is not the case.
The Rousseauian version of the Social Contract theory continues. It says that by being born into, and living in, society, you tacitly sign an implicit contract with the rest of society. In this implicit contract you agree to conform to every ordinance and statute enacted. And, Rousseau says, this agreement on your part to follow every law — no matter how misguided you personally judge that statute or ordinance to be — rightfully overrides all your personal rights to life and belongings.
As stated in an English translation of Rousseau’s French, living in society is “the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community...” This “alienation” from total autonomy is “without reserve, the union is as perfect as it can be...” The reason is that the “constant will of all the members of the State is the general will...” Ultimately “The citizen gives his consent to all the laws, including those which are passed in spite of his opposition, and even those which punish him when he dares to break any of them.”
Yes, continues the argument, by living in society you tacitly agreed to obey every law, as foolish as you may perceive any of them. That includes laws against smoking marijuana privately on land that you own. Should you do that, you instigate a breach of contract. You have violated the contract you have made with the rest of society. Hence, when the government comes after you, the government is not the party that has ignited the use of force. A far as the use of force goes, you started it. On this interpretation, the State penalizing you is only your just deserts. This argument is what I call “The Social Contract Song-and-Dance.”
There Is an Implicit Mutual Understanding Between Government and Governed, But That Is Not a Contract
Rousseau and Hobbes are correct that there is always an at-least-tacit mutual understanding between the government and the governed. Suppose that Ted is the government’s chief executive, and Mike, Wade, and Joe are under Ted’s jurisdiction. Then Ted takes police action against Mike. Ted has Mike apprehended. And suppose that Wade and Joe are aware of what Ted is doing to Mike. But, like the rest of the people under Ted’s jurisdiction, both Wade and Joe refrain from violently coming to Mike’s aid against Ted.
In this instance, there is an at-least-tacit mutual understanding between two parties: (1) Ted and (2) Wade-and-Joe. Wade-and-Joe at-least-tacitly agree with Ted that Ted will be able to enforce his will upon all residents as Wade-and-Joe employ no physical force of their own to counter Ted’s will. Thus, when I say there is an implicit mutual understanding between the government and the governed, this is what I mean. It is that both parties know what behavior is expected of the other in this arrangement, and neither party will undertake dramatic action to change this arrangement.
I agree with Rousseau and Hobbes that there exists this implicit mutual understanding between an administration and those its reigns over. And, for many people, observation of this implicit mutual understanding makes it seem plausible that working government and civilization gain their legitimacy from adhering to something that resembles an underlying contract. Even if the arrangement is not exactly one, people assume, the resemblance is close enough to a contract justify the use of that word to describe it. Insofar as a contractual agreement is valid, after all, there should be a mutual understanding between the parties involved.
However, contrary to Rousseau and Hobbes, this implicit mutual understanding should not be confused with contractual consent. Rather, when it comes to fulfilling the conditions needed for a contract to be sound, the presence of mutual understanding is necessary but not sufficient.
Indeed, this sort of implicit mutual understanding between government and the governed, is something that exists in all governments, no matter how oppressive. That implicit mutual understanding existed between the dictator Idi Amin and the Ugandans he oppressed. That implicit mutual understanding also exists between a mafioso and the small businesses from whom he extorts money. It also exists in intimate-partner abuse, between the abuser and the abused. In all of these cases there is an implicit mutual understanding, and Rousseau and Hobbes ignore the actual reason why the governed people refrain from resisting the government. It is not that the governed people necessarily find themselves morally condoning the government’s behavior deep down in their hearts. More often than not, it is that these governed people are simply complying under duress.
And that can apply to the above scenario with Ted imposing his will on Mike as Wade and Joe look on. Suppose Mike smoked a joint on his own land, despite smoking a joint being illegal. Maybe Mike paid another consenting adult a wage that was below the assigned minimum. Ted, as government official, is the party instigating the force. If Wade and Joe privately sympathize with Mike, but lift no finger to defend him, it is because they, too, are fearful and cowed into submission to Ted.
The Modern First-World Version of Rousseau’s Social Contract Argument Adds “Democracy” and the Distortion of the Idea of Consent As Something Offered Collectively
Modern politicians in the First World are at least somewhat aware of objections like the one I have made above. For that reason, modern politicians who repeat Rousseau’s argument will emphasize two other components that Rousseau did not place as much emphasis on.
These modern First-World politicians say that our having a “democracy” is what especially justifies the Rousseauian Social Contract. They combine this appeal to “democracy” with their own presumption that consent is not something offered or withheld by any individual, but is instead something offered or withheld by some collective of society. That presumption is based on the broader premise that decision-making, in general, is something that is not done by the individual but instead by some collective of society. (This notion that the unit that makes decisions is a social collective, rather than the human individual, is one I refute in further detail here.)
The new version of the argument goes like this: Maybe it is true that, contrary to that monarchy apologist Thomas Hobbes, there is no actual Social Contract between a king and his subjects. Not one peasant had any say in whom the next monarch should be. Most monarchies are hereditary, after all. But in our times, we live in a democracy in which adults can vote. We can vote for representatives who draft the laws and enforce them. And the officials whom we elected are also the ones who appoint and confirm judges for our courts. Sometimes there are even ballot initiatives on which we, the citizens, can vote directly on what a law is to be. Maybe the majority of people votes that anyone who has been caught imbibing marijuana on her own private real estate should be criminally charged. Furthermore, maybe the minority of voters has voted against this law.
The argument goes on: once this statute is enacted, it is not the case that individuals in the majority are imposing their wills on the individuals who are in the minority. Nay. There is one body-politic, one people. The outcome of the vote is, to employ a term of Rousseau’s, the “general will” of that one body-politic. Maybe you want to smoke a joint in private on land that you own. And maybe you voted against the statute that criminalized such an action. If it was a ballot initiative, you may have voted against it directly.
You may even have voted against the statute indirectly if the statute was the result of a vote by a legislative body. If that was what happened, then when you voted on which lawmaker would represent your district, you made sure to cast your ballot against the incumbent whom you knew would vote to maintain the criminal ban on cannabis.
But, the argument concludes, you forget that you are just part of the greater collective of the body-politic. In the vote, the collective decided for itself that it would criminally punish the smoking of marijuana. And as you are just part of the collective, it follows that, for all practical purposes, you yourself decided for yourself that smoking marijuana should be illegal. And now we find that you opted to inhale the weed on your own land anyway. Well, the State comes after you. It was not that you were minding your own business, and then the government started the violence on you. No. It was you who has inflamed this contract breach, breaking your contract with the collective. And as you are part of the collective, you even broke your own promise to yourself to follow all the laws. Therefore, when the government manhandles you, it is not some majority of individuals imposing their will upon some recalcitrant individual. It is better than that — you are with the collective, and therefore the punishment inflicted upon you is actually your very own personal will being visited upon you.
Former President Barack Obama and U.S. Sen. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have invoked such a collectivist version of the Rousseauian Social Contract. They did so to rationalize their intrusions about what individuals can do with their own private possessions.
