>> We're super excited
today to have Ann Cudd joining us from Boston University.
Ann is the Dean of Arts and
Sciences at Boston University.
She's also a professor of philosophy.
Before that, she was at the University of Kansas,
where I was leaving behind me in the alley.
I said she was not living in the alley.
She was living across the alley in a lovely home,
a lovely home, yes.
I've raised her since she was a whippersnapper.
Ann is a very interesting person for this lab because she
has a undergraduate degree
in mathematics, she's a philosopher,
she wrote her dissertation on game theory,
she studies feminism, she studies oppression,
and she has a lot of overlaps with a lot
of different interests that a lot of us have,
so I thought it would be delightful to have her come by.
I will let you go ahead.
She has tons of accomplishments, lots of books,
lots of praise, all of that stuff,
but I would rather hear what you have to say.
>> Thank you so much, Nancy.
It's such a privilege to come here and to speak with you,
and thank you for allowing a philosopher to come in
and talk about the metaphysics of the cell parts.
I don't think that's what Nancy
had initially imagined that I would speak about,
but I told her this is actually
the most recent research paper that I've been working on,
so she said," Well, if you're passionate about it,
then go for it."
So, I am promising some implications of
my work for something that
I think maybe many of you are interested in.
So basically let me just get started,
and let me provide some context of why I'm thinking about
self-ownership and how this could play
a role in those kinds of
things that many of you think about.
So, if you think about it,
there's a very basic moral or political question
that moral and political philosophers
should try to answer,
and that is something like what
two persons have a right to do and say,
and what can society or
other individuals force us to
do on pain of some social sanction.
Whether that's from just disapproval,
all the way to incarceration or worse.
Okay, so any kind of social sanction.
So what do we have a right to do
and what can society force us to do?
Basically, philosophers' method,
the typical philosophers' method
is to establish some basic concepts,
some basic principles, go to first principles,
that can then ground
a theory that can answer the questions.
Okay, so our theory is usually built up with
some kind of argument from
example or analogy or counterexample,
and really it's pretty basic,
and so it's not usually empirical,
although as we were talking about at lunch today,
sometimes philosophers
do a little bit of experimental work,
but I'm afraid I'm not one of those philosophers.
So, it's basic argumentation,
so that's the kind of methodology I'm going to use.
So self-ownership is one of these basic concepts.
In particular, it's a basic concept for libertarianism.
So libertarianism, I'm going to be
speaking of libertarianism, not very much,
but a little bit today as
a political philosophy and not
necessarily in the sort of Rand Paul,
contemporary political
empirically practically political world, okay.
I'm going to be talking about.
Insofar as I do talk about libertarianism,
I'm going to be talking about
the basic political philosophy.
So, what libertarians do with
self-ownership as they say that they posit this idea,
and they don't usually examine it very carefully,
but they posit the idea that each of us owns ourselves,
and they especially concentrate on this idea of
ownership and that brings a lot
of moral political weight with it.
It's because ownership rights are taken to be
very stranger rights. The rights to
use or possess or exclude others from using,
rights to dispose of or transfer some kind of a thing.
So if I own my toothbrush,
I can use it, I possess it,
I can exclude you from using it,
I hope, I can throw it away when I want to,
and if I want to give it away, I can give it away.
So there's something about,
we think about ownership as having those kinds of claims.
Now of course, you can take those apart,
you can make up different kinds of ownership
rights legally, you can take all of those pieces apart,
but basically, this is why libertarians
are interested in this idea of self-ownership is
because it gives us a very
solid significant stringent claim
over our own bodies,
and then by extension,
over the things that our bodies do,
and in particular, the ways that
we gain the right to property.
So libertarians, well, if you
think about even old liberals,
classical liberals like John Locke,
who argued that from the ownership of ourselves,
when we work on some unknowns nature and
we we pluck an apple from an apple tree that nobody owns,
we come to own that through our labor.
We come to own the apple that we have now labored on,
by an extension of our own bodies.
Anyway, I'm not really going to talk much about that,
I'm just trying to motivate
the idea that self-ownership provides,
especially for the libertarian,
this important stringent right
over our bodies and then over our things.
Libertarians appeal to this idea to say,
first of all, that for each of us,
our bodies or ourselves,
whatever a self is in addition to a body,
but over our bodies,
we cannot be used or possessed without our consent.
That's pretty important right, right?
That's one thing, and another is that our duties to
help others or to do things for others
can only arise from our voluntary consent.
So Libertarians are very keen to
say that you cannot force me to help
you unless I consent to some kind
of contractual arrangement with you, okay.
So that's how you get this idea of
libertarianism that's against taxation,
that's for very stringent property rights,
and builds this cocoon,
if you will, around the individual,
and I'm characterizing a little bit so if our character,
so if you're a libertarian,
please feel free to attack that caricature,
but I'm trying to do it for
the sake of simplicity and clarity,
and it's overly simplistic, perhaps.
Okay, so that's the idea of
self-ownership as the libertarian looks at it.
The ideal itself, I think,
has two very important characteristics.
It's one very the individualistic.
So the self is to be fully
identified with the individual.
