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MODEL OF NEUTRAL-INCLUSIVITY by Vinsent Nandi, 41 aSWW



BOOK OF FUNDAMENTALS, PART II [chapters 4-6]



4  NEUTRAL-INCLUSIVITY, TRUTH AND PERSONHOOD


4.1  NEUTRAL-INCLUSIVITY


4.1.1  THE NEW MODEL OF HARMONY AND UNITY


4.1.1.1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE CAUSE OF NEUTRAL-INCLUSIVITY 

We must discriminate
between neutralness and unneutralness,
and recognize the supreme value of neutrality;
between the unneutralness which is nanapolar,
that is, neutral-directed, and that which is not.
We must discriminate
between inclusiveness and exclusiveness,
and recognize the value of inclusivity.

Let every person distinguish
the neutral and inclusive attitude
from the extreme and exclusive attitude,
from the unneutral and exclusive attitude.
And let every person realize
that these two ways of thinking,
these two ways of feeling and behaving,
are fundamentally incompatible.

Those who know this are aware of
the active side of the exclusive attitude:
preferential treatment or privileges,
and exclusion or subordination,
on the basis of family ties or race,
of people's denominational persuasion,
of language, political creed, wealth or class,
of age, sex or sexual orientation,
or on the basis of any other factor
irrelevant to the ultimate values.

And those who know this are aware of
the sentimental side of the exclusive attitude:
inhibition, compulsion and alienation,
from nature and what is natural in our kind,
from groups of a different culture or mind,
if not from the immutable norms themselves.

We adherents shall advance
the neutral or neutral-directed in the world,
where it echoes "Down with extremism!";
the inclusive in ourselves and in others,
while it echoes "Down with exclusivism!".
We shall not discriminate
but to further the neutral and the inclusive,
the cause of neutral-inclusivity.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------


As noted before, it is often hard to tell protoneutralist ideas or systems
of thought apart from protorelevantist ones. Similarly, it will often be
hard or impossible to distinguish neutralism from inclusive relevantism. The
foundation of neutralism is a relevantist one in that the norm of neutrality
has been defined as "the relevantist interpretation of the principle of
neutrality"; the foundation of inclusivism is a neutralist one in that the
norm of inclusivity has been defined as "the neutralist interpretation of
the principle of relevance". At this point it must be admitted that our
reasoning has been circular. But the circle we have drawn is so
all-embracing that no further justification is needed, or that we cannot
conceive of any alternative belief or proposal which would be more
plausible.

Neutralism is concerned with the catenical dimension of thought, and
inclusivism with the relevancy-conditional dimension of it. Neither
neutralism nor inclusivism covers the truth-conditional aspect of thought as
such, let alone metadoctrinal and purely propositional aspects of it. When
neutralism-inclusivism is for us the most plausible (or least implausible)
normative system of disciplinary thought, it is therefore for us the most
plausible catenical and relevancy-conditional normative system of
disciplinary thought. Like protoneutralist conceptions and theories,
neutralism pictures for us a model of harmony, but whereas this new model is
catenical, protoneutralist conceptions and theories build on antonymical
metaphysics; like protorelevantist conceptions and theories inclusivism
pictures for us a model of unity, but whereas this new model is now
relevancy-conditional, protorelevantist conceptions and theories build on
inconsistent and obscure premises.

The idea of a perfect world of harmony and unity is perhaps as old as
thought itself. As we have seen in the previous chapter, even antineutralist
thinkers have made their strife of opposites issue in harmony and unity in
the end. Hence what is new about the neutralist-inclusivist model is not the
idea of harmony and unity as perfect things but, firstly, the catenical
interpretation of harmony and the relevancy-conditional interpretation of
unity; and secondly, the special interplay between the neutralist theory of
'harmony' and the inclusivist theory of 'unity'. Because of the intimate
connection which exists in our model between the norm of neutrality and the
norm of inclusivity, or between the notion of neutrality and the notion of
inclusivity, it is reasonable to speak of "one notion of
neutral-inclusivity". It is this catenical, relevancy-conditional concept
which replaces all traditional and ancient concepts of harmony and unity.

The norm of neutrality is a ground-world norm; the principle of neutrality a
ground-world principle. It is when this norm or principle is applied to the
making of distinctions that it coincides with the norm of inclusivity, for
no distinction shall be made so that things on the one side of a divide are
undervalued and those on the other side overvalued. The norm of inclusivity
itself is the ground-world application of the principle of relevance. Via
this principle we enter propositional reality. Here propositional
principles, or norms of thought, take over, like the principles of truth,
coherence and parsimony.

Neutrality and inclusivity are connected in at least two fundamentally
different ways. One way is thru the interpretation of the respective
principles. With regard to the principle of discriminational relevance this
means that equal treatment in a literal sense needs no justification, and
that the burden of proof is with someone who claims that a distinction is
relevant. Another way is thru the focus of relevancy, which always has to be
a neutralist value. This value may be a perfective one, like equality, or an
instrumental or corrective one, like the minimization of unhappiness or a
maximum situational improvement in neutralist terms. Everyday goals like the
best quality of work to be done, or the greatest possible safety to be
achieved, should fit in with this scheme, for example, because they minimize
(the chance of) unhappiness or because they contribute to the establishment
of optimum conditions for good health. Neutral-inclusivity requires that
such goals always serve neutrality in the end, however remote the position
of these goals may be with respect to that ultimate, perfective value.



4.1.2  THE NON-METADOCTRINAL PRINCIPLES OF ONE DOCTRINE


It is not only reasonable to speak of "one notion of neutral-inclusivity",
it is also evident that there is no separate doctrine of neutrality besides
a separate doctrine of inclusivity. In other words: ours is one doctrine of
neutral-inclusivity. A convenient and significant abbreviation for this
doctrine is DNI. The norm of neutrality and the norm of inclusivity are the
paradigmatic or immutable norms of the DNI; paradigmatic in that they
together wholly determine our denominational paradigm or potential paradigm,
and immutable in that they are not capable or susceptible of replacement or
great change without ruining the entire doctrine itself. They are the sole,
purely ground-world norms or principles, and as such form the kernel of our
doctrine. Of the principles which are not purely nonpropositional, the
metadoctrinal one underlying the right to personhood is no part of the DNI,
altho it is part of our denominational system of disciplinary thought (and
denominational 'doctrine' in a wider sense). The principles of the DNI are
non-metadoctrinal, that is, doctrinal as opposed to metadoctrinal. The sole
principle in addition to those of catenated neutrality and of
discriminational relevance, which is not purely propositional and part of
the DNI, is the principle of truth.

If we confine ourselves to the nonpropositional realm and conceive of
neutral-inclusivity as one perfective value, the DNI is ultimately a
monistic ground-world doctrine. On the surface it may seem rather
pluralistic with values like nondiscrimination, beneficence, symmetry,
equality, nanhonore, truth and coherence. But firstly, values like truth and
coherence are not ground-world values; and secondly, we have seen how the
norm of neutrality starts from the normative superiority of a secondary
predicate. By taking a secondary predicate like neutralness as the value to
be pursued, many primary values of different dimensions can be subsumed
under one supervalue. Given the intimate connection between neutrality and
inclusivity, neutral-inclusivism offers therefore a monistic view of
nonpropositional reality, altho not the monistic view of a system in which a
number of old and/or new theories are eclectically soldered together. It is
the one value of neutral-inclusivity itself which encompasses an indefinite
number of values of indefinitely many different dimensions.
Neutral-inclusivity transcends all these dimensions.

Those who have claimed that a complete normative doctrine must always be
pluralistic, while thinking of values supposedly being of the same category,
like happiness, justice or equality, freedom and truth, have made a number
of mistakes. Firstly, they have not differentiated doctrinal and
metadoctrinal values such as freedom in a sense. Secondly, they have not
differentiated nonpropositional and propositional values such as truth.
Thirdly, they have not realized that values which are of a different
dimension can still be subsumed under one supervalue if the former ones
belong to the primary domain, and the latter one to the secondary domain.
And fourthly, they have confused perfective values on the one hand and
instrumental or corrective values on the other. Neutral-inclusivism proves
that a ground-world doctrine can be monistic without suffering from the
serious flaws, fallacies and fancies of monistic beliefs like
utilitarianism, libertarianism, agapism and monotheism. Tho our
denominational ideology is not monistic on the whole, what is to be added to
neutral-inclusivism is a principle of truth which is (partially)
propositional; and what is in turn to be added to the DNI is a principle of
personhood which is metadoctrinal.

The principle of truth is propositional insofar as it governs the
relationship between the ground-world and propositional reality. Unlike the
norm of inclusivity and the norm of neutrality it is not paradigmatic since
most, if not all, lovers of disciplinary thought pay lip-service to some
kind of truth or principle of truth. (Adherents of certain monotheist
ideologies may thus call their supreme deity "Truth"; and adherents of the
same or other ideologies may thus call their supreme newspaper "Truth".) The
recognition of truth as a value does not distinguish the DNI from
exclusivist and extremist doctrines, yet what does distinguish it from those
doctrines is the neutral-inclusivist, non-supernaturalist interpretation of
truth. It has already been shown, and will be shown again, at many places in
this Model how much the supernaturalist assault on truth, which has been
going on for thousands of years, deviates from the neutral-inclusivist
position on this value. And this even tho truth in itself is neither neutral
nor inclusive.



4.2  TRUTH IN A SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE


4.2.1  TRUE STATEMENTS, PROMISES AND THREATS


Typical of the doctrine of neutral-inclusivity is not only the
non-supernaturalist interpretation of truth but also its application to both
promises and threats. Traditionally ethical theorists treat the duty not to
lie, or the duty to tell the truth, and the duty to keep one's promises as
separate, independent duties. Deontologists, for instance, will recognize
these duties but seldom or never a duty to make good one's threat. While
they hate to get (too much) involved in consequences, this is just another
indication that the consequences of acts they prescribe or forbid may
already be implicit in the descriptions or formulations of those acts.
(Compare the tendency not to call an utterance "a promise" when the bad
consequences of doing something else than 'foretold' are, or would be, small
or negligible; that is, the bad consequences with respect to people's, or
other people's, happiness or well-being.)

How can the misleading 'intuition' to recognize a duty to keep one's
promises and not to recognize a duty to make good one's threats --even not a
prima facie one-- be explained? The reason cannot lie in what promises and
threats have in common, namely that they refer to the future, usually to
something the person promising or threatening will or will not do if a
certain state of affairs does or does not hold. The reason must lie in what
distinguishes promises from threats. And this is, first and foremost, that
what a person intends to do in a promise is something of which 'e supposes
that the person to whom 'e promises it, likes or prefers it, or something
that the promiser supposes to be good or better for that person. On the
other hand, what a person intends to do in a threat is something of which 'e
supposes that the person whom 'e threatens does not like or prefer it, or
something which the threatener supposes to be bad or not as good for that
person. The difference between promises and threats is therefore not a
question of truth but of well-being, beneficence or preference. Nonetheless,
granted that there is a duty to keep one's promises which cannot be entirely
derived from the duty to be beneficent, or which is to be more than a
derivative utilitarian duty --as deontologists will claim with us-- and
granted that factual-modal morality or passed-on intuition cannot be
accepted as an argument per se, this duty to keep one's promises must ensue
from the general duty to tell the truth. For this latter duty does not only
concern the relationship between what a person says now and the past or
present but also that between what 'e says now and what 'e will do or not do
'imself in the future.

(The way certain people used to, or still, react to the difference between
aggrandizemental discrimination and abnegational discrimination can be
similarly explained: relevancy-conditionally there is not any difference
between the two, just as there is truth-conditionally no difference between
keeping one's promise and carrying out a threat. The difference lies in
eudaimonistic considerations. Aggrandizemental discrimination is supposed to
make someone happy or to serve 'er well-being, whereas abnegational
discrimination is supposed to make someone unhappy or to be unfavorable to
'im. Those who condemn the abnegational but not the aggrandizemental
manifestations of discrimination thus completely neglect what is essential
to discrimination, namely the relevancy-conditional aspect. Moreover, also
here the deontologists among them turn out to be secretive consequentialists
of the eudaimonist brand in their intuitive selection of so-called
'ultimate' or 'intrinsic' duties.)

