Hmmm... Therefore anybody can say that they "felt" like they've been manipulated - after the fact. After consenting to the original contract/agreement. Which means contracts are unenforceable. Therefore every consenting agreement is null and void based on simply changing one's mind. Good luck with that.😁
Conversely, just because you don’t feel like you’re being manipulated doesn’t mean you ain’t. Who can resist those tall wavy inflated figures bobbing around at the car dealerships? I didn’t set out to buy a new car, but they had four of those damn things going at once…
by that standard, the "contract" that allegedly is in force when one buys a ticket to fly anywhere, is actually no contract at all . . . what is it based upon? total fraud, hoax, lies . . .
Thank you 😊 I didn’t even think of it until right before I started writing it, and then it all just came pouring out. And I was laughing out loud while I wrote!
But ya know what? I got an unsubscribe within just a couple of minutes of the post going live. Did the person just read the title and think that I really actually forced my wife to marry me?
Possibly. I have some readers who skim my work who sometimes miss sarcastic humor memes and also sometimes don't realize the difference between when I'm telling a real story and when I am proposing a hypothetical scenario. I'd brush it off it takes all types on here.
I could build on this as I ponder it. I do believe that the balance between male led energy and female led energy has reached a bit of an extreme but I want to flesh out those terms...
“ I could build on this as I ponder it. I do believe that the balance between male led energy and female led energy has reached a bit of an extreme but I want to flesh out those terms...”
—I would be interested to hear more about what you mean here.
One point I will make is that I think male energy is hierarchical while female energy is primarily contextual and relationship dependant. We are I believe at peak male hierarchical structure right now, which obliterates the consent and free exchange for which female contextual energy is based on.
For a man getting to the top of a hierarchy I.e. first you get the money then you get the women is what affords him the prizes. This obliterates the divine nature of consent which he can never truly be blessed with. In this situation he is forever led further astray from God.
To give an example of female led consensus energy let us say that I say I am the savior of the world. Depending on your perspective you might call me delusional, you might shrug your shoulders and say "wow that's cool whatever" or you might start a dialogue which allows the evolution of both of our thought processes to higher spiritual planes.
Who was actually important in this? Not me. YOU. There has to be YOUR input, YOUR willingness to heal physically mentally and spiritually, YOUR own divine guidance based on YOUR personal experiences.
What we have now instead is messiah and savior complexes in which consent is based on force or farce with a degree of very clever linguistic manipulation built in...
Some would call for some sort of Manichaean balance in response—male and female energy balancing each other as counterforces. But maybe that’s not the right way to look at it. Maybe we need 100 percent of the best of each and zero percent of the worst of each, rather than 50-50.
I tend to view masculine and feminine as more ying yang energy with both sides having a small bit of the other in which they can meet and understand within them. That said both are about raising to their highest selves which I feel is best suited to say a marital relationship for most people with a guidance from God/the Holy Spirit/Source as the third component. Yes this did seem inspired…
I’ve stated before that I have stopped wearing my seatbelt. The decision came about due to the ridiculousness surrounding Covid. I can see the reframe here that makes my stance much more justified. Not that I needed to justify anything, but I may need to defend it in the future should I be pull over and offered a ticket. I’m looking around more closely at things that laws have been created to curtail, which have no basis other than a funding source. I suppose my failure to register my garden is another act of civil disobedience, and I HIGHLY resent having to look at that as being disobedience at all. Seriously, what business does ANYONE outside of myself have in keeping track of my garden??? I’m sure there are so many more laws that I need to ignore that are in place to “keep me safe.” Safe from whom? Why do governments care?
I’m all for the life of anarchy with the caveat being that community must be the foundation of anarchical society. Is that possible with 8 billion people? I don’t know. It occurred to me today, would the population have grown by such numbers if community, such as tribes, had continued to be the norm. Was it exponential population growth that led to kings, emperors, or whatever they chose to call themselves controlling ever larger numbers of people, which lead to an ever growing hierarchy of controllers?
My church is in a series explaining how Revelation has happened, is happening, and will happen. An interesting take on what most consider to be only end time prophesy. Two particular sermons have me in a place of questioning. I won’t go in depth. It was noted by my pastor that while Jesus WILL be seated on the throne, He will be flanked in one side by the 12 Apostles, and on the other side by the leaders of the 12 tribes of Israel. And scripture, as he unwound it for us, supported his commentary on it.