On some theories, that's the individual body,
and on other theories,
well you don't have to just
identify the self with the body,
it could be with the rational individual that's inside of
me or a rational individual.
The thing that is the agent
in game theory or something
like that or in decision theory,
and the others' aspect of it
is that it's an atomistic theory.
So individuals are separable
from the external world, at least in principle.
So the people who
populate a libertarian theory are these self-contained,
self-sufficient rational individuals, okay.
So that might be familiar to some
of you economists, and the theory,
basically the theory of homo economicus
or something like that,
it's not not that different from that.
So what I'm going to do in my argument today is,
I'm going to deny both of these aspects of
self-ownership and argue that a self owner,
so an entity that can own itself
and that can be
the foundation of a political or moral theory,
is actually necessarily connected to other self owners.
So is not atomistic,
but connected within a network
of norms and social practices,
and he social practices of
guiding each other according to social norms.
So that guidance and being guided by and guiding
others according to norms, rules, practices,
things that judgments of
better and worse, that kind of thing,
are really really important to making us
the kind of things we are namely,
self owners that can be
the foundation of a moral and political philosophy.
So are you with me?
That's the basic context here that we're talking about.
Okay, so I want to draw sharp disarray,
a careful distinction between
descriptive and normative individualism.
So, I take myself to be a liberal,
in the large, broad sense of liberal.
In the sense of what I would
say is normative individualism.
That is, I take the human self,
whatever it is, to be of ultimate intrinsic moral value.
So, the whole point, to me,
of doing political and moral philosophy, is to,
in some sense, give
a theory that protects that individual moral self.
We are of ultimate value.
Descriptive individualism by contrast
is just claims that the human self can be described and
explained by reference to
forces and causes that act only on
the individual and not
having to refer to any irreducibly social facts.
So, I think that descriptive individualism is false,
but normative individualism is true.
I think that the atomistic self-owner
of libertarianism is a descriptive, individualist theory.
It's also normatively, individualist.
But I deny the descriptive part,
I don't deny the normative part.
So, as I say, liberalism
rests on normative individualism,
but it need not embrace a descriptive one.
I think that libertarianism is a form of liberalism that
embraces both descriptive and normative individualism.
Just to give you a contrast,
and I'm not going to be talking about this view at all,
but communitarianism denies normative individualism
as well as descriptive individualism.
Okay? Yes.
>> Is it necessarily either or when you think about it,
is it possible to both be a normative individualist
and also communitarianism that
says each self is of ultimate in terms of moral value.
So, two is a community in which we
always I before another?
>> I don't think that's impossible and that's my view,
but I think that's a liberalism.
But that's a really good question.
So, here's where I think there's
the two might- I would have to hear more about
what you mean by communitarianism but
where they might split apart.
>> It's all there.
>> Yeah, well, where they might split apart is
suppose you think that we
should sacrifice individuals for
the sake of preservation of some community.
So, for instance, not allow
a right of exit from a community.
There are communities that
don't allow individuals to exit without very,
very significant cause that
I would say is a denial of right of exit.
To me, that's anti-liberal.
But then you might say, "Well, okay,
but then that's denying normative individualism."
So, I think you
can't be a normative, individualist and communitarian.
So, here's the thesis that I'm going to defend.
I'm going to argue that self-owners can't be
the atomistic individuals portrayed
by the concept of libertarian self-ownership.
They're essentially constituted by
their connections with other selfs.
So, this word "Essentially"
is obviously a pretty important word for a philosopher.
It means I'm going to start talking metaphysics here,
because it's got to be really,
that's a strong claim,
essential is really basic.
So, I'm giving a metaphysical
arguments because I think that's
a more stringent argument than a merely causal one.
So, lots of libertarians will say to me, "Oh, of course,
we think that infants have to be cared for by
their parents and people need all kinds of care,
and so causally yes,
we're all dependent on each other.
Sure." But essentially, we are separable individuals.
So, that's why I think I have to go
to this metaphysical claim,
or metaphysical plane if you will.
So, join me in this quest,
on this metaphysical plane,
to really make the argument.
In the end, if
you all want to say or somebody you want to say,
"Well, really why do we care about the metaphysics?"
In some sense I'll say, "Yeah,
I understand where you're coming from,
because what's really important ultimately is
the politics and what
we actually hold each other accountable for."
But my view is that if you want to defeat the argument,
the best rational argument of the libertarian,
you have to go to this metaphysical plane. Yes.
>> Are you predicted on the idea of there being
a singular self,
fixed singular self, as opposed to
a dynamic or multiplicity of selves in a person?
>> I don't think it is dependent on that.
However, if there's not a connection among those cells,
then it's hard to say what
the right self would have if it changes over time.
So, I think there has to be some continuity.
So, I would subscribe to
a psychological continuity thesis
about personal identity.
If that's basically the philosophical problem
I think that you're referring to.
But within that, of course,
psychological continuity is consistent
with a lot of change over time
just as long as there's a memory
or a connection from one moment to the next.
So, here's just to say a little bit more about why
this has to be metaphysical argument
and not a causal one,
or to say a little bit more about what that means.
So, I think you can separate out what I
would call the causal origins of any given self.