Obama explained how he would set straight the right-wingers who cry, “I need a gun to protect myself from the government.” As this is a democracy, Obama continued, it is myopic for you to distinguish yourself from the government, as if you and the government that imprisons you are separate entities. Remember, he said, “the government is us. These officials are elected by you. . . . I am elected by you. . . . It’s a government of and by and for the people” (emphases Obama’s). Therefore, when Obama placed restrictions on your guns, it was not Obama overpowering you. No, it was your own will being done upon you.
Likewise, Sen. Ocasio-Cortez tells you, “[...I]n a democracy, the government is us. ...the government is The Public, and The Public decides what is good for itself” (emphasis hers).
She was speaking about business regulations and new taxes. Yet that logic is equally applicable to the scenario where the majority votes to maintain criminal penalties for smoking marijuana in private on your own land. The government that comes after you for smoking marijuana . . . is us. In effect, that very same government . . . is you. The government coming after you in this instance is only The Public — which is you — deciding what is good for itself.
President Obama and Sen. Ocasio-Cortez are far from alone in invoking “democracy” and social collectivism in this Rousseauian Social Contract argument. At the newspaper TheMiami Herald, regular columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr., waves off people who “wax eloquent about what great things the free market and the free American could do if government would just get off their backs.” He asserts that governmental penalties on you is your own will visited upon you. “Government is the imperfect embodiment of our common will.” Observe that the “common will” that Pitts mentions is what English translations of Rousseau phrase as the “general will.”
And the filmmaker Michael Moore agrees. The TV reporter John Stossel once pointed out to him that the government ultimately enforces its statutes at gunpoint. To that, Michael Moore retorted, “No, it doesn’t, actually.” The reason why the U.S. government cannot impose its will on you is that the government is us. And that means the government is you. As Moore phrases it, “The government is of, by, and for the people. The people elect the government, and the people determine whether or not they’ll allow the government” to do anything that it does, punitive or otherwise.
There are many flaws in the these Rousseauain Social Contract arguments. I exposed the fallacy of the broader Rousseauian/Hobbesian argument in the essay “Bound to the Social Contract Under Duress.”
Then we come to the assertion that having a voting “democracy” justifies every statute, as all the voting citizens are a collective, which means the government punishing you is just your own will being enacted upon you. That argument came from even more convoluted rationalizing. I explain its wrongness in the essay “Exposing the Fallacy of the Presumptive Collective.” Importantly, that essay explains how we know it is that decisions are made by individuals, not collectives, and of how unanimity consists not of a collective but is an instance of individuals, each choosing privately, to come together to act in concert.
Here, in the blog post you now read, I want to expose the wrongness of the collectivist presumption of Obama and AOC in a manner far simpler than I did in my other essay. It is that AOC does not even apply her own Social Contract argument consistently. And this is for a very good reason.
Throwing Rousseau’s Social Contract, “Democracy,” and Collective Consent Back at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
There are many state governments in the USA controlled by the Religious Right. And, to the extent that they engage in forms of suppression of voters from particular demographics, these states are not as democratic as they should be. But, for the most part, these states are still overall democratic in AOC’s understanding of the term. It is not as though the voting districts of New York, which AOC represents, are substantially better. And in the states controlled by the Religious Right, state governments have democratically ratified and enforced statues that initiate the use of force upon private individuals. That is is the case with abortion bans. It is also the case of threatening punishment upon parents for the alleged misdeed of allowing their transgender children to obtain the gender-affirming care that they need.
And Sen. Ocasio-Cortez correctly objects to these statutes as violations of rights, as of initiations of force on peaceful people. When the U.S. Supreme Court’s majority enabled state governments to outlaw abortion, Sen. Ocasio-Cortez hollered, “People will die because of this decision.”
She also correctly said that for Texas governor Greg Abbott to punish parents for letting their kids have gender-affirming care is an attempt to “control people who are not cisgender men.” She concluded that anti-LGBGTQIA2S+ measures, such as by Gov. Abbott, are “hurting people across the country.”
I agree with all of her assessments there. But the problem is that these measures are the result of democracy. It is illiberal democracy, yes, but still democracy in terms of voting majorities enacting what they claim to be the common will. This is the result of the same process of voting by what AOC calls “The Public” — the democratic process that Sen. Ocasio-Cortez invokes as morally unassailable when it enacts the sorts of impositions that she wants.
U.S. Supreme Court justices are not elected directly by the majority of registered voters. However, they come to power as a result of the representative democracy that AOC has upheld. Potential justices are nominated by a chief executive who was elected democratically. And these candidates are approved for the Supreme Court by those of whom the general voters had elected democratically to represent them in Congress.
Thus, the very Rousseauian rationalizations employed by AOC and Obama can be thrown back at them.
AOC complains about these individual rights being violated. But if any Texans voice the same objections as AOC, Gov. Greg Abbott can repeat Obama’s own words for these Texans. Any Texan who does not like the actions of Abbott and other anti-queer officials can be reminded: “the government is us. These officials are elected by you. . . . I am elected by you. . . . It’s a government of and by and for the people” (emphases originally Obama’s). Ergo, Gov. Abbott can retort that these measures against queer people are just the will of the collective general public . . . which means it is even the will of the queer people themselves.
And then there are AOC’s own words: “[...I]n a democracy, the government is us. ...the government is The Public, and The Public decides what is good for itself” (emphasis originally hers). In this case, Religious-Right voters can tell AOC that the state-level abortion bans and the hostility toward queer people is just The Public deciding what is good for itself.
Conclusion
Of course, I do not condone abortion bans or these state actions against transgender people.
The point here is that if there was any merit to the Rousseauian rationalizations of AOC, President Obama, Michael Moore, and Leonard Pitts, then their argument would have to apply consistently. Yet AOC talks as if the rationalization does not apply when state governments use the democratic process to undertake these actions that she correctly identifies as wrongful. And although AOC will not phrase it this way, these actions are wrong because they are indeed instances of voting democratic majorities imposing their will on individuals.
No, AOC, even in democracies it is the case that, to the degree that democratic voting is prioritized above the laissez-faire liberal principles of the Night Watchman State, the majority can and will oppress the minority. No, AOC, no majority vote over legislation on economic actions is The Public deciding what is good for itself. That is because there is no Public beyond the individuals that comprise it. The individuals of The Public frequently disagree with one another over what is the best sort of lifestyle. Therefore it is best that insofar as these people disagree on something so important, they be able to leave one another be. That means the State does not intervene. Merely as a form of dispute resolution, some democratic votes may properly be used in determining which willing candidates shall enter public office. But democratic votes are never ethical justification in having the power of the State overrule what people do peaceably in their own personal lives with their own wealth.
