Hey, the Stanford-Binet IQ test does its job and there's nothing wrong with it.
It's all these morons wanting to use it for stuff other than it's job, which is children in the schooling system, and generalise it to everybody else.
People who don't understand the test, in other words, but just want to be given an excuse to categorize people.
Let's not blame the wrong things here ok. It's just a tool, you need to carefully design it, but the tool itself is blameless. I don't blame my fork when I can't dig a trench with it.
I understand that, I was merely saying that I think tests nowadays are rarely capable of carrying out an analysis on the criterion they're aiming for.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Hey, the Stanford-Binet IQ test does its job and there's nothing wrong with it.
It's all these morons wanting to use it for stuff other than it's job, which is children in the schooling system, and generalise it to everybody else.
People who don't understand the test, in other words, but just want to be given an excuse to categorize people.
Let's not blame the wrong things here ok. It's just a tool, you need to carefully design it, but the tool itself is blameless. I don't blame my fork when I can't dig a trench with it.
I understand that, I was merely saying that I think tests nowadays are rarely capable of carrying out an analysis on the criterion they're aiming for.
Which test are you talking about though? I mean off the top of my head there's about six or seven major theories I have to learn right now.
If you are talking about Standford-Binet's IQ then yeah sure I completely agree! It should only be used for children in education and any attempt to classify people using it should be regarded as raving bonkers.
If you mean all tests in general then this is enough grounds for a full on academic discussion thread which if you make I will gladly participate in, because I think you are wrong.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
That's a very new and fresh idea you got there. If implement it will might take a lot of time to do the process and research. The basic requirement that we have rite now is that somebody must be sane to vote.
I have to say, I agree with the statement that everyone has a right to vote. Whether people vote for stupid reasons is still the will of the populace. Of course I suppose then we're getting into self-determination and such - if enough people dislike the state of the country etc etc.
For the voting viability test, candidates are presented with a peanut butter sandwhich and a piece of chocolate cake. The cake has been attached to a battery and will mildly shock the test subject when they touch the cake. If after the first shock the test subject continues to attempt to grasp the cake they shall be disqualified from voting.
With my system in place Bush wouldn't have got a second term.
I like this idea.
I think this idea would effectively have eliminated most of the people who are responsible for our crappy government.
The cake is trickle-down economics.
I'm ashamed of you, ELM. Are you saying scientifically minded people are responsible for our crappy government?
Hey, the Stanford-Binet IQ test does its job and there's nothing wrong with it.
It's all these morons wanting to use it for stuff other than it's job, which is children in the schooling system, and generalise it to everybody else.
People who don't understand the test, in other words, but just want to be given an excuse to categorize people.
Let's not blame the wrong things here ok. It's just a tool, you need to carefully design it, but the tool itself is blameless. I don't blame my fork when I can't dig a trench with it.
I understand that, I was merely saying that I think tests nowadays are rarely capable of carrying out an analysis on the criterion they're aiming for.
Which test are you talking about though? I mean off the top of my head there's about six or seven major theories I have to learn right now.
If you are talking about Standford-Binet's IQ then yeah sure I completely agree! It should only be used for children in education and any attempt to classify people using it should be regarded as raving bonkers.
If you mean all tests in general then this is enough grounds for a full on academic discussion thread which if you make I will gladly participate in, because I think you are wrong.
I can't make threads... also, I think University tests do what they should, but I don't think that end of Highschool tests are anything like what they should be. Academic tests like SAT's (in the U.K at least) seem to be pretty useless, and the AS and A-level system in the UK is a joke, and there's no way you could convince me otherwise.
The fact that we don't have standardised medical tests is something I find is poor though if you'd like to discuss that? I think we agree on the other stuff though, and as I have no experience of any other countries educational system I can't really give an opinion on them.
Democracy used to have a very effective test for intelligence.
It was the requirement to own property. So only the smart and go-get 'em types would be able to determine the fate of the nation.
Land in America has never been a sign of being a go-get 'em type. How many states did they just, literally, give it out for free? For most of US history, the only reason not to be a landowner is because you didn't want to be, even into the 20th century there were places you could go, fill out some paperwork, and become the new owner of some undeveloped land without paying a dime. Free land was how they moved people west so quickly, they were just kinda piling up east of the Mississippi. Even now, the only requirement is to have a reasonable income and credit history, and before the last few months that was only a requirement to remain a landowner, not to become one.
You should read the Second Treatise on Government and Federalist No. 17. The US was founded as a liberal constitutional republic, which is committed at its philosophical base to property ownership as being a necessary requirement for citizenship. When Madison talks about the "tyranny of the majority" he's referring to small freeholders having potentially more influence than the owners of larger estates; he definitely wasn't referring to non-property owning groups. That wasn't even on the radar. And that bias is reflected in the political culture and institutions of the U.S. even today.
And of course they were perfectly good stewards of the people who did not own land.
Why it was a virtual Fairy Tale land, except that the Barons were called Missah
I was being facetious. My point is that limiting the franchise to property owning males is a perfect way to ensure "intelligence" or literacy, because these people will overwhelming be sure to have a damn fine education. As soon as you start extending the franchise to other socioeconomic classes, you start getting into trouble really fast, because the base level of education one can assume begins to drop dramatically.
For instance, it's really only been (in the US at least) since the 1950s and 1960s that working class (white) males have been able to go to University in any significant numbers. Same with women and many other ethnic minority groups, such as Natives (in Canada) and Blacks (in the US). Things have been improving, a bit, but what we've seen is definitely not an increase across the board in the quality of education of the populace, but instead a continued and sometimes dramatic disparity between those who possess enough money to afford to send their children to expensive (and as a result, better funded) schools and those who must rely on schools who aren't as expensive (but are almost sure to have issues of quality of materials available, as well as all of the problems of attracting talent that goes along with being located in a shithole).
The problem we have here is essentially an economic one, especially if we are talking about any measure of intelligence or literacy test as a requirement for citizenship or the franchise, as test scores are easily correlated to income levels. That needs to be addressed first and foremost before we can really talk about any sort of "intelligence" requirement for citizenship, or else we'll just be actively excluding blacks, women, and the poor while giving a disproportionate amount of voting influence to an already disproportionately powerful group: the white, rich (or middle class) males.
Yeah yeah, its Howard Stern but the amount of ignorant voters out there is staggering (and it goes both ways here, republican or democrat).
Man, how is that even possible? Even my borderline retarded high school acquaintances all know Palin is McCain's VP.
Would you listen or watch if they had scores of interviews with urban people who instantly spotted the trick questions? Would that be entertaining? No.
They most likely interviewed many, many people, and cherry picked the most ignorant ones.
I haven't watched the video but I could easily see being caught on a really bad day and saying something unbelievably stupid or having simple things slip my mind.