So, I was born on a certain day,
to a certain pair of parents,
with a certain set of genetic components,
nurtured by the food that they gave
me and then taught by the words that they spoke to me.
The various stimulants that they presented to me.
Then over time, as I
became a child and
started playing with peers and so forth,
there were further causal interactions
that have formed me,
up to the point where I am the person that I am.
So, those are all causal origins of this self.
The metaphysical origins of a self,
though are something a little bit different,
this is the question, what are
the necessary conditions for
something to be a self that is a self-owner?
So, that's a very much more basic
and conceptual question than
the causal question of how
did I get to be the self that I am today?
Or even the generic causal question of how do
people generally grow up to
be the adult human beings that they are?
So, you can ask that causal question
in those two separate ways.
A very particular way and a more generic way
that has to do with the causal laws.
By causal I mean
not just physical but also mental and social causes.
So, the things that I think right now,
the self having these thoughts
about metaphysics and so forth.
Right now as I speak, has social causes and mental causes.
I've had previous thoughts about philosophy,
about, whatever. All of those things.
That have made me
think the things that I think right now.
I guess I am deterministic, right?
That's just to say the self is deterministic,
and their social causes.
There are all kinds of different sciences that would
play a nice role in explaining how human beings
come to be the things that they are today in
this culture with these thoughts, with these tendencies.
But metaphysical origins has to do
with what is a self-owner?
How does it come to be the thing that it is?
If you're thinking about moral and political philosophy,
and what you wanna do is,
have a theory that holds regardless
of the particularities of
how the being came into existence causally.
And philosophers tend to want to do that,
because we want to have a moral and political philosophy
that would work for robots.
Or for entities on
a distant exoplanet, right? Doesn't matter.
Provided that they are
the kinds of things that are self-owners,
this moral and political theory should fit for them.
Okay? Okay. So, the assumptions
I'm making about what a self-owner
is or has to be in order to be
the grounding for social and political philosophy
or for moral and political philosophy is that,
those self-owners have to be intrinsically valuable.
They have to be capable of making
and respecting ownership claims.
In other words, what is it to be an owner?
Well, it's to be able to make a claim on something.
So, that's the basic assumption.
What is it to be normative individualism to hold?
Well, has to be intrinsically
valuable and not valuable just
because of the advantages it brings to somebody,
it's something else, right?
Has to be valuable in itself.
And the part about respecting ownership claims-.
And there, I think it's going to be an entity that's
a grounding for a moral and political philosophy,
then it has to be capable of basically acting morally.
So, it has to be able to respect the claims
of others. Just capable of that.
Might turn out to be an immoral version
of one of these beings but at least it's
capable of understanding and respecting them.
So, as I say though,
the metaphysical question doesn't
assume that self-owners are
necessarily human or even
biological or that they're embodied.
And an analogy to
this kind of metaphysical question I'm asking is-.
Think about chess pieces and chessboards.
You could have a set of
chess pieces that are
made out of ivory and you could have a wooden board.
Or you could have a digital representation of
chess pieces and the rules
of chess and chessboards, right?
And both of them are equally
chess pieces and chessboards.
It doesn't matter.
So, what makes them that is the set of rules
that you're applying to
the movements of the chess pieces.
Okay? Yes.
>> Are there examples you can give that would satisfy
the criteria that would
not be human biological or embodied?
>> Well not human. Might be some other social primates.
>> Right.
>> That be easy. But I'm not sure of that,
because I'm not a biological anthropologist.
But I bet maybe baboons are like this.
I don't know, they could respect. Biological? Well, you
could imagine a virtual beings.
In fact, that would count as not embodied too, right?
Algorithms there might be Hal?
Right? It could be a self-owner.
I don't think that Hal could be a connected self-owner.
No. Maybe Hal is connected to
the people that he lived among.
>> Dave?
>> Dave. Right. Maybe between them.
Yes. But that's where I'm trying to
leave open the possibility of a virtual being,
and the idea that there
might be an artificial intelligence where you would say,
it would be immoral to unplug it
or to kill it because it's intrinsically valuable.
Why? Because it's capable of
the same capabilities of self-ownership that we are.
I don't think it exists yet,
but in our dreams, right?
Okay. Good. So, this is
just a little representation
of these sort of hierarchies.
So, they're actually existing self-owners,
are a subset of the physically possible ones.
But the metaphysically possible ones are
even beyond a bigger set, right?
I think that's just it. Okay. So, here we go.
Here's the argument. Okay. Now I need my notes.
Okay. So, the first premise is just to say that,
if the self-owners are to be
foundational for moral and political philosophy,
then they're going to have to have intrinsic moral value,
and they have to have the ability
to participate some community or polity.
It's just from the meaning of
moral theory or political philosophy really.
Okay? If they're not valuable then,
then they're not sort of the subject of a moral theory.
Okay. If they're valuable-.
I should draw the distinction
between intrinsic and instrumental value.
I'm assuming that.
So, something that's intrinsically valuable
is valuable in and of itself, right?
Without considering anything else.
Something that's merely
instrumentally valuable is valuable
because it's valuable to something
that is intrinsically valuable, right?
So, the subjects of moral and political theory,
I believe have to be.
I don't think this controversial.
Have to be intrinsically valuable.