From the point of view of truth it just does not matter at all whether the
relationship between what one says now, and what one will do or not do in
the future is a relationship with a state of affairs which is liked or not
liked, preferred or not preferred, by the person to whom it was said.
Therefore, from the point of view of truth proper there is not only a duty
to keep one's promise but also a duty to make good one's threat. Both these
duties are intrinsic (in our sense of doctrinal but also in the
deontological sense of perfective or noninstrumental); neither one is
ultimate, however. Ultimate is the duty to tell the truth, or not to lie, in
the widest sense possible. Yet, this is not to say that the principle of
truth is the sole principle underlying the duty to keep one's promise: the
principle of beneficence is certainly part of this duty as well. In
questions of promise-keeping truth and beneficence support each other almost
by definition. (Exceptions are cases in which the total utility would
decrease by keeping a promise.) This is quite unlike the nature of threats:
here telling the truth, or having told the truth, and beneficence tend to
pull in opposite directions. That is the very reason why traditional
thinkers have (almost?) never had an instinctive urge to defend a duty to
make good one's threat. As we ourselves feel bound not to base our normative
doctrine on conventional, arbitrary or incoherent intuitions, we must
conclude that a consistent interpretation of the principle of truth requires
us to adopt the existence of a prima facie, derivative duty to make good
one's threat even tho there is at the same time a derivative duty of
beneficence according to which one should not do things which harm people or
sentient beings.

Keeping one's promise is a nice thing to do, and both deontological and
consequentialist theorists have probably found a duty such as carrying out
one's threat a task too unpalatable for their taste. But if an act of making
good one's threat is (believed to be) disagreeable, it is not disagreeable
as an act in which an utterance is made true but as an act which has bad
effects with respect to a purely nonpropositional value (particularly the
minimization of unhappiness). The implication of our position is therefore
not so much threaten and carry out your threat but rather never threaten,
unless you are willing and able to stand the effects. The recognition of a
prima facie duty to make good threats should not contribute to an increase
of maleficent acts by people who have been threatening others with such
acts; instead, this recognition should be conducive to a decrease in the
number of threats, and preferably to their total extinction.

One reason that the DNI does not allow its adherents to edify children or
people by indoctrination and commination is precisely that its respect for
truth also extends to threats, inclusive of comminations, whether godly or
not. Only theodemonical or other ideologies for which truth is nothing else
than a believer's duty not to lie or a believer's duty not to break a
promise can promise anything and everything, and can threaten people with
anything or everything, without bothering about the question whether those
promises and those threats will certainly or probably come true.

Not only should we not threaten someone, unless we are willing and able to
create the unpleasant condition and to stand the consequences, we should not
promise anything either, unless we are willing and able to create the
pleasant condition and to stand the consequences too. In both cases the good
consequences should on the whole outweigh the bad ones. Even when a threat
is carried out which harms the person who has been threatened, the action in
question should have more good than bad consequences, especially when taking
into consideration the preventive effects of such an action. Consequences in
themselves, however, are not part of the truth-conditional aspect of keeping
a promise or carrying out a threat. The principle of truth is not a
consequentialist principle even tho we look upon truth as a value. With
respect to keeping a promise and making good a threat it is past-regarding
and noncausal, and could therefore be called "antecedentialist". Like
consequentialist principles the principle of truth is future-regarding with
respect to statements about the future, but the relationship concerned is
now one of correspondence between a proposition and a lower-level reality
and not one of causality as in consequentialism. The principle of truth is
present-regarding and noncausal with respect to statements about the
present, and also past-regarding and noncausal with respect to statements
about the past. This order is reversed for promises and threats since the
utterance is there in the past and the reality it is about, schematically
speaking, in the present.

If one promises something, one should keep one's promise; and if one
threatens with something, one should carry out one's threat from the
perspective of truth; that is, other things being equal. However, the
principle of truth does not require people to promise something to others,
or to threaten others with something, by any manner of means. In the same
way it does not require people to say something or to believe something. It
is only if one says or believes something that it should be true. Instead of
telling and believing in what is far-fetched or irrelevantly unneutral, we
should have the courage to acknowledge that there are things beyond, or
still beyond, our ken. True humility bows to verity and silence rather than
to comforting or threatening falsehoods.



4.2.2  PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS AND FAITHFULNESS


There is much which can, and partially has already, been said about personal
relationships from the standpoint of the norm of inclusivity and the norm of
neutrality. Personal relationships must, then, be understood as denoting
relationships with people one knows, particularly friendships, whether with
relatives or nonrelatives, neighbors or nonneighbors. Being friends adds to
personal relationships a dimension of more or less intensely liking each
other and of more or less regularly being together or voluntarily doing
things together. Friendship could be distinguished from love in that the
intensity of liking, or of emotional dependence, is much higher in the case
of love, but there is no need to do so: if people who like each other very
much are 'friends', this includes 'lovers'. Whether one speaks of "a lover",
"mate", "chum", "comrade", "friendly neighbor" or "beloved relative", they
all are friends with whom one enjoys being together at certain times (often
or always). This may or may not include sharing a household, having sexual
or physical contacts with each other, and/or having one or more children in
common.

The most drastic institutionalization of personal relationships in religious
and religiogenic societies is the institution of wedlock. It is a standard
contract drawn up by a religious organization or state in which exclusively
two people at a time of exclusively different gender who are not close
relatives, are theoretically joined together for life. Under the rules of
such a contract, the two partners are traditionally seldom or never united
on equal terms: the two sexes have different, that is, unequal and
exclusive, rights and responsibilities. To those who have entered the
institution, special advantages are often offered in the sphere of, for
example, social and parental status, hereditary rights, taxation and
accomodation, often regardless of whether the married people concerned look
after minors or not. Since wedlock only covers one type of human
relationships in which the parties are practically always unequal as well,
and since it offers advantages from outside the relationship proper of which
other personal relationships are deprived, it must be looked upon as an
institution which in its traditional form has always violated sexual
inclusivity and interpersonal equality.

Because of a preferential treatment of the relationship of those who are
married on a religious or religiogenic basis, other personal relationships
are, relatively speaking, made unfavorable. The first relationships to be
prevented from developing optimally are, then, friendships of two or more
people which do not comply with the prerequisites of the established
marriage contract. A clear example is a racist or ethnocentrist country in
which persons of a different race or ethnicity are not allowed to marry or
even to have sexual contacts. But personal relationships are not only made
unfavorable by illegalizing them or by depriving them of matrimonial
equality, they can also be made unfavorable by more or less hidden
prejudices and customs. Thus it may be legally possible to marry somebody of
a different ethnic group, of a different social class or of a different
political party, yet the social pressure not to get involved in such a
relationship may be so strong that this is felt as a serious restraint. And
prejudices are not only found in opinions; they are also found in
expectations. The most notorious of these expectations are what 'people
(parents, neighbors, friends or relatives) might think of it'. It is under
such circumstances that factors such as ethnicity, class, ideological
belief, gender, job, education, and so on, were, or still are, used to break
off friendships or to harass human beings who love or like each other.

Relationships are equal, regardless of whether the persons involved belong,
say, to the same race, family, gender, class, or age, or to a different
race, family, gender, class or age, so long as these persons want the
relationship and are mature enough to show decision in their refusals or
consents. Granted that the people involved agree among themselves and
respect the personal rights of others, no system of relationships of more
than two human beings, for example, of one man and two women, or of one
woman and two men, is inferior to relationships of only two human beings.
Hence, a law which allows a man to be wedded to several women at once (or a
custom which allows a man to have a 'mistress' in addition to his wife), and
not a woman to be wedded to several men at once (or to have a 'mister' in
addition to her husband), is nothing else than an illegitimate hybrid of
sexual and matrimonial exclusivism.

Sexual relationships of which children are born definitely demand special
attention. In fact a common offspring is the most concrete confirmation of a
relationship between human or other sexual beings. Because children are not
capable of providing for their own needs of safety, food and shelter, mature
beings are required to care for them. However, such does not mean that
children need exclusively or necessarily to be brought up by their
biological parents, particularly not in a culture that no longer
discriminates between so-called 'legitimate children', children born out of
wedlock and step-children, and particularly not in a culture where the
material 'ties of blood' are no mental 'ties of conduct', that is, reasons
for exlusiveness or exclusion, anymore. But when there is no good
alternative, the procreators have the first responsibility for the
satisfaction of the children's needs. In the relationship of one man and one
woman both are equally responsible; in general, all partners have this
responsibility together, or may have this responsibility instead of
(exclusively) the biological parent or parents. As soon as the child is no
longer helpless and shows decision on its own, this responsibility
terminates. Until this stage is reached the norm of well-being requires that
a child shall not be left to its fate.

The institution of wedlock can be stripped of exclusivisms and impingements
of the right to personhood by incorporating it into an inclusive system of
personal contracts. Such a system is to be inclusive in that it shall not
make the formalization of any kind of personal relationship impossible: any
group of two or more persons (male, female, both or neither) has the right
to enter into any personal contract, the conditions being determined by the
partners of that contract themselves. Such an agreement may specify the
terms on which two or more people decide to live together, the terms
defining the social aspects of their sexuality towards each other and
towards outsiders, the pecuniary and fiscal terms, and possibly also the
terms regulating the responsibility for children entering into the
relationship. The participants should also determine themselves for how long
the contract will be valid and what will be the penalty (if any) for
breaking it. The binding nature of a family contract may automatically come
to an end, for instance, when the last child reaches the state of maturity
(as defined in advance).

Characteristic of an inclusive system of contracts is the personal consent
of the people involved: every decision to which the contract applies
directly has to be unanimous, inclusive of the decision to give a mandate to
one or more particular persons. The situation in exclusivist countries where
a man can only marry one woman, or can marry several women in different
wedding ceremonies without being legally bound by the consent of his other
wife or wives, is far different from the situation where a person can have a
formalized relationship with one or more other persons who together
voluntarily agree to enter into such a relationship. The prerequisite that
the acceptance of new partners has the unanimous consent of all who are
bound by the contract indicates that it formalizes a personal relationship
and not just membership of a social group like an association or a union.

A contract is not simply an agreement between two or more persons (or
parties) but a binding agreement. If it were merely a useful agreement,
people could forget about it as soon as it would turn out not to be useful
anymore. Similarly, if it solely served neutral-inclusivity, it would not be
wrong in any way to leave the contract for what it is as soon as breaking
the contract served neutral-inclusivity better. What makes a contract
binding (in the normative sense) is what makes a promise or a threat binding
in the first place, namely the principle of truth. It is this principle
which demands that we keep our promises and observe our contractual duties.
This does not mean that we actually must do, or refrain from doing, certain
things in the future, because every promise or contract makes an im- or
ex-plicit use of exceptive clauses. In general this is the condition that
one shall do, or refrain from doing, something, unless the other person or
persons concerned give permission to do or not to do this (because it is the
other party's preference which counts in a promise). If such an exceptive
clause were not somehow part of the promise or contract, one would still
violate the principle of truth even tho one's partner(s) would not mind if
one did not do what one had promised. Not doing what one has promised would,
then, still be wrong from a truth-conditional point of view, whereas it is
not actually wrong with the proviso that one can be relieved by someone else
of one's promisory or contractual duty if there are good reasons for not
doing what was promised. (Dependent on the weight attached to the proviso,
it may remain prima facie wrong from the purely truth-conditional point of
view nevertheless.)

To stick to one's promises and to observe what one has agreed upon in a
personal relationship, whether by means of a contract or not, is what is
called "faithfulness". Faithfulness is a truth-conditional normative concept
and has no bearing on the content of a contract or on what has been
promised. What has been promised may be wrong from the perspective of a
neutral-inclusive subnorm, yet to keep one's promise is always right in
terms of the principle of truth. Exclusivist moralists love confusing these
things. Equating moral with normative in matters of sexuality they are
obsessed with a negative, sexual conception of faithfulness in which partner
relations must be, and remain, monogamous or exclusive under all
circumstances. For them faithful merely means not having or having had
intercourse with anyone else, if not not having intercourse with anyone at
all (for the relationship may be, or have become, devoid of any erotic
significance). Such a negative conception of faithfulness is quite different
from the positive one which demands of the people concerned that they keep
their relationship going, also (and perhaps primarily) in the erotic respect
(provided that it was meant to have an erotic component). Positive
faithfulness does not possessively and jealously preclude relations or
contacts with others, unless it has been promised not to get involved in
such relations, or not to have such contacts. Thus faithfulness is not
firmness in adherence to the doxastic values of supernaturalist, exclusivist
or extremist ideologies; faithfulness is firmness in adherence to agreements
with other people, whatever the contents of those agreements might be.