The second sermon, the next week, included commentary on the book of life in which all the names of the saints will be written. Additionally he said there is also a book of works. He jokingly let it be known that even though our names would surely be in the book of life, some of us will still only get into heaven by the skin of our teeth. This was mind blowing to me as I put those parts of the sermons together. I’m not trying to start a theological debate, and kindly ask that no one comment on the validity of the interpretation of the prophecies of The Book of Revelation. This is my struggle and I am reading a lot of theological theories to try to get a clearer picture of what it is that God wants me to understand. But y point is that I don’t have a clue what heaven is supposed to look like. But I sure as H E double hockey sticks never imagined it to look exactly like what we have in the world. A class based eternity???
As to the religious and eschatological stuff…I really just don’t know what will happen. And so I just try to do my best and be nice to people and help where I can.
—No, it really isn’t. Dunbar’s number is probably valid—it’s really not possible to have stable relationships with many people. A community of 150 may be about the max.
But that does not mean we have to be atomized. Small communities can respect and cooperate with others. They can compete in sporting events. They can trade. They can make mutual agreements regarding travel, defense, economic interactions, etc.
Indeed, panarchy with some sort of “mutual respect protocol” might be ideal.
One of the useful functions of the social contract theory is to assume and confirm the right to dissent and to disagree with the actions of government. That remains an essential principle that we need to protect. If we move away from the fiction that government is legitimate only because citizens gave actual consent to being governed, then how do we practically justify or maintain our right to dissent from government’s actions?
I *think* I get what you are saying, but please clarify if I am wrong.
Social contract theory, as I understand it in the classical-liberal context, says that people are insecure in a state of nature (the absence of authority), so they agree to surrender some of their property, and the pure freedom they enjoyed in a state of nature, in order to secure the rest of their property and freedom.
This was an upgrade on what had come before. It began the process of clarifying some important things:
There is no divine right of kings. There is no automatic right to rule. People should be able to have a say in authority. People are naturally free and have natural rights. People want those things secured and defended. Impartial justice is required.
And we could think of a few more things, I am sure. But social contract theory was also wrong in several ways. (Or, if you prefer, it was transitional only):
It does not actually describe how governments are created. All governments thus far have been imposed to one degree or another. Some have been soft, some have been hard, but none has actually formed in the way described.
It presumes that government can secure rights better than whatever mechanisms exist in a state of nature. It presumes, somewhat a priori, that the state of nature is worse.
It presumes that everyone agrees to the deal.
That one, and this next pair, are arguably not simply flaws with social contract theory itself, but with their moment in history and lack of knowledge of (market-anarchic) alternatives…
It presumes that there is no way to gain real consent, and therefore that the notion of tacit/implied consent is an acceptable workaround, and
It presumes that voting is the way to create ongoing consent to policies, etc.
So, with all of that being said, I guess I am a bit fuzzy on your final question. We have a right to dissent from government because of the ontological fact that no one is born with an automatic authority over another. All authority must either be granted willingly or imposed by force. And we have natural rights as an ineluctable consequence of our own existence and free will. What more do we need? I think that social contract theory was an important step, but it was just a step. I don’t think we need it in order to justify not only dissent from government, but utter refusal to consent to it in any way.
The whole construct of consent presupposes that the distribution of powers exists from the outset, namely that one party defines the rules and the other party can agree or disagree. That alone is the flaw. Who defines the rights of one party to set the rules and put them up for discussion?
Moral compass and ethics must be the only guidelines, no party may elevate itself above the others, there should never be hierarchies unless all parties involved expressly agree to them. It is therefore unacceptable that a person, born into a society by chance without consent, should lose his natural right to self-determination and have to submit to rules agreed by an unknown party (government).
It is a good analogy. However, to continue the analogy, I wonder if all that changed with the new Constitution was that you told your wife that she now had the legal right to petition for divorce. But, when she turned up at the divorce court she discovered that the presiding judge was you.
In other words, it is really the same gangster regime of deception and violence dressed up with a few pretty lies, like the Jones Plantation.