Democracy used to have a very effective test for intelligence.
It was the requirement to own property. So only the smart and go-get 'em types would be able to determine the fate of the nation.
Land in America has never been a sign of being a go-get 'em type. How many states did they just, literally, give it out for free? For most of US history, the only reason not to be a landowner is because you didn't want to be, even into the 20th century there were places you could go, fill out some paperwork, and become the new owner of some undeveloped land without paying a dime. Free land was how they moved people west so quickly, they were just kinda piling up east of the Mississippi. Even now, the only requirement is to have a reasonable income and credit history, and before the last few months that was only a requirement to remain a landowner, not to become one.
You should read the Second Treatise on Government and Federalist No. 17. The US was founded as a liberal constitutional republic, which is committed at its philosophical base to property ownership as being a necessary requirement for citizenship. When Madison talks about the "tyranny of the majority" he's referring to small freeholders having potentially more influence than the owners of larger estates; he definitely wasn't referring to non-property owning groups. That wasn't even on the radar. And that bias is reflected in the political culture and institutions of the U.S. even today.
I call bullshit and request a citation. Property was the tertiary foundation of government according to Locke. But even that was not land ownership. Locke argued for a fundamental ownership of self. Through this he justified property and ownership of land only through labor. This was a derived right, not a foundational right.
Sec. 27. Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.
The formation of just government presupposes the right and equality of man. That is the foundation, not land ownership.
Sec. 95. MEN being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent. The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security
against any, that are not of it.
Note again that property does not refer to land ownership but the co-mingling of labor and nature that man engages in to sustain himself.
Federalist 17 (which was written by Hamilton, not Madison) spoke of analogies of federalism, specifically feudalism which can be seen as an example when a strong central government was necessary. In this case the States were the nobility, not individual land owners.
Though the ancient feudal systems were not, strictly speaking, confederacies, yet they partook of the nature of that species of association. There was a common head, chieftain, or sovereign, whose authority extended over the whole nation; and a number of subordinate vassals, or feudatories, who had large portions of land allotted to them, and numerous trains of inferior vassals or retainers, who occupied and cultivated that land upon the tenure of fealty or obedience, to the persons of whom they held it. Each principal vassal was a kind of sovereign, within his particular demesnes. The consequences of this situation were a continual opposition to authority of the sovereign, and frequent wars between the great barons or chief feudatories themselves. The power of the head of the nation was commonly too weak, either to preserve the public peace, or to protect the people against the oppressions of their immediate lords. This period of European affairs is emphatically styled by historians, the times of feudal anarchy.
When the sovereign happened to be a man of vigorous and warlike temper and of superior abilities, he would acquire a personal weight and influence, which answered, for the time, the purpose of a more regular authority. But in general, the power of the barons triumphed over that of the prince; and in many instances his dominion was entirely thrown off, and the great fiefs were erected into independent principalities or States. In those instances in which the monarch finally prevailed over his vassals, his success was chiefly owing to the tyranny of those vassals over their dependents. The barons, or nobles, equally the enemies of the sovereign and the oppressors of the common people, were dreaded and detested by both; till mutual danger and mutual interest effected a union between them fatal to the power of the aristocracy. Had the nobles, by a conduct of clemency and justice, preserved the fidelity and devotion of their retainers and followers, the contests between them and the prince must almost always have ended in their favor, and in the abridgment or subversion of the royal authority.
Furthermore, as Hamilton was a Northern banker - the opposite of the Southern landowning aristocrat - claiming he was arguing for a polity that would so favor Southerners seems quite unlikely.
Furthermore, Madison never wrote of the "tyranny of the majority" that was John Stuart Mill nearly a century later. Madison did write Federalist 10
By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.
....
But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
edited November 2008
The question misses the point. The fundamental theory behind a democratic, representative government is that its power is derived from the will of the people. The source of all legitimate, moral force in our current system of government is based on the premise that all people are born with certain inalienable rights, and that voting is the primary fulcrum by which those rights are expressed within a collective government.
Read the U.S. Constitution and think about that again.
Any attempt to force people to conform to some standard of proof beyond citizenship is, in and of itself, an act which actively attempts to deprive them of their rights. End of discussion. It doesn't matter if it's a test of intelligence, a test of competence, a test of knowledge, a jumping test, a running test, or a pie-eating test. Any such test, at its core, places some form of judgment/standard by which someone must conform in order to express a fundamental right not only as a citizen, but as a person.
If you want to argue about what constitutes personhood, citizenship, or whether or not you agree with the theory behind this form of government is another debate altogether. But if you are asking the original question, "Should [insert random word here] Tests be required to vote?", the real answer is:
No tests allowed beyond this point. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
It's not about which test is good enough. It's about how democracy works.
Any test of mental acuity or knowledge is a blatant attempt to place an arbitrary standard on other people. Unless you can account not only for all languages, types of intelligence and forms of knowledge, but also all methods of expressing the aforementioned things (orally, written, Morse Code, binary, via typewriter, etc. etc. etc.), you need to step the fuck off when it comes to something as fundamental as voting. Even a question like, "Who is the Republican Party candidate for President?" comes with it a plethora of ethical and philosophical ramifications, not the least of which is, "Who the fuck decided that having to know a political party's candidate for an office that anyone can hold regardless of party affiliation should be important to expressing one of my fundamental rights as a human being?"
PS - I, too, have a B.A. in Philosophy. It's been completely worthless to me in my career thus far.
I call bullshit and request a citation. Property was the tertiary foundation of government according to Locke. But even that was not land ownership. Locke argued for a fundamental ownership of self. Through this he justified property and ownership of land only through labor. This was a derived right, not a foundational right.
Locke equivocates. At first, you are right, that by mixing one's hands with nature we create property, and there is that fundamental tie between labour and ownership. But if you continue on, Locke switches gears and ends up contradicting himself, asserting that those without property are deviant and wicked men, and there is a natural division between those with property and those without, regardless of questions of labour. And it is here that he proscribes the creation of a social contract, specifically to deal with the tension that invariably arises between those with property and those without.
Though the Earth, and all inferior creatues be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that Nature has provided, and left it in, he has mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, has by his labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men. For this labour being the questionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others.
Nor is it so strange, as perhaps before consideration it may appear, that the property of labour should be able to over-balance the community of land. For it is labour indeed that puts the difference of value on everything; and let any one consider, what the difference is between an acre of land planted with tobacco, or sugar, sown with wheat or barley; and an acre of the same land lying in common, without any husbandry upon it, and he will find, that the improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the value.
So far, so good, right?