4.3  TRUTH AND NEUTRAL-INCLUSIVITY


4.3.1  TRUTH AND RELEVANCE IN OBJECTIVITY


Judgments in which an individual gives free play to 'er own way of seeing,
hearing, smelling, tasting and touching things in the outside world are
founded upon mere feelings rather than upon interpersonal considerations and
are thus subjective. While associating and processing the sensory reactions
in the body's parts and organs, the feelings developing in such an
individual are feelings of love or liking, of anger, hate or disliking. 'E
may anticipate danger and pain, possibly accompanied by fear; or protection
and pleasure, possibly accompanied by a feeling of security. The same
stimulus may induce love in one individual and hate in another; or it may
induce a feeling of security in the former individual and fear in the latter
one. Things which are related for the one, because 'e is used to associate
them while liking or disliking them all, are completely unrelated for the
other, because 'e is not used to associate them. Even when people's (or
their bodies') feelings are not opposed, they can still differ considerably
in intensity: what induces mere liking in A may induce a deeply felt love in
B; or what induces mere disliking in C may induce a deeply felt hatred in D.
This lack of interindividual (or 'interpersonal', or 'intersubjective')
continuity is precisely what characterizes subjectivity.

It is not utterances in which a person gives free rein to 'er own feelings
which are subjective in that they are, or could be, illusory. When someone
says that 'e 'imself likes or dislikes a certain sight or smell, for
instance, there is not any reason to assume that what 'e says would not be
true. And if 'e also says it to explain or justify 'er own, personal
behavior, there is not any reason to assume that 'er feelings would not be
relevant in that context. When we speak of "judgments", however, we do not
refer to mere utterances but to opinions, assertions or formal utterances.
To say that one likes a certain type of fruit may be true and relevant, but
it could hardly be termed "a judgment". The subjectivity of such an
utterance is not the kind of subjectivity to be concerned about, for the
distinction between subjectivity and objectivity just does not act a part
for utterances of which the scope is purely individual.

Even when the scope of an utterance is not purely individual, the utterance
may still be subjective when it applies to each individual separately. For
example, we all like babanas stands for a conjunction of the type A likes
bananas and B likes bananas and ... . However, bananas taste good or bananas
are healthy are not mere utterances but judgments of a scope which is not
purely individual, and it is such judgments which have to be objective, that
is, interindividually reliable. To be reliable they cannot be exclusively
based on the speaker or writer's own feelings or experiences, because other
people's feelings and experiences may have a different intensity, or may
even be opposed. One particular human being's or group of human beings'
sensory reactions does not establish a nonpersonal or supra-individual fact.
To obtain an objective judgment the same stimulus has to evoke the same
reaction in all who can sense this stimulus. This is not to say that the
universal frame of reference (of all individuals which can sense a certain
kind of stimulus) could not be immeasurably large and even unknown so far as
other planets or galaxies are concerned. In practise human beings are forced
to confine themselves to a relatively small frame of reference. This does
not at all have to discredit a judgment so long as it is realized and
expressed that the judgment in question is solely valid for the same frame
of reference. Within such a smaller frame, judgments can still be
interindividually reliable. To be an objective statement, bananas are
healthy, for instance, must at least specify for what species and age-groups
they are healthy and under what conditions (such as the number to be eaten
in a certain period).

Subjectivity is wrong when it involves utterances or ideas which are perhaps
reliable and justifiable for one individual or for one particular group of
individuals, but which are considered binding, or demanded to be binding,
for other individuals as well, or for individuals not belonging to that
particular group. There is a confusion of scopes: the scope of the
judgment's reliability and justifiability is different from that of its
application. In other words, the judgment is not relevant in the practical
context concerned. To be objective a judgment has to be both true and
relevant in the context in which it is applied. Objectivity is therefore not
simply a matter of being intersubjectively observable, verifiable or
falsifiable. Or, if it is, such would not be a reason to regard it as
normatively superior to subjectivity. It is only normatively superior when
it involves truth instead of falsehood, and relevance instead of
irrelevance.

Judgments are not only objective because they are reliable for the same
framework as the one in which they are used, they can also be objective when
the framework in which they are used is much bigger. This is the case when
the basis of the judgment is restricted to the past and the present, but
when there is no reason to assume that it will not be true in the future as
well. It is an objective view (held true by scientists) to believe that
apples will continue to fall off trees in the future, altho this cannot now
be observed, and altho this cannot now be verified or falsified. It would
even be arbitrary or 'subjective' to believe that apples did and do solely
happen to fall off trees in the past or present (unless it can be made
plausible that human civilization is not capable of improving drastically
and will eventually lead to the destruction of a great part or of all life
on Earth, inclusive of apple trees).

Strictly speaking, it can indeed not be proved that ground-world events
which were 'always' conjoined, or 'always' succeeded each other in the past,
will continue to be conjoined or will continue to succeed each other in the
future. But if two of such events are not believed to be conjoined or to
succeed each other anymore in the future, the onus is on the one who does
not assume that the conjunction or the succession will remain unaltered, to
prove that such a discontinuity is to be expected. For the one who must show
that the assumption of discontinuity (such as that the Sun will not rise
anymore tomorrow) is more plausible than the assumption of sameness or
continuity (that the Sun will rise as usual tomorrow), it is imperative to
bring forward relevant factors overlooked before or relevant recent changes.

The objective attitude in the factual or modal spheres can and must be
extended to the normative sphere. In this sphere it cannot be proved either
that, for example, people are 'equal', that is, should be treated in the
same way in similar situations. But if two persons are not believed to be
equal, the onus is on the one who does not assume equality between people to
prove that a different treatment of persons in similar situations is
relevant. This is what both the norm of inclusivity and the norm of
interpersonal equality demand from us. In this respect, too, normative
theories like inclusivism and relevantist egalitarianism turn out to be not
more and not less objective than factual-modal ones like the theory on cause
and effect.



4.3.2  TRUTH AND NEUTRALITY IN EXPECTATIONS


People's behavior does not have to be goal-directed according to the norm of
neutrality, but if it is goal-directed the goal aimed at should ultimately
be a neutral one. It has quite commonly been pointed out that people's (or
'human') behavior is in actual fact 'mostly goal-directed'. This kind of
behavior is then described as "rational", because it involves the choice of
the best means available for attaining the goal in question. Correct tho
this description may be, it does not follow that a person who does not
choose the best means available, for example, because this violates someone
else's right to personhood, would behave 'irrationally'. Or, if one wants to
call such behavior "irrational", it does not follow that a person would
always have to behave 'rationally'. Yet, since we are in the context of this
division primarily interested in doctrinal considerations, we should not
only choose neutral-inclusive objectives, but also behave rationally with
respect to these objectives. On this teleological scheme the means-end
concept of rational behavior is, indeed, a useful one.

When a decision maker can predict the outcome of an action, the situation is
not problematic. A person who thus acts under certainty should choose the
right goal (a neutral or nanapolar one) and make sure that 'er prediction is
a true one, that is, corresponds with reality. But only under ideal
circumstances can a person be entirely sure about the state of affairs 'er
action will bring about. In actual fact a person (more) often (than not)
acts under risk and under uncertainty. In the case of risk 'e knows at least
the objective probabilities of the possible outcomes; in the case of
uncertainty even these objective probabilities will not all be known to 'im.
When objective probabilities are not known and not given, mere adherence to
the principle of truth will not help. The decision maker is then forced to
work with 'subjective' probabilities or expectations. (Subjective is used
here in the sense of nonepistemic doxastic and expectation in the standard
sense, not in the mathematical sense of product of the probability that an
event will occur and the amount to be received if it does occur.) If a
decision maker has a goal in mind, and if not all outcomes are known to 'im,
'e will have to make comparisons, also intra- and inter-personal ones. Even
abstaining from every action presupposes that this would serve the goal in
question at least as good as any positive action. There is nothing dramatic
about this situation: everyone performs such mental operations all the time,
altho definitely not always to serve a neutral or nanapolar end.

The function of the theory dealing with the problems and principles of
decision-making, decision theory, is not to tell us what end we ought to
choose. Its function is merely to formulate decision rules telling us what
to do given a certain end. Hence, so far as these ends are concerned
decision theory is neither neutralistic nor antineutralistic. Therefore it
is even more remarkable that one of the classical principles of decision
theory is a neutralist one, namely the principle of indifference, also
labeled "the rule for choice under uncertainty" or "the principle of
insufficient reason". On this principle one should assign equal
probabilities to all possibilities in a situation of complete ignorance, if
one has to employ probabilities at all. Altho the principle of indifference
does not prescribe that a person must employ 'subjective' probabilities, the
rational decision maker can usually not help acting as if 'e does use them.
This, at least, is what one school of decision theory teaches. The theorists
of this school propose expected-utility maximization as decision rule under
uncertainty. Taken literally, the formulation of the end to be pursued in
terms of 'maximum utility' is extremist and inconsistent with the neutralist
character of the principle of indifference. On our terms, the decision rule
concerned should be a rule of expected neutralization, but this
reformulation has little or no impact on the mathematical enterprise itself.
It only underscores that those who accept the principle of indifference in
decision theory should also accept neutralization as an ultimate corrective
value instead of maximization or, for that matter, minimization.

Even when restricting themselves to means-end rationality and even when
accepting the same goal or goals, decision theorists may still disagree
about what a rational decision maker is actually supposed to do. For the
principle of indifference has its competitors too. And if this principle
were wrong, it would not benefit neutrality in the end, if we tried to
achieve a neutral or nanapolar goal by assigning equal probabilities to the
possibilities in question (assuming that they are completely unknown to the
decision maker). One alternative principle proposed is the maximin
principle. According to this principle every action or policy must be
evaluated in terms of the worst possibility which can occur by choosing this
action or policy, and it is this worst possiblity which must then be
maximized. It has been argued, however, that the maximin and similar
principles often suggest entirely unacceptable decisions in practise and
'lead to highly irrational decisions in important cases'. On the maximin
principle a person would always have to choose something unpleasant if
choosing something pleasant could possibly lead to the worst outcome,
however unlikely it might be that this ever happened. On a related principle
in political philosophy (the so-called 'difference principle') society has
to give absolute priority to the interests of the one worst-off individual,
even tho an alternative policy would be beneficial to no matter how many
people. (It should be noted that the system to which the principle is made
to apply does not distinguish extrinsic and intrinsic rights and that
therefore the worst-off individual in this system may not even have 'er
extrinsic property at 'er disposal.) Where this principle does lead to
reasonable decisions, it is 'essentially equivalent to the expected-utility
maximization principle' --as has been said. When we now substitute
neutralization for utility (maximization), we have come full circle; that
is, we are then back in the original position in which it is ultimately only
neutrality and neutralization which count.

Throughout nature and culture neutrality appears as symmetry. So also in the
probabilities of decision theory. There it is called "symmetry in
probability". In effect, symmetry considerations require here that one
attach exactly equal mathematical probabilities to each of all possible
outcomes (assuming that one does not know that the probabilities are
unequal). It is, of course, nothing else than the principle of indifference
which establishes this equality of probabilities. But while it is admitted
that this principle 'will continue to be a most fertile idea in the theory
of probability' it has also been criticized for reasons other than those of
the maximin type.

Some theorists do not accept the indifference principle as a formal
postulate, but believe that there is 'an element of truth' in it --a rather
odd and ambiguous position indeed. One objection is not very serious. It is
that the principle would not be strictly applicable for a person who has had
the relevant experience. As the argument runs, one cannot expect a person to
maintain a symmetrical attitude toward a kind of situation (such as when
confronted with a piece of apparatus) with which 'e has had long experience.
Such a person would have to continue believing against all odds that the
possible outcomes of such a situation were equally probable and independent
from case to case. Since the principle of indifference applies to situations
of 'complete uncertainty' and the principle of truth to situations of
'complete certainty', there is a wide range of situations between these two
epistemological extremes. Situations in which a person has had some relevant
experience are typically situations in which 'e is not completely uncertain
anymore (hopefully for the right reasons). A relevantist interpretation of
the principle of indifference will therefore bypass the objection
altogether: probabilities should be taken equal, unless the assumption that
they are unequal can be justified. Hence, the 'element of truth' in the
principle of indifference is that a symmetrical initial attitude towards
probabilities needs no justification.