And what is it to participate in a community or a polity?
Well, minimally I think,
it means that you're able to reflect on norms,
rules or something more informal rules
that are given to you
externally and guide your actions according to them.
So for instance, to learn that it's bad or wrong
to do X and it's good or right to do Y,
or just some basic rules and some basic normative claims,
something is apt, appropriate, good, right preferable.
Any of those kind of judgments.
Okay? And then even more,
fully than that, more fulsomely is
to be able to guide others actions.
Minimally, you have to be able to
guide your own actions according to
these rules, but even better,
real participation in a polity or community,
is that you are not
just the subject but you're the agent as well.
Okay? And that means, I think,
in order to be able to do that reflection on
norms and guiding one's actions according to those norms,
one has to have mental states
and intentions, beliefs, desires.
Okay? One has to be able to see what the norm is,
consider an action, and judge
whether that action fits the norm or doesn't.
And likewise, judge about others actions.
Do they fit according to the norm or not?
Okay? And right now,
I'm using norm in
a very descriptive way in the sense that,
it might be a bad norm, right?
But it's a norm agreed upon by some community.
Okay? Some group.
>> Does it trouble your definition of technology?
Actions that violate norms as participation,
if I'm murdered in cold blood,
Am I still participating in the community
or have I stopped participating in the community?
>> Right. I'm just trying to get-.
As long as you can see that you violated a norm,
then you're participating in this very basic sense.
>> Acknowledgement.
>> Acknowledgement, yes, at minimal.
And I'm just trying to get the minimum qualifications
for something to be a self owner,
again because I'm trying to get
this metaphysical very broad view
and include everything in that we possibly can,
and the reason for that is because,
suppose I make a very broad-.
All of these things could be
self owners but the one thing that can't,
are the atomistic individuals of libertarian theory.
Right? That's the structure of my argument.
Okay. So, have to have
mental states, intentions, beliefs,
desires, so that they can take in norms,
reflect on norms or rules.
And what is it to be an owner?
Well minimally, again, that's to
have a claim over a thing that is owned and
a claim against others over
others exclusively claiming it.
And an ability make use of or possess it.
Again, this is just from
the very definition of ownership.
What it is to own something.
Okay? So what I am saying though,
is that one has to be able to actively make a claim.
And that again is
bringing in intentions and beliefs and desires.
Okay? So I'm concluding
from those last two premises about ownership and
participation that a cell phone or
must be a thing that intends and acts,
and that can take and respond to norms.
And that's just what in other words is a moral person.
So, philosophers always talk about what is a person,
and there's a high bar
for person-hood it's not just having
the right number of chromosomes
or roughly the right number of chromosomes,
it's actually having this ability to
intend and act and take and respond to norms.
So, a self owner has to be a moral person.
I guess key premise is six,
which is to say that,
what makes a self's existence as this moral person,
as this thing that can think, intend,
and act, is that it's
embedded in a normative web of meaningfulness.
Why is that? Well, if I'm going to have an intention,
I intend to do X or I intend some meaningful thing,
it has to have a meaning for me.
But meaning then immediately,
I think brings in language.
And language is essentially social.
One individual, atomistic individual,
cannot come up with a language.
A language is essentially social.
I believe that once we
start to talk about things as having intentions,
beliefs, and desires, we've already brought in
the social, namely language.
But there are lots of other norms that
also make our world meaningful.
So, our judgments are better and worse,
apt and inapt, good and bad,
also color the whole world that we live in.
We never see anything as green their chair, right?
We see it as, it's a certain kind of green,
it's a chair that you can sit in,
but you wouldn't want to lie down in it.
There are all these judgments that
immediately come with our perception.
We never perceive things purely as some data,
but always we perceive it as something,
and that I believe brings in norms and language.
And if that's the case,
so that cracks the argument for me.
If that's the case, then we are essentially
connected in this web of social norms.
We are essentially socially connected.
Do you want to ask a question?
>> I was just curious whether
somebody who understands some of the norms
but not all the norms or respects some of the norms
not all the norms would be considered an immoral person,
because they don't respect some of the norms?
>> Yes, I haven't even gotten to that point.
I would say jumping ahead a little bit.
There are many norms in
any given community that are
bad norms and should be flouted.
There are others that are optional, right?
It's normative for women to paint their fingernails,
but it's optional, right?
So there are these things that
maybe is a general judgments of
better and worse in a community that you don't need to.
>> I've been thinking about your inability
to recognize a norm.
>> Right.
>> You can recognize some but you don't recognize others.
>> I like if you can recognize one.
You count as one of
these intrinsically valuable, self-owners.
>> Even if you go against it?
>> Yes, right. Even going against it, right?
>> If you don't even recognize it?
>> Right.
Yes. There is no probably you
No second person who would be kind of said-.
Well, somebody who has become comatose and will
never regain consciousness again,
will count as not a self owner on this.
Doesn't mean you can do whatever you want
to to anything that's not a self owner.
I'm not saying that, therefore,
we can cut down all the trees in the world
because they're not self owners. I don't wanna say that.
But I'm simply trying to make this claim that
anything that we're going to ground
moral or political philosophy on,
has to be something that can
recognize and guide itself according to norms.