Let us, then, reexamine the addition of invocations of “democracy” and collective consent to Rousseau’s Social Contract argument. It starts by acknowledging that you may say that you were minding your own business until the voting majority imposed its own will upon you. And the voting majority’s will is enforced at gunpoint. But when collective consent is invoked in the Social Contract argument, it blurs the distinction between you and the voting majority. It says the voting majority is not divided from nonvoters or the voting minority. Nay, it continues, there is but one unit — the collective — and therefore the legislative or judicial outcome is what “The Public decides...is good for itself.”
That argument is really just a pretentious way of saying that might makes right. More specifically, the message is that the might of the majority makes right, as its greater number overpowers the minority. And, to cover up that this is about some individuals overpowering others, the majority and minority are nebulized together. The outcome is said, by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to be what “The Public...decides its good for itself.” AOC has lost all moral authority, then, when she protests in horror about how voting majorities in other U.S. states perform actions that both she and I abhor.
The individual deserves freedom. Therefore, it is true that no individual should be ruled over by a mob that tries to override the voters and install Donald Trump in a coup as dictator. And it is also true that it is your sacred right, as an individual, to go about your personal and economic affairs peaceably — not to be put to a vote by any public.
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
That is an excellent and wise quotation. It is a perfect affirmation of the presence of free will.
All too often in our culture we hear the phrase “Nature versus Nurture.” The insinuation is that your personal identity, as an adult, is the result of you being passive in being shaped by forces external to your conscious decision-making. As the phrase goes, what molded you into you was either inborn biological mechanisms beyond your control (“nature”), or conditioning from circumstances impinging upon you (“nurture”). Those factors do have some influence. But as the quotation reminds us, the biggest factor in making you the person you are as an adult is the one that goes unmentioned and unacknowledged. That factor is the series of choices you made on your own, proactively. (It is no accident that “Nature versus Nurture” was coined by Sir Francis Galton, the founder and namer of eugenics. He favored Nature over Nurture, and ignored free will completely.)
And all over the World Wide Web and in memes in Google Images, and even throughout works you can find in Google Books, that quotation is misattributed to Carl Jung.
Betty DeShong Meador, “Uncursing the Dark: Restoring the Lost Feminine,” Quadrant: Journal of the C. G. Jung Foundation for Analytic Psychology vol. 22 (no. 1, 1989): 27–39.
This was in a journal published by the C. G. Jung Foundation. That is how the quotation ended up being ascribed inaccurately to the man himself.
As I write this, I must say that this psychoanalyst and therapist, Betty DeShong Meador, died relatively recently. She was born in 1931 and died on February 20, 2023. I wish that it could have been within her lifetime that this quotation was sourced properly to her.
It seems that a mystery that nagged at me since childhood might be solved. Many collectors of Godzilla toys are familiar with the Hong Kong company Imperial. It made the Godzilla action figure with the red lips. The action figure has a strange silver blotch on its chest because the people at Imperial copied that feature from the Godzilla action figure that Bandai made in Japan years earlier. Imperial also made King Kong.
Pertinent here is that Imperial made a googly-eyed Tyrannosaurus with unique features: it has thin-but-wide plates going down its chest. It has osteoderms (little spikes) running down its back similar to a crocodile’s. And it is yellow. It was made in 1985. While many toy collectors know of this toy, they seem not to know that this toy’s design features — the chest plates and dorsal spikes — are based on another toy company’s design.
I learned of this because of my cousin. Years ago, he gave me many toys of Godzilla and Ultraman monsters made by Bullmark, not Bandai. Likewise, he gave me some thick paperback books, full of thick pages, profiling Ultraman. He gave me yet another book from the same publishing house that was about dinosaurs. And the book heavily featured a sculpture that closely resembled the 1985 Imperial toy, with the dorsal spikes and chest plates. But this sculpture had much more realistic eyes and was overall fancier. It also was not yellow. This book was published in 1981. I cannot read the kanji, and neither could my cousin. I always wondered if this sculpture was some model kit released in Japan in 1981 or earlier.
It seems I now have some answers. As you can see above, I took photos of the pages of the Japanese book. I then ran a Google image search. It appears that the sculpture was photographed by Top Trumps in 1979 for its card game called Prehistoric Monsters. And the sculpture has an earlier appearance still. It is in the 1977 book Purnell’s Book of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Mammals. This is profiled on the blog Love in the Time of Chasmosaurus. One of the commenters says, “Since these models were featured in the London museum, I theorize that they were sculpted by a British paleontologist named Arthur Hayward — he had sculpted dinos for Ray Harryhausen [for One Million Years B.C. starring Raquel Welch].”
Important design features of Imperial’s Godzilla toy were copied from Bandai’s. Likewise, it seems Imperial copied the design of its 1985 Tyrannosaurus from a sculpture that Arthur Hayward made at least as early as 1977.
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser Published My Letter to the Editor
Stuart K. Hayashi
Back in the year 2006, Pablo Wegesend, Reid Ginoza, and I issued a warning to HawaiÊ»i in the letters-to-the-editor sections of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Honolulu Advertiser, before the latter newspaper purchased the former. The warning had to do with the construction of the government-controlled rail system being shoved down everyone’s throat. We warned of the threat of eminent domain being exercised to seize private land for the rail system. My focus was on the chances of citizens being expropriated of their private residences.
For the most part, we find that our warning has come true. The one difference here is that it is not a private residence being taken but instead the site of the Takaras’ family business, Service Printers Hawaii. The specific agency confiscating the land is the one directly in charge of the rail system, HART (the Honolulu Authority on Rapid Transportation). The Friday, November 17, 2023, Honolulu Star-Advertiserran this news as its front-page story. It prompted me to write yet another letter to the editor, which was published on Tuesday, November 21, 2023.
The official Twitter account of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser even sent out a tweet quoting from my letter and linking to the Web version of it.
OPINION: "(HART) invoked eminent domain to dispossess the Takara family of land on which their family business has stood for 59 years. ... That downplays the real issue: freedom and consent versus coercion." ⤵️ https://t.co/okRconMw9a
In the letter, two words I regret are “59 years.” The business was started in 1964 but, upon rereading the Friday article, Mr. Takara said the business was a tenant of the land for “43 years.” Instead of “for 59 years,” I should have said “for decades.”
The Newest Letter
This is what I had sent to the paper:
November 17’s front-page story, “HART Board Approves,” shows HART has no heart.
HART invokes eminent domain to dispossess the Takaras of land on which their family business has stood for 59 years. Rationalizations for eminent domain always mention payment to the victims. That downplays the real issue: freedom and consent versus coercion. Eminent domain is ultimately backed by armed force. Enforcing it in L.A. in 1959 had armed officers literally drag a widow, Aurora Arechiga, from her home.
People assume cities need eminent domain. In January I e-mailed development officials of Carson City, Nevada, about this. They informed me that although the city can enact it, at the time they knew of no instance of Carson City actually exercising eminent domain in its history.
During these holidays, ponder whether slogans about “the greater good” are justification enough, and if passively condoning eminent domain’s brutality is what we truly want.