(Note that the traditional belief that all religions would be equally valid
which is called "indifferentism" can only be held by those who confuse
ideologies or systems of thought in general with religions, and who have
never seriously reflected on the attitude assumed in different systems of
thought with respect to truth and its interpretation, and with respect to
neutrality and its interpretation. To be an indifferentist a person must be
totally ignorant of the completely anti-indifferentist content of the
religions claimed to be 'equally valid'.)

It has been argued, too, that people do in practise not act on the
indifference principle, nor on the maximin principle or some other general
decision-theoretical rule. But objections of this sort are rather weak.
Firstly, even where only consequentialist or teleological considerations are
concerned, there is no reason to suppose that people always act rationally
--on the contrary. Secondly, even if we assume that they always do act
rationally, it may not be clear what end or ends they have in mind. Thus,
according to the indifference principle, taking part in a lottery is
irrational if the participator's sole aim is to win a prize. If there are
many lots and few prizes, it is unneutral to expect that one will win such a
prize. Yet, if the lottery is held in aid of a good cause, and if it is
known that the money one will probably lose, goes to a cause one supports,
then one does behave rationally nonetheless. In such a case one spends money
on something which will, presumably, always serve a good end, either a
personal or a nonpersonal one.

A more serious objection against the principle of indifference is that it is
'not always obvious what the symmetry of the information is'. There may be
partitions of the domain in question which many different people all
consider uniform partitions, but the partitioning may in other instances be
controversial. Nonetheless, where there is, perhaps, no agreement on a
single, 'correct' way of partitioning, people will probably agree that a
great number of partitions is not correct. In all those cases the
indifference principle is still operative in that it makes it impossible to
justify many unneutral expectations. In the next section we shall take a
look at an example of the indifference principle's marked effectiveness even
when it is not immediately obvious what the equal probabilities must be
assigned to.



4.3.3  REALISM BEFORE AND AFTER DEATH


4.3.3.1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

REALISTIC

A poor sense of reality
is what those people display
who have too much fantasy,
who overlook the actual constraints, and
who daydream until nightfall
about what certainly never will be:
they may be optimists,
they are not realists.

And a poor sense of reality
is what those people display
who have too little fantasy,
who overlook the possibilities, and
who cannot conceive of anything else
than what seemingly always has been:
they may be pessimists,
they are not realists either.

A better sense of reality
is what those people display
who know how to employ their fantasy
to make things which seem impossible today
the reality of tomorrow:
they are the real realists.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------


Let us assume that we are in a state of complete uncertainty and do not know
whether there will be a happy, nanhappy or unhappy life after death. We are
not sure either, whether there will be any life after death. Maybe these
assumptions are ridiculous, or outmoded when they once will be reconsidered.
But if so, then from the point of view of truth. We will now examine this
issue from the point of view of neutrality, granted that we do not (yet?)
know the truth. The question of whether there will exist a life after death
(and whether there did exist a life before birth or conception), and if so,
what kind of life, is in itself a scientific question and not a
denominational one. Neither the neutrality principle in general nor the
indifference principle in particular forces us to accept any belief
concerning the question of whether a person or mental being remains in
existence after 'er body has died (or did already exist before 'er body came
into being). Nevertheless it is dead certain that the adherents of these
principles are forbidden to adopt or readopt unneutral beliefs which have
been religiously entertained by a great many previous generations. The
unneutrality has always, or usually, been of the happiness-catenary type,
and we will therefore confine ourselves to this aspect.

When looking at the logical future possibilities, the first choice is one
between no life after death (noncatenality) and some life after death
(catenality). To suggest that the first choice might as well be between
noncatenality, happiness, nanhappiness and unhappiness, or between
noncatenality and all proper predicates of the happiness-catena, is to
forget that every proper or improper happiness-catenary predicate represents
catenality, and that noncatenality has been defined as negation of
catenality. (Noncatenality, nanhappiness and unhappiness also represent
nonhappiness, but this is different, because they have not been defined as
negation of happiness.) Therefore the principle of indifference in itself
does allow us to assume that the chance of no life after death (and no life
before birth or conception) is the same as the chance of a life after death
(and a life before birth and conception). Both are 1/2. When considering the
kind of life after death, we may suppose that there is an equal chance of
having any of the, say, n predicates of the happiness-catena. But as the
chance of having a happiness-catenary predicate is 1/2, the chance of having
a particular happiness-catenary predicate is 1 / 2n. Since there is no
reason to assume that the number of proper happiness predicates is different
from the number of proper unhappiness predicates, the chance of having a
happy life after death is then (n-1) / 4n ; this is the same as the chance
of having an unhappy life after death.

Now, there are good reasons to assume that the chance of having a nanhappy
life is greater than the chance of having an unneutrally happiness-catenal
life, and certainly greater than that of having an extremely happy or
extremely unhappy life, just as the chance that a totally unknown, adult
human being is medium tall is greater than that 'e is very tall or very
short. (This merely as an illustration, because an important difference
might be that the shortness catena is a modulus-catena, whereas the
happiness catena is not.) Whatever the construction, however, if we do not
have the true and relevant ground-world knowledge the indifference principle
does not allow us to assume that our death will be followed by a happy or by
an unhappy life. It will either be followed by no life at all, or by a life
which is nanhappy on the average. Given our premises this conclusion does
even hold when the same chance is assigned to noncatenality as to happiness,
nanhappiness and unhappiness, or as to every single, proper predicate of the
happiness catena.

Extremist supernaturalism does not only promise the believer a happy life
after death if 'he' abides by the commandments of 'his' ideology but no less
than an eternally happy life; and it does not only threaten the believer
with an unhappy life after death if 'he' does not abide by the commandments
of 'his' ideology but with no less than an eternally unhappy life.
'Unfortunately', an eternally happy life, whether on Earth or elsewhere,
seems even theoretically impossible, because it would require an eternal
amelioration of the catenal's situation. This would eventually terminate in
a good situation or in a state of well-being in which improvement would not
even logically be possible anymore. Before this state, the threshold of
happiness-catenary feeling would have been attained, and nanhappiness would
already have set in. This situation could only be changed again by a
deterioration accompanied by unhappiness. (Hence, supernaturalists who still
expect an eternally happy afterlife by being nice to other supernaturalists
are flogging a dead horse.)

Theoretically an eternally unhappy life seems possible, but this would
require a perpetual deterioration of a sentient being's situation (on the
relative view of the relationship between happiness-catenary and situational
catenality). It appears that such a deterioration does in actual fact always
issue in decatenalization. The most plausible moment of decatenalization is,
then, the moment a happiness-catenal's body dies. (This is not to say that
such a catenal must die under unhappy circumstances.)

When a religion or other ideology tries to win people over to its side by
promisory and comminatory means it does not only violate the norm of
neutrality but usually also the principle of truth and people's (especially
young people's) right to personhood. What such a religion or other ideology
also often heavily draws on is the confusion between hope and expectation.
We may hope for anything desirable, even tho we do not think it will
actually happen, but we may only expect to happen what certainly will
happen, or what probably will happen on the basis of the indifference
principle in combination with the relevant experience. For but too many
people, however, hope and expectation have been, or still are, synonyms. The
things such people hope for, and the things they expect, are often or too
often the same. The difference between hope and expectation tends
particularly to fade away in emotional times, for example, during a
competition or war. It is then that an exceedingly unrealistic, optimistic
belief may manifest itself in which the intensity of the expectation is
extremely high or much higher than can be justified on the basis of the
probability of the occurrence hoped for.

Some people seem to believe that optimism is expecting something good and
then like to consider themselves optimists. If this is 'optimism' at all, it
is not necessarily 'optimism' as a mode of unrealistic thought. What makes
'optimism' in the sense we shall use it here, unrealistic and unneutralistic
is that it is a belief in the best possible outcome or the inclination to
always expect good outcomes, regardless of the facts or in contradistinction
to the indifference principle. Even the doctrine that this world would be
the best of all possible worlds is a product of such optimism. The
antithesis of optimism, pessimism, is then the belief in the worst possible
outcome or the inclination to always expect bad outcomes, again, regardless
of the facts or in contradistinction to the indifference principle.
Specimens of pessimism are the doctrine that 'reality is essentially evil'
or that 'unhappiness overbalances happiness'. A 'real' pessimist should not
only believe that unhappiness must outweigh happiness in life, that is,
before death but also after death, for a 'real' pessimist is also someone
who is never optimistic. In practise tho, there are but too many people who
are pessimists today and optimists tomorrow: unrealistic pessimists and
unrealistic optimists are certainly not known for their equanimity. But
whether they are staunch pessimists, staunch optimists or fluctuating
between pessimism and optimism, for none of these people there is a neutral
vantage point from which they can take the right decision.

The type of realism founded in the principle of indifference which preserves
the nanhappy mean between unrealistic optimism and unrealistic pessimism is
decision-theoretical realism. If the facts or experience show that a good
outcome is more probable than a bad one, and if we do have expectations at
all, this decision-theoretical realism requires us to expect a good outcome.
Yet, this is not optimism, for if the facts or experience showed that a bad
outcome were more probable, we would have to expect a bad outcome; and this
is not pessimism either.

Decision-theoretical realism centers primarily round the principle of
neutrality, whereas non-supernatural realism (as we have provisionally
called it in I.6.2.1) centers primarily round the principle of truth. In
spite of this, they are plainly two strands of one realist attitude. This
could be a reason to argue that the principle of indifference, like the
principle of truth, is not a ground-world principle. To this argument it can
be replied that truth may play a role in the cognitive component of the
realist attitude, while decision-theoretical indifference plays a role in
the affective, and particularly the conative, component of this attitude.
Moreover, one can implicitly adhere to the neutralist principle of
indifference in practise without ever talking or even thinking about this
principle and about what one is doing or choosing. Indeed, one can adhere to
it without being involved in thinking at all, something that can definitely
not be said about the principle of truth.



4.3.4  VERIDICALISM INSTEAD OF SUPERNATURALISM


Proselytizing supernaturalists love to pose questions like how do you know
that there is no life after death? or how do you know that God does not
exist?. Such questions are hypocritical, because the supernaturalist does
not know the answers 'imself either. Yet, such questions need not be
inappropriate when a nonbeliever does actually claim that 'e 'knows that
life after death and God do not exist'. Naturally, many supernaturalists are
completely unable to make a distinction between the claim or belief that
something does not exist and the absence of a claim or belief that something
does exist. They do not realize that it is one thing to be an a(nti)theist
who argues that a supernatural or supreme being named "God" does not exist,
and quite another to be an agnostic or someone who is not denominationally
interested and who neither argues that something or someone by that name
exists, nor that it or 'he' does not exist. (For the agnostic and the
antitheist the question of Mono's existence is as relevant as for the
theist, but we will see that for us as normists the question itself is
irrelevant on the highest level.)

The supernaturalist does not really have to be capable of distinguishing
between a belief that something does not exist and the absence of a belief
that something does exist; what suffices for 'im in point of fact is that 'e
can differentiate a belief which 'e knows to be false and any other kind of
belief. The reason is that 'er principle of truth merely requires from 'im
that 'e do not lie. In other words, that 'e do not contend and --for
'imself-- believe something which 'e knows to be untrue. Supernaturalist
ideologies have no substantive criterion whatsoever for the infinite number
of cases that the falsity of a statement cannot be proved. What is worse, a
supernaturalist has only to make sure that what 'e tells children or other
people cannot be falsified or made implausible in any way. Such is
preferably done by means of expressions which have never been univocally
defined, and by means of proper names which have never been assigned to
particular individuals. Thus a supernaturalist can utter the most
nonsensical, absurd and implausible statements without feeling forced to
believe that 'e does not take the truth seriously, provided at least that 'e
does not lie intentionally. But this is, of course, the most narrow and
egregious interpretation of the principle of truth one can think of and
subscribe to.