Yes?
>> [inaudible] I think this is an example of that kind of thing.
It feels like the concept of the self owner,
you're saying that needs to be
practical for moral philosophy.
And therefore, it has to be grounded
in notion of participation.
And then participation has norms and norms great-
>> Right.
>> -connections, impulse, et cetera.
So, should I take away that this is not
a useful concept without the communities
or roughly or I should think of it-.
it's not even a well-defined concept to that conclusion.
>> Right, yes.
I think the idea that a self owner could
be separable from all other possible self owners,
like there could be one in
the history of the Big Bang happens,
then there's one self owner,
Robinson Crusoe let's call him,
he's out there and that's impossible.
That's metaphysically impossible,
because he could never have language,
he could never have norms to guide himself according to.
There's also the fact that well,
who's going to make claims against?
But that's not the point that I'm making.
>> Okay. >> Right? Yes. He might make
claims against this flying asteroid
that's going by or something. Yes?
>> [inaudible] You take a human being and now you take him
to another planet alone and he stays there.
Should he himself think of himself as a self owner?
>> Good. Yes. Yes. So, I
think that once you've acquired norms,
and you remember them,
and you think, crap I miss
my family but they would have wanted
me to go on or that's
already a normative way of guiding your actions.
So, you've internalized these norms.
I think we can internalize them,
and then you know be all alone in the world.
Now, if you then get hit by the asteroid and you
have amnesia and you remember no norms and no language,
you're longer a self owner.
Yes. So, the Robinson Crusoe story,
which is often brought up by libertarians as
an example of the ideal man, right?
Is to me, it's
loaded already with all of the norms that he was,
so didn't keep a diary and stuff.
He was very much trying to live like a proper Englishman,
that's a very normative framework to be living within.
Okay.
So, this normative web I think is constitutive of-.
Philosophers love to use that term.
-Constitutive of self-hood.
And this is just to reiterate the main points of
my central argument and that is to be a person,
is to be enmeshed in a web of social relations.
The normative web that we are enmeshed in is
this emergent normative framework that
we collectively create through
our individual behavior and social interactions.
Right? But our individual behavior then creates norms,
nobody set out to- Probably to- I don't know.
Create some silly norm that there
exists today in fashion or something
that somebody tried something
out and all of a sudden other people
started copying it and pretty soon became
a normative way of
dressing or acting or something like that.
To use a Heideggerian phrase,
which I rarely will do but this is my favorite one.
Social institutions are always already there.
Okay? So we're dropped into as individuals.
In fact, were sort of dropped into
this normative world that we find,
and that shapes us inevitably. Yes?
>> Is there any reason why the web is your metaphor,
like spider web as [inaudible] to some other kind of structure?
>> There's a kind of an illusion to
something that Willard Van Orman Quine wrote but,
I don't know. Maybe that's it.
The web of relations.
I'm not sure how much I've loaded into that,
except that I think that,
you have to think of physical individuals
as nodes in a network
or a web and that that's a significant.
So both the connections and the nodes are important.
So, I don't know.
That's probably not a very good answer.
I thought it was cool. The picture was cool.
>> [inaudible] biological or some other kind of connective-.
>> Yes. There will be connective tissue.
Network is the other other metaphor.
So, my conclusion the normative web including
linguistic norms that connect
individuals who are capable of moral personhood.
And without which, there could be no moral persons,
it has to be itself intrinsically valuable.
So, it's not just the individuals
but all of our connectedness.
So, this is a relational accounts
or our relations with each other are
also intrinsically valuable not
just the individual node. Yes?
>> I don't know, maybe somebody ask something like that.
Does it count if you have a relationship with let's say,
with the environment with nature.
I'm thinking about indigenous community
and their sense of society.
So, I am kind of such person if a relate with the tree.
For me a tree is a living being that determine my norms.
Because it's influencing my behavior.
So that the individual can be something thus,
not human. You know what I mean?
>> So, the thing is,
a tree can't be a self-owner on my view.
Okay? Doesn't mean that the tree is invaluable.
But on my view,
it would have to be instrumentally valuable.
And so, I would have to have a long conversation to
figure out a way in which I would be able to
see the tree as intrinsically valuable,
in the way that self owners are.
>> The man or the woman that interact
just with the tree that say other people don't exist,
intrinsically valuable or not?
>> No, because it can't be self owner.
Right? Now I could imagine,
that suppose there's one human
being ever and there's also
one other sentient being that can
also form intentions where
they could interact in some way.
I could imagine that they could
develop a kind of language between
them and eventually both become self owners,
that seems imaginable to me,
like higher-order primates or whales or dolphins.
So, I think there are probably-.
I'm not enough of a biologist to know which things are.
I'm pretty sure trees can't be because they can't
form intentions or beliefs or desires. Yes?
>> I'm really curious because I feel
like in my questions,
I'm hearing some of the other ones.
I'm hearing an exercise where we're all
looking to try to like change your presumption.
In fact, I think most people in
this room have a kind of like
connected theory of illness whether
it's kind of like
a social constructionist on the sociological side-
>> Right.