Your five necessary conditions of consent are similar to the common law requirements of a valid and enforceable contract, which you should be able to find online if you haven't already done so. I'm not sure whether you intend those conditions to be only necessary or necessary and sufficient. Here's a simple illustration of what I mean: The presence of oxygen is a necessary condition for the presence of fire, because if fire is present, then oxygen must be present. However, the presence of oxygen is not a sufficient condition for the presence of fire, because if oxygen is present, fire may not be present. Being an unmarried man is both a necessary and sufficient condition of being a bachelor, because if one is an unmarried man, then one is a bachelor, and if one is a bachelor, then one is an unmarried man. In a conditional proposition of the form “if p, then q”, the simpler proposition represented by “p” expresses a sufficient condition of the necessary condition expressed by “q”. A biconditional proposition of the form “p if and only if q” is equivalent to “if p, then q; and if q, then p”, which indicates that the propositions represented by “p” and “q” express necessary and sufficient conditions of each other.
But if it does have those five, is it definitely consent? I guess we would have to think about it—is there a condition missing? Is there some way that we could have all five and still not have consent?
If you can demonstrate that your five conditions (or some expanded set of conditions) constitute both the necessary and sufficient conditions of consent, that would be quite an achievement! That would amount to an adequate definition of “consent”, but it would be extremely difficult. To illustrate, for a long time, philosophers defined “knowledge” as “justified true belief”, which implies that the following are the necessary and sufficient conditions for some person, X, to know some proposition, p: (1) X must believe that p, (2) p must be true, and (3) X's belief that p must be justified. However, in 1963, philosopher Edmund Gettier presented a paper that showed that the traditional conditions of knowledge may be necessary but are not sufficient. He offered two counterexamples. Such counterexamples are now called “Gettier problems”. Here's my favorite counterexample (not one of Gettier's): Al awakens one morning and sees that his analog clock shows the time to be 8:00, so Al believes that it's 8 AM, which is true. Since one normally knows the time by observing a clock or watch, Al's belief seems to be justified. However, Al's clock had stopped 12 hours earlier, so Al apparently didn't know that the time was 8 AM. There have been several responses to Gettier problems, but according to the 2020 PhilPapers survey of academic philosophers and philosophy graduate students, there is no consensus opinion on the issue. Fewer than one-third of respondents agree on any one analysis. I agree with your response, which seems to be this: To determine the necessary and sufficient conditions of consent, try to think of a counterexample to the five conditions. Ask whether there is any possible situation in which all five conditions could be satisfied without consent being obtained. When you find that you can't think of any missing condition, you may have what you're looking for, but you'll still probably have critics.
That's a concise description of the common law requirements for a valid and enforceable contract. If you find the time in your busy schedule, you may want to look into the matter more closely. Most libertarians prefer common law to statutory law because the former, unlike the latter, has evolved over a long period through English judicial decisions aimed at reaching just decisions in disputes.
I don’t think we humans can fully comprehend consent. The five conditions you explained so well are not part of many decisions we make. Moreover, we are raised in a non consensual environment. As we grow up, virtually all decisions; school, religion, dress, etc., are not made with our consent. By the time we are adults we’ve become accustomed to, and indoctrinated into giving consent without knowing those five conditions. We just accept how things are until one day(hopefully) we wake up.
But aren’t we slowly improving on the consent front as species? I just wrote this to another:
Well, it’s a start, right? In terms of consent, we are moving in the right direction, albeit reeeeeeeeeeaaaaally slowly. Once, no one even really considered consent in governance. Then they did. Though the system they created isn’t really truly consensual, it was a good try. So now we move on.
Same progress with marriage. Baby steps. 100 steps forward, 99 back, but we are slowly getting there.
We see this on all levels including some you wouldn't think of as "government." When I bought my five acre property there was a POATRI (Property Owners Association of Terlingua Ranch Incorporated) a corporation (now there was a red flag right there) and I found that I was expected to pay a yearly assessment..forever... to this corporation) I never signed anything, I never even received a copy of the bylaws or rules. They sent me a bill for the "assessment" and it was pretty cheap, they told me the things they would do like maintain the dirt roads. Well I didn't care much for that as my road didn't really need much, but it was cheap and it seemed I would get something for it. They said that they couldn't raise the assessment without a vote of 51% of all the property owners, and they couldn't change the rules without the same vote. Yet eventually they did change the rules because they said most of the absentee landowners never bothered to vote and so now it would be 51% of the owners who actually voted who could change the rules. :-( And the same for the assessment which jumped to twice what I originally was billed for without my consent. I eventually just quit paying and I hear they are placing liens against some owners and tack on a huge legal fee and penalties far in excess of the original assessment. Another rule they changed was that originally the assessment was based on how much land you had. A small owner like me paid very little, the ones who had very large tracts paid quite a lot. They changed that to where we were all to pay the same. I suppose that is how they got the votes to this. (Unless the vote was rigged, but they wouldn't do that would they?)Hard to believe that those abused haven't been able to get justice, but things are the way they are today. My understanding of the meaning of "association" was something voluntary not a coercive, non revocable parasite. You learn something new all the time.
