Quote from: epi 1:10,000 on July 14, 2011, 07:06:31 PM

Quote from: SgtSpike on July 14, 2011, 06:51:39 PM

It is impossible to objectively remove oneself from his life experiences. It doesn't matter if this is the right way to perform justice or not - it is impossible to perform justice in this manner anyway.

That which has been seen cannot be unseen.
That which has been heard cannot be unheard.
That which has been felt cannot be unfelt.
That which has been experienced cannot be unexperienced.

Not quite what I was looking for but in the right direction. I'm assuming Rawls would agree but when you expand the conversation to a large group these biases are minimized and as the group becomes larger and as knowledge progresses the model allows for evolution. The question is can you find a point in his argument that isn't adaptable and can be refuted with his own model's inclusion of the group in the original position's "knowledge of psychology/sociology".

hints: ~~red headed~~ brownish/red headed anarchist, "knowledge of psychology/sociology" (this particular knowledge can be assumed to be known by many if not a majority of citizens today.)

By the way in very odd and biologically interesting way all those statements can be invalidated but in the broad sense lets assume them to be true in the majority of cases.

Are you referring to "The Man Who Was Thursday"? W/e

Okay. I will go for the simple point I was initially trying to make but you dodged.

They wouldn't come to a consensus because the issues being considered are inherently based in subjectivity and experience. One can prove things such as Y=MX+B or Pythagorean theorem through irrefutable axioms, and one can prove things such as physical laws through similar axioms. They can be disproven in (depending on the subject) a laboratory under controlled circumstances or on a blackboard. If I go to Massachusetts and, under completely normal conditions, drop an apple that proceeds to rise up, then gravity has been disproven (mind, that is a huge generalization, but then so is the "Original Postion").

How do you reconcile that with societal constructs? A government is NOT an actual "thing", like a falling tree or a shooting gun. It is impossible to view objectively because simply knowing its definition creates bias. For example, one person would say government is a group of people who run things. That wouldn't necessarily be false. Alternatively, one might define it by its means rather than its ends and consider it to be a group that reallocates resources through a monopolistic, involuntary system. That wouldn't necessarily be false, either.

Furthermore, the ends are not clear, either. With mathematics, the ends are very obvious. In this case, what you consider ideal depends upon what end you desire most. If you value safety above all else, you can easily justify a massive police state without ever saying anything untrue or illogical as you would justifying a false mathematical theorem. Is freedom, justice, or safety to be prioritized? Furthermore, what defines the above? Is a world where everyone is beaten on regular basis but few are killed safer than one in which one in ten are killed each month but the beatings don't occur?

Finally, as I was saying initially, perspective is what shapes it. A starving man would have a different perspective on the importance of property over basic necessities compared to a rich businessman.

A disembodied ghost's opinion would be shaped by the biases fed to it as "fact", and don't mince words, when you talk history and economics it is impossible to not have a biased starting point. Furthermore, without the perspective as a everyman, the ghosts' consensus would be utterly meaningless and arbitrary.

To put it into perspective, lets assume that the scenario occurs. Well, what knowledge of economics do they receive? If they only receive that of, say, Keynesians, they will obviously have a tendency to agree with the Keynesian method. Of course, assuming this is unbiased as possible, lets assume all schools of economics are given an honest look. But then, economics is based heavily in reality, and is utterly meaningless without a background of history as well. But that raises yet more problems. You look at the Great Depression. The Keynesian can say the Depression was stopped by the New Deal because GDP began to rise in 1933. The Austrian can then respond that the New Deal resulted in failure, as shown by other countries recovering far faster than the US did. The Keynesian can say the same of WW2, which resulted in a massive drop in unemployment and a huge rise in GDP. The Austrian then responds by stating that economies exist to maximize the efficiency of resource allocation, and the US was faced with rationing, while unemployment did drop it went to an unproductive sector (the military) and employment is a means, not an end in itself.

You see what I mean? It is impossible to have a worthwhile opinion without dipping into reality, and to dip into reality you need to already have certain biases.

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Of course if you flat out refuse to incorparate what humanity has learned inn the past 60 years of psychology, sociology, cognitive neuroscience, ect. then we will have to agree to disagree.

A brain (assuming sustenance, etc is already handled) is utterly worthless without its senses. If I had no ability to feel, smell, taste, see or hear, I would be functionally no different from a corpse.