If truth were really such an extremely limited affair as supernaturalist
(and certain naturalist) creations cause innocent human beings to believe,
every person could say that 'e will die tomorrow, for instance, because 'e
cannot know today that 'e does not die tomorrow. Every person could argue
that the world will end the day after tomorrow because no-one can know today
that it does not end the day after tomorrow. Every person could claim that
there is an all-beautiful being named "Dog" living in a place or on a planet
named "the nevaeh" (or an all-ugly being named "Lived" being dead in a place
or on a planet named "the lleh"), because no-one can prove that Dog and the
nevaeh do not exist, and that Dog does not live in the nevaeh (or that Lived
is not dead in the lleh). These and all suchlike flights of fancy are
supernaturalist illusions and delusions, however effective and 'natural'
their dissemination by the Ministry of Love or other such agencies may once
have been (or still is). And this is what truthful people must reject, not
necessarily because it is known to be false, but because no sincere person
has a reason to assume that it is true, let alone literally true.

In the doctrine of neutral-inclusivity the principle of truth is interpreted
in such a manner that one should only say that something is the case if one
can prove that it is the case, or if one can make it plausible that it was,
is or will be the case, or made the case. This plausible must be understood
in a scientific or otherwise non-supernatural, realist sense, and definitely
not in the sense of millenniums or centuries old, sacred books. It is also
to apply to the supernatural or theodemonical promises and comminations in
such books. And if the truth of an utterance about the future depends on
oneself, then a way of making it true is not only by fulfilling a promise or
carrying out a threat, but also by not promising something or threatening
with something, when one is not able or likely to make it come true. No
narrower interpretation of the principle of truth than this one can deserve
the epithet veridical. (Taking into consideration that veridical derives
from verus meaning true and dicere meaning (to) say.) Our
neutral-inclusivist position with respect to the principle of truth shall
therefore be called "veridicalism".

Being the antithesis of supernaturalism, our veridicalism shows in a
fundamental preference of the plausible to the false or farfetched. (The
veridicalist word is not made flashy but well-balanced.) In literature and
in other fields of art fantasies do not have to be taken seriously, and
utterances not literally. In fundamental denominationalism, however, we
prefer to see the real world presented as a theater in which purposes are
unfolded which are, first of all, not sure nor likely to be extreme,
exclusive or extravagant.


4.3.4.0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRUTH,   RELEVANCE   AND   NEUTRALITY   TOGETHER

Truth in isolation is not worth anything
Reflections on truth cannot be separated
from reflections on relevancy.
Some might argue
that truth also involves the question
whether it is true or not
whether something is relevant or not.
That's true,
but relevancy also involves the question
whether it is relevant or not
whether something is true or not.
Everyone interested in truth must always choose
between infinitely many conditions or propositions, and
between different descriptions of the entities involved.
The question 'e will always be confronted with is:
what do i base my choice upon?,
why assert the one truth and not the other? or
why apply the one description and not the other?.
The distinctions 'e draws
--because in choosing 'e does draw distinctions--
must then be relevant ones.
While a truthful thinker of the past sought for
truth in isolation,
the sincere thinker of the future will seek for
relevance as well.

Truth and relevance in isolation are not worth anything either
Reflections on truth cannot be separated
from reflections on relevance.
Some might argue
that truth and relevancy also involve the question
whether it is true or not
whether something is the focus of relevance or not.
That's true,
but if truth and relevance cannot be separated from each other,
the search for truth is itself dependent
on its own focus of relevancy.
Everyone interested in truth and relevance must always choose
'er own focus of relevancy first in order to assess
what is relevant or not with respect to this determinant.
The question 'e will always be confronted with is:
what should this focus of relevancy be?.
The neutralist will then opt for a neutral determinant.
And if it's true
that there are reasons not to opt for neutrality in one respect,
'e will opt for neutrality in another, more basic respect.
Only then will 'e accept polarity in the former respect.
The neutralist will not seek for
truth and relevance in isolation.
'E will seek for neutrality above all.
And it is by realizing this
that truth, relevance and neutrality become of supreme value
together.


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4.4  PERSONHOOD AS ONE OF FOUR PILLARS


4.4.1  FROM ANANORM TO ANANORM


The system of disciplinary thought centering round the norm of neutrality or
ananorm is neutralism. Neutrality is the ultimate end, purpose or 'telos' of
neutralism. The system of disciplinary thought centering round both the norm
of neutrality and the norm of inclusivity is neutralism-inclusivism or
neutral-inclusivism. Neutral-inclusivity is the general, ultimate value of
neutral-inclusivism. The system of disciplinary thought centering round the
norms of neutrality and inclusivity and the veridicalist interpretation of
the principle of truth is what we have called "the doctrine of
neutral-inclusivity" or "DNI". This doctrine is a goal-duty-based doctrine,
and so are the neutral-inclusivist and neutralist components of it. Goal is,
then, to be understood in a wide, past-, present- and future-regarding,
causal and noncausal sense. The DNI does recognize rights too, but they are
intrinsic rights derived from neutral-inclusive or truth-related, doctrinal
goals. That is why our ideology is, doctrinally speaking, goal-duty-based or
teleological. On the other hand it is, metadoctrinally speaking,
right-duty-based or rights-theoretical. This agrees with an
interideologically inclusive attitude towards adherence to the DNI itself.
The extrinsic right in question is the right to personhood which is based on
the sole practical metadoctrinal principle espoused by us in addition to the
principles of the doctrine of neutral-inclusivity.

The recognition of the doctrinal principle of neutrality leads within the
bounds of neutral-inclusivism itself to the formulation of both distributive
goals like those of equality and nondistributive goals like well-being and
the minimization of unhappiness or suffering. Besides this the recognition
of the doctrinal principle of relevance demands from us nondiscrimination
and respect for persons. Altho the ananorm and the norm of inclusivity
together seem sufficient to guarantee people's autonomy and bodily
integrity, personhood requires that every person be treated as such
regardless of the first-order doctrine 'e or anyone else embraces. While in
our case the DNI is fully compatible with the right to personhood, there are
but too many ideologies or normative doctrines for which this has not held,
or for which this still does not hold.

For those who distinguish first- from second-order reasons, it might be said
that the doctrinal principles of the DNI provide us with first-order reasons
to act or not to act in a certain way. Or, it might be said that the
doctrine's intrinsic rights and duties are first-order reasons. The right to
personhood, or the metadoctrinal principle of personhood, however, provides
us with a second-order reason not to do a certain act. In general
second-order reason has been defined as reason to act or to refrain from
acting for some reason. Since rights of personhood are nonactivating, the
second-order reason concerned is always a reason to refrain from acting for
some reason. Such second-order reasons have been termed "exclusionary", but
they have nothing to do with the type of exclusion or exclusiveness as
denounced in the norm of inclusivity. So the metadoctrinal principle can
--if not in practise, then at least theoretically-- confront us with a
so-called 'exclusionary' reason not to act in accordance with the DNI. The
reason is then that acting on one of our doctrine's principles would
infringe a right of personhood, that is, the extrinsic right of a person who
is not willing to cooperate with us, while having the right not to cooperate
with us. But the knife cuts both ways: if adherents of the DNI do not have
the right to impose their own principles on nonadherents of the DNI (and
they do not have that right), then adherents of supernaturalist,
exclusivist, extremist and lesser unneutralist doctrines do not have the
right either to impose their beliefs, institutions and symbols on adherents
of the DNI.

The doctrine of neutral-inclusivity is a normative doctrine, and the
principle of personhood a normative principle. The normative system of
disciplinary thought which comprises both, and which is our denominational
ideology or 'doctrine' in the widest sense, may therefore be referred to as
"the Norm". The Norm is a proper name but obviously not an arbitrary one. No
other proper name can more clearly and adequately express that our ideology
is a normist instead of a theocentrist one. (In the last chapter of this
book we will further discuss the position of this proper name in the
antithesis between normism and theocentrism.) To emphasize that our
denominational doctrine is not just a normist denominational doctrine, we
shall speak of "the Ananorm", that is, the Norm of neutrality or the Norm of
neutral-inclusivity. The proper adjective belonging to it is Ananormative.

There is one pillar which supports neutralism, namely the ananorm. There are
two pillars which support neutral-inclusivism, namely the previous one and
the norm of inclusivity. There are three pillars which support the DNI,
namely the previous ones and the principle of truth. And finally, there are
four pillars which support the total normative edifice of the Ananorm,
namely the previous ones and the right to personhood. It is these four
normative pillars we shall hold on to in this Model. They are listed in
figure F.4.4.1.1.



4.4.2  FREEDOM, EXTRINSIC AND INTRINSIC


Like justice, 'freedom' is something almost all people are in favor of.
Virtually every religion and political ideology promises freedom or
liberation, with or without simultaneous equality for everyone. This is a
reason to listen to any talk about freedom or liberation with skepticism.
(Even when a religion or political ideology brought freedom in one respect,
it has but too often brought a new kind of lordship or dictatorship at the
same time.) Yet, it is when freedom is blatantly absent that one best
realizes that it means something important. This is first and foremost the
case when people are murdered, tortured, injured, raped, imprisoned or
enslaved who have not violated other people's personal rights. In one
country it may be the state or an army of occupation which commits such
atrocities, in another it may be individual citizens or groups of citizens
who commit them. Freedom is not there because the law says so; freedom is
there when the authorities respect people's rights in actual fact and when
the structure of society is such that it does not create or perpetuate the
conditions in which violence is stimulated, provoked or even made necessary.

Freedom is often denied in the name of freedom. That is why one theorist has
argued that people should differentiate negative and positive liberty and
stick to the first form of it. 'Negative liberty' is the absence of
interference or domination, that is, the absence of interference by the
state, of the pressures of social conformism and of invasions by other
individuals. 'Positive liberty' is on this account the absence of
impediments over and above simple, deliberate coercion. It is said to derive
from 'the wish on the part of the individual to be 'er own master'. This
notion of positive liberty has proved to be highly prone to abuse in the
hands of those who conceive of self-mastery as mastery of some 'higher' or
'real' self over some 'lower' or 'animal' self. The higher or real self is
then the sort of self which best suits the ideals or aspirations of certain
'liberators' who are but too willing to arrogate all power and influence
unto themselves, especially in the name of a god or a political party.

It has been objected that the above-mentioned division between 'negative'
and 'positive liberty' does only count as interference direct, physical
obstruction and neglects the form of domination exercised by withholding the
means of life or labor from people. The alternative division proposed is one
between counterextractive and developmental liberty. Counterextractive
liberty is defined as immunity from the extractive power of others and is a
wider notion than negative liberty. Developmental liberty, on the other
hand, is narrower than positive liberty and is said to denote 'individual
self-direction' and 'the ability to live in accordance with one's own
conscious purposes'. It is clearly not meant to denote coercion of 'those
who do not (yet) know the truth' by 'those who say that they know it'.

In terms of metadoctrinal and doctrinal considerations both the division
between 'negative' and 'positive', and that between 'counterextractive' and
'developmental liberty' are faulty or too vague. Roughly speaking, negative
and counterextractive liberty deal implicitly with the right to personhood.
Negative liberty underscores the aspect of freedom in the mere sense of
personal and bodily autonomy, whereas counterextractive liberty focuses on
the property aspect inherent in the right to personhood, not only where it
concerns the person's body, but also where it concerns external things.
Again roughly speaking, positive and developmental liberty deal with
doctrinal rights and ideals. But the so-called 'ability to live in
accordance with one's own conscious purposes' is, of course, first of all a
metadoctrinally required condition. It is additional demands which make it
more and more doctrinal. To the extent that it is metadoctrinal, that is
extrinsic, we ought to support this ideal; to the extent that it is supposed
to be doctrinal, that is intrinsic, it depends on the person's ends whether
we ought to support it or not. To live in accordance with one's own,
individual purposes (whatever those purposes might be) is nothing
intrinsically good in itself.

What it all hinges upon is the distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic
freedom or liberty. 'Extrinsic liberty' is the liberty of the active,
discretionary right to personhood and closely related to the notions of
negative and counterextractive liberty. But this proposition cannot be
reversed: the notion of the right to personhood is not merely a notion of
extrinsic liberty, it is as much a notion of extrinsic property (a notion to
be discussed in 4.4.5). 'Intrinsic liberty' is liberty on the principles of
the DNI, that is, liberty as warranted, or insofar as warranted, from the
perspective of neutral-inclusivity and truth. It is a form of 'positive' and
'developmental liberty' when the person or persons concerned have the
freedom to do what is best for their own well-being without violating
anyone's rights and without doing more harm than good on the whole.