Yes, it is a source of frustration that one of the current operative examples of private governance models—HOAs and property associations—are so terribly run.
That is one of the reasons I was disappointed that Texas which generally has more respect for individual rights allows this. This was the only place I could find that still has land without building codes, land use restrictions and several other violations of property rights you see in "blue" states.
A simple truism: If you feel like you’re being manipulated, you are.
Hmmm... Therefore anybody can say that they "felt" like they've been manipulated - after the fact. After consenting to the original contract/agreement. Which means contracts are unenforceable. Therefore every consenting agreement is null and void based on simply changing one's mind. Good luck with that.😁
Conversely, just because you don’t feel like you’re being manipulated doesn’t mean you ain’t. Who can resist those tall wavy inflated figures bobbing around at the car dealerships? I didn’t set out to buy a new car, but they had four of those damn things going at once…
Lol, it's called “buyers remorse”. Ain’t - that - a - bitch…
Let's review the post:
Informed consent. Talk is cheap. Documents define the “deal”.
That's the way the story goes. Therefore it's difficult to determine where emotions hold any water. The mind is a fickle matter of delinquency.
I am very expressive with my arms, apparently, because my wife once likened me to one of those tall wavy inflatable guys.
Great analogy!!! Really sums up our abusive relationship with government.
🙏🏻 💯
Now we now how you snagged such a beautiful lady - caveman! :)
Excellent Article Christopher, you bring up many very good points!
Uglor smash! Uglor take what Uglor want.
But I know who really runs things!
😆
Ye beast!
Beneath the Beasts! (article): https://amaterasusolar.substack.com/p/beneath-the-beasts
by that standard, the "contract" that allegedly is in force when one buys a ticket to fly anywhere, is actually no contract at all . . . what is it based upon? total fraud, hoax, lies . . .
.
whatever - - - citizens
are we MAD AS HELL
.
,
,
,
,
,
yet?
I recommend We stop consenting...
The GentleOne’s Solution (article): https://amaterasusolar.substack.com/p/the-gentleones-solution
I loved the husband/wife analogy on consent!
Thank you 😊 I didn’t even think of it until right before I started writing it, and then it all just came pouring out. And I was laughing out loud while I wrote!
But ya know what? I got an unsubscribe within just a couple of minutes of the post going live. Did the person just read the title and think that I really actually forced my wife to marry me?
Possibly. I have some readers who skim my work who sometimes miss sarcastic humor memes and also sometimes don't realize the difference between when I'm telling a real story and when I am proposing a hypothetical scenario. I'd brush it off it takes all types on here.
I could build on this as I ponder it. I do believe that the balance between male led energy and female led energy has reached a bit of an extreme but I want to flesh out those terms...
“ I could build on this as I ponder it. I do believe that the balance between male led energy and female led energy has reached a bit of an extreme but I want to flesh out those terms...”
—I would be interested to hear more about what you mean here.
One point I will make is that I think male energy is hierarchical while female energy is primarily contextual and relationship dependant. We are I believe at peak male hierarchical structure right now, which obliterates the consent and free exchange for which female contextual energy is based on.
For a man getting to the top of a hierarchy I.e. first you get the money then you get the women is what affords him the prizes. This obliterates the divine nature of consent which he can never truly be blessed with. In this situation he is forever led further astray from God.
To give an example of female led consensus energy let us say that I say I am the savior of the world. Depending on your perspective you might call me delusional, you might shrug your shoulders and say "wow that's cool whatever" or you might start a dialogue which allows the evolution of both of our thought processes to higher spiritual planes.