But then we get into some more problematic places, things that don't really follow, like this:
If man in the state of Nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest and subject to nobody, why will he part with his freedom? Why will he give up this empire, a subject himself to the dominion and control of any other power? To which it is obvious to answer, that though in the state of Nature he has such a right, yet the enjoyment of it is very uncertain, and constantly exposed to the invasion of others. For all being kings as much as he, every man his equal, and the greater part no strict observers of equity and justice, the enjoyment of the property he has in this state is very unsafe, very insecure. This makes him willing to quit a condition, which however free, is full of fears and continual dangers: and it is not without reason, that he seeks out, and is willing to join in society with others who are already united, or have a mind to unite for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties, and estates, which I call by the general name, property.
The great and chief end therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property. To which in the state of Nature there are many wanting. First, there wants an established, settled, known law, received and allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong, and the common measure to decide all controversies between them. For though the law of Nature be plain and intelligible to all rational creatures; yet men being biased by their interest, as well as ignorant for want of study of it, are not apt to allow it as a law binding to them in the application of it to their particular cases.
For in the state of nature, to omit the liberty he has of
innocent delights, a man has two powers. The first is to do whatsoever he thinks fit for the preservation of
himself, and others within the permission of the law of nature: by which
law, common to them all, he and all the rest of mankind are one
community, make up one society, distinct from all other creatures. And
were it not for the corruption and viciousness of degenerate men, there
would be no need of any other; no necessity that men should separate from
this great and natural community, and by positive agreements combine into
smaller and divided associations.
The other power a man has in the state of nature, is the power to
punish the crimes committed against that law. Both these he gives up,
when he joins in a private, if I may so call it, or particular politic
society, and incorporates into any common-wealth, separate from the rest
of mankind.
Every man is born with a double right: first, a right of freedom to his person, which no other man has a power over, but the free disposal of it lies in himself. Secondly, a right, before any other man, to inherit, with his brethren, his father's goods.
The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they choose and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power, and moderate the dominion of every part and member of the society. ...
There's a number of uncomfortable moments in all of these excerpts, but the more important points are that Locke feels that the only reason politics was ever invented and men formed polities was due to the inherent limitations of property ownership in the state of nature (the pre-political world). Indeed, property is an absolutely necessity for there to be politics, and it is the primary function of the state to protect the property of its constituents from corrupt and degenerate men, who a) lack reason, and b) lack property.
And as you can see, labour being the foundation of property ownership quickly goes out the window, although he notes earlier in the work that if some land is being used unproductively, it may be possible to usurp it from the unproductive owner; but he's careful to restrict this only to other property owners, using Cain and Abel as examples (both, in his reading, being property owners themselves).
Non-property owners have no place in the commonwealth or polity, and are really only the negative impetus for the creation of the state in the first place.
Yeah, I'm not American, I've read the Federalist Papers once, and I've never really studied them. You can ignore my comments about the Federalist Papers if you'd like, it was my lame attempt to make my point more relevant to all the Americans in this thread.
Your counter-evidence fits Pants's read of Locke perfectly. It's also a bit odd that you seem convinced that the only way people would feel compelled to take property away from others is if they have none, as opposed to simply wanting more. Beyond that if only property-owners can vote they can arrange to maintain a government made up exclusively of people who will see to it that non-property-owners don't ever join their ranks. Which would eliminate the whole "pursuit of happiness" bit, the natural right to work to improve your station or if you want to sacrifice some station while still retaining your humanity.
Beyond that if only property-owners can vote they can arrange to maintain a government made up exclusively of people who will see to it that non-property-owners don't ever join their ranks.
It would seem that we already have this, despite everyone being able to vote. I blame television.
Beyond that if only property-owners can vote they can arrange to maintain a government made up exclusively of people who will see to it that non-property-owners don't ever join their ranks.
It would seem that we already have this, despite everyone being able to vote. I blame television.
Your counter-evidence fits Pants's read of Locke perfectly.
You are going to have to show me, then, because I don't see that.
It's also a bit odd that you seem convinced that the only way people would feel compelled to take property away from others is if they have none, as opposed to simply wanting more.
I didn't say that. In fact, I noted that earlier Locke explicitly mentions this possibility, but only in the circumstance when there is property which is being used unproductively.
Your counter-evidence fits Pants's read of Locke perfectly.
You are going to have to show me, then, because I don't see that.
It's also a bit odd that you seem convinced that the only way people would feel compelled to take property away from others is if they have none, as opposed to simply wanting more.
I didn't say that. In fact, I noted that earlier Locke explicitly mentions this possibility, but only in the circumstance when there is property which is being used unproductively.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that greed goes away when a person has acquired "enough", but the nature of greed is that there is no such thing as "enough". No matter how much property you have, you could always have more until you own everything.
As to the first part, if you can't see it you're willfully looking away from it and I can't make you see something you refuse to see. I don't have mind-control powers.
As to the first part, if you can't see it you're willfully looking away from it and I can't make you see something you refuse to see. I don't have mind-control powers.
If you can't back up your claim that my reading is incorrect while PantsB's is, then you shouldn't be making the claim in the first place. Calling me stupid when I ask you to actually explain your argument with something more substantial than a one liner is not really constructive.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that greed goes away when a person has acquired "enough", but the nature of greed is that there is no such thing as "enough". No matter how much property you have, you could always have more until you own everything.
Where the hell did I ever say that? My point, since the very beginning, is that the political institutions of the United States are conceived based upon the principles laid out by Locke in the Second Treatise on Government, and that these principles are predicated on the notion that way in which a polity is formed is through cooperation between property owners. The resulting polity has one overriding mandate: to protect the property of its members (the property owners) from those who would seek to acquire or dismember this property - usually the propertyless.
The resulting political institutions in the U.S. have therefore inherited these notions of wealth and property being central to the state and its function, with the result that the democracy and power structures at play are simply unsuited for a citizenry which is not exclusive to male property owners. So when we look at other socioeconomic groups, we can see that there are fundamental, structural limitations regarding what sort of impact these groups can have on the wider political culture and institutions.
Which leads us to question why, exactly, we would want to re-institute some kind of test that naturally favours male property owners, when what we really should be doing is looking long and hard at the way the political institutions and the ideas upon which they are built are conceived.
You provide exactly one reason why someone might seek to take the property of others, and your read of Locke relies on it being the only one. Philosophers primarily deal with the abstract. Concepts, ideas, thought-experiments, etc. That's why when Jefferson et al borrowed from Locke adjustments were made, because philosophy has to be tempered with practicality to turn idealized concepts and ideas into a blueprint for a functional system. Based on doesn't mean equal to. For an illustration you can grasp see Cool Runnings (based on a true story). Philosophy requires assuming a great many controls in order to examine the workings of concepts. You need to get them isolated so that you can analyze them without "noise" from the infinite other concepts always at play in the workings of the real world.
