Okay, Danny, here goes.

Please, if you will, define for me from whence "authority" derives.

Note here that I am specifically recognizing (the part in bold) that I have no authority over you, that only you can choose for yourself, or speak for yourself, and I am appealing to that authority for a reply.

- NonE

I'm not really interested in having a semantic argument with you about this. I was using the word authority to mean a specific thing, and if you don't want to use it that way, then there are other ways we can use it. I'm starting to come around to the way that it's used by Joseph Raz, to mean that authority provides a reason for obeying independently from other reasons -- that is, that an authority's decree is important at least partly because it is an authority. That's a good way to use the term too, though it's fundamentally different from the one I was using before. It's ultimately not a big enough deal to go to war over.

Well, if you say so. I, on the other hand, believe that this idea of "proper authority" is the very core issue of human relations, freedom and so on. But I have no authority to force you to engage.

Interestingly enough I find it similar to the discussion on another thread about talking with christians. If a person is unwilling to apply logic to their most fundamental mental structures there is no chance whatsoever at discovering any errors that might exist there.

I am observing that the uncomprehension between you and Conrad appears to be based upon this very issue. You seem to have some form of magical belief that is based upon nothing logical and yet you are not willing to examine it.

You said:

Quote:

...that an authority's decree is important at least partly because it is an authority.

I have previously pointed out that your position on authority is illogical and circular. This is an example.

I may be totally wrong, of course. (God I hope I'm not sounding like Stef here! If so, just shoot me now and get it overwith!!!) I'm simply pointing out what it appears from this side of the viewscreen.

- NonE

I would say that, properly speaking, there is no such thing as 'authority' of any kind. One simply accepts or does not accept the arguments and commands of others, I know of no convincing argument that anyone 'ought' to submit to authority which, by Danny's present definition, would mean that no authority actually exists.

Well just one example to illustrate what Raz has in mind: If we have a government agency for the determination of traffic laws, then we ought to obey its commands on traffic matters simply because those commands came from the traffic agency, and they're the ones who make the traffic rules. So it wouldn't merely be that the traffic authorities made good traffic laws -- there are plenty of different traffic regimes that are perfectly okay -- that leads us to follow their commands. The fact that they're the traffic authority is a reason of its own for doing what they say when it comes to traffic. Again, that's not to be taken as advocacy of traffic authorities...I just wanted to show how the idea is supposed to work.

Sorry Danny, but that is simply incoherent to me. You are saying it is because it is. And that justifies it. You can use that reasoning to justify anything. Can you not see this?

I return to my initial query: From whence do you believe authority derives? And I note that even the Declaration of Independence made the claim that government derives it's power from the governed. (Failing to note that those who did not agree were governed nonetheless just as slaves are anywhere.)

- NonE

*sigh* I really can't continue to talk about this if you don't learn to identify the difference between a definition and an explanation on the one hand and an argument in favor of something on the other hand. I wasn't arguing in favor of anything. I was simply telling you what a term means.

I feel a little "South Park" comin on.....

Thank you, Dyl, for pointing out other contexts. The specific context in which I was inquiring was formed in another thread and so I did not restate it here. For the purpose of my "badgering" of Danny, let it be said that I mean "authority" in the nature of one person having the right of force over the life of another, as in a cop, or a government agent. I am not speaking of the "authority" of superior knowledge.

Danny continues to speak of certain people in governmental positions of power having "proper authority," and I'm simply curious as to how he sees that they have come by this "authority." I cannot find any place where such "authority" can be derived outside of force, in which case it is not "proper," but is rather aggressive and thuggish behavior no matter if you call it "proper authority" or "brute force." Danny keeps pointing out that there is a difference, and so I am asking him to show me how, as I am totally unable to find where the difference was formed. He acts as if I am making unreasonable demands in this regard, yet if I am faced with a cop threatening me, it is not at all irrelevant to try and see if there is any possible way this cop is in any way different in nature than a Mafia goon. Either way it is dangerous for me to reject the person's advances as the threat of personal harm is great in either instance, but I do believe it is VERY relevant to my own sense of myself and my life to know whether or not I consider the Mafia thug "proper" or not, and exactly the same applies with the cop.

It appears that to Danny's mind, and to the minds of the vast majority of the world's people, that anyone claiming to be from "the government" has the "proper authority" to do ANY FUCKING THING. That's the way it was in Nazi Germany. That is pretty much the way it has become in the U.S. of A. There was a trial in Nuremberg wherein it was determined that the authority to determine proper actions resides with the individual. Danny seems not to agree, but is totally unwilling to make a case for why.

Does that help to clarify my position? I happen to think the IDEA of authority, the very idea which allows something like Auschwitz or Guantanamo or Iraq to happen is a core issue. That's why I care. As is said, "Ideas have consequences."

- NonE

Interestingly there is an article at Lew's Place right now which has this quote from Lysander Spooner which is quite applicable:

Lysander Spooner from 'The Constitution of No Authority' wrote:

What constitutes legitimate government authority? Lysander Spooner far more eloquently answers the question than I can when examining the Constitution. To wit: The consent, therefore, that has been given, whether by individuals, or by the States, has been, at most, only a consent for the time being; not an engagement for the future. In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having ever been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practise this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, be finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man attempts to take the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot – which is a mere substitute for a bullet – because, as his only chance of self-preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency, into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him.

- NonE

And here we have a snippet from Robert Higgs alluding to why I have concerns over ideas:

Robert Higgs wrote:

All of which leaves us – by which I mean nearly everybody on earth — converging on the only form of politico-economic system that has a stable equilibrium in our present ideological circumstances: participatory fascism. I am not saying that this system is the only one possible, forever and ever, amen. I am saying, however, that until the world’s people abandon en masse the collectivist ideologies that now determine their social cognition, policy evaluation, political practices, and personal identities, any hope for moving to a freer form of economic order as a stable equilibrium is virtually nil.

(emphasis mine)

The whole article is recommended.

- NonE

Personally, when people say authority, this is what I think of.



But that's just me.

Good one, Paul!

This is what I see relative to any Authority:


* Pick it up
* Look into it
* See the only Authority there is