>> -we're studying webs of people and
recognize the influence of [inaudible] k. So,
I'm trying to see if you're
arguing at someone who is like No,
they are atomistic individuals,
people are billiard balls, they're bumping each other,
and they are otherwise alone,
and it's those people you're challenging or you saying,
despite the fact that we're actually
connected and we all know that,
there's a convenient fiction
that's been there that we kind of lean on.
>> Right.
>> You're trying to just like take fiction.
>> Right, yes.
>> Okay. That's great. Then, one questions is like,
maybe it's a fiction and it is
a convenient fiction and it helps us organize things,
and we could say it's pragmatic fiction or we can say
maybe there would be a better fiction that
would better understand this.
But it makes sense
to me that there's a world where I both recognize
that I am deeply tethered to
people through social relations in
language but I still have way to like have contracts,
and that contracts relies on like,
I'm me, you're you.
I have stuff. I can give you stuff. That's your stuff.
>> Great. Yes. Right. So, that's exactly-.
>> We don't have to be like. No, I believe in atomistic
individuals, should actually get to like, is this
a foolish fiction for us to keep on sticking with?
>> Yes. Yes. That's exactly
the point that I want to get to.
So, the response is often that,
well, this is just an idealization,
this atomistic individual, just
like idealizations in physics,
in economics, whatever, right?
And my response to that is to say,
the value of an ideal In that sense,
depends on its use, right?
What does the theory give you?
That you get out of making that idealization.
Well, in political philosophy,
it gives you libetarianisim.
So, it gives you a theory that says you have
no necessary obligations to
others that you don't voluntary contract for, okay?
I think that's a real problem.
I think that's a problem for the world.
I think that we actually owe each
other some things by virtue
of what we are given without ever
asking or accepting voluntarily,
those things, that we inevitably have so much,
that we owe it,
to the pay it forward or pay it back one or the other.
We have an obligation to do that.
And so, the libertarian ideal
that you actually should have,
the tax list state
except for defense something like that,
is a mistake and it comes
about as a result of this ideal, idealization.
So, I judge the value of an ideal based on what you
get out of it and I think you
get something not so good out of it.
So, it's question begging to say,
you know this, oh but it's just
an ideal but it gives me this bad outcomes.
So let's examine the ideal. The ideals of fiction.
Here's the way in which it's a fiction.
What would this give us?
Alright? Well, I'm going to pass on by this one
because that was just to say there are lots of
different causal origins of different but
let's move on to Autonomy as ideal.
So, if we are
the self owners what is an ideal way to be a self owner.
Well traditionally,
autonomy has been a value
in moral and political philosophy
for lots of reasons I could talk about later but it's
the basic idea of people as self governors.
So, it's an ideal of freedom.
Right? I get to
set my own beliefs and desires and so forth,
and nobody forces them upon me.
Autonomy as long been thought of as
a kind of individualistic notion.
But more recently, and I'm talking
about 20 years now or something
of political and moral philosophy,
a notion of relational autonomy has
been developed and particularly by feminists.
And so, that's the ideal of autonomy that would go
together with this connected self ideal, alright?
So, one of these,
that's particularly appealing to me is
the idea that an autonomous person is
one who has the ability
to participate in a collective self-government.
So is not only a taker of norms but also a giver.
So, can give and take,
argue about debate, disagree,
agree, whatever about the norm.
So, on my view,
the connected self could not be
a lone originator of norms,
alright? Got to be others.
But autonomous connected selves are both
contributors to and participants
in the making and giving of normative guidance.
Now, we get a little bit of pay off.
There's not very much, because
I don't have a lot of time.
But a little bit of payoff is, well,
the web of connection society, community, networks,
ought to allow each node within to become
such a reciprocal participant giver and taker of
norms in order to
promote this kind of relational autonomy.
So, we could now judge
communities as oppressive or as autonomy enhancing.
So those would be two opposites,
depending on whether they enhance
people's ability to be
full participants in this norm creation,
or whether for some people
merely be takers and
the others get to be both givers and takers.
Okay?
So, this is just the basic difference between
the atomistic self-owners and the connected.
I am going to pass out and by too
because that's basically [inaudible].
So, what are these
autonomy enhancing communities or networks?
Well, they're the ones that encourage reciprocity.
And one way of doing that is by
encouraging or having norms of dignity and equality.
Because if everybody has dignity and equality,
they're authorized by the normative framework itself
to be givers as well as takers of norms.
So, now I'm getting a little bit of
political payoff here to this.
And morally speaking, connected selves,
good connected selves, moral ones,
nourish autonomy in each other
by teaching and encouraging autonomous capacities,
that is capacities to debate civilly
or without violence and
to talk about norms with each other,
which, of course, we do all the time.
This is what much of our conversation is about.
It's about normative facts.
And by discouraging violence and
other emotionally or socially
or psychologically damaging practices,
which disable us from being
these full participants in
the reciprocity of norm giving and taking.
And so, basically, this is a basic principle I
think and that is networks or communities
that are not autonomy enhancing,
have no right to exist as such,
and persons have moral obligations to reform
those or to help those who are
oppressed by them to find
autonomy enhancing networks in which two exist.
So, now we can talk a little bit
about online communities and,
the sort of reciprocity that should be enabled by them.