I wanted to give you an opportunity to clarify the truth or falsity of my sense that you were assuming Locke's writings to be identical to the actual framework of American government, and now that you have I can point to that as where your musings in defense of restricting access to power to those who already have it are inconsistent with the actual design of things. The decision to use the phrasing "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" instead of the original "life, liberty and property" is not an accident. Pursuit of happiness is an umbrella category under which property falls, among many other concepts. If property is required in order for a person to have a say, then the native right of people to pursue happiness is violated. This provides justification for removal of property-requirements for voting.
The system is flawed because it is real, not a thought-experiment, but it is designed to try to circumvent exactly the limitations you identify as fundamental to its structure. Locke didn't write any of the documents that outline the structure of our system. He wrote a bunch of things that influenced the writing of the writers of those documents, but those writers weren't Locke and they didn't actually just copy-paste his work to come up with what we have. Despite how popular it is for people who hate the U.S. to claim otherwise.
And I never said anyone's read of Locke was incorrect, just that everything you cited jives just fine with PantsB's read. It's philosophy, there are an infinite number of possible "correct" reads. That's why our system created a branch of government whose entire function is to decide which reads of our blueprint-documents we will accept. I also never called you stupid, reading that from my posts requires you to input a bunch of extra stuff of your own invention that I didn't include. From what I wrote you can only really say I'm calling you stubborn.
Didn't you just quote right there a statement saying that when Locke says "property" he means "lives, liberties, and estates" which includes a whole lot of things that are not land?
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
You provide exactly one reason why someone might seek to take the property of others
I didn't realize that I needed to create an exhaustive list. Greed is one, as you mentioned, but so is the simple fact that the number of people increases while the land doesn't. At some point, we are going to run into a situation where there are a certain number of property owners and there are a number of those who don't own property, and it's at that point that there are going to be some problems. Which is where Locke takes his cue; he doesn't, and I don't, dismiss the possibility of there being conflict in the state of nature for other reasons, but that the conflict between property owners and non-property owners is substantial enough to justify the creation of a polity.
and your read of Locke relies on it being the only one.
It definitely does not.
Philosophers primarily deal with the abstract. Concepts, ideas, thought-experiments, etc. That's why when Jefferson et al borrowed from Locke adjustments were made, because philosophy has to be tempered with practicality to turn idealized concepts and ideas into a blueprint for a functional system. Based on doesn't mean equal to. For an illustration you can grasp see Cool Runnings (based on a true story). Philosophy requires assuming a great many controls in order to examine the workings of concepts. You need to get them isolated so that you can analyze them without "noise" from the infinite other concepts always at play in the workings of the real world.
Your view of philosophy is impoverished, to say the least. I am just going to say that we don't need to turn this thread into a discussion of philosophical pragmatism vs. idealism (in whatever form), and that it is unhelpful for you to attempt to make such arguments.
I wanted to give you an opportunity to clarify the truth or falsity of my sense that you were assuming Locke's writings to be identical to the actual framework of American government
Where did I say that Locke's writings were identical to the actual framework of the American government? From my recollection, I merely asserted that Locke provided the philosophical basis for the American government, not the actual constitutional framework. I can say categorically that I do not think that Locke wrote the American constitution.
The decision to use the phrasing "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" instead of the original "life, liberty and property" is not an accident. Pursuit of happiness is an umbrella category under which property falls, among many other concepts.
If property is required in order for a person to have a say, then the native right of people to pursue happiness is violated. This provides justification for removal of property-requirements for voting.
It may provide justification, but even though a certain phrase may have been used in your constitution or declaration of independence, that does not change or override the historical realities of how the American government is, and continues to be setup and run.
The American system was originally conceived and created by property owners. These property owners shared a particular view of the nature of the polity in relation to property. The institutions created by these property owners were modeled on the view of the polity put forward by Locke, and as a result, reflect the shortcomings of his position.
Namely the exclusion of non-property owners from positions of political power and influence.
Now, this has certainly be changed and tempered over time, no one is going to argue with that. Institutions and political cultures naturally change and evolved over time. However, there are still many things which remain unchanged, and which have, in fact, become more entrenched and resist to change - that is where I take issue. With the things which haven't changed to reflect the sorts of outcomes the political culture is interested in, like the actual enfranchisement of all adults, regardless of ethnic origin, language, sexual orientation, or wealth.
To ignore the very real obstacles posed by these unchanged institutions and constitutional arrangements is to open yourself up for all sorts of problems, many of which are evidenced in this thread.
Despite how popular it is for people who hate the U.S. to claim otherwise.
I don't hate the U.S., and I don't think it should be heresy for a person to question the basic constitutional arrangement of one's country, especially if it was setup on unequal terms. Your constitution is not sacrosanct; it's not special or unique - it may be notable historically, and that's cool, but that notability shouldn't prevent you from changing it for the better.
And I never said anyone's read of Locke was incorrect, just that everything you cited jives just fine with PantsB's read. It's philosophy, there are an infinite number of possible "correct" reads.
It sounds like you are dangerously close to asserting that whatever subjective interpretation a person may possess is just as correct as any other, and that it is impossible for us to determine otherwise. I would strongly disagree, and recommend you create another thread if you want to have that discussion.
That's why our system created a branch of government whose entire function is to decide which reads of our blueprint-documents we will accept
No, judicial review exists to ensure that the law is applied equally according to the constitution. This is true for most countries where judicial review exists, such as Canada. It has very little to do with philosophy, unless you are talking about the principles upon which judicial review is based. In which case, that's another discussion entirely.
I also never called you stupid, reading that from my posts requires you to input a bunch of extra stuff of your own invention that I didn't include.
No, you didn't write the word "stupid," but you didn't hesitate to imply that I was somehow impaired by not recognizing the correctness of your one liner, and simply acquiescing to your superior argument. It felt inflammatory and insulting.
Didn't you just quote right there a statement saying that when Locke says "property" he means "lives, liberties, and estates" which includes a whole lot of things that are not land?
Hey, the Stanford-Binet IQ test does its job and there's nothing wrong with it.
It's all these morons wanting to use it for stuff other than it's job, which is children in the schooling system, and generalise it to everybody else.
People who don't understand the test, in other words, but just want to be given an excuse to categorize people.
Let's not blame the wrong things here ok. It's just a tool, you need to carefully design it, but the tool itself is blameless. I don't blame my fork when I can't dig a trench with it.
I understand that, I was merely saying that I think tests nowadays are rarely capable of carrying out an analysis on the criterion they're aiming for.
Which test are you talking about though? I mean off the top of my head there's about six or seven major theories I have to learn right now.
If you are talking about Standford-Binet's IQ then yeah sure I completely agree! It should only be used for children in education and any attempt to classify people using it should be regarded as raving bonkers.
If you mean all tests in general then this is enough grounds for a full on academic discussion thread which if you make I will gladly participate in, because I think you are wrong.