Metadoctrinally, liberty must be defended; doctrinally, it can be defended,
not only on the basis of people's well-being but also on the basis of the
minimization of unhappiness, on the basis of interpersonal equality and on
the basis of nondiscrimination. However, each time it is a particular type
of liberty which is then justifed. For example, (positive) liberty has also
been interpreted as the greatest number of options available. Such a form of
liberty is extremist and not a perfective value to be strived for on the
neutralistic model. Ultimately, there is nothing intrinsically good in a
great number of available options, let alone something better in a number
which is even greater, and that ad infinitum. If and when the freedom of a
great number of available options is good, this is only so for instrumental
reasons.

The right to personhood teaches us that we have a certain freedom, an
extrinsic freedom to be precise. The DNI teaches us what we should do or not
do with this freedom. This does only partially confirm our freedom, for in a
way every sensible, doctrinal principle solely restrains people's extrinsic
freedom. For example, the principle of truth does in the first instance
nothing else than this: instead of telling the truth and lying as we please,
we must now always tell the truth. Whereas we had (and still have) the
extrinsic freedom to lie, we do not have the intrinsic freedom anymore to do
so. Only indirectly could it be argued that all of us eventually will have
more freedom on the whole by not lying. For the agent who is to act morally
it is the very essence of the normative to limit the number of physical or
metaphysical options open to 'im. With morality the number of options an
individual decision maker has is smaller than without (altho this may only
hold so long as enough other people lead moral lives). Therefore morality
itself contravenes '(total) freedom' in a normative sense. It does not
contravene 'freedom' in a social or legal sense, however, because that kind
of freedom does not interfere with it. This is not to say, of course, that a
lack of social or legal freedom could not interfere with what one ought to
do or refrain from doing in practise.



4.4.3  THE FREEDOM NOT TO SUPPORT POLARITY OR EXCLUSIVITY


Freedom is not an ultimate doctrinal value in itself. It may be derived as a
lower-level value from neutrality and inclusivity, but neither of these
ultimate values can be replaced by it. Inclusivity, for instance, may entail
intrinsic liberty, but intrinsic liberty (even liberty in general) does not
entail as much as inclusivity does. From the inclusivist angle freedom is
merely the absence of the most severe forms of direct exclusionism, that is,
the bare minimum on the way to the inclusiveness of total nondiscrimination.
So denominational freedom is the bare minimum on the way to denominational
inclusivity; religious freedom is even much less than that. A country with
denominational freedom can still be very religionistic, for instance. The
state will in such a country not injure or imprison nonreligious people, or
people of another religion than the established one, but it will confront
them, day and night, with the institutions and symbols of religion, or of
the favored religion, nevertheless. Unlike denominational freedom, both
denominational inclusivity and the right to personhood forbid states and
other inter- or non-ideological agencies to support and perpetuate one
particular type of denominationalism, let alone to indoctrinate citizens
with it. Hence, governments and people who speak of "respect for religious
freedom" rather than for "denominational impartiality", because they prefer
so or do not know better, have still a hell of a long way to go.

That exclusivist institutions and symbols are in actual fact but too often
imposed upon everyone by the state or community in which people live is very
regrettable. Yet, this is no reason whatsoever to voluntarily contribute to
the perpetuation of their existence. Thus more than 50% in a 'democratic'
country, or less than 50% in an undemocratic country, may foist a monarchist
system in which one 'man' and 'his' family are granted extensive privileges,
onto the whole of society. While they may fancily style the members of that
chosen family "king", "queen", "prince", or what have you, everyone retains
the extrinsic freedom not to participate in the practise --in their
practise-- of referring to people in exclusivist terms. If one calls every
other person in one's country who one does not know intimately by 'er
surname, then one shall call every person of that particular family who one
does not know intimately by 'er surname. No doubt, the use of monarchist or
aristocratic titles is part of the perpetuation of familially exclusivist
practises and institutions.

In a majoritarian polity 51% can 'democratically' impose any system on the
rest of society, but no majority or minority can force individual citizens
to believe in exclusivism and to talk in an irrelevantist fashion, least of
all among themselves. Those who do that nevertheless voluntarily perpetuate
the exclusivist institution. (Under a dictatorial regime one could, perhaps,
style every male "Prince Such" and every female "Princess So" thus draining
titles like these of all exclusiveness.) In an undemocratic country
(including countries with a disproportional representation) 49% or less can
force every citizen to pay taxes for the maintenance of a monarchist,
religionist or party-political totalitarian system, however meretricious or
obnoxious; but no 49%, even no 67% or more, can force neutral-inclusivist
citizens to change their thoughts or to alter their language. Those who do
in spite of this have their thoughts or their language knowingly colored by
exclusivist, political or communal institutions do not care about equality
and inclusivity, and do not deserve it.

Not only can people not be forced to change their thoughts and language,
they cannot be forced either to provide information which is not pertinent
to the issue concerned, even when legitimate. All of us have the extrinsic
freedom to refuse to answer any question which is discriminatory in that the
information is not relevant to the subject, or to the listeners, spectators
or readers in general.

It is true that people do not only have the extrinsic freedom not to
perpetuate, and participate in, exclusivist or extremist undertakings and
institutions, but that they do also have the extrinsic right to do this. The
point is, however, that those who want, for example, to speak of themselves
or others in exclusive terms, and who want to have themselves financially
supported or want to support others merely because of something like their
ancestry or marriage ties, should establish and maintain such an exclusivist
institution themselves. For their money they have the extrinsic right to do
that, but they should not involve the state and other citizens in such a
major manifestation of familial favoritism.

On the whole we as adherents of the DNI will certainly have more freedom
than the adherents of most religious and political ideologies. Nonetheless,
we do not have the intrinsic freedom to participate in, or to perpetuate,
systems which are unneutralistic, exclusivistic or supernaturalistic.
Neutral-inclusivity has to be attained or furthered in the first place by
making use of our extrinsic right to noncollaboration and noncooperation. In
the political domain this implies before all noncooperation with fascism,
party-political totalitarianism, state religionism and monarchism. Those who
collaborate and cooperate with people striving for these and other forms of
polarity and exclusivity promote polarity and exclusivity themselves.



4.4.4  FREEDOM VERSUS OTHER VALUES


A normative doctrine in which freedom is the sole value cannot be a
ground-world doctrine; at most it is a sort of metadoctrinal normative
theory dealing with the relationship between a person and 'er ideals or lack
thereof. A normative doctrine in which freedom is the sole value just knows
no ground-world ideals. But what if freedom is not the only value and the
system of disciplinary thought concerned pluralistic? Traditional ideologies
or doctrines teach that in such a case freedom has to be balanced against
the other values recognized. However, those doctrines never managed to
differentiate doctrinal and metadoctrinal (or even metaphysical)
considerations, and often not normative and social or legal, nonnormative
considerations either. From the metadoctrinal perspective of personhood, the
idea of balancing freedom against other values is definitely fallacious. It
is only on the doctrinal level that it makes sense to let freedom be part of
the evaluative calculus. In other words, extrinsic freedom with its purely
rights-theoretical basis cannot be weighed against anything; intrinsic
freedom, on the other hand, whether ultimate or not, can indeed be made part
of any consequentialist or other calculus.

Traditional pluralists who do not distinguish between the doctrinal and the
metadoctrinal, like to construe a conflict between freedom and two other
values in particular -- or rather, one value and one disvalue. Firstly,
there is the so-called 'conflict between freedom and the prevention of
harm', and secondly, there is the so-called 'conflict between freedom and
equality'. By construing these conflicts as purely doctrinal ones, pluralist
ideologues or theorists give themselves the greatest freedom possible to
choose what suits them best. When they prefer totalitarianism of the
sexual-monotheist brand, they will argue that more individual freedom does
too much harm to society as a whole; when they prefer totalitarianism of the
socioeconomic brand, they will argue that more individual freedom is
detrimental to equality in the material sense. And, of course, when they
prefer liberty above all, they will argue that both the increase of harm and
the decrease of equality are negligible compared with the benefits of
liberty.

The criterion of harm was originally introduced to confine the power and
influence of the state to the area of public interest, that is, to keep it
out of the sphere of the purely private. Against this view that individual
freedom in the private domain is not harmful to anybody, it has later been
objected that also purely private acts or practises could be 'harmful' to
society as a whole. The purported 'harm' concerned would then not be direct,
bodily harm like murder or injury but some kind of 'indirect' or 'spiritual
harm'. (This concept of harm stands to bodily harm as structural violence
stands to bodily violence.) Deviation from the established, 'moral'
conceptions of a society would endanger that society and be a potential harm
to it. On this construction any kind of individual freedom could be
'injurious' (like any kind of communal or collective system could be blamed
for its 'structural violence').

When an ideologue of the above persuasion speaks of "fundamental values
which all people in a society have to share", one would expect that 'e liked
to get rid of all religious and other ideological minorities in the first
place --a standpoint which, altho immoral, would be courageous in a society
that demands respect for religious minorities--, but somehow 'er most
beloved victims are minorities and ex-minorities in matters of sexuality and
family-planning instead. 'E will not point out that certain religious and
political ideologies are harmful to society, or that a cinema, television
and computer game cult of violence and disrespectfulness is, even when the
harm concerned in these instances might be truly indirect in that it does
contribute to murder, rape and other forms of bodily harm in stages. When
the phrase indirect harm is not in any way related to bodily harm, but is
used to denote spiritual or societal 'harm', it evidently serves as a mere
deus ex machina. It then merely provides a contrived solution to the problem
of how to associate everything that is believed to be bad in terms of some
doxastic value with bodily harm, such as killing and injuring. This is done
according to an age-old recipe: take a word which has a negative evaluative
meaning for everyone (such as harm or violence) and 'mix' this word with
something that has completely different conceptual contents, while
exploiting the negative connotation of the word to the utmost. To top it
all, add an extra adjective (such as spiritual or structural) now and then
to make clear what the actual denotation of the phrase thus concocted is
supposed to be.

Now, freedom from harm, that is bodily harm, may indeed be a fundamental
value shared by almost everyone. To the extent that it is, people may not
even recognize it as a value. But other values, or doxastic values, are
controversial, for example, because they are blatantly exclusivistic. To
call such values "fundamental", and to say that doing something that does
not agree with those doxastic values does 'harm' to society, is a question
of ideological strategy, not of morality. Fundamental in this
interideological context is solely extrinsic liberty. And no-one's doxastic
values, even not those of a majority of people, can interfere with an
individual's liberty in the sense of the right to personhood.

While harm is the disvalue with which freedom has been confronted, equality
is the value. As the argument runs, the ideal of freedom would always
disagree with the ideal of equality in some way. If one allowed people
freely to choose what they wanted, their free choices would upset any ideal,
egalitarian pattern for society as a whole -- it has been said. But the
opposition construed between freedom and equality is largely based on a
confusion, firstly, of the different kinds of freedom, and secondly, of the
different ontological spheres, namely the normative sphere and the
factual-modal sphere to which social rules and laws belong.

When speaking of "extrinsic" and "intrinsic freedom", we associate these
concepts with normative principles, while already having presupposed
'freedom' in some metaphysical, modal sense. That is, we take it that the
people we are talking about can choose to act morally or immorally. This is
the sort of freedom people have, because they are not mere bodies of which
the behavior is wholly predetermined. (It only makes sense to assume that
their behavior is partially free and partially predetermined.) If
denominational and other normative doctrines are to be of any significance
at all to people, then people must be free in this sense. To say that they
should be free in this sense is superfluous, if not nonsensical. Should
equality conflict with freedom, it is therefore not this metaphysical
freedom it conflicts with.

In a social or legal sense freedom is the absence of a (mandatory) social
rule or law forbidding certain actions, or even the presence of a permissive
social rule or law explicitly allowing certain actions. But the principle of
freedom in a social or legal sense is a factual-modal principle, not a
normative one; or if so, then contingently so. An act may be right but
illegal (when one does not have the legal freedom to do it); and it may be
wrong but legal (when one has the legal freedom, or even duty, to do it).
(And whether or not something is forbidden by the state or community, people
normally still have the 'metaphysical freedom' to do what they want to do.)
The question of whether acts which are (morally) wrong should always be
forbidden we will not deal with here, but this question can be asked
precisely because of the distinct character of the normative, doctrinal
sphere on the one hand and the social or legal sphere on the other.