So, just like communities in the material world,
online communities can be either
oppressive or autonomy enhancing.
So, if there are norms of
bullying and shutting people down and so forth,
those are obviously non-autonomy enhancing.
There are some networks,
some online sharing spaces
that provide the ability to have full conversations
without flaming and that sort of thing but allow for
continuing threaded discussions in ways that
are more productive or to say.
And obviously, spreading false news is one way
of psychologically damaging people.
And then just for privacy rights,
I think we have a duty not to harm others,
that's not autonomy-enhancing after all.
And norms of trolling behavior or creating
false news that gaslights persons
or making defamatory false claims
about people and those kinds of things,
those are kinds of privacy violations
and some of them, they cause harm.
We have a duty I think to
avoid doing things like harvesting personal data
without permission or passing on
data that's been legitimately collected in
one way but using in ways
that then lead to these kinds of harms or
that can lead to non-autonomy enhancing networks.
Right? And so, I would say we
can derive the idea that software developers have
a duty to avoid having their products be
used in such a way that they harvest
personal data without permission or
pass on data that's been legitimately
collected in various ways. Yes?
>> What do you think about different cultures having
different normative webs, for example,
the United States and
the European Union having different ideals about
self-control and autonomy and that we're
seeing in exact this issue?
>> Right.
>> Now Facebook is just like, well,
we're not quite gonna give North Americans
the same kind of privacy protection as we give Europeans.
>> No. That's just because they want to abide
by the minimal laws rather than-.
>> Right. They want to abide by minimal laws?
Is that the case where,
from your perspective, you can say, well,
Facebook is infringing on
the autonomy of Americans and Canadians.
They're wrong or that's not more moral way behave or is
there an argument that could be legitimately made but
instead we're abiding by the norms of our community,
which is the American community and why should
we be cultured by the norms of another communities?
>> Good. So, what my theory allows us to do
is to judge entire normative frameworks.
Right? So, what we could say is that
it turns out the North American normative framework,
legal framework is not the best normative framework.
The EU has a better one, right?
I mean, you could make it in
terms of this autonomy enhancement,
and the likelihood of creating the False-light,
false news and harvesting personal data.
I didn't say much about why that's
so bad violations of privacy,
but I could talk some more about that.
So, this I think is
a framework that gives us
exactly the kind of ammunition we
need to argue that the whole framework of
the legal structure is inadequate at this point.
Right? Not that legal structures are the only ways
of creating normative frameworks
but they're pretty important and it seems like,
if we have a sharp disagreements like
Facebook on one side and others on the other,
we're going to have to adjudicate that in
a way probably that uses a certain amount of
coercion and legal forces probably
what's required. Yes Bill?
>> I have a question ma'am. I like the [inaudible] the language as
a basics for connectiveness.
I stressed about kind of [inaudible] multiple languages though.
So, if I'm going to [inaudible] immigrated to
a place where my government or
my tax code doesn't speak my language,
Am I still connected to them or if
I'm in the indigenous community
inside a bigger country
that doesn't recognize or connect my language,
does that mean that I have any obligation
to participate or respect their norms or is not?
Do you consider people to be
connected if they speak different languages
that are connected to ancestors or have-.
>> People will inevitably become
connected when they meet each other,
I mean they're going to find ways
of communicating even if
it's not through knowing exactly the
language of each other.
So, I use the language maybe in a little bit
of a minimal sense.
But what I would
say that a community that say takes in another community,
refugee community, say of
people who don't speak the same language,
is not going to be very autonomy-enhancing
if it doesn't help
those individuals to communicate with
the rest of the community.
But I should also say that I think lots of
autonomy-enhancing normative frameworks and so,
you could have two different communities that have
very different norms, well,
especially aesthetic norms, etiquette norms,
moral norms, still there
could be some differences in moral norms I think.
That could both be autonomy-enhancing and yet,
not exactly the same.
Okay? So, when they come into conflict,
probably some respect norms that need to come into
play in order to enhance the autonomy of both.
But I do think that
individuals need to have the right to abandon one set
of norms and go to another community
if their autonomy is not
enhanced within a particular community.
So, once a self-owner,
always a self-owner, sort of.
So, you don't have to speak the language that you're
dropped into a new country
and you don't speak their language,
you're still a self-owner.
But you're going to have to probably to be
an autonomous self-owner within this new community,
you're going to have to learn some of
their language in order to be
able to participate. Yes?
>> So,
continuing this questioning of normative frameworks,
it seems we're still trapped
a little bit in
this libertarian framework because
emphasis on privacy rights.
I think this pervades
a lot of current policies of course,
if we just can't protect
our privacy or if we are able to own our own data.
So, there's still this adoption
of a kind of individualistic framework,
and I'm just wondering if we can broad in the social
imaginary and think about the trend
of not just individuals,
but social rights, collective rights.
Is that deserve a vocabulary we can move from?
>> Well, one thing is I think it's important,
I don't know, if this gets there,
but it's really important to see why
publicity is so important to us as well as privacy.
So, that's a value because without publicity,
our ability to make public to
each other what we think and what we believe,
we don't have a normative web.