I can't make threads... also, I think University tests do what they should, but I don't think that end of Highschool tests are anything like what they should be. Academic tests like SAT's (in the U.K at least) seem to be pretty useless, and the AS and A-level system in the UK is a joke, and there's no way you could convince me otherwise.
The fact that we don't have standardised medical tests is something I find is poor though if you'd like to discuss that? I think we agree on the other stuff though, and as I have no experience of any other countries educational system I can't really give an opinion on them.
I think you have confused intelligence tests with every concievable test under the sun mate. I have no idea what you are talking about with the academic testing, that's not what I've learned. (Other than how to pass them! )
As for medical testing, again what are you talking about? Psychometric testing? The kinds of tests they use in psychology or the kinds of tests they use in medicine and psychiatry? I'm only interested in talking about intelligence and psychometric testing I'm afraid, I don't have the time or the knowledge to discuss the tests used in other fields.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
So does it get you ten kinds of pissed off when Mensa determines membership by IQ? I know it pisses me off on their site when they say "IQ score" as if that phrase isn't redundant.
Okay, nobody here is questioning the tests themselves, so I'm going to do it.
The person who invented the traditional IQ test invented it to test children in the education system of the time in order to determine who could benefit from better education.
To Binet, his test was a measure of what was being taught to the children only, and in no way a measure of general intelligence. He specifically said the measure is not to be taken as a measure of general intelligence and should not be used to judge or otherwise mark people as innately incapable.
You're pretty off on this. Yes, Stanford-Binet was originally used to test mental retardation in French children. However, modern Stanford-Binet (I believe it is S-B 5 now) is designed for use with any person, not just French schoolchildren who might be retarded. So, that's complete bullshit. S-B 5 can be used accurately to guage IQs of.. ANNNYYYYOOONNNEEEE.
Secondly, Stanford-Binet is far from the only game in town. WAIS is also a very popular IQ test which is very good at measuring IQ of a general population, though there is WISC if you want to specifically test children.
So does it get you ten kinds of pissed off when Mensa determines membership by IQ? I know it pisses me off on their site when they say "IQ score" as if that phrase isn't redundant.
That you think that phrase is redundant might be a sign that you shouldn't be applying for Mensa.
Didn't you just quote right there a statement saying that when Locke says "property" he means "lives, liberties, and estates" which includes a whole lot of things that are not land?
Sure.
At one point are the three ever separate?
Clearly one can have a life and liberties without an estate, aka land. And while Locke may be a bit oppsessed with land, his point applies equally well to a more modern use of property, which includes pretty much any material good or even immaterial good (ie IPs, trademarks).
Furthermore, I see nothing in the quotes you've presented to suggest that these so called "degenerate men" are by definition those without land, or even property in general. It seems clear to me that in the context of his argument it refers to anyone who does not follow the natural law. In other words, they are "degenerate" because they do not obey nature's mandate to respect the life, liberties, and estates of others.
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
So does it get you ten kinds of pissed off when Mensa determines membership by IQ? I know it pisses me off on their site when they say "IQ score" as if that phrase isn't redundant.
That you think that phrase is redundant might be a sign that you shouldn't be applying for Mensa.
It's an Intelligence Quotient, as in a number divided by another number, so it's already a number score.
Edit: If my IQ is 136, what would my IQ score mean? Or is 136 my IQ score, in which case what would my IQ mean?
I call bullshit and request a citation. Property was the tertiary foundation of government according to Locke. But even that was not land ownership. Locke argued for a fundamental ownership of self. Through this he justified property and ownership of land only through labor. This was a derived right, not a foundational right.
Locke equivocates. At first, you are right, that by mixing one's hands with nature we create property, and there is that fundamental tie between labour and ownership. But if you continue on, Locke switches gears and ends up contradicting himself, asserting that those without property are deviant and wicked men, and there is a natural division between those with property and those without, regardless of questions of labour. And it is here that he proscribes the creation of a social contract, specifically to deal with the tension that invariably arises between those with property and those without.
Though the Earth, and all inferior creatues be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that Nature has provided, and left it in, he has mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, has by his labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men. For this labour being the questionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others.
Nor is it so strange, as perhaps before consideration it may appear, that the property of labour should be able to over-balance the community of land. For it is labour indeed that puts the difference of value on everything; and let any one consider, what the difference is between an acre of land planted with tobacco, or sugar, sown with wheat or barley; and an acre of the same land lying in common, without any husbandry upon it, and he will find, that the improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the value.
So far, so good, right?
But then we get into some more problematic places, things that don't really follow, like this:
If man in the state of Nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest and subject to nobody, why will he part with his freedom? Why will he give up this empire, a subject himself to the dominion and control of any other power? To which it is obvious to answer, that though in the state of Nature he has such a right, yet the enjoyment of it is very uncertain, and constantly exposed to the invasion of others. For all being kings as much as he, every man his equal, and the greater part no strict observers of equity and justice, the enjoyment of the property he has in this state is very unsafe, very insecure. This makes him willing to quit a condition, which however free, is full of fears and continual dangers: and it is not without reason, that he seeks out, and is willing to join in society with others who are already united, or have a mind to unite for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties, and estates, which I call by the general name, property.
The great and chief end therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property. To which in the state of Nature there are many wanting. First, there wants an established, settled, known law, received and allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong, and the common measure to decide all controversies between them. For though the law of Nature be plain and intelligible to all rational creatures; yet men being biased by their interest, as well as ignorant for want of study of it, are not apt to allow it as a law binding to them in the application of it to their particular cases.
For in the state of nature, to omit the liberty he has of
innocent delights, a man has two powers. The first is to do whatsoever he thinks fit for the preservation of
himself, and others within the permission of the law of nature: by which
law, common to them all, he and all the rest of mankind are one
community, make up one society, distinct from all other creatures. And
were it not for the corruption and viciousness of degenerate men, there
would be no need of any other; no necessity that men should separate from
this great and natural community, and by positive agreements combine into
smaller and divided associations.
The other power a man has in the state of nature, is the power to
punish the crimes committed against that law. Both these he gives up,
when he joins in a private, if I may so call it, or particular politic
society, and incorporates into any common-wealth, separate from the rest
of mankind.
Every man is born with a double right: first, a right of freedom to his person, which no other man has a power over, but the free disposal of it lies in himself. Secondly, a right, before any other man, to inherit, with his brethren, his father's goods.
The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they choose and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power, and moderate the dominion of every part and member of the society. ...
There's a number of uncomfortable moments in all of these excerpts, but the more important points are that Locke feels that the only reason politics was ever invented and men formed polities was due to the inherent limitations of property ownership in the state of nature (the pre-political world). Indeed, property is an absolutely necessity for there to be politics, and it is the primary function of the state to protect the property of its constituents from corrupt and degenerate men, who a) lack reason, and b) lack property.