Equality with respect to societal patterns or the distribution of goods is
something to strive for on the basis of the prescriptive reading of the norm
of interpersonal equality. There can be no direct conflict between this
normative ideal and the ideal of social and legal freedom. It is one's
metaphysical freedom and this very social and legal freedom which one should
employ to further the ideal of equality. Every act which leads to an
inequality or greater inequality of distribution is, then, prima facie wrong
and ought to be abstained from. Also in the event that it is legal to act
wrongly in this respect, this still does not take away one's moral
responsibility to act rightly in this respect. The conflict construed by
some between equality and freedom is therefore primarily due to mixing up
normative, doctrinal considerations with social or legal, nonnormative and
with metadoctrinal considerations. This does not mean that the intrinsic
ideal of personal freedom could not disagree with the intrinsic ideal of
interpersonal equality, but if this is the case, the conflict is one between
well-being or minimization of unhappiness and equality. This conflict is one
between derivative, neutral-inclusive doctrinal values. It does not serve
clarity to label this conflict as one between (a principle of) equality and
(a principle of) freedom, because this rendering is both too restrictive and
too liberal. It is too restrictive in that well-being and the absence of
suffering are much more than a question of being free to choose. And it is
too liberal in that the concept of freedom is also used in metadoctrinal,
metaphysical, social and legal thought.



4.4.5  PROPERTY, EXTRINSIC AND INTRINSIC


When speaking of "property" as a moral or normative right, extrinsic
property rights must be distinguished from intrinsic ones. Also with respect
to property, every normative system of disciplinary thought has to look at
people and their relationships with other people or things both from a
doctrinal and from a metadoctrinal standpoint. The basics of extrinsic
property have already been discussed in Property as a right to personhood in
the last division of the Book of Instruments (I.9.4). There it has been
pointed out that extrinsic property is an active, discretionary right, that
everyone owns 'er own body and the things which are made by 'im (at least
initially and under the relevant description), and that everyone has an
initial, equal share too in all things which are not person-made. This
latter property right may involve an extrinsic right to an income, dependent
on the fact whether natural resources are privately used and/or exploited by
other people, or on the fact whether they are collectively used and/or
exploited by the state or community. The right to personhood in itself does
not guarantee such an income, let alone one which is sufficient for a
living. However, everywhere where natural resources are indeed used and/or
exploited by others, a person has the extrinsic right to compensation where
such use or exploitation involves 'er personal share in these natural
resources.

In the Book of Instruments it has also been made clear already that the
constellation of extrinsic property rights and duties has still to be
fleshed up with substantive normative contents as provided by a first-order
ground-world doctrine. The liberty of choosing may be prerequisite for being
a moral agent, and the actual possession of extrinsic property for being
recognized as a moral agent, to be moral in an intrinsic sense one has to
comply with doctrinal principles. On the neutral-inclusivist model this
means that one shall opt for equality or solidarity, for everyone's
well-being and for inclusivity. Thus, metadoctrinally speaking, one has the
right to exclude everyone from one's extrinsic property as one likes, but
doctrinally speaking, one does not have this right if doing so would be
inequitable, harsh or discriminatory. In such a case a person's intrinsic
property is smaller than 'er extrinsic property for the one, and bigger for
the other.

As regards external things each person starts life with extrinsic property
of the same value, apart from variations thru time which effect everyone. In
the intitial stage it is only people's personal, physical conditions which
can differ considerably. From the metadoctrinal point of view those who are
strong and healthy can say to the weak and sick that they have bad luck.
(Those for whom freedom is the sole or highest value do say that.) All
persons own the body they have, but these bodies are not all equally strong
and healthy. It is from the doctrinal perspective of the DNI that we realize
that the strong should help the weak and the healthy the sick, where this is
beneficial to people's and children's overall well-being, or where
solidarity demands it. This, at least, holds with respect to people or
children who are not to blame for their weakness or illness. If they are to
blame themselves for it, they have had pleasures or advantages which the
others have not had, or they have not fulfilled their own duties towards
their bodies either. In such a case the strong and healthy who did not have
those pleasures or advantages, or who themselves did fulfil their duties
towards their bodies, may not be obliged to help them.

People who had pleasures in the past, but who suffer now because of those
pleasures may on the whole not be worse off than people who did not have
those pleasures, and who do not suffer now. By arguing that the latter
people need, then, not be obliged to help the former, we use a temporal
principle of equality, that is, we do not so much look at interpersonal
equality at this moment but at interpersonal equality thru time. Evidently
this does not preclude anyone from helping another person, even if 'er
present misery is 'er own fault or is due to a risk 'e chose to take
'imself. Helping 'im nevertheless will be beneficent and will be conducive
to equality at the present moment. All these considerations can play a role,
because the DNI is past-, present- and future-regarding.

Not only the Ananorm's doctrinal principles are temporal, also the Ananorm's
metadoctrinal principle is. The difference is tho, that the right to
personhood can give rise to gross inequalitites while those inequalities are
not even prima facie bad in themselves. On the metadoctrinal principle
solely initial equality is required. But on the doctrinal principle of
interpersonal equality inequalitites are bad in themselves unless they can
be justified on a temporal reckoning. Extrinsic inequalities may start with
differences in people's physical conditions, but they will be found
particularly in the added value of person-made things. From a metadoctrinal
perspective every person has the exclusive (extrinsic) right to the whole
value 'e has added to a thing (but not to the thing itself, that is,
independent of its description). Hence, a person who is very talented has a
much greater chance of acquiring more extrinsic property, even tho 'e does,
perhaps, not work harder than other people. But 'e does not have the same
intrinsic right to the total value 'e has added to a thing; 'e only has such
an intrinsic right to the extent that it benefits the whole (the community,
society or all sentient beings). From the point of view of equality alone 'e
should not have an intrinsic right to more than the average added value. In
other words, 'er personal, intrinsic property is smaller than 'er extrinsic
property, and on the DNI it is intrinsic property which counts. Yet, a
person may also have acquired more extrinsic property, not because of 'er
natural cleverness or skilfulness, but because 'e has worked harder than
others. In such a case 'e will also have the intrinsic right to more
property on the basis of temporal considerations of interpersonal equality,
and on the basis of balancing that person's right to more property against
'er loss of free time.

So far as the right to personhood is concerned a person may allow or
disallow someone else to use 'er extrinsic property as 'e likes; 'e may also
give it away or bequeath it to whomever 'e likes. So far as the norms of
neutrality and inclusivity are concerned, however, a person should not in
allowing or disallowing the use of 'er extrinsic property discriminate
between people on the basis of an irrelevant factor. And when giving away or
bequeathing 'er extrinsic property to individuals a person should give and
bequeath to poor people and children; other things being equal, that is. In
this respect the more than average extrinsic property of the rich is the
intrinsic property of the poor.



5   LIFE AND NONLIFE


5.1   THE INVIABILITY OF AN ULTIMATE PRINCIPLE OF LIFE


5.1.1  THE MEANINGS OF LIFE AND DEATH


When defining a term, there are three approaches which can be taken:
  1.  empirical-linguistic
  2.  lexical
  3.  stipulative
On the empirical-linguistic approach the term in question is studied as
actually used by a sufficient number of people, or by people who have
special knowledge or skills in the field concerned. From the synonyms and
examples of usage, and from the contexts in which the term is employed one
then derives (if possible) the objective meaning of this term for a
particular speech community. On the lexical approach one consults a number
of dictionaries and starts from the less subjective definition(s) given in
these dictionaries which are left over after deleting those which are
blatantly exclusivistic, supernaturalistic or obviously wrong for other
reasons. (To take just one example: a traditional dictionary may seriously
want the user to believe that death would also refer to what is unreal and
untrue.) On the stipulative approach the term is defined in advance in order
to make clear what one is talking about. Ideally, however, the empirical,
lexical and stipulative definitions of a term ought to coincide so that no
confusion can arise. And ideally, the term to be employed ought to have only
one meaning, for homonyms are a notorious source of fallacious reasoning.
Unfortunately, life and to a lesser extent also death and killing do not
fulfil these conditions.

Etymologically life, to live and living belong together and we cannot accept
any definition according to which the literal, original meaning of life is
not related to what is characteristic of living beings. These 'living
beings', in turn, must encompass at least all animal beings (including, for
example, human beings) and all plants (including, for example, bacteria). It
is now a question of stipulative definition whether things such as viruses
are also living organisms, or merely complex protein molecules; or if not
merely a question of stipulative definition, then a result of defining
another term in a stipulative way. 'Life' is then the state of an organism
with the capacity for reaction to stimuli and for metabolism and growth. A
being which grows and which can reproduce itself independently is certainly
a living being, but viruses which are capable of growth and multiplication
only in the cells of other living beings may for this reason be said not to
be individual, living beings. Consequently, if they are not counted as
living beings for this reason, not any organism which needs, or still needs,
an intimate bodily contact with a living individual can be considered a
living being itself. This would not only apply to viruses but also, say, to
spermatozoons and to fetuses if, and so long as, they need a womb or an
artificial system maintained by human beings to grow and to keep growing. If
it does not make a difference whether the organism needs a woman's or a
man's body to survive and to grow, or whether this is all taken care of
artificially outside anyone's body, then consistence requires that we forgo
this criterion for all organisms from viruses, or the most simple organisms,
to the most complex ones.

When we look at what characteristic quality, or set of qualities, living
beings such as animals and plants have in common, our view of them is a
nontemporal one in a loose sense. Strictly speaking of course, metabolism,
growth and reproduction are temporal processes, yet given that a certain
being has these capacities, it belongs to a species of living beings in the
nontemporal (or not exclusively present) tense of to belong, unlike, for
example, stones and minerals. On a temporal view, however, one individual is
followed from its coming into existence, during its lifetime and until its
death. Life then means something like period of existence of a living
individual. Variants of this meaning are period between birth and death and
the sequence of physical and/or mental experiences which make up the
existence of an individual. In the temporal sense of living it is obvious
that a living being need not be able to reproduce or multiply at all in
order to be a living being, nor does it need to grow in the sense of getting
taller or larger.

While the boundary between nontemporal life and death, that is, between
living beings and dead things, is not sharp from an empirical-linguistic or
lexical standpoint, the boundary between temporal life and death, that is,
between an individual which is still living and an individual which has
died, is not that sharp either. Some say that human beings in irreversible
coma should be regarded as already dead. A patient may thus be declared
"dead" if 'er brain has not been functioning for at least twenty-four hours
(the body showing no response to stimuli, no general movements, no reflexes
and an isoelectric electroencephalogram). The heart may then still beat
spontaneously without the aid of a machine, something that is reason enough
for others to call such a human being "still alive". Instead of irreversible
loss of all electrical activity in the brain, irreversible loss of
consciousness may also be held as a criterion of death. It has been said
that death should be defined in terms of this absence of consciousness,
since it would be from this alone that interest in the electrical activity
derives. On the so-called 'double-test view' it is necessary that both all
respiratory and circulatory activities have stopped and that the brain is so
badly damaged that the loss of consciousness has become irreversible. This
should guarantee that both the person and the body 'e had are dead. For a
person may need a living body, but a living body certainly does not need a
person.

What is important when choosing a definition or criterion is the consistence
with which such a definition or criterion is applied: if the absence of all
electrical activity in the brain is a criterion at the end of one's
existence, it is also a criterion at the beginning of one's existence (here
as a fetus of which the brain waves can already be monitored). As regards
life in a nontemporal sense: if a spontaneous beating heart, or
consciousness, were a prerequisite for being called "(still) living", beings
which have no heart, or which are not conscious, would not be living beings.
This would exclude plants, if not many animals as well, unless life and
living are used in two different senses. What is also important is that the
definition of what is 'life' or 'living' does not conceptually depend on
some principle of life, or on any idea about the value or disvalue of life
or nonlife. It is one thing to say that a person or 'er body is dead and
quite another to say that 'er or its life is not worth preserving anymore.

Nonlife and death are the or a negation of life and as such privative
concepts. What characterizes a nonliving or dead thing or body is the
absence of any response to stimuli, metabolism, growth, reproduction and the
capacity to move by itself, altho the absence of only one of these features
is not enough per se to call a thing or body "nonliving" or "dead". As the
negation of nontemporal life dead means nonliving (in a nontemporal sense),
while as a negation of temporal life it means having died or not living
anymore. Temporal death is only part of temporal nonlife, the negation of
temporal life, because this negation also covers the period of preexistence,
that is, the period before a living being came into existence. Furthermore,
it also covers eternal nonexistence. (To define the temporal dead as not
living as some dictionaries do, is therefore erroneous, when it means having
died.) It is preexistence, life and death together which extend over the
whole dimension of time. (Preexistence is not used here in the sense of
eternal existence of the soul or person before the coming into being of 'er
body, in which case not preexistence and death are complementary notions but
preexistence and immortality.)