The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) invoked eminent domain to dispossess the Takara family of land on which their family business has stood for 59 years. Rationalizations for eminent domain always mention payment to the victims. That downplays the real issue: freedom and consent versus coercion. Eminent domain is ultimately backed by armed force. Enforcing it in Los Angeles in 1959 had armed officers literally drag a widow, Aurora Arechiga, from her home.
People assume cities need eminent domain. In January, I emailed development officials of Carson City, Nev., about this. They informed me that although the city can enact it, at the time they knew of no instance of Carson City actually exercising eminent domain in its history.
During these holidays, ponder whether slogans about “the greater good” are justification enough, and if passively condoning eminent domain’s brutality is what we truly want.
Stuart K. Hayashi Mililani
With sixteen reader comments underneath the online version, this letter of mine was the second-most-commented-upon letter to the editor of the day. First-place was the one about the Second Amendment, at thirty Web comments.
The next day, the Star-Advertiser published yet another letter denouncing HART’s callous violation of the Takaras’ rights. This one came from Charlene Aoki.
The Letter From 2006 Below is my letter of warning back in 2006. There are two different versions of it.
Pablo Wegesend raised an important concern in his Jan. 28 letter to the editor, but we have yet to see anyone address it.
Wegesend said, “With all the talk about light rail, there is one question that needs to be answered: Who’s going to be forced out of the way to make room for light rail infrastructure?”
Good point. What assurance do we have that the City [and] County of Honolulu won’t exercise eminent domain after selecting a route for the fixed-rail system? I find the very idea that the city might have to resort to condemning people’s houses far more unsettling than any increase in the general excise tax.
We shouldn’t rest easy until the City [and] County publicly promises us, in this newspaper’s op-ed pages for everyone to read, that it won’t forcibly confiscate anyone’s private land when the time comes to construct the rail.
Eminent Domain Don’t Seize People’s Homes for Transit
What assurance do we have that the City [and] County of Honolulu won’t exercise eminent domain after selecting a route for the fixed-rail system? I find the very idea that the city may have to resort to condemning people’s houses over this far more unsettling than any increase in the general excise tax.
We shouldn’t rest easy until the city publicly promises us, in this newspaper’s op-ed pages for everyone to read, that it won’t forcibly confiscate anyone’s private land when the time comes to construct the rail.
If this project requires the seizure of people’s homes, then perhaps it wasn’t such a terrific idea after all.
Stuart K. Hayashi Mililani
As a follow-up to my own, Reid Ginoza had his own March 17, 2006, letter to the editor published over here.
Yes, in 2006, I said, “We shouldn’t rest easy until the City [and] County publicly promises us, in this newspaper’s op-ed pages for everyone to read, that it won’t forcibly confiscate anyone’s private land when the time comes to construct the rail.”
We know what has happened since then. With the rail project, the city government is on the very unscrupulous path of which we had warned. It should reverse course before it hurts innocent people even more than it already has.
It seems that perpetually-online people, especially those who upload onto YouTube and TikTok, are finally beginning to understand the importance of intellectual property rights and of how they benefit the little guy. That is a tremendous sea change — very far off from where perpetually-online people were a decade or two before.
1999 was the year of the war over Napster. Napster made its owner and one of its early executives, respectively, into a multimillionaire and billionaire. But Napster successfully convinced the public that it was the underdog. Users who downloaded music without compensating the musicians rationalized to themselves that they were scrappy rebels sticking it to the record companies and only the greediest of the bands, such as Metallica.
Then came the YouTube era. One of its earliest celebrities was Doug Walker, better known as the Nostalgia Critic. YouTube Corporate was still getting accustomed from 2006 to 2008 to learning how to stop users from violating the intellectual property rights of companies like Disney and Viacom. For that reason, YouTube Corporate often acted with too heavy a hand in taking down contents that could potentially cause problems.
That led to YouTube Corporate removing the five-second clips of major motion pictures that Mr. Walker had uploaded. Even as YouTube Corporate learned not to be so heavy-handed anymore, Walker never forgot and never forgave. For that reason, he took great interest in 2010 when Congress introduced a bill known as the Stop Online Piracy Act — SOPA. The bill was very far from perfect. But, as Chris Ruen notes in his book Free Loading, it would not have allowed for the governmental actions that its detractors would go on to accuse it of trying to implement.
Sadly, Jimmy Wales — cofounder of Wikipedia — wound sow much misunderstanding by stating publicly and inaccurately that the bill’s passage would make it easy for any vexatious corporation to invoke SOPA to shut down his website. Doug Walker, still smarting from the takedowns of his videos from years earlier, and not being someone with a sophisticated understanding of public policy, immediately bought into all of the scare stories. He used his YouTube channel and official website — Channel Awesome —to campaign against SOPA. He took the talking points from Jimmy Wales’s movement and amplified them.
Probably much more than Mr. Wales, Doug Walker did a lot to influence the opinions of YouTube’s vloggers. And from much of this, they drew the wrong lessons not merely about a specific bill like SOPA, but about intellectual property rights more broadly. To a large extent, they fostered the impression that copyrights exist mostly so that big corporations like Disney and Viacom can bully little guys like Doug Walker.
They also liked to cite the incident between video-game streamer “PewDiePie” and online model “Alinity.” PewDiePie uploaded a video showing clips of her so that he could disparage her and other online models as “THOTs.” Alinity saw this and, on one of her own streams, said this made her want to “copy-strike” the man in retaliation. He had, after all, used her intellectual property without her permission. The majority opinion of the users of YouTube was staunchly on the side of PewDiePie. His fans greatly outnumbered hers. They felt aggrieved not merely by Alinity, but that there existed a type of law that could be invoked against their favorite celebrity. Hence, this dispute was repeatedly brought up in insinuations that copyright enforcement is only a method of retribution against one’s critics.
All of this was very convenient for libertarians as, from the 1970s onward, the party line has been to denigrate the need for intellectual property rights. The Mises Institute and Liberty International (formerly the International Society for Individual Liberty) take the hardline route — they demand the abolition of all patents and copyrights. (They conveniently seldom mention trademarks, and they seem not to know about a type of intellectual property right that farmers have for new sexually-bred crops — planet variety protections.)
Other libertarian think tanks, though, take a more discreet approach. They do not say outright that they want a ban of IPRs. They do, however, wait for high-profile court cases where a precedent may be set, such as with the lawsuits over Napster. And, any time there is a chance that the high-profile issue may result in a weakening in the ability to enforce intellectual property rights, these libertarians will produce op-eds and other essays where they write glowingly of such a weakening.
Fortunately, after the Napster wars and Doug Walker’s campaigns, it seems that uploaders on YouTube and TikTok are finally learning the truth. This is due to a phenomenon that these uploaders call “content theft.”