And as you can see, labour being the foundation of property ownership quickly goes out the window, although he notes earlier in the work that if some land is being used unproductively, it may be possible to usurp it from the unproductive owner; but he's careful to restrict this only to other property owners, using Cain and Abel as examples (both, in his reading, being property owners themselves).
Non-property owners have no place in the commonwealth or polity, and are really only the negative impetus for the creation of the state in the first place.
Your reading of "property" as "land" or even material goods is completely untenable and directly contradicted by the text. I refer again to the Chapter entitled "Of Property"
Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a "property" in his own "person." This nobody has any right to but himself. The "labour" of his body and the "work" of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this "labour" being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others.
There is no such thing as a man without property for at the very least each man is his own property. Each man also has his own labor. So even if one takes the portions of the text that refer to society being formed to protect property, this does not exclude those who do not own land or even the otherwise impoverished or invalid.
Laborers were considered a part of society by Locke. Here he contrasts them with slaves who are not part of society.
Master and servant are names as old as history, but given to those of far different condition; for a free man makes himself a servant to another by selling him for a certain time the service he undertakes to do in exchange for wages he is to receive; and though this commonly puts him into the family of his master, and under the ordinary discipline thereof, yet it gives the master but a temporary power over him, and no greater than what is contained in the contract between them. But there is another sort of servant which by a peculiar name we call slaves, who being captives taken in a just war are, by the right of Nature, subjected to the absolute dominion and arbitrary power of their masters. These men having, as I say, forfeited their lives and, with it, their liberties, and lost their estates, and being in the state of slavery, not capable of any property, cannot in that state be considered as any part of civil society, the chief end whereof is the preservation of property.
You see here only by being in the state of slavery does one become incapable of property as Locke states in his short passage on slavery, because the slave has had his property of self stripped from him.
Indeed your Section 190 is explicitly not referring to material property but Liberty.
116. This has been the practice of the world from its first beginning to this day; nor is it now any more hindrance to the freedom of mankind, that they are born under constituted and ancient polities that have established laws and set forms of government, than if they were born in the woods amongst the unconfined inhabitants that run loose in them. For those who would persuade us that by being born under any government we are naturally subjects to it, and have no more any title or pretence to the freedom of the state of Nature, have no other reason (bating that of paternal power, which we have already answered) to produce for it, but only because our fathers or progenitors passed away their natural liberty, and thereby bound up themselves and their posterity to a perpetual subjection to the government which they themselves submitted to. It is true that whatever engagements or promises any one made for himself, he is under the obligation of them, but cannot by any compact whatsoever bind his children or posterity. For his son, when a man, being altogether as free as the father, any act of the father can no more give away the liberty of the son than it can of anybody else. He may, indeed, annex such conditions to the land he enjoyed, as a subject of any commonwealth, as may oblige his son to be of that community, if he will enjoy those possessions which were his father's, because that estate being his father's property, he may dispose or settle it as he pleases.
A simplistic and context-less reading of "property" to mean "land" or even "wealth" is a fundamental misunderstanding of the underpinnings of Locke's philosophy.
So does it get you ten kinds of pissed off when Mensa determines membership by IQ? I know it pisses me off on their site when they say "IQ score" as if that phrase isn't redundant.
That you think that phrase is redundant might be a sign that you shouldn't be applying for Mensa.
It's an Intelligence Quotient, as in a number divided by another number, so it's already a number score.
Edit: If my IQ is 136, what would my IQ score mean? Or is 136 my IQ score, in which case what would my IQ mean?
A quotient is just a number. A score is some numeric representation of your performance. The phrase "IQ score" is saying that the Intelligence Quotient, a number, is a score.
But what else could an Intelligence Quotient be? The very nature of calculating the IQ involves ranking the performance against others.
Nothing in the phrase "Intelligence Quotient" necessarily implies a score. You could be talking about an IQ mean, for example, which would be a very different beast than a individuals IQ score. You could also talk about an IQ sigma, or standard deviation. Again, a very different beast.
"Intelligence Quotient" simply implies a method of calculating a number, not necessarily what that number represents.
But what else could an Intelligence Quotient be? The very nature of calculating the IQ involves ranking the performance against others.
Nothing in the phrase "Intelligence Quotient" necessarily implies a score. You could be talking about an IQ mean, for example, which would be a very different beast than a individuals IQ score. You could also talk about an IQ sigma, or standard deviation. Again, a very different beast.
"Intelligence Quotient" simply implies a method of calculating a number, not necessarily what that number represents.
"Quotient" is the method of calculating a number" and "Intelligence" is what that number represents. In your two examples "Intelligence Quotient" becomes an adjective phrase and thus has a different meaning than when it's a noun phrase.
I've never understood Mensa. I mean, top 2%? So it's a rare gift you share with you know, over a hundred million other people. It's just not a very useful club.
Posts
I understand that, I was merely saying that I think tests nowadays are rarely capable of carrying out an analysis on the criterion they're aiming for.
Which test are you talking about though? I mean off the top of my head there's about six or seven major theories I have to learn right now.
If you are talking about Standford-Binet's IQ then yeah sure I completely agree! It should only be used for children in education and any attempt to classify people using it should be regarded as raving bonkers.
If you mean all tests in general then this is enough grounds for a full on academic discussion thread which if you make I will gladly participate in, because I think you are wrong.
I can't make threads... also, I think University tests do what they should, but I don't think that end of Highschool tests are anything like what they should be. Academic tests like SAT's (in the U.K at least) seem to be pretty useless, and the AS and A-level system in the UK is a joke, and there's no way you could convince me otherwise.
The fact that we don't have standardised medical tests is something I find is poor though if you'd like to discuss that? I think we agree on the other stuff though, and as I have no experience of any other countries educational system I can't really give an opinion on them.
You should read the Second Treatise on Government and Federalist No. 17. The US was founded as a liberal constitutional republic, which is committed at its philosophical base to property ownership as being a necessary requirement for citizenship. When Madison talks about the "tyranny of the majority" he's referring to small freeholders having potentially more influence than the owners of larger estates; he definitely wasn't referring to non-property owning groups. That wasn't even on the radar. And that bias is reflected in the political culture and institutions of the U.S. even today.
I was being facetious. My point is that limiting the franchise to property owning males is a perfect way to ensure "intelligence" or literacy, because these people will overwhelming be sure to have a damn fine education. As soon as you start extending the franchise to other socioeconomic classes, you start getting into trouble really fast, because the base level of education one can assume begins to drop dramatically.
For instance, it's really only been (in the US at least) since the 1950s and 1960s that working class (white) males have been able to go to University in any significant numbers. Same with women and many other ethnic minority groups, such as Natives (in Canada) and Blacks (in the US). Things have been improving, a bit, but what we've seen is definitely not an increase across the board in the quality of education of the populace, but instead a continued and sometimes dramatic disparity between those who possess enough money to afford to send their children to expensive (and as a result, better funded) schools and those who must rely on schools who aren't as expensive (but are almost sure to have issues of quality of materials available, as well as all of the problems of attracting talent that goes along with being located in a shithole).
