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From: chenr@tilt.FUN (Ray Chen)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Judging political axioms
Message-ID: <247@tilt.FUN>
Date: Fri, 8-Mar-85 17:04:13 EST
Article-I.D.: tilt.247
Posted: Fri Mar  8 17:04:13 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 10-Mar-85 04:58:06 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Princeton University EECS Dept
Lines: 70


The point has been made that in debating political systems, people
invariably debate until they get down to the basic principles or
axioms that form the foundation of the systems they are championing.
There they arrive at an impasse since they have no way to debate
axioms in a rational manner as an axiom is by definition assumed
or taken on faith.

Some have taken the approach to attempting to derive their axioms
from a historical perspective.  Although this may be a better approach
then simply assuming axioms on faith, many people still regard this
method with suspicion as historical "truths" can not be guaranteed
to be so and even if they were, the set of historical truths must
be a subset of the set of political truths.  Thus, limiting oneself
to historical truths would be an unnecessarily restrictive step
when constructing a political theory.

Axioms in political theories are usually assumed because the consequences
of applying the axioms to a society produce results that are regarded as
just.  The problem to me, then, seems to be a matter of defining justice.

The Libertarians offer a formulation of justice which might be interpreted
as "justice as non-coercion".  I happen to hold another view of justice:
"justice as fairness".  In a system that is fair, the principles of justice
governing that system are produced by a fair procedure.

The advantages of such a system is that the principles of justice are
not decided a priori, nor are they set in concrete once they are
decided on.  If new developments in political theory unearth new facts
or theories, the procedure can be run again to generate new principles
that take into account the new developments.  This procedure also
provides a framework in which to debate various axioms.

The question, then, is what is a fair procedure?

Answer:  A fair procedure is one in which a one would be willing to
live with the outcome no matter which person you actually ended up
being in that procedure.  In other words, take the example of a labor
arbritration.  A fair arbitration would be a arbitration whose
consequences you would be willing to abide by if you were a member of
the union or part of the management of the company.

A final note about justice and fairness.  Most people do this anyway
when deciding whether or not something is fair/right/just, but it should
be formalized, just so we know what we're all talking about.  The process
is called "Reflective Equilibrium".  Basically, each person has a set of
general principles that governs what he/she thinks is right, and is constantly
running across more and more situations to which those principles apply.
Reflective equilibrium simply states that there should be no contradictions
between the general principles and the examples.  So, if you run across
an example that you think is X and some principle(s) say it's Y, then either
the principle(s) has to be thrown out or adjusted, or you have to revise
your conclusion about the example.  (These conclusions often come about
as a "gut feeling" or some such thing.)  When there are NO internal
inconsistencies, then your value system is in a state of reflective
equilibrium.

Reflective equilibrium is a good tool to use when looking at political
systems, as often people are tempted to overlook little inconsistencies.
I claim that any set of beliefs you hold to be true should be in full
reflective equilibrium with your other beliefs.

	Ray Chen
	princeton!tilt!chenr

P.S. -- This discussion will continue if people decide it's worth their
	time and mine.  (i.e.  I see or get some intelligent, non-flaming,
	responses.)  Being busy these days, I'm trying to refrain from
	posting stuff, but given the NCP discussion (Paul Torek and Barry
	Fagin), I thought people might be interested in this.