An important aspect of intellectual property rights is the Fair Use doctrine. It allows one copyright holder to take small parts of another copyright holder’s material in order to comment on it. It is the reason why I can quote other authors and explain the areas where I agree or disagree with them. In this commentary, I am taking a snippet of material that is already copyrighted, but doing so in a context removed from the one in which the material first appeared. Hence, my conservatively-limited reproductions of some copyrighted material is “transformative” of that material. When it comes to online videos, Video-Maker 2 may reproduce a small portion of a video from Video-Maker 1 in order to provide the context in which Video-Maker 2 comments on the work of Video-Maker 1.
Over the past three years, some YouTube uploaders have gained large audiences through abusing and stretching the criteria of “fair use” beyond what it was intended for. They have done so by using sections of other person’s videos that are increasingly large, proportion-wise.
The YouTube uploader SSSniperWolf does “reaction” videos where she watches other people’s TikTok videos, sometimes in their entirety without even showing the TikTok username of the person whose clip she is using. The “commentary” consists of nothing more than her reading the caption out loud and orating for the audience everything that happens onscreen. This has contributed to her gaining over 34 million subscribers on YouTube.
On Twitch, Hasan Piker (nephew to The Young Turks founder Cenk Uygar) and “xQC” will run someone else’s video in its entirety on their own stream as they themselves get up and leave the room. This is routinely done without the permission of the video’s actual owner. All the revenue for this goes to SSSniperWolf, xQc, and Hasan — not the persons whose videos they are using. These practices have played a part in making SSSniperWolf and xQc into multimillionaires. It has also done much to enrich Hasan Piker even further, though he was already born into a multimillionaire family. Someone else who had already been rich and who is now doing this, is the former recording artist Jason Derulo, who had a role in the motion picture adaptation of Cats.
The power imbalance in this situation has greatly undermined the Doug Walker-era myth that online copyright protection is just about rich people trampling on poorer people. It is SSSniperWolf, xQc, and Hasan Piker who have the money and power, and who have been violating the intellectual property rights of people who do not have the wealth, influence, or connections that they do.
The foil to content theft is Jack Douglass. He has been on YouTube from its beginning with his channel “JacksFilms.” Much to his credit, he has created a video to articulate how damaging SSSniperWolf’s practices are to the actual creators of the TikTok videos she uses.
Weeks later, Jack did a follow-up video to elucidate on how the situation with SSSniperWolf was even worse than he realized. There have been occasions where, completely unauthorized, SSSniperWolf has used someone’s TikTok video in its entirety and did not bother saying anything about it. There is not even a pretense of “transformative commentary.” As Jack says, “That’s not ‘fair use’; it’s just ‘use.’ ”
And the best news is that Jack’s efforts have not been in vain. Despite having much fewer subscribers and much less clout, an increasing number of people who have had their videos stolen by SSSniperWolf have been successful in invoking their copyrights. By making their copyright claims to YouTube Corporate, they have been able to pressure SSSniperWolf into removing a growing number of TikTok videos that her YouTube channel has appropriated. This is the first video that Jack has made about the recent string of victories.
As I type this out, here is Jack’s most recent summary of the situation. He ends on a hopeful note by talking about how small copyright-holders are showing that they have indeed been able to defend their work from SSSniperWolf.
I, too, am hopeful. We are coming to see the extinguishment of the narrative that copyrights are all about big media conglomerates slapping around little guys like Nostalgia Critic. Increasingly, small content-creators, who otherwise might have been taken in by Nostalgia Critic’s narrative, are waking up to the reality of the situation. They are seeing how intellectual property rights protect little guys like themselves.
Introduction
In my home state of Hawai‘i, superstitions abound. Every New Year’s Eve, one does not merely practice certain rituals but also eats certain foods. I have been assured that this will please the spirits and they will reward us with luck throughout the year. When I ask different people if they truly believe all this, they usually give the same reply. They shrug, laugh sheepishly, and say, “Well, ya never know. It’s possible there might be something to all this.” People believe this might possibly be true simply because they can imagine it.
This notion that if you can imagine a scenario, that proves that it is possible, is very common. It serves as the major excuse for belief in the supernatural, such as fortunetelling, ghosts, demons, and deities. It is also a rationalization that underpins so much pretentiousness in philosophy.
This is may be familiar to you. It has become routine that, after taking Philosophy 101 class, someone will say, “Gee, maybe my whole life is not real. Maybe all of my experiences are an illusion, and I am actually a brain in a jar imagining my life. This is theoretically possible.”
Such talk was popular long before the release of The Matrix. It has an extensive history of being entertained copiously in formal philosophy, in some form or another. Immanuel Kant had a version of it, and it is famously associated with Plato. The idea was also extolled by the ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zi. He said that one day he dreamed he was a butterfly, but maybe he is actually a butterfly dreaming that it is Zhuang Zi. Buying into the assertion that what we interpret as sensory evidence might all be misleading, the philosopher Karl Popper proclaimed seriously, “...we never know what we are talking about.” (To that I reply, “Speak for yourself, buddy!”) And although Rene Descartes ultimately did not affirm his agreement with this idea, he still presumed it deserving of very serious consideration.
Disturbingly, the Enlightenment Era philosopher David Hume was explicit in saying that his ability to imagine a scenario was sufficient grounds for deeming it a theoretic possibility that deserves your study. This starkly contradicts Hume’s reputation among today’s professors — that he was a strict empiricist all about sensory experience. As worded by Hume, “To form a clear idea of any thing [that is, to imagine something vividly] is an undeniable argument for its possibility and is alone refutation of any pretended demonstration against it.”
We will return to this erroneous supposition of Hume’s a bit later in this essay. Although Hume made some very sound arguments for free-market economics and having a laissez-faire and constitutional liberal republican Night Watchman State, much of his influence in the area of epistemology, such as with what he has said above, has contributed to setting much of Western society on the wrong track.
People who indulge in this talk — that being able to imagine something is proof that it is possible — have no actual basis for doing so.
I already knew that years ago, and I would offer them this same reply.
I can imagine an isolated ice cube falling to the bottom of a glass of water and remaining on the bottom for eternity. My ability to imagine this is still no basis for introducing this scenario as a theoretic possibility. For a proposition to be worth some consideration as a theoretic possibility, there must be evidence to support it.
And, as far as I was concerned, that was that. However, on Thursday, July 27, 2023, I came up with some additional points about this. These additional points, I think, make more use of formal logic. My new manner of phrasing the matter goes farther down to the foundation of metaphysics and epistemology. The main purpose of the essay you are reading is for me to present my argument in this new form. But, first, I must give some background information that serves as the basis for my new argument.
The Context Behind the Issue
This idea that your sensory experiences might be distorted or illusory, and that there might be a truer plane of existence with which you have not yet made contact, is called metaphysical Idealism. This is not to be mixed up with moral Idealism, which is a persisting commitment to ethical principles. And the ramifications of metaphysical Idealism are not confined to metaphysics. In the realm of epistemology — the discipline that studies how do we know what we know — metaphysical Idealism is frequently accompanied by epistemic Rationalism, which should not be confused with rationality.