The problem we have here is essentially an economic one, especially if we are talking about any measure of intelligence or literacy test as a requirement for citizenship or the franchise, as test scores are easily correlated to income levels. That needs to be addressed first and foremost before we can really talk about any sort of "intelligence" requirement for citizenship, or else we'll just be actively excluding blacks, women, and the poor while giving a disproportionate amount of voting influence to an already disproportionately powerful group: the white, rich (or middle class) males.
NSFW (just maybe some cursing).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxXY6VscPnQ
Yeah yeah, its Howard Stern but the amount of ignorant voters out there is staggering (and it goes both ways here, republican or democrat).
Would you listen or watch if they had scores of interviews with urban people who instantly spotted the trick questions? Would that be entertaining? No.
They most likely interviewed many, many people, and cherry picked the most ignorant ones.
I call bullshit and request a citation. Property was the tertiary foundation of government according to Locke. But even that was not land ownership. Locke argued for a fundamental ownership of self. Through this he justified property and ownership of land only through labor. This was a derived right, not a foundational right.
Furthermore, Madison never wrote of the "tyranny of the majority" that was John Stuart Mill nearly a century later. Madison did write Federalist 10
So.... bullshit
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Read the U.S. Constitution and think about that again.
Any attempt to force people to conform to some standard of proof beyond citizenship is, in and of itself, an act which actively attempts to deprive them of their rights. End of discussion. It doesn't matter if it's a test of intelligence, a test of competence, a test of knowledge, a jumping test, a running test, or a pie-eating test. Any such test, at its core, places some form of judgment/standard by which someone must conform in order to express a fundamental right not only as a citizen, but as a person.
If you want to argue about what constitutes personhood, citizenship, or whether or not you agree with the theory behind this form of government is another debate altogether. But if you are asking the original question, "Should [insert random word here] Tests be required to vote?", the real answer is:
No tests allowed beyond this point. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
It's not about which test is good enough. It's about how democracy works.
Any test of mental acuity or knowledge is a blatant attempt to place an arbitrary standard on other people. Unless you can account not only for all languages, types of intelligence and forms of knowledge, but also all methods of expressing the aforementioned things (orally, written, Morse Code, binary, via typewriter, etc. etc. etc.), you need to step the fuck off when it comes to something as fundamental as voting. Even a question like, "Who is the Republican Party candidate for President?" comes with it a plethora of ethical and philosophical ramifications, not the least of which is, "Who the fuck decided that having to know a political party's candidate for an office that anyone can hold regardless of party affiliation should be important to expressing one of my fundamental rights as a human being?"
PS - I, too, have a B.A. in Philosophy. It's been completely worthless to me in my career thus far.
Locke equivocates. At first, you are right, that by mixing one's hands with nature we create property, and there is that fundamental tie between labour and ownership. But if you continue on, Locke switches gears and ends up contradicting himself, asserting that those without property are deviant and wicked men, and there is a natural division between those with property and those without, regardless of questions of labour. And it is here that he proscribes the creation of a social contract, specifically to deal with the tension that invariably arises between those with property and those without.
So far, so good, right?
But then we get into some more problematic places, things that don't really follow, like this:
This:
This
And this:
Let's not forget:
There's a number of uncomfortable moments in all of these excerpts, but the more important points are that Locke feels that the only reason politics was ever invented and men formed polities was due to the inherent limitations of property ownership in the state of nature (the pre-political world). Indeed, property is an absolutely necessity for there to be politics, and it is the primary function of the state to protect the property of its constituents from corrupt and degenerate men, who a) lack reason, and b) lack property.
And as you can see, labour being the foundation of property ownership quickly goes out the window, although he notes earlier in the work that if some land is being used unproductively, it may be possible to usurp it from the unproductive owner; but he's careful to restrict this only to other property owners, using Cain and Abel as examples (both, in his reading, being property owners themselves).
Non-property owners have no place in the commonwealth or polity, and are really only the negative impetus for the creation of the state in the first place.
Yeah, I'm not American, I've read the Federalist Papers once, and I've never really studied them. You can ignore my comments about the Federalist Papers if you'd like, it was my lame attempt to make my point more relevant to all the Americans in this thread.
So do I.
You are going to have to show me, then, because I don't see that.
I didn't say that. In fact, I noted that earlier Locke explicitly mentions this possibility, but only in the circumstance when there is property which is being used unproductively.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that greed goes away when a person has acquired "enough", but the nature of greed is that there is no such thing as "enough". No matter how much property you have, you could always have more until you own everything.
As to the first part, if you can't see it you're willfully looking away from it and I can't make you see something you refuse to see. I don't have mind-control powers.
If you can't back up your claim that my reading is incorrect while PantsB's is, then you shouldn't be making the claim in the first place. Calling me stupid when I ask you to actually explain your argument with something more substantial than a one liner is not really constructive.
Where the hell did I ever say that? My point, since the very beginning, is that the political institutions of the United States are conceived based upon the principles laid out by Locke in the Second Treatise on Government, and that these principles are predicated on the notion that way in which a polity is formed is through cooperation between property owners. The resulting polity has one overriding mandate: to protect the property of its members (the property owners) from those who would seek to acquire or dismember this property - usually the propertyless.
The resulting political institutions in the U.S. have therefore inherited these notions of wealth and property being central to the state and its function, with the result that the democracy and power structures at play are simply unsuited for a citizenry which is not exclusive to male property owners. So when we look at other socioeconomic groups, we can see that there are fundamental, structural limitations regarding what sort of impact these groups can have on the wider political culture and institutions.
Which leads us to question why, exactly, we would want to re-institute some kind of test that naturally favours male property owners, when what we really should be doing is looking long and hard at the way the political institutions and the ideas upon which they are built are conceived.
I wanted to give you an opportunity to clarify the truth or falsity of my sense that you were assuming Locke's writings to be identical to the actual framework of American government, and now that you have I can point to that as where your musings in defense of restricting access to power to those who already have it are inconsistent with the actual design of things. The decision to use the phrasing "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" instead of the original "life, liberty and property" is not an accident. Pursuit of happiness is an umbrella category under which property falls, among many other concepts. If property is required in order for a person to have a say, then the native right of people to pursue happiness is violated. This provides justification for removal of property-requirements for voting.
The system is flawed because it is real, not a thought-experiment, but it is designed to try to circumvent exactly the limitations you identify as fundamental to its structure. Locke didn't write any of the documents that outline the structure of our system. He wrote a bunch of things that influenced the writing of the writers of those documents, but those writers weren't Locke and they didn't actually just copy-paste his work to come up with what we have. Despite how popular it is for people who hate the U.S. to claim otherwise.
