@orathic:
Yes, that would be my position, that you may believe whatever you wish, but you cannot tell someone what to BELIEVE.
Obviously if something is a fact, and, even more blatant, a legal or scientific fact, and their disregarding or going against it will harm YOU, then you have every right to tell them what to do...you can't tell someone what to believe in about the afterlife, but if someone blows a stop sign and rams your car wehn you were abiding by the traffic laws, you have everyt right to inform them that they're paying for that damage and that they'd better show some insurance information and that you'll see them in court.
But my issue with government as a whole is the issue of compromise, as you pointed out, total freedom is anarchy and that simply doesn't seem practical, and an authoriatarian state doesn't seem appealing, so a crompromise SEEMS best...
And yet, in my experience, and in my opinion, NOTHING that is "the best possible solution" EVER comes from a compromise. I HATE that term! I hate its very name..."compromise," it says it all right there--you have comrpomised your position, you ahve allowed your ideals to become compromised.
I almost never pay compliments to science here (not because I'm anti-science or anything, not really, anyway, I only take that stance when a total materialist like Dawkins takes the position that science can explain and solve EVERYTHING, but otherwise I just don't talk about it because hey, I have trouble with BASIC albegra, science, besides biology, isn't my thing, and English/literature and philosophy clearly is, so I'll naturally talk about what I know and not about what I don't) but in this case I must:
Science NEVER compromises. In science, there is a solution to a problem, and the correct solution is the correct solution, full stop. Now, there may be two or more correct solutions, and that's fine, even glorious--they're still, ALL of them,. ENTIRELY RIGHT, full-stop. Now, obviously if my theory later turns out to be wrong it then wasn't right full-stop, but for the moment, when I have the Newtonian account of gravity, that account is right, at least in principle, and not until we get to Einstein or Hawking or even those before them do we challenge that, but even THEN...right is right. The natural world does NOT say "Well, you know, Einstein proved Newton wrong here, but both were great thinkers...let's compromise and settle somewhere in the middle of their ideas."
In the natural world, right is right, wrong is wrong.
Again, you cn use different methods to find the right answer, and there may even be different correct answers--but they are NOT born out of compromise, at best they're born out of cooperation between competing theories and scientists, but even then they're not compromising, they're collaborating, the actual LAWS of natural science aren't being compromised, they're jsut trying to figure them out using the best ideas each of them have, but the ultimate answer is still absolutely right, full-stop.
NOW take art and literature.
HERE the rules are different. HERE you CAN allow for compromise--though as a personal taste I'd still generally avoid it, for reasons I'll enumerate later--as the fields here are largely, with the exception of fundamental axioms of art (ie, "every sentence has words" and I'd say "every musical piece has musical notes or sounds of some kind" but I'll leave that second one alone for now, the first is an ample enough example to get across what I mean by an "axiom of art") subjective. YOU, like the great T.S. Eliot, might think "Hamlet" is a load of rubbish that Shakespeare just failed on, that Hamlet has no real external motives which would adequately cause or explain his internal ones, and so the character doesn't work logically adn the piece falls apart on that basis...*I*, on the other hand, might say that ITSELF is a load of rubbish, that Shakespeare gives a perfectly GOOD explanation in the father being dead, revealing himself, and Hamlet trying to reconcile that with the commons sense that says "people do NOT just turn into ghosts and tell folks that they were murdered by their brother who's now getting it on with your mother," thus adequately explaining why Hamlet hