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Dr J C Lester on his New Theory of Liberty. (part 2 of 3.)
A brief statement of Lester's five-step libertarian philosophical theory
The main philosophical problem is that most libertarians don’t have an explicit theory of liberty. Consequently, for instance, they can’t explain how some property rights fit liberty while others don’t. This theory aims to make explicit the philosophical theory that is entailed by libertarianism. This is done by distinguishing five steps that other libertarians usually conflate to varying degrees.
Note that liberty is conceptually about the absence of some sort of constraint on something. But interpersonal (or social) liberty is about the absence of some sort of constraint on people by each other.
First, therefore, we must ask: in what way—at its most abstract—do we want other people not to constrain us? We want them not to initiate constraints on our preference-satisfaction. This is libertarian liberty-in-itself.
Second, how do we theoretically solve the obvious problem of clashing preferences in practice? When “the absence of initiated interpersonal constraints on preference satisfaction” (initiated impositions, for short) is not fully possible, then this can only be maximised in the most plausible way.
Third, what are the practical implications of applying this abstract theory? In a state of nature, applying it gives us three prima facie rules of maximal liberty-in-practice: 1) initial ultimate control of one’s body, 2) initial ultimate control of one’s used resources, and 3) consensual interpersonal interactions and resource transfers. Any other rules would typically initiate more interpersonal impositions.
Fourth, how do these practical implications relate to property? To institutionalise these practical rules as legally enforceable property rights is an additional logical step. Thus, we see that property, even self-ownership, is only the fourth step rather than the first (let alone an axiom).
Fifth, where do normative rights, morals, and values fit into the positive libertarian system? They are a further separate issue. Thus, they are only the fifth step rather than the first (let alone an axiom).
There is an important secondary, epistemological, problem. This is that most libertarians are justificationists (or foundationists) rather than critical rationalists. But that will not be discussed here.
———Dr J. C. Lester
https://www.meste.org/ojs/index.php/mest/article/view/1279
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Escape-Leviathan-Libertarianism-without-Justificationism/dp/1908684089
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Dr J C Lester's New Theory of Liberty. (part 2 of 3)
Dr J C Lester, the author of Escape from Leviathan, talks about his New Theory of Liberty. (part 2 of 3). Enlightenment Defended interviewed him.
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Dr J. C. Lester on his New Theory of Liberty
Dr J. C. Lester, author of Escape from Leviathan, on his New Theory of Liberty. Interviewed by Enlightenment Defended.
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A Greater Glory
"Even then you had to take a guest to the bathroom to tell him a
joke. You turned on the water full force and then whispered the joke. You even laughed quietly, into your fist. This marvellous tradition did not die out."
Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich.
Are we really at this point in the West?
Like jokes, music is universally a victim of totalitarian tendencies. In 2020 the Chinese Communist Party banned multiple classical pieces of music, deeming them religious in background, among which was Ludwig van Beethoven's wonderful Symphony No. 9, "Ode to Joy".
The human mind can’t help seeing meaning everywhere. We hear voices in the wind, see faces in the clouds. As the human mind can make anything into a sign for anything else, even works of art without textual accompaniment can appear suspicious to the totalitarian mind. Too much dissonance or a hint of the avant-garde or, at the other end of the scale, the minutest use of traditional motifs or structures (indicating a longing for the past) that the new regime has repressed—anything that's distinctive enough to serve as a sign of "deviationism"— can suffer the horrors of the gulags.
Plato, the pre-eminent philosopher's totalitarian, believed that certain music modes, the Lydian and Dorian, produced soft and effeminate citizens, whilst the Ionian mode produced characters suited to being warriors. In Plato's ideal state, citizens would be brought up with music suited to the caste for which they were destined. Plato's general attitude is to beware of changes to music style, since "any change in the style of music always leads to changes in the most important institutions of the whole state." (See Karl Popper on Plato's theory of music and totalitarianism. The Open Society and Its Enemies.)
All totalitarianisms come by degrees, one small cut at a time, followed by thousands of small cuts, until even the dullest minds can see that their legs, arms and throat have been severed. In the west, we've already seen some small-minded comedians enable this incremental demise of our freedoms. (Fortunately, there are brave comedians such as John Cleese, Jerry Seinfeld, Leo Kearse, Konstantin Kisin.) We must resist the spread of this accommodation, this willing enslavement, to the totalitarian tendencies of the state and snowflake ideology. Without sustained resistance, this cowardice before the citadel of “correct speech” will spread to music and dance, any space that we might use as a sanctuary from pervasive monitoring and control.
Beethoven's Ode to Joy is magnificent and sublime and could easily be taken as the anthem of the Enlightenment. Our piece of music, Greater Glory, is not a grand composition but rather, it is a humble, fun and upbeat composition with a strong message. In it, Alex and I wish to express the idea that progress, even though it has a material framework provided by industrial production, is a thing of the mind or spirit.
In the song, the boy Zeno is wandering through a wood, reflecting on the buzzing and playful life all around. The song's refrain is:
"Man’s star it shall wax (echo)
Man’s star it shall wane (echo)
But within the soul alone (echo)
Is made every gain (echo)
Two squirrels play. Bounding from branch to branch
Tree to tree. A hoverfly it stares at me…
It stares at me…"
As the Stoics would say, we appreciate the wonders, both natural and manmade, by how we embrace the world and its objects mentally. It's not objects alone —trees, squirrels, rivers, stars, cars, skyscrapers, paintings, sculptures, etc —that excite feelings of fun, or admiration, or the beautiful or the sublime, but the cognitive grasp we take of them. The hoverfly stares back at the wanderer in the wood, into him, signifying that the wonder is within humankind. The greater glory lies within.
Wake up, people! Sing, dance and tell your jokes until your body and throat hurt.
Wake up, People! Sing, Dance! The Greater Glory is Within.
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Liberty Loves Reason: Episode 1. All Life is Problem Solving.
"Brilliant, Beautiful, and Crucially Important."
Professor Paul Levinson.
Savour this deep dive into the philosophy behind the events and movements of our times.
It is the first episode of 7 in the serialisation of my documentary. The documentary views the enlightenment in terms of Karl Popper's evolutionary analysis of knowledge.
This episode sets the stage for understanding why political correctness and woke ideology is anathema to the possibilities of progress, which is a matter of the growth of knowledge through solving problems.
All life is problem-solving. Problems in all spheres are solved by various analogues of conjecture and refutation. Many competing guesses are made, and this is followed by the weeding-out of those guesses that don't match an appropriate standard. Problem-solving and error correction is at the core of the growth of all knowledge, from the simple amoeba to Einstein's breakthroughs in science. And this growth of knowledge is at the core of the enlightenment.
However, woke ideology and its regressive henchman, political correctness and identity politics, are constraining this fundamental process of open conjecture and refutation.
Featuring David Deutsch FRS and Professor Paul Levinson.
Narrators: Lulie Tanett & Edward Crumblehulme.
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The Logic of Persuasion/ Part 1. Ruthless Logical Continuity
(Talk at Oxford Karl Popper and Hayek Society.)
Persuasion is a logical task. You have an important message to transmit to the year 2070. Your message at its origin time T1 must match in information content your message at its destination time T2. Even grand persuaders are constrained by this ruthless logical continuity.
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Afghanistan Special: Isolationism & Leading by Example. Part 2 of 3.
We are defending the enlightenment.
International relations specialist Dr Roger Townshend, Poet and theologian Alex Brocklehurst, and philosopher Dr Ray Scott Percival take a deep dive into the Afghanistan crisis and place it in broad historical perspective.
Talking Points:
1. The wider impact of the crisis.
2. The relationship between the Taliban and the terrorist groups of Al Qaeda and others.
3. Occupying foreign cultures by force is incompatible with Enlightenment Values.
4. China and Russia.
5. Withdrawal: A Defeat or Advance for Enlightenment?
6. Spreading Liberty by Force is confusing and self-defeating.
7. Media: Mainstream Media versus more perspectives through the new media.
8. Noam Chomsky.
9. Strategic thinking undistorted by ideology or Media Agendas: the congruence of the ancient wisdom of Sun Tzu and the state-of-the-art thinking of professor Robert Pape. (See his book Dying to Win.)
10. A Crack in the Mainstream Media: some elements started questioning the occupation, but then closed ranks, resuming an imperialistic narrative.
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Afghanistan Special: Isolationism & Leading by Example. Part 1 of 3.
We are defending the enlightenment.
Undistracted by the ephemeral political tides of our times, poet and theologian Alex Brocklehurst, international relations specialist Dr Roger Townshend and philosopher Dr Ray Scott Percival rev up the conversation and take a deep dive into the crisis, placing it in broad historical perspective.
Talking points:
1. Leading by example and peaceful argument —methods compatible with the enlightenment.
2. The strategic logic of suicide terrorism.
3. Terrorists as rational (but highly immoral) actors.
4. The state-of-the-art thinking of Professor Robert Pape.
5. Isolationism.
For an account of terrorism and fanaticism within the wider issue of human rationality/irrationality see my book The Myth of the Closed Mind.
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