Sunday, November 22, 2015

Axiom About Justice

Someone asked, “What about returning good for evil?” Confucius answered, “Why should one return good for evil? Treat evil with justice and return good for good.”
Analects of Confucius, Book 14, chap. 36
Earlier I listed eight statements—eight axioms—about human feelings that should be taken into account by anyone, who debates about economics, politics, law, social philosophy or life itself:

About Humanism: Only humans feel; collectives do not feel.
About Isolation: Feelings of other people can be judged only by their acts.
About Insatiability: It is impossible to overcome all needs.
About Tastes: People value powers differently.
About Egoism: Strangers' needs are not important.
About Love: Loved ones are only few.
About Justice: The worse the offense, the more offender is hated.
About Envy: The richer the person, the more he is hated.

Each of these axioms cuts away a huge mass of statements as antiscientific ones. And only the statements not contradictory to these axioms can be considered as scientific.

We have already discussed six axioms. Today it’s turn of the seventh axiom—about justice.

A feeling called morality, conscience or justice inheres within our soul. This feeling allows us to judge acts separating them into right, moral, just, fair on one hand and wrong, immoral, unjust, unfair or dishonest on the other. The Harvard biologist Marc Hauser conducted a survey amongst many people of different nationalities, cultures and religions, and found that their descriptions of bounds between moral and immoral are amazingly similar. Moreover, their consensual assurance was much stronger than their ability to distinctly explain the reasons for their views. Their assurance was intuitive. Hauser made a conclusion that this amazingly similar moral choice was made at some very deep, subconscious level.

Our task is to reinforce the intuitive moral choice between right and wrong with logic, with science.

Scarce (and thus valuable) alienable powers, or in other words—property—is a subject of competition between people, who don’t feel love towards each other. Competitors may seize property (or assets) with violence or deceit, or they may mark bounds—borders that divide assets between them and protect valuable unalienable powers. Bounds turn valuable powers into someone’s rights. It is forbidden to use alien rights. It is forbidden to destroy or damage alien rights. If solidarity in protecting the rights is high, then one can be confident that it will be applied to protection of his rights as well. Acts respectful to bounds become right acts; acts disrespectful to bounds become wrong acts; fight against wrongdoers becomes public affair.

Respect towards bounds does not mean their rigidness. Voluntary alteration of bounds in the form of trade or gifts is also respectful towards bounds. Violation of bounds occurs when someone forces their alteration. This is called a wrongdoing or offense. However using force can be right act if it’s applied towards wrongdoer. Wrongdoer gets punished. As such, he can be forced to compensate damage to those who had suffered from his wrongdoing.

Wrongdoing or offense is a dangerous act that almost everyone agrees to ban.

Wrongdoings include following acts:

1. Violence, when people get killed, crippled or tortured, property gets destroyed, damaged or forcefully taken away;
2. Threats, when threatened one obeys without violence, but because of the threat of violence;
3. Deceit, when property is taken away secretly or promise is broken.

However, although dangerous acts look bad, they cannot be banned completely. Absolute ban of dangerous acts leaves no room for fighting wrongdoers, while convincing and moral suasion may not work on them.

It is just to use violence, threats and deceit towards wrongdoers if it’s adequate to their offense. Thus violence, threats and deceit can be right acts, and it is wrong to ban them. Not all dangerous acts should be considered as wrongdoings and banned, but only those of them, which considered wrong.

By defining wrongdoings through wrong dangerous acts we use recursion. Recursion is hard to grasp; many think of any recursion as a vicious circle. But I don’t see any other way to define wrongdoing. Perhaps recursion in definition of offence causes so many troubles with good laws and commandments. “Thou shalt not kill!” But what if there’s no other way to stop the murderer? Is it just to condemn the murderer of murderer?

Recursion in the definition of wrongdoing gets even more complicated, when we discover that there’s another dangerous act that should be banned:

4. Avoiding fight against wrongdoers.

Fight against wrongdoers is a public affair that no one should avoid. Fence sitting is wrong here.

Extreme individualism is wrong. It is everyone’s debt to make his contribution into fight against wrongdoers: with money, personal participation in militia, testimony, etc.

Demand of solidarity, which is appropriate in fight against wrongdoers, is wrong when it’s tried to be stretched on other affairs—social care for example. This wrong demand of wide solidarity, inherent in today’s world, weakens solidarity of right people in their fight against wrongdoers and strengthens the wrongdoers. Helping the poor is just, when it’s driven with love, and it’s wrong when it is being forced. Not the poor ones benefit from such forced struggle with poverty, but those, who are in charge of it.

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