From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Mon Oct 30 2006 - 16:14:54 EST
I thought that was a pretty insightful post. I would say markets might promote honesty insofar as they require some basic trust, but also dishonesty, insofar as people swindle. But I still think that proves my basic thesis about it, i.e. that markets do not contain any specific morality of their own, except what is necessary to settle transactions. My most basic empirical indicator of morality is reported crime levels. Since the 1970s, world crime rates have at least doubled. Why? Economic growth and unemployment levels seem to have a lot to do with it - in a society where everybody can make gains, crime is reduced; it seems that, the more the gains of some are made at the expense of others, the more crime increases. I tend to define honesty as telling the truth while taking the other person into consideration while telling it. I worked for a Statistics Department one time, and you discover that when you have an array of data, you could tell many different stories about that data, all true in the strict sense of the word. Now what is "the truth", what is honesty? At this point, the postmodernists start talking about a "significant other", but the real point here is a "significant truth". And the significance of a truth refers to a consideration of the people to whom it is told, and to explicating the assumptions on which it is based. You tell the truth the best you know how, being forthright about what you are assuming, and considering the person you are telling it to. Thus, intention or motive plays a role in honesty. This is reflected in the legal system: in a court of law, you are supposed to tell "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth". Why bother with the truth about the number of deaths in Iraq for example? Well the fact is, that this is a war started on false pretenses, and I think that's a very serious matter, especially but not only because of all the victims. The perpetrators of course claim they acted with integrity on the basis of values they had, but really they implied - with Straussian philosophy - that "ordinary mortals" would not be able to grasp the true reasons why this war was necessary and morally justified, lacking a geopolitical perspective and all that. Personally I think precisely that's bullshit, and I think the retrospective justifications for the war are bullshit. Fighting a war is one thing, but fighting a war where it's not clear to all concerned why it is being fought, is quite another. In the latter case, we're back with George Orwell's 1984. Why do they say there is no such thing as an "honest politician"? Precisely because "there are truths and truths, big truths and little truths". Some truths are highly significant in a particular context, others aren't, and as politician you have to try to be correct at the correct time. Perhaps it is true, that there are no totally honest politicians, insofar as you always have to tell a story about what you know to be true in a given context. But you can be a politician of integrity, i.e. ready to tell the truth when it needs to be told. If that is not possible, there is not much hope for politics as a means to solve human problems. Is truth-telling utilitarian? If so, significant truths are useful truths. There is something to be said for that in practical life, except that some significant truths are not useful, and it begs the question of "useful to whom"? The utility of a truth is related to an interest or stake somebody has, thus, talking about "utility" while disregarding interests can in the end only produce vacuous tautologies. A "useful truth" could also be a "dishonest truth", i.e. an accentuation of one facet of the situation which obscures the real situation as a whole, a sort of guile that mediates contradictions. Very useful given a personal interest, but not really "the truth". Jurriaan
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