This epistemic Rationalism is the notion that there are valid and true ideas we hold that are innate, à priori, and which are truer than knowledge that we can induce à posteriori, meaning from from sensory experience. Someone can be a Rationalist without agreeing that it is theoretically possible that all sensory experience is suspect or misleading or illusory. Still, being an epistemic Rationalist is a very convenient position for someone who agrees that all sensory experience is illusory.
For a metaphysical Idealist, epistemic Rationalism is supposed to answer the question, “If everything learned from sensory evidence is subject to doubt, how do you know that all of that sensory evidence is thrown into doubt?” Once again, people say that their ability to imagine that waking experience is an illusion is enough to make it a theoretic possibility. Those who are most adamant in metaphysical Idealism and epistemic Rationalism go farther, saying they know all this conjecture is a legitimate evaluation.
There is a name for this idea that your consciousness can recognize truths — truths about entities that exist outside of your own consciousness — independently of investigation of those entities by means of sensory experience. That is, the idea is that even if no one ever investigated the matter by means of sensory experience, you can still know what is true about the entities existing outside of your own consciousness, entities such as trees and flowers and volcanoes and clouds and galaxies and other humans.
The name also applies to a still-more-radical idea. The more-radical idea is that, independent of going through sensory motions to affect the entities outside of your own consciousness, your consciousness alone can will those entities outside of your consciousness to change their nature and behavior. The name that the writer Ayn Rand gave those ideas is “the Primacy of Consciousness.”
It is true that your own consciousness can sometimes influence the entities outside of it. But your consciousness can do this only by means of going through motions with the realm of sensory experience, not merely thinking with your consciousness but acting in reality, through physical motions, to implement the ideas from your consciousness.
For example, the Wright brothers conceived of — imagined — heavier-than-air flying machines when none had existed. Then, through their efforts, they created airplanes in reality. In this respect, what once manifested only in their imaginations had also become real entities that existed independently of their consciousness.
But they did this through sensory experience. They observed that, as birds flew, the birds changed the direction of their flight by changing the direction of their wings and the angles at which edges of their wings had bent. The brothers then employed their bodies to draw up plans and diagrams that they formulated to accommodate such observations. They built models and prototypes of a flyer, and they employed their senses to observe the results of tests they ran on such prototypes. By contrast, for the Wright brothers to employ a Primacy-of-Consciousness mindset would have been for them merely to attempt to wish or pray airplanes into being. After all, their father was a priest.
Likewise, here is another example of the Primacy of Consciousness. Suppose that on Monday, I pray that Hawai‘i will not be hit with an earthquake on Tuesday. Then, on Tuesday, Hawaii experiences no earthquake. Then I chalk up the absence of such a disaster to my having prayed to God. I still performed a physical action — I put my hands together and spoke with my mouth. But there is no evidence that this had any causal effect on seismic activity. Moreover, because God supposedly can read my mind, it probably would have been just as effectual if only in my head did I ask God that there to be no earthquake. Hence, this is the Primacy of Consciousness at play.
It is also the Primacy of Consciousness when my loved ones eat a particular dish on New Year’s Eve to bring good luck. Here, good luck refers to steady finances and the good fortune of a hurricane not hitting Hawai‘i months later. Again, this ritual does involve a physical action with entities outside of people’s consciousness. Still, there is no actual evidence of a causal connection between eating a particular food and Hawai‘i having averted a catastrophe. In practice, this is the same as trying to wish away the tropical storms.
In contrast to the Primacy of Consciousness, Ayn Rand discusses the Primacy of Existence. It starts with the most obvious observation you can make — something exists. Something that exists is called an “entity.” Your recognition that something exists will produce a corollary recognition: a consciousness exists — your own. Were it not for Existence, there would not be something there for your consciousness to recognize, and there would definitely be no consciousness there to recognize it. Likewise, were it not for Consciousness, there would not be anything to recognize the existence of itself or anything else.
Your consciousness is clearly important. But when it comes to your consciousness recognizing what is real and true, or at least theoretically possible, looking at Existence must be the starting point. In the realm of Existence — what I also call Nature with a capital N — we find there are some principles that apply consistently. The law of gravity is an example.
And every entity has attributes through which your consciousness can distinguish it from other entities. The pertinent attributes of an entity are what we call the entity’s nature. It is in a tree’s nature, for example, to consist of cells, to grow, and to release oxygen as it takes in sunlight to produce its own food. By contrast, it is not in the nature of a tree to transform into a 400-meter-long rhinoceros and stampede over a city. We discover the respective natures of entities through repeat observations with the senses.
Recognition of an entity by its pertinent attributes is the Law of Identity. Here is how you apply that law. You observe one entity, Entity 1, whose attributes allow you to place it in a particular classification, a particular category — the concept of it. Then you observe Entity 2, which shares the same pertinent attributes as the first entity. Applying the Law of Identity, you recognize Entity 2 as being of the same category as Entity 1.
Entities perform actions. A cloud above you is an entity, and it sending raindrops down upon you is its action. Actions are caused by the respective natures of entities. In the past, when you observed clouds become a very dark gray, these clouds followed up by raining upon you. Today you see another cloud that is a dark gray. Applying the Law of Identity, you predict that this dark gray cloud will likewise send rain.
Derivative of the Law of Identity is the Law of Causality. The fact that entities have particular respective natures is a fact that affects the events that these entities cause. When two entities are of the same type, A, and they are under the same set of pertinent conditions, B, the same stimulus, X, will cause them to react in the same manner, Y.
We have two mobile phones, A, that are similar enough in the pertinent context to be regarded as being of the same type. These are phones 1 and 2. Both of them are under the same condition, B — they are not broken. On Phone 1, I input your phone number. This is the stimulus or causal agent X. This results in your phone ringing, effect Y. Applying the Law of Identity, we ascertain that if, after you have hung up from the first call, I punch in your number on Phone 2 as well, it will likewise cause your phone to ring. We infer that the action of my inputting your number will be consistent in causing your phone to ring. As Ayn Rand phrases it, “The Law of Causality is the Law of Identity applied to action.”
These are the same sensory observations denigrated by metaphysical Idealism, epistemic Rationalism, and, implicitly, by all those who presume that their ability to imagine a scenario is sufficient to prove that it is possible.
Again, the vast majority of philosophy instructors will tell you that David Hume was a consistent empiricist. That is, he was the opposite of a metaphysical Idealist and epistemic Rationalist, of which Plato was both. If they could put aside their prejudicially motivated revulsion toward Ayn Rand long enough to learn her terminology, philosophy instructors would say that admirers of Ayn Rand’s should concede that Hume argued from “the Primacy of Existence.” But I find, sadly, that what Hume has said about imagination and theoretical possibilities is an instance of him showing favor to the Primacy of Consciousness.
In contrast to metaphysical Idealists, epistemic Rationalists, and — in this instance at least — David Hume, I shall now present my new argument about why a posited scenario must have evidentiary backing before it is to be welcomed as a theoretic possibility.