And I never said anyone's read of Locke was incorrect, just that everything you cited jives just fine with PantsB's read. It's philosophy, there are an infinite number of possible "correct" reads. That's why our system created a branch of government whose entire function is to decide which reads of our blueprint-documents we will accept. I also never called you stupid, reading that from my posts requires you to input a bunch of extra stuff of your own invention that I didn't include. From what I wrote you can only really say I'm calling you stubborn.
Didn't you just quote right there a statement saying that when Locke says "property" he means "lives, liberties, and estates" which includes a whole lot of things that are not land?
I didn't realize that I needed to create an exhaustive list. Greed is one, as you mentioned, but so is the simple fact that the number of people increases while the land doesn't. At some point, we are going to run into a situation where there are a certain number of property owners and there are a number of those who don't own property, and it's at that point that there are going to be some problems. Which is where Locke takes his cue; he doesn't, and I don't, dismiss the possibility of there being conflict in the state of nature for other reasons, but that the conflict between property owners and non-property owners is substantial enough to justify the creation of a polity.
It definitely does not.
Your view of philosophy is impoverished, to say the least. I am just going to say that we don't need to turn this thread into a discussion of philosophical pragmatism vs. idealism (in whatever form), and that it is unhelpful for you to attempt to make such arguments.
Where did I say that Locke's writings were identical to the actual framework of the American government? From my recollection, I merely asserted that Locke provided the philosophical basis for the American government, not the actual constitutional framework. I can say categorically that I do not think that Locke wrote the American constitution.
It may provide justification, but even though a certain phrase may have been used in your constitution or declaration of independence, that does not change or override the historical realities of how the American government is, and continues to be setup and run.
The American system was originally conceived and created by property owners. These property owners shared a particular view of the nature of the polity in relation to property. The institutions created by these property owners were modeled on the view of the polity put forward by Locke, and as a result, reflect the shortcomings of his position.
Namely the exclusion of non-property owners from positions of political power and influence.
Now, this has certainly be changed and tempered over time, no one is going to argue with that. Institutions and political cultures naturally change and evolved over time. However, there are still many things which remain unchanged, and which have, in fact, become more entrenched and resist to change - that is where I take issue. With the things which haven't changed to reflect the sorts of outcomes the political culture is interested in, like the actual enfranchisement of all adults, regardless of ethnic origin, language, sexual orientation, or wealth.
To ignore the very real obstacles posed by these unchanged institutions and constitutional arrangements is to open yourself up for all sorts of problems, many of which are evidenced in this thread.
I don't hate the U.S., and I don't think it should be heresy for a person to question the basic constitutional arrangement of one's country, especially if it was setup on unequal terms. Your constitution is not sacrosanct; it's not special or unique - it may be notable historically, and that's cool, but that notability shouldn't prevent you from changing it for the better.
It sounds like you are dangerously close to asserting that whatever subjective interpretation a person may possess is just as correct as any other, and that it is impossible for us to determine otherwise. I would strongly disagree, and recommend you create another thread if you want to have that discussion.
No, judicial review exists to ensure that the law is applied equally according to the constitution. This is true for most countries where judicial review exists, such as Canada. It has very little to do with philosophy, unless you are talking about the principles upon which judicial review is based. In which case, that's another discussion entirely.
No, you didn't write the word "stupid," but you didn't hesitate to imply that I was somehow impaired by not recognizing the correctness of your one liner, and simply acquiescing to your superior argument. It felt inflammatory and insulting.
Sure.
At one point are the three ever separate?
I think you have confused intelligence tests with every concievable test under the sun mate. I have no idea what you are talking about with the academic testing, that's not what I've learned. (Other than how to pass them!
As for medical testing, again what are you talking about? Psychometric testing? The kinds of tests they use in psychology or the kinds of tests they use in medicine and psychiatry? I'm only interested in talking about intelligence and psychometric testing I'm afraid, I don't have the time or the knowledge to discuss the tests used in other fields.
You're pretty off on this. Yes, Stanford-Binet was originally used to test mental retardation in French children. However, modern Stanford-Binet (I believe it is S-B 5 now) is designed for use with any person, not just French schoolchildren who might be retarded. So, that's complete bullshit. S-B 5 can be used accurately to guage IQs of.. ANNNYYYYOOONNNEEEE.
Secondly, Stanford-Binet is far from the only game in town. WAIS is also a very popular IQ test which is very good at measuring IQ of a general population, though there is WISC if you want to specifically test children.
That you think that phrase is redundant might be a sign that you shouldn't be applying for Mensa.
Clearly one can have a life and liberties without an estate, aka land. And while Locke may be a bit oppsessed with land, his point applies equally well to a more modern use of property, which includes pretty much any material good or even immaterial good (ie IPs, trademarks).
Furthermore, I see nothing in the quotes you've presented to suggest that these so called "degenerate men" are by definition those without land, or even property in general. It seems clear to me that in the context of his argument it refers to anyone who does not follow the natural law. In other words, they are "degenerate" because they do not obey nature's mandate to respect the life, liberties, and estates of others.
It's an Intelligence Quotient, as in a number divided by another number, so it's already a number score.
Edit: If my IQ is 136, what would my IQ score mean? Or is 136 my IQ score, in which case what would my IQ mean?
Your reading of "property" as "land" or even material goods is completely untenable and directly contradicted by the text. I refer again to the Chapter entitled "Of Property" There is no such thing as a man without property for at the very least each man is his own property. Each man also has his own labor. So even if one takes the portions of the text that refer to society being formed to protect property, this does not exclude those who do not own land or even the otherwise impoverished or invalid.
Laborers were considered a part of society by Locke. Here he contrasts them with slaves who are not part of society. You see here only by being in the state of slavery does one become incapable of property as Locke states in his short passage on slavery, because the slave has had his property of self stripped from him.
Indeed your Section 190 is explicitly not referring to material property but Liberty.
A simplistic and context-less reading of "property" to mean "land" or even "wealth" is a fundamental misunderstanding of the underpinnings of Locke's philosophy.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
A quotient is just a number. A score is some numeric representation of your performance. The phrase "IQ score" is saying that the Intelligence Quotient, a number, is a score.
Nothing in the phrase "Intelligence Quotient" necessarily implies a score. You could be talking about an IQ mean, for example, which would be a very different beast than a individuals IQ score. You could also talk about an IQ sigma, or standard deviation. Again, a very different beast.
"Intelligence Quotient" simply implies a method of calculating a number, not necessarily what that number represents.
"Quotient" is the method of calculating a number" and "Intelligence" is what that number represents. In your two examples "Intelligence Quotient" becomes an adjective phrase and thus has a different meaning than when it's a noun phrase.