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Entire content of your argument referred to the means by which you were making the argument, not the ... forget it, let's not keep going into that hole. Talkin

Entire content of your argument referred to the means by which you were making the argument, not the ... forget it, let's not keep going into that hole. Talking about what the practitioners of civil disobedience think is entirely irrelevant to justification. A boy helps an old woman carry her groceries across the street. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., exclaims, "why would he do that! That's not civil disobedience! It is unjustified!" People can do good things, that are justified, without it being civil disobedience. If one calls it civil disobedience, then viewed in that light, it gets complicated. But since it is not civil disobedience (I assert), why do we have to justify it against the standards applied to civil disobedience? It's also not "rule by divine right of Kings" -- is it therefore unjustified by that standard? It's not "because it helps the children", is it therefore unjustified? We can go over all the ways that it does not meet how various people justify actions, and still come no closer to looking at his actions for what they are. Clearly, in my mind, this is a case of "whistleblowing", where someone reveals information that is hurtful to an organization but helpful to the public. A mafia informant doesn't stick around to get whacked, and nobody faults him, because receiving the punishment for violating the secrecy does not help the cause that he is trying to advance.

jessriedel 13y ago
Suppose someone very smart argues that X is justified when condition Y holds, but X is not justified when Y doesn't hold. Furthermore, this argument is well regarded by many smart people, who find that it is applicable in many places. That doesn't make it right, but it does mean when you assert something that conflicts with the argument, you better either acknowledge that you reject the widely-regarded argument, or explain why the argument doesn't apply in this case. Now, you assert Z is justified, which a lot of people say looks a lot like X. In fact, Z = X + delta_X. Furthermore, it is agreed by everyone that Y does not hold in this case. So some people say, "Z is effectively X, and Y doesn't hold, so Z is unjustified." You say, "but Z != X. Therefore this argument breaks down. Here's my new argument for justification". But someone replies "but delta_X is small, and I claim that it doesn't change the outcome of the original argument". You can't respond "But Z is not the same thing as X, so we should use completely different arguments to judge justified-ness." You either need to claim that delta_X is large enough to break the original argument, or acknowledge that you disagree with that argument. I believe you're misinterpreted me to be saying "Snowden's actions are trying to be civil disobedience, but they don't have all the qualities of justified civil disobedience, therefore it's unjustified". Hence your thinking that my argument was composed of semantics. But this is not at all what I argued, and I think you'll agree if you re-read my comments.
- andrewla 13y ago
  Okay, so let's get to my main quibble here. You say that Z = X + delta_X. I specifically disagree with this statement, assuming that Z == "Snowden's actions" and X == "Civil Disobedience". Snowden's actions no more resemble Civil Disobedience than shooting a man or robbing a bank; all of these involve breaking a law, but only one of them involves breaking a law that the perpetrator believes to be unjust, in the hopes that their defiance will inspire people to strike down the law. I don't know what this jibber-jabber about "indirect civil disobedience" is. I agree that a lot of people say Z looks a lot like X. In fact, my entry into this thread consisted of saying "Z does not look like X at all". They are so different, in my mind that applying delta X is like saying "imagine that instead of leaking documents and fleeing the country, he had not leaked documents, but instead sat at a segregated lunch counter, and instead of fleeing the country, he calmly complied with the police and spent the night in jail". I agree with all of your points about Civil Disobedience itself; and you beat me to quoting King's Birmingham Jail letter by the barest of fractions of hairs. If you choose to, say, not pay taxes, and when the government gets wise, you skip town to avoid paying, this is not civil disobedience; even if you chose to not pay taxes to specifically protest the tax itself. But this does not even barely resemble what Snowden has done, so I do not concede that Y is necessary or even relevant to the justification.

jessriedel 13y ago

Suppose someone very smart argues that X is justified when condition Y holds, but X is not justified when Y doesn't hold. Furthermore, this argument is well regarded by many smart people, who find that it is applicable in many places. That doesn't make it right, but it does mean when you assert something that conflicts with the argument, you better either acknowledge that you reject the widely-regarded argument, or explain why the argument doesn't apply in this case. Now, you assert Z is justified, which a lot of people say looks a lot like X. In fact, Z = X + delta_X. Furthermore, it is agreed by everyone that Y does not hold in this case. So some people say, "Z is effectively X, and Y doesn't hold, so Z is unjustified." You say, "but Z != X. Therefore this argument breaks down. Here's my new argument for justification". But someone replies "but delta_X is small, and I claim that it doesn't change the outcome of the original argument". You can't respond "But Z is not the same thing as X, so we should use completely different arguments to judge justified-ness." You either need to claim that delta_X is large enough to break the original argument, or acknowledge that you disagree with that argument. I believe you're misinterpreted me to be saying "Snowden's actions are trying to be civil disobedience, but they don't have all the qualities of justified civil disobedience, therefore it's unjustified". Hence your thinking that my argument was composed of semantics. But this is not at all what I argued, and I think you'll agree if you re-read my comments.

andrewla 13y ago
Okay, so let's get to my main quibble here. You say that Z = X + delta_X. I specifically disagree with this statement, assuming that Z == "Snowden's actions" and X == "Civil Disobedience". Snowden's actions no more resemble Civil Disobedience than shooting a man or robbing a bank; all of these involve breaking a law, but only one of them involves breaking a law that the perpetrator believes to be unjust, in the hopes that their defiance will inspire people to strike down the law. I don't know what this jibber-jabber about "indirect civil disobedience" is. I agree that a lot of people say Z looks a lot like X. In fact, my entry into this thread consisted of saying "Z does not look like X at all". They are so different, in my mind that applying delta X is like saying "imagine that instead of leaking documents and fleeing the country, he had not leaked documents, but instead sat at a segregated lunch counter, and instead of fleeing the country, he calmly complied with the police and spent the night in jail". I agree with all of your points about Civil Disobedience itself; and you beat me to quoting King's Birmingham Jail letter by the barest of fractions of hairs. If you choose to, say, not pay taxes, and when the government gets wise, you skip town to avoid paying, this is not civil disobedience; even if you chose to not pay taxes to specifically protest the tax itself. But this does not even barely resemble what Snowden has done, so I do not concede that Y is necessary or even relevant to the justification.