My New Way of Phrasing It
Again, many people in Hawai‘i say that it is theoretically possible that if we appease spirits on New Year’s Eve by eating a particular lucky food, those spirits will help protect us throughout the year. And, again, many people chirp that it is theoretically possible that their whole lives are an illusion and they are actually a brain in a jar being made to dream the dream that is their lives.
As with any supernaturalistic claim, these people begin by imagining a scenario arbitrarily, and then they try to rationalize it after the fact. This approach exemplifies the Primacy-of-Consciousness mindset. Now let us proceed from the other end. Let us acknowledge the Primacy of Existence.
We start off by looking at entities — the objects that exist. To speak of what is “possible” is to speak of a judgment made about some posited event. “Events” are just actions performed by the entities. That is why we look at the entities before we consider their actions and the events or possibilities associated with them. Moreover, the qualities of an action are influenced by the qualities of the entity performing it. Hence, it is only by learning about entities and their attributes that we ascertain what is possible for them.
That is why there is no proper basis or justification for us to speak of what is “theoretically possible” for an entity in the absence of observational knowledge of that entity’s attributes. Facts and evidence about an entity are epistemically foundational, and “possible” is a derivative attribute of that entity’s actions that hinges on such an epistemic foundation.
To be rationally justified, then, in saying that an event is theoretically possible is to say the following. It is to say that even if we are not sure that this particular event will take place, we have gained enough knowledge of the pertinent entities — enough evidence — for us to make an educated guess that they possess the necessary attributes that would enable them to contribute to the occurrence of this event.
As the biologist Meghann Ribbens put it to me, there is a good reason why, at least implicitly, we recognize the distinction between “imaginable” and “possible.” Some events that were indeed possible were, at some points in human history, unimaginable. It is doubtful that Stone Age hunter-gatherers imagined the occurrence of invisible airwaves that one day would transmit information to radios, televisions, and mobile phones. Conversely, as we have seen, not everything imaginable is possible. If there was no obvious distinction between “imaginable” and “possible,” there never would have been a need to coin the adjective imaginable; the adjective possible would suffice for every scenario ever described. And if every imagined scenario were possible, there would not need to be the adjective possible either — “possible” as opposed to what?
When someone floats an arbitrary postulate, such as that astrology predicts the future, often this person issues a particular challenge and advances a particular insinuation. The challenge is for any would-be doubter to put forth an effort to disprove the postulate completely. The insinuation is that, in the absence of such an effort, those who initially doubted the postulate must now concede that the postulate has gained clearance for admission into consideration as a theoretic possibility. Anyone who refrains from entertaining the postulate as deserving of consideration — even if that refraining was originally by passive default — is allegedly duty-bound to engage with arguments for and against the arbitrary postulate, on the pain of otherwise being exposed as intellectually lazy and intellectually dishonest.
It is that challenge and insinuation that are intellectually lazy and intellectually dishonest. There is no limit to the number of arbitrary postulates being foisted in our culture. Anyone who tried to engage with all or even most of them would waste all time on this pursuit, and partake in nothing else in life. On any occasion in which someone floats an arbitrary postulate, it is not incumbent upon me to poke holes in it to justify my passively refraining from entertaining that postulate as a possibility. When someone wants me to welcome the postulate as a theoretic possibility, the burden is on him or her to show evidence for the existence of conditions that can contribute to its occurrence. Thus, we do not rule out possibilities from limitless arbitrary imaginings. Instead we rule in possibilities based on their evidentiary support.
There is only one set of circumstances in which we have a firm footing in ruling out what was previously considered a possibility. It is this. Initially, based on the knowledge we have, we rule in a set of theoretic possibilities, such as A, B, and C. Then we conduct further investigation. Based on the additional knowledge, A and B still appear viable. However, the new information we have gained about the attributes of the pertinent entities exist in such a manner as to preclude C from happening. At that juncture, we can rule out C. But insofar as any proposition is made in the absence of evidence, that proposition is not to be ruled either in or out as a possibility. It deserves simply to be ignored so that we can devote our precious time and attention instead to propositions that are buttressed by evidence.
That is why it is wrong — why it is the Primacy of Consciousness — when people start with some arbitrary imagining, call it “theoretically possible,” and then try to rationalize it after the fact. To understand the Primacy of Existence is to start with observations and facts. And it is after we learn about an entity’s capabilities that way, when we can apply imagination to imagine possibilities in such a manner that can actually get practical results.
What About People Who Accomplish What Was Previously Thought Impossible?
The Wright brothers provide an instructive case study in ascertaining what is and is not possible, and in imagination’s proper role in rendering such judgments. The Wright brothers were highly imaginative. They conceived of a heavier-than-air flying machine at a time when none had existed and in which the consensus was that such a product of their efforts would never take off — pun intended.
“We knew,” said Wilbur, the older Wright brother, “that men had by common consent adopted human flight as the standard of impossibility. When a man said, ‘It can’t be done; a man might as well try to fly,’ he was understood as expressing the final limit of impossibility.”
It was for such reasons that the prospect that the Wrights would succeed at flying was widely dismissed. It was dismissed even by the eminent physicist and entrepreneur Lord Kelvin, who played a major role in laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable and who provides the namesake of the scientific unit for measuring temperature. “...I have not the smallest molecule of faith,” he wrote, “in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of expectation of good results from any of the [aeroplane] trials we hear of.”
In 1899, Scientific American magazine, too, expressed doubt. A major obstacle to the invention of the airplane was developing a method for safe steering. As the ability to duplicate the method by which birds steered themselves seemed unlikely, the periodical determined that aeroplanes would not have “commercial or military utility.”
In light of a spectacular failure of another experimenter, Samuel Pierpont Langley, attempting heavier-than-air flight, the New York Times pronounced in October 1903 that though such manned flight could happen one day in a far-flung future, it would not happen any time soon. “It might be assumed,” said the Times
“that the flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years...”
That same year, on December 10, a second New York Timeseditorial stated that such a brilliant enthusiast attempting flight should not
“put his substantial greatness as a scientist in further peril by continuing to waste his time and money for further airship experiments. Life is short, and he is capable of services to humanity incomparably greater than can expected to result from trying to fly...”
A week later, the Wright brothers made their first flight.
To the dismissals in general, the younger Wright brother, Orville, retorted, “If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.”
Of course, in their endeavor to prove it possible for humans to produce heavier-than-air flying machines, imagination was necessary but not sufficient. For what they imagined to manifest as possible, the Wright brothers always had to account for the evidentiary facts of Nature they observed. The reason why the Wright brothers were right. whereas Lord Kelvin and Scientific American magazine and the New York Times were wrong, was that when it came to this issue, the Wright brothers took all the pertinent evidence into consideration much more logically and consistently than did Lord Kelvin, Scientific American, and the New York Times.
What the Wright brothers understood to be “theoretically possible,” at least implicitly, was (a) what they imagined and (b) what they understood to be within the at-least-general bounds of evidence.