Who was actually important in this? Not me. YOU. There has to be YOUR input, YOUR willingness to heal physically mentally and spiritually, YOUR own divine guidance based on YOUR personal experiences.
What we have now instead is messiah and savior complexes in which consent is based on force or farce with a degree of very clever linguistic manipulation built in...
Some would call for some sort of Manichaean balance in response—male and female energy balancing each other as counterforces. But maybe that’s not the right way to look at it. Maybe we need 100 percent of the best of each and zero percent of the worst of each, rather than 50-50.
I tend to view masculine and feminine as more ying yang energy with both sides having a small bit of the other in which they can meet and understand within them. That said both are about raising to their highest selves which I feel is best suited to say a marital relationship for most people with a guidance from God/the Holy Spirit/Source as the third component. Yes this did seem inspired…
I’ve stated before that I have stopped wearing my seatbelt. The decision came about due to the ridiculousness surrounding Covid. I can see the reframe here that makes my stance much more justified. Not that I needed to justify anything, but I may need to defend it in the future should I be pull over and offered a ticket. I’m looking around more closely at things that laws have been created to curtail, which have no basis other than a funding source. I suppose my failure to register my garden is another act of civil disobedience, and I HIGHLY resent having to look at that as being disobedience at all. Seriously, what business does ANYONE outside of myself have in keeping track of my garden??? I’m sure there are so many more laws that I need to ignore that are in place to “keep me safe.” Safe from whom? Why do governments care?
I’m all for the life of anarchy with the caveat being that community must be the foundation of anarchical society. Is that possible with 8 billion people? I don’t know. It occurred to me today, would the population have grown by such numbers if community, such as tribes, had continued to be the norm. Was it exponential population growth that led to kings, emperors, or whatever they chose to call themselves controlling ever larger numbers of people, which lead to an ever growing hierarchy of controllers?
My church is in a series explaining how Revelation has happened, is happening, and will happen. An interesting take on what most consider to be only end time prophesy. Two particular sermons have me in a place of questioning. I won’t go in depth. It was noted by my pastor that while Jesus WILL be seated on the throne, He will be flanked in one side by the 12 Apostles, and on the other side by the leaders of the 12 tribes of Israel. And scripture, as he unwound it for us, supported his commentary on it.
The second sermon, the next week, included commentary on the book of life in which all the names of the saints will be written. Additionally he said there is also a book of works. He jokingly let it be known that even though our names would surely be in the book of life, some of us will still only get into heaven by the skin of our teeth. This was mind blowing to me as I put those parts of the sermons together. I’m not trying to start a theological debate, and kindly ask that no one comment on the validity of the interpretation of the prophecies of The Book of Revelation. This is my struggle and I am reading a lot of theological theories to try to get a clearer picture of what it is that God wants me to understand. But y point is that I don’t have a clue what heaven is supposed to look like. But I sure as H E double hockey sticks never imagined it to look exactly like what we have in the world. A class based eternity???
As to the religious and eschatological stuff…I really just don’t know what will happen. And so I just try to do my best and be nice to people and help where I can.
“ Is that possible with 8 billion people?”
—No, it really isn’t. Dunbar’s number is probably valid—it’s really not possible to have stable relationships with many people. A community of 150 may be about the max.
But that does not mean we have to be atomized. Small communities can respect and cooperate with others. They can compete in sporting events. They can trade. They can make mutual agreements regarding travel, defense, economic interactions, etc.
Indeed, panarchy with some sort of “mutual respect protocol” might be ideal.
Wait, some place is actually making you register your garden?
One of the useful functions of the social contract theory is to assume and confirm the right to dissent and to disagree with the actions of government. That remains an essential principle that we need to protect. If we move away from the fiction that government is legitimate only because citizens gave actual consent to being governed, then how do we practically justify or maintain our right to dissent from government’s actions?
I *think* I get what you are saying, but please clarify if I am wrong.
Social contract theory, as I understand it in the classical-liberal context, says that people are insecure in a state of nature (the absence of authority), so they agree to surrender some of their property, and the pure freedom they enjoyed in a state of nature, in order to secure the rest of their property and freedom.
This was an upgrade on what had come before. It began the process of clarifying some important things:
There is no divine right of kings. There is no automatic right to rule. People should be able to have a say in authority. People are naturally free and have natural rights. People want those things secured and defended. Impartial justice is required.
