Philosophy exercise: call for critiques

[grysar]

So, regyt once told me that philosphy was a meta area of study, that it explored and discovered caves/topics like politics, biology, economics, and moved on while those less meta subjects explored their own cave in depth. I'm not doing full justice to the eloquence of the metaphor, but I think that gets the point across.

In that case I believe this is an exercise in philosophy. I propose, against all comers, an analytic system for understanding effective human action. Specifically for describing codes, honor, moral systems, political systems, economic systems, religions, and the like. I do not seek to describe the actions of animals, unthinking objects, computers, or any other entity that doesn't meet my human-centric definition of self-consciousness.

Namely:
All these systems humans follow hold two opposing but also reinforces forces: power and principles.

Power is both creative and destructive. It gives us drive and is tested in the forge that is reality. Thus it changes as the world changes, for the power of a cave man is not the power of a modern human. It can be internal: sharpness of mind, force of will or strength of body. It can be external: weapons, money, technology, God or gods. It can even be a fundamental rejection of the world and a realization of some truer plane.

Principles are rules, conscious or unconscious. They are restrictions on the means we can employ. They are not goals in and of themselves, except that some goals deny us certain means or demand we use others. They are law, the golden rule, cultural mandates, and the like.

Both of these aspects are necessary. Moreover in an effective system they both must be balanced. Power needs the channel of principle or it will become corrupted: see absolute power or hedonism. Principles alone will lack the ability to achieve their goals or they will stagnate without the renewal of power.

As you get into complex economic or political systems the model can be applied, but complex systems will often have multiple sub-systems that need to check and mutually reinforce one another.

So here are my contentions:

1. This model is quite helpful in understanding what makes an effective system.
   
2. This model can be applied to any of the systems I've described above.
   
3. This model can not be simplified to contain only a single force and it need not be expanded to contain three or more.
   
4. This model is a better window for understanding these systems than other dichotomies: individual/society; order/chaos; good/evil; good/bad; rationality/emotion.
   
5. Any effective system must have both of these aspects and they both must be strong forces in and of themselves.
   

So, I need a quick nap and I'm also smug, so I'll skip the examples for now. I invite anyone to challenge any of my contentions or any other contentions they think are implied. And if you provide me a system, I'll give my breakdown.

Addendum due to Ard's threat of violence. (Note, there's lots of variety, I'll just go with a common one I think of.)

System	Power	Principles
Christianity (old school)	God	Strict code of sacrifice and golden rule.
Buddhism	Enlightenment/Seeing through illusion of reality	Rejecting atachment.
Capitalism	Self-interest; hard work; competition; entrepeneurship	Basic market rules: no violence, no monopolies, etc.
Theoretical communism	Hard work; power in the hand of the workers; collective effort	Work all you can; don't take more than you need.
Totalitarianism	Centralized power without restrictions; government can guide colleective energy of entire society; shaping of individuals to best serve countries need	Unquestioning devotion to leader; leader servers interest of people
Democracy	Power is in people's hand	Must accept results of elections; follow election rules; majority must try to serve interests of all
Utilitarianism	All means are available when appropriate	Means/ends together must server greater good
Natural law	Core desires and needs of humanity	Don't infringe on other's core needs in most cases
Kantian	Moral strength; positive example influences others	Don't do anything that you aren't willing to have someone else do
Nihilism	Rejection of no-win world	Don't give a shit.

Comments

[unreason.livejournal.com]

I think I disagree with you slightly about the nature of principles. Your view of them seems primarily limiting, e.g. Don't beat up that guy with the noisy lawnmower, don't mug that elderly lady for your rent money, and so forth. This is not necessarily the case. If principles were merely limitations on power, then what of this principle: If you see someone being mugged, you should call the police. Your power is not being limited in this case; calling the police is not limiting anything. In this case, your principles are motivating the use of power, rather than limiting it. So it's important to view principles as both a limiting and an initiating factor. I would describe human endeavor with two slightly different factors: Power, and Motivation. Power goes unused without a motivating factor. Similarly, a use of power being driven by motivation can be arrested by a stronger motivation: e.g. A person's desire for money might lead one to utilize power to steal, but if personal morality is stronger it will cancel out the motivating factor, and thus theft will not occur. So, to use a physics metaphor, power supplies the ability to move, but motivation supplies direction to said power.

We can understand using this physics metaphor why power corrupts:
Let us say we have a bank teller. He has the opportunity to steal from his bank, but does not. Why? Let's make a cheesy pseudo-physics equation:

Banker's action=(Power to act)*(Positive factors-Negative factors)
where
Positive factors include: Desire for money, knowledge of potential power to act
Negative factors: Fear of going to jail, knowledge that current power is insufficient to succeed, moral system

Now, let's make a change. Let's say that there's a mix up in the bank's records, and it makes it possible to steal without the bank noticing. Note that the teller needs to know about this change; power is of little effect without the knowledge of power.

What happens to our equation? Well, the positive factors certainly go up, since our teller now has full confidence that he can succeed in his theft. By the same token, the negative factors of fear of jail and knowledge of the possibility of failure are eliminated. This makes morality the only negative factor. Therefore, it is possible that although the teller's morality was sufficient to retard the motion of theft when combined with the other factors, it is now outweighed in the new equation, causing the teller to steal. I would say that all human society and endeavor fall into this category, with actions being determined by Power and Motivation.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

It is true that principles can both limit action and demand action.

In addition, I think you're getting to, but not exactly at the question I'm trying to address. I think the question you've got is "How do people choose to act." And I think you may have a better answer for that question than my system provides. So, I need to better figure the more specific question I'm trying to answer.

The reason I shied away from motivation is that I'm trying to look at codes multiple individuals could use. For example, the samaurai code: samaurai theoretically they operated under the same restrictions/demands. Moreover the code taught them to pursue their power as a warrior in the same way: facing death, practice, gaining loyal subordinates, that sort of thing.

The problem I'm running into in formualating the question is properly seperating motivations from your powers and your principles. Let's tenatively go with "How do you best pursue your motivation" rather than "How do you act" as a question. This is only tenative, because obviously some codes are more suited to some motivations than others.

Actually no, that's not going to be good enough. I may have to sleep on this one. But when I get my question, I'll take on whether your quite sound system better answers it than mine. Thanks! Also, I'm back in MD, how are you doing? Still around? Wast to get together some time?

[unreason.livejournal.com]

Doing fine, hope you are too. I live in DC now, not MD, but I'm still in the area. Are you still in Silver Spring?

[grysar.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm back in Silver Spring from now until the start of January. I'll also be taking classes in DC (Around Woodley Park Metro) in the Fall.