So, publicity is very valuable as is privacy,
and I think privacy is valuable because, again,
each of us is a node,
each of us does suffer an individual fate,
if you will, and can be individually picked
out for abuse or something like that.
So, what I think the connected self-ownership ideal
helps us to see is how important it is to
balance the needs of publicity and the needs of privacy.
But maybe you're right, maybe that's still doesn't
get beyond the individualism.
As I said, I am ultimately a liberal just not
a libertarian and normative individualism
is something I embrace.
So, maybe I can get
totally over to the communitarian side.
So, let's see. Yes.
>> So, as much as I like this idea of,
this connecting to self-owner,
I'm seeing several problems if you try
to put it out there as a strategy on the Internet.
So, one is that a lot of these terms you're using,
which I, again, that I love,
like normative web and social relations and all this,
a libertarian is just not going to
listen to any of those concepts.
Secondly, one thing that we've learned about
libertarians or similar behavior,
especially in the last lecture, if I recall,
from sociologists, is that
their notion of group is very different from what,
say, me as a sociologist would consider a group.
So, like Ally showed us had this book
on Tea Party Movement.
The way that this group thinks
about who's their inner circle is very different.
It's not everybody's, it's not the entire web,
and there are various groups on the web.
It's their immediate circle.
That's the care group that they would
care about in a quorum forum.
So, how would you make
them think about the web is normally
web is this larger community.
Third, who's the subject that we're
really talking about here?
So, we have all these individuals that are on the web
and many of them are thinking,
"I have libertarian rights, I can do what I want.
I can hate speech,
I can do, this is sort of my right."
But it's not just individuals now we know.
The difficulty thing is that the trolling and
the false news is now
being conducted by one, bots, right?
>> Right.
>> You know, we can't really talk to.
Number two, by this Cambridge Analytica and Russian,
what do you call them?
The trolling organizations and such.
So, it's these elicit organizations
and it's these tech designers,
and now it's like Zuckerberg who is, himself,
like aligned with these groups
who are doing these things.
So, this idea that there's a single sort of
libertarian person that we
have to convince, it's so difficult.
>> Yeah. So, philosophy
is pretty impotent, there's no doubt about it.
That is, what I can say is you libertarian,
you have the wrong metaphysics itself.
That's not very powerful in
the world of coercive agents who
are willing to use force to get what they want. I agree.
But those who say, "Well,
but I've got these rights and I-" That's actually no,
if that is supposed to have some moral grounding,
or some rational grounding,
turns out you're wrong.
But if you want to coerce me, well,
I'm going to have to bring force against
your force, that's true.
So, philosophy is ultimately impotent
against people who are willing to
use force against others.
As for the bots though,
they're created by actual human beings and I'm saying,
no, you have a duty not to create these things.
Having a duty,
I am going to shun you if you
don't stop creating those bots.
That's not a very powerful position
in the world of bad people.
But in the world of those who are saying the right to,
say, free speech regardless of
the consequences for the community, well, no.
Actually, I'm going to argue that you don't have
this kind of right that's completely unbounded.
Yeah, so it depends on the amount of
force that your opponent's willing to apply. Yeah.
>> I'm interested in
the ownership concept and the foundation of it.
I can see why it's a very powerful anchor or grounding,
but if there are
elements implicit in
ownership concept dissociation with possession,
with control, with domination.
That sort of pull against
what you're trying to do on a connective side,
and if there were other groundings or metaphors,
if we consider to do this foundational working.
>> Yeah. So, maybe too much disclosure.
I was assigned to
do some kind of critique of libertarianism.
So I took up the self-ownership idea,
and then I said, "Oh,
there might be a different way of thinking about it."
But then the question is why
preserve the idea of self-ownership?
I can think of five reasons.
So, it retains this idea of claim.
So, ownership brings with it claim.
It preserves the idea that there is
this node in the self
that is of primary moral importance,
the individualism,
the normative individualism I think comes with it.
But it also, because it's connected self-ownership,
it suggests that the creation of
selves is a collective endeavor.
I think the ownership metaphor brings some good things,
but I agree, there are some bad things too.
But it's just investment,
and that we're still paying forward
that's what investment is.
That we have an obligation to
invest ourselves in the project of
this norm creation in order to be
really autonomous, fully fulfilled beings.
Then finally, it's traditional liberal way.
So, going back really,
you can trace it back to at least the 15th century,
a traditional way of thinking about it.
Also we have a compliment to somebody is to say,
"Oh, you're very self possessed."
That's a kind of confidence and so forth
that is supposedly admirable.
So, there are some good aspects to it,
but I admit it might come up with
so much baggage that it's not a good idea. Yes.
>> I wonder if played with the idea of agency.
I can see all the arguments there and that makes sense.
But within philosophy, is there room to make
agency the shadow that's connective and
still allows for sense self-determination
but the self can be
indefinite or open-ended in
a more, in an indigenous approach?
>> Yeah, absolutely. The idea of agency doesn't
necessarily come with this idea of a claim,
a self-possession claim, but certainly
agencies always a very important concept
for philosophers. So, yeah.
>> I think that we're-
>> We're a little over.
>> We are past time.
There are supposed to be snacks we can
mingle and chat some more. Thank you so much.
>> Thank you so much. Okay.
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