Here is a story that is an example of that. To make their first tests on the wings of their contraption, they produced a large kite — the “glider.” The first airplane would have a motor, but, as far as their early experiments were concerned, the glider did not need one. They took the then-motorless glider to Kitty Hawk exactly because its strong winds would carry the glider. In these experiments, they initially relied on “lift tables” provided by another aviation experimenter, Otto Lilienthal.
Lilienthal had experimented on using different shapes for his airfoils — objects to sustain lift in flight, such as wings and tail rudders. The tables were the records he made for the lift-to-drag ratio for each of the various airfoil shapes. Eventually, the Wright brothers noticed major discrepancies between Lilienthal’s lift tables versus their own results. Rather than take the lift tables on faith, the brothers had to admit to themselves that the tables were inaccurate. They therefore had to apply both their imaginations and empirical knowledge to develop their own lift tables.
Their bicycle shop proved fortuitous in this. They built their own small wind tunnel out of wood. A 1-horsepower engine from their bike shop powered a fan that produced airflow. Out of bicycle spokes and hacksaws, they assembled a “lift balance.” Mounted on top of the lift balance would be (1) an airfoil section they intended to test and (2) a flat plate with a surface area equal to that of the airfoil section. As the airflow impacted upon them, the respective torques of the airfoil section and the equivalent-surface-area flat-plate had to be equal to one another. When the respective torques were equal, the Wrights were able to make accurate measurements of lift-to-drag ratio for 48 different airfoil sections.
Observe the need for both logic and imagination even in just these wind-tunnel experiments. The Wrights had to be logical in accepting the faultiness of Lilienthal’s lift tables. They had to be imaginative in devising their own wind-tunnel experiments. And they needed both imagination and logic to understand how this wind-tunnel model would apply to the actual airplane’s flight later on. This smaller part, and the wider project overall, required both logic and imagination.
It was through such empirical observation that the Wright brothers gained further confidence that the flight of an airplane was indeed possible. Orville said, “I believe we possessed more data on cambered surfaces, a hundred times over, than all of our predecessors put together.” Note his mention of data — as in “sensory evidence.” The data came first — and, from it, the Wrights could ascertain what was, and what was not, theoretically possible. Here, we see that, although “theoretic possibility” is permeated with many still-unknowns, it remains within parameters set tentatively by what is known, including that which is recently-discovered.
Four years before the first flight, Wilbur Wright wrote to the Smithsonian Institution asking for information on what had already been tried. His letter touched implicitly upon the basis in evidentiary support for any theoretic possibility. “I am an enthusiast, but not a crank in the sense that I have some pet theories as to the proper construction of a flying machine. I wish to avail myself of all that is already known and then if possible add my mite [own information-gathering]...”
Yes, de facto, the Wright brothers’ approach was Facts come first; then we apply those facts to imagine the possibilities.
As my late father wrote on January 19, 1973, “An idea is not a reality. An idea is a method of perceiving reality.”
The Fallacies in Saying “Maybe Our Sensory Experiences Are a Distortion of Reality, and We Are Ignorant of What Is Actual Reality”
I now want to give special attention to the arbitrary postulate that perhaps everything our senses tell us is a misleading distortion, and that there may be a truer reality that exists beyond our ability to perceive anything. According to this postulate, what our senses inform us is not reality but merely a representation of reality — or, more precisely, a misrepresentation of reality. This postulate is an obfuscation of the very means by which we identify what is a representation or misrepresentation of anything.
To say that R is a representation of Q is to say that R is not literally Q but that R at least symbolizes Q in our minds. Moreover, we know R is a representation of Q because it has enough pertinent similarities in attributes with Q for us to recognize R as representational of it. For instance, we know that a toy truck from the brand Hot Wheels or Micro Machines is not literally a truck. But a toy truck from Hot Wheels or Micro Machines provides enough visual and other sensory cues for us to recognize the toy as a representation of a truck.
Here is a pertinent question. If you present a toy truck to a baby before she has ever seen a real truck, will she recognize the toy as a representation of a truck? She will not. You can recognize R as a representation or simulation of Q no more than the extent to which you have knowledge of what Q itself is like literally.
The same principle applies when we talk of a misrepresentation, or at least a representation that has been found to be inaccurate. Consider how whales are depicted on maps of the Atlantic Ocean that were drawn during the high Middle Ages. Of importance here are some facts about whales that became well-known in the twentieth century. First, whales do not possess scales like those of carp — goldfishes and koi — and the arowana fish. Also pertinent are tail flukes — these are the triangle-shaped parts of the tail fin found on fishes and whales. On whales, the tail flukes are horizontal — there is a fluke on the left and another on the right. By contrast, when a fish has tail flukes, they are more likely to be vertical — there is a fluke on the top of the tail and maybe another on the bottom. Not all fishes have vertical tail flukes, but it is the case that all whales only have horizontal tail flukes.
Now take a gander at a medieval map of the Earth and its oceans, and examine what that map labels a whale. Conventionally, the “whale” will be covered in fishlike scales and sport tail flukes that are vertical like a fish’s, not horizontal. These are inaccuracies in representation. The charitable way to interpret this is that the map’s illustrators labored in earnest and the inaccuracies came from their not having the information about whales that became more accessible from the twentieth century onward. But whatever the cause of the inaccuracies, we know of the representation’s inaccuracies only because we have some knowledge of what actual whales are like.
Thus we discern the illogic in someone saying that all our sensory experiences are no more than a representation of reality, whereas the truer reality is unknown to us. We can discern something as a representation of objective reality no more than the extent to which we have already experienced objective reality directly and thereby gained knowledge of it.
Further, we can discern the even-bigger fallacy in proclaiming that our sensory experiences might be a false representation of an alleged truer objective reality that remains unknown. For us to have a basis in speculating that our sensory experiences might not match reality exactly, once again we would have to know what objective reality is like literally. And yet in this scenario we have already been told that we are wholly ignorant of that very same objective reality.
Conclusion
When someone proclaims, “It’s theoretically possible that all our sensory experiences are deceptive or unreal, and we are in complete ignorance of reality as it truly is,” that proclamation remains wholly arbitrary. And it is to be written off as such.
In sum, the existence of entities and the facts associated with them are primary, and to discern what is theoretically possible for those entities is contingent upon those facts. That is why, just because you can imagine something happening, that is not sufficient for calling it a “theoretic possibility.”
On Friday, August 4, 2023, I added the part about Scientific American magazine.On Monday, August 7, 2023, I added the paragraph about how, subsequent to ruling in a theoretic possibility with the evidence we had at the time, C, we are justified in ruling out C as a possibility upon our discovering further evidence that precludes it. That same day I embedded the YouTube video about how many animals were represented inaccurately in the European-authored bestiaries of the high Middle Ages. On Sunday, June 2, 2024, I added the quotation from my father. On Saturday, September 7, 2024, I added the case study of what the Wright brothers did about the lift tables.