And we could think of a few more things, I am sure. But social contract theory was also wrong in several ways. (Or, if you prefer, it was transitional only):
It does not actually describe how governments are created. All governments thus far have been imposed to one degree or another. Some have been soft, some have been hard, but none has actually formed in the way described.
It presumes that government can secure rights better than whatever mechanisms exist in a state of nature. It presumes, somewhat a priori, that the state of nature is worse.
It presumes that everyone agrees to the deal.
That one, and this next pair, are arguably not simply flaws with social contract theory itself, but with their moment in history and lack of knowledge of (market-anarchic) alternatives…
It presumes that there is no way to gain real consent, and therefore that the notion of tacit/implied consent is an acceptable workaround, and
It presumes that voting is the way to create ongoing consent to policies, etc.
So, with all of that being said, I guess I am a bit fuzzy on your final question. We have a right to dissent from government because of the ontological fact that no one is born with an automatic authority over another. All authority must either be granted willingly or imposed by force. And we have natural rights as an ineluctable consequence of our own existence and free will. What more do we need? I think that social contract theory was an important step, but it was just a step. I don’t think we need it in order to justify not only dissent from government, but utter refusal to consent to it in any way.
Am I properly answering your question?
The whole construct of consent presupposes that the distribution of powers exists from the outset, namely that one party defines the rules and the other party can agree or disagree. That alone is the flaw. Who defines the rights of one party to set the rules and put them up for discussion?
Moral compass and ethics must be the only guidelines, no party may elevate itself above the others, there should never be hierarchies unless all parties involved expressly agree to them. It is therefore unacceptable that a person, born into a society by chance without consent, should lose his natural right to self-determination and have to submit to rules agreed by an unknown party (government).
Such radical ideas! If more people start believing them, you never know what might happen… ❤️🔥🙏
'Cosent of the goverened' is supposed to be the sovereign 'voice of the country' through Trial by Jury, the central pillar of the Constitution.
Brilliant.
🙏
It is a good analogy. However, to continue the analogy, I wonder if all that changed with the new Constitution was that you told your wife that she now had the legal right to petition for divorce. But, when she turned up at the divorce court she discovered that the presiding judge was you.
In other words, it is really the same gangster regime of deception and violence dressed up with a few pretty lies, like the Jones Plantation.
I still need to watch the Jones Plantation. I hear great things.
By Constitution, are you referring to the U.S. Constitution? Or, as we probably should call it, Hamilton’s Coup…
Your five necessary conditions of consent are similar to the common law requirements of a valid and enforceable contract, which you should be able to find online if you haven't already done so. I'm not sure whether you intend those conditions to be only necessary or necessary and sufficient. Here's a simple illustration of what I mean: The presence of oxygen is a necessary condition for the presence of fire, because if fire is present, then oxygen must be present. However, the presence of oxygen is not a sufficient condition for the presence of fire, because if oxygen is present, fire may not be present. Being an unmarried man is both a necessary and sufficient condition of being a bachelor, because if one is an unmarried man, then one is a bachelor, and if one is a bachelor, then one is an unmarried man. In a conditional proposition of the form “if p, then q”, the simpler proposition represented by “p” expresses a sufficient condition of the necessary condition expressed by “q”. A biconditional proposition of the form “p if and only if q” is equivalent to “if p, then q; and if q, then p”, which indicates that the propositions represented by “p” and “q” express necessary and sufficient conditions of each other.
It’s not consent if it doesn’t have those five.
But if it does have those five, is it definitely consent? I guess we would have to think about it—is there a condition missing? Is there some way that we could have all five and still not have consent?