Neither temporal life and death nor nontemporal life and death are catenical
concepts, even tho temporal life and death belong to a series of three
concepts. Preexistence and death are not opposites, nor are life and death.
Moreover, life, death and preexistence are not concepts which admit of
degrees, or which do not admit of degrees while limiting concepts which do.
(Altho it has been argued that life diminishes by degrees in a scale
descending to death, it has never been pointed out what would be the unique
catena or dimension involved.)

The temporal transition from life to nonlife or death is called "dying".
Dying is to pass out of existence, that is, to pass from life in the case of
living beings. When this transition is caused by a particular agency, people
speak of "killing". What this agency is, may vary from a virus to a person,
but in a moral context it is of course the question of persons killing
living beings which is the focus of attention. It is not so obvious tho,
whether the difference between causing the death of a living being and
risking or allowing the death of such a being is of any moral significance.
We must not delude ourselves into thinking that it is only killing which
counts, and not risking or allowing death, or letting something or someone
die. The fact that there is only a special word for causing death in the
present language, and not for risking or allowing death, is merely a
propositional fact with no bearing on the ground-facts. Similarly, it is
only a propositional fact that there are no special words in the present
language for causing, risking or allowing something to remain in a
preexistent or potential state, but also here we must ask what the
implications are of the difference between remaining in a preexistent state
and having died; and what they are not.

Unlike killing, which refers to the mere fact of death caused by an agency
in any manner, murder is said to imply full moral responsibility. Murder is
not just a kind of killing which is bad, it is a kind of bad killing which
is also intended and therefore wrong. When it is claimed that murder implies
'motive', it is intention which is meant, for people also speak of 'murder'
when the motive is not someone's death but, for example, someone's valuables
when these could only be obtained by killing the person in question. Such a
motive is then probably a personal motive, but it can also be an impersonal
one, while the killing itself remains deliberate. In such a case people tend
to speak of "assassination". However, a political or military authority
carrying out a death sentence would rather call it "an execution". It is
precisely because murder has an inherent wrongness, and because 'everyone'
is against murder, that people will employ every expression but the
expression murder to describe their own deeds or those of their comrades.
Only by seeing thru the emptiness and inconsistence of this verbalism can
the plot of those playing this game of words be exposed. The substantive
matters of life and death are just too serious to remain hidden between
evaluative meanings and nebulous notions.



5.1.2  THE SO-CALLED 'INTRINSIC VALUE' OR 'SANCTITY OF LIFE'


To say that something lives or is alive is one thing, to say that it should
live or be alive quite another. Now, it does not seem to make sense to
assert that things should live, or be made into living beings, in a
nontemporal sense, because even if we knew what this were to mean exactly,
we would not have the power anyhow. But to say that living beings should
remain alive on the temporal view is a meaningful statement which deserves
further attention. Those who claim this maintain that life or living beings
have an 'intrinsic' --that is, noninstrumental, nonderivative-- worth, that
life is of supreme value, or that it is sacred. If this is true, there is
always something against killing a living being, because on this schema a
dead thing is worthless. (If not, then a dead thing's value is based on
another principle, a principle which theoretically may decrease or outweigh
the value of life at the same time.) To believe that living beings have a
value merely as living beings (a value nonliving beings do not have), is to
adhere to an independent or ultimate principle of life, whether it be
labeled "respect for living beings (but not for nonliving beings)", "the
supreme value of life", "the sanctity of life (but not of nonlife)" or
something similar. At this place we will only consider identity-dependent
interpretations of this principle. On such interpretations individual living
beings are not replaceable by other living beings.

Taken literally, the traditional principle of life states that (being a)
living (being) is 'intrinsically' valuable, whereas (being a) nonliving
(being) is not. In the nontemporal view of life this would mean that a virus
has a worth if it is a living organism, but that a molecule which is not a
living organism has no intrinsic worth, regardless of the question whether
it is more complex or not. And, according to such a principle of life
itself, no distinction can be made between a living organism like a
bacterium and a living organism like a human being. Any difference in value
between these two organisms must be attributed to another factor and another
principle. According to that other principle nonliving beings have either no
value at all or they do. If they have no value at all on the basis of that
other principle, then the first principle (that of life) is superfluous, and
those talking about 'a supreme value' or 'sanctity of life' should let us
know what principle they are really thinking of. On the other hand, if
nonliving beings have a value too according to the hidden principle with
which different types of living beings are compared, then the principle of
life is, perhaps, not superfluous, but the theory it is meant to support is
in that case pitifully deprived of all practical significance. The reason is
simply that on balance both nonliving and living beings have a value now.
The question remains what factor would determine the difference in value of
the different types of living and nonliving beings.

In the temporal view of life, a true principle of life would make a life of
permanent coma of equal value as the fully conscious life of a person. It
would entail that killing a person were wrong, but not putting 'er body in a
permanently comatose state, since such a transition is only one between two
forms of living. The same applies to the comparison between a fetus and a
conscious, adult being. And again, should the 'ultimate lifer' object that
fetuses and conscious, adult beings and permanently comatose beings are all
of intrinsic worth but of a different intrinsic worth, 'e employs another
principle, a principle which either makes the principle of life superfluous
or entirely vitiates it.

Combining the nontemporal and the temporal aspects of life, someone who
believes that the life of fetuses and permanently comatose beings has an
intrinsic, nonderivative value, must also admit that the life of plants has
an intrinsic, nonderivative value, and an equal value (as far as the
principle of life is concerned). On the principle of life in itself the life
of a plant is of the same value as the life of a human vegetable and as the
life of a conscious person. Consistence requires also that the life of a
virus is of intrinsic value, and of the same intrinsic value as that of a
fetus or spermatozoon which cannot stay alive outside another living body or
without artificial means. Either all of them are living organisms or no-one
is.

In an attempt to save the principle of life as an independent principle it
has been rejoined that it is not life in the broadest sense, but that it is
really being conscious which is intrinsically valuable. However, this
amounts to a confession of defeat, because what we are then talking about is
a principle of consciousness, not a principle of life anymore. For life
encompasses both conscious and nonconscious (including unconscious) living
beings.

But, for the sake of argument, let us say that this is only a terminological
question. Now, if consciousness is mere consciousness, then those who adhere
to a principle of life as consciousness must assign the same value to the
'lowest' conscious living beings as to the 'highest' conscious person --
lowest and highest to be understood in the purely descriptive terms of some
other factor than mere consciousness. In cases of conflict there would be no
reason to give priority to the one conscious being over the other. It would
make no difference whether to kill a lower or a higher, conscious being. On
the other hand, if the consciousness referred to in the formulation of the
principle admits of degrees, then --as has already been pointed out--
certain nonhuman animals may in a number of respects be more conscious than
human beings. It may then be worse to kill those animals than to kill
conscious human beings. But even if this supranthropic conclusion were
accepted, why would consciousness be an ultimate or perfective value, or a
higher degree of consciousness of a higher perfective value? Not only is the
latter view extremist, but if consciousness is a matter of the presence and
acuity of different senses, one would expect it to be of instrumental value.
(On this reckoning the charge of extremism could no longer be made either.)
When talking of "a principle of life" or "consciousness", however, this
principle is presented as a fundamental principle, not as some derivative
principle, and the value of life or consciousness as an (ultimate)
perfective value, not as some derivative value. (Note that a derivative
value may be either a single nonultimate or nonperfective value or a value
derived from a blend of perfective and corrective or instrumental values.)

In another attempt to save the principle of life it has been claimed that it
is being human which is intrinsically valuable. Such a principle of human
life is of course rank anthropocentrism, one of the speciesist
manifestations of exclusivism. If, and insofar as, human refers merely to a
biological species, the principle does not deserve our further attention,
but what if it is person which is meant in a sense different from that of
human being? Those adhering to such a principle of personal life may define
person as self-conscious or self-aware being. Such a being is aware of
itself as an individual, distinct from other entities in the world, and --as
has been added-- it must also be aware that it exists over a period of time.
On this account certain nonhuman animals can be 'persons', whereas, for
example, human vegetables are not. The category of living beings which are
of 'intrinsic' worth would be much smaller than that of conscious beings and
there would be no differentiation between self-conscious beings. This
principle of self-consciousness hardly resembles the original, genuine
principle of life anymore. That is why it does not suffer from the defaults
of a belief in the intrinsic, ultimate value or sanctity of all life as
life. Yet, the question remains why self-awareness would be of any
noninstrumental, nonderivative worth. Has the sanctity of human life,
perhaps, merely been replaced by the sanctity of self-awareness to better
accomodate the needs of self-conscious human beings who do not want to be
accused of speciesism? Altho this substitution may be an improvement, the
relevance of the distinction between beings which are self-aware and those
which are not, cannot be made plausible in this context.

(It has also been suggested by people asserting the existence of immortal
souls, that it would be the life of a being with an immortal soul which is
valuable. But in questions of killing it is the 'mortal' life which is at
stake and therefore it should rather be the killing of beings without an
immortal soul which is wrong in the first place. Such a consistent scheme is
not what these supernaturalists envisage, however, because for them it is
exclusively or particularly the killing of the bodies of human beings which
is wrong, even tho they are claimed to have souls which survive every
killing.)

In short, our conclusion is that it is vital to the cogency of the DNI that
we forget about a separate, fundamental principle of life altogether. And we
have then even not yet discussed the actual conduct and historical record of
those who have always so religiously preached on the sanctity of life, or on
the sanctity of human life. Such a discussion might not be appropriate in
philosophy, it could certainly be appropriate in the field of comprehensive
ideology where it is not so much theories without engagements but attitudes
and practises which count.



5.1.3  THE RIGHT TO LIVE ON THE IMMUTABLE NORMS


5.1.3.1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE DOMINION OF THE X-IST FATHER AND HIS SONS

The fear of them and the dread of them
was upon everything on the ground,
and in the air,
and in the water;
upon every animal of the earth,
upon all mothers and daughters,
upon all fathers and sons
of a different persuasion.
Into their hands was everything delivered.
And the life and death of every living being
was subject to their exclusive use,
to their abuse.


  [This prose poem was inspired by the
   text of a theodemonist, sacred book.]


----------------------------------------------------------------------------


A principle of life, whether accepted or rejected as a fundamental
principle, is a (non-metadoctrinal) doctrinal principle. The value which
life, conscious life, self-conscious life or human life have or would have
is a doctrinal datum. On the metadoctrinal model one cannot assign any value
to anything, not because things would not have a value, but simply because
assigning values is a doctrinal activity. When all people have their own
right to personhood according to metadoctrinal theory, this is not because
of some intrinsic value of their personhood, or of personal life, but
because of their role as rational, moral agents who adhere to their own
moralities, to their own normative doctrines. It is this right to personhood
which is the foundation of all persons' right to life. This right --as we
have seen in section 8.5.2 of the Book of Instruments-- is an active,
discretionary right, that is, it is a right to live and to die. It is also
correlated with a duty to respect other people's personhood which entails
that one must not kill or use them either without their permission. However,
rights to personhood solely concern relations between people. In no way does
it follow from the metadoctrinal principle that one would be allowed (or
disallowed) to kill or use nonpersonal living beings.

Since the right to personhood forbids the killing of people without their
permission, it might look as if the principle underlying it were an
identity-dependent principle of personal life in which personal is not
defined in terms of mere selfconsciousness but in terms of adherence to
one's own normative convictions instead, or some such way. This, however, is
a mistake, for if the principle underlying the right to life as ensuing from
the right to personhood were a principle of personal life, the right to life
would not be discretionary. It would still be life (even if only the life of
personal beings) which would be of intrinsic worth. Consequently, it would
be wrong ever to kill a person even with 'er permission. But on the
metadoctrinal level the concept of intrinsic worth is not applicable, and it
is only the person's integrity and autonomy (as an independent decision
maker) which matters, not 'er life as such. Rather than being based on the
value of life, or of personal life, a person's right to life precedes all
questions of the value of life, at least if, and insofar as, it is used as a
trump in front of other persons.

The value of life as distinct from nontemporal nonlife, and as distinct from
preexistence and temporal death, is a doctrinal issue. As a separate,
fundamental principle of l