If you can demonstrate that your five conditions (or some expanded set of conditions) constitute both the necessary and sufficient conditions of consent, that would be quite an achievement! That would amount to an adequate definition of “consent”, but it would be extremely difficult. To illustrate, for a long time, philosophers defined “knowledge” as “justified true belief”, which implies that the following are the necessary and sufficient conditions for some person, X, to know some proposition, p: (1) X must believe that p, (2) p must be true, and (3) X's belief that p must be justified. However, in 1963, philosopher Edmund Gettier presented a paper that showed that the traditional conditions of knowledge may be necessary but are not sufficient. He offered two counterexamples. Such counterexamples are now called “Gettier problems”. Here's my favorite counterexample (not one of Gettier's): Al awakens one morning and sees that his analog clock shows the time to be 8:00, so Al believes that it's 8 AM, which is true. Since one normally knows the time by observing a clock or watch, Al's belief seems to be justified. However, Al's clock had stopped 12 hours earlier, so Al apparently didn't know that the time was 8 AM. There have been several responses to Gettier problems, but according to the 2020 PhilPapers survey of academic philosophers and philosophy graduate students, there is no consensus opinion on the issue. Fewer than one-third of respondents agree on any one analysis. I agree with your response, which seems to be this: To determine the necessary and sufficient conditions of consent, try to think of a counterexample to the five conditions. Ask whether there is any possible situation in which all five conditions could be satisfied without consent being obtained. When you find that you can't think of any missing condition, you may have what you're looking for, but you'll still probably have critics.
“offer, acceptance, consideration, legal capacity, mutual assent, and legality.” (I had not done so before, but I just looked them up.)
That's a concise description of the common law requirements for a valid and enforceable contract. If you find the time in your busy schedule, you may want to look into the matter more closely. Most libertarians prefer common law to statutory law because the former, unlike the latter, has evolved over a long period through English judicial decisions aimed at reaching just decisions in disputes.
I definitely prefer common law to statutory law. I am not convinced that we need statutory law at all.
I don’t think we humans can fully comprehend consent. The five conditions you explained so well are not part of many decisions we make. Moreover, we are raised in a non consensual environment. As we grow up, virtually all decisions; school, religion, dress, etc., are not made with our consent. By the time we are adults we’ve become accustomed to, and indoctrinated into giving consent without knowing those five conditions. We just accept how things are until one day(hopefully) we wake up.
True true.
But aren’t we slowly improving on the consent front as species? I just wrote this to another:
Well, it’s a start, right? In terms of consent, we are moving in the right direction, albeit reeeeeeeeeeaaaaally slowly. Once, no one even really considered consent in governance. Then they did. Though the system they created isn’t really truly consensual, it was a good try. So now we move on.
Same progress with marriage. Baby steps. 100 steps forward, 99 back, but we are slowly getting there.
Well done!!!!! You nailed the aspects needed for consent to be truly consent! Thank You!
Thank you—we keep hammering away, improving our understanding!
Indeed! Love always!
Mr. Cook, this is excellent.
Thank you. The imaginary vignette with my wife actually only occurred to me while I was writing. I didn't plan it ahead of time.
We see this on all levels including some you wouldn't think of as "government." When I bought my five acre property there was a POATRI (Property Owners Association of Terlingua Ranch Incorporated) a corporation (now there was a red flag right there) and I found that I was expected to pay a yearly assessment..forever... to this corporation) I never signed anything, I never even received a copy of the bylaws or rules. They sent me a bill for the "assessment" and it was pretty cheap, they told me the things they would do like maintain the dirt roads. Well I didn't care much for that as my road didn't really need much, but it was cheap and it seemed I would get something for it. They said that they couldn't raise the assessment without a vote of 51% of all the property owners, and they couldn't change the rules without the same vote. Yet eventually they did change the rules because they said most of the absentee landowners never bothered to vote and so now it would be 51% of the owners who actually voted who could change the rules. :-( And the same for the assessment which jumped to twice what I originally was billed for without my consent. I eventually just quit paying and I hear they are placing liens against some owners and tack on a huge legal fee and penalties far in excess of the original assessment. Another rule they changed was that originally the assessment was based on how much land you had. A small owner like me paid very little, the ones who had very large tracts paid quite a lot. They changed that to where we were all to pay the same. I suppose that is how they got the votes to this. (Unless the vote was rigged, but they wouldn't do that would they?)Hard to believe that those abused haven't been able to get justice, but things are the way they are today. My understanding of the meaning of "association" was something voluntary not a coercive, non revocable parasite. You learn something new all the time.
Yes, it is a source of frustration that one of the current operative examples of private governance models—HOAs and property associations—are so terribly run.
In most states, you can't be forced to join a labor union, but you can be forced to join an HOA? WTF?
That is one of the reasons I was disappointed that Texas which generally has more respect for individual rights allows this. This was the only place I could find that still has land without building codes, land use restrictions and several other violations of property rights you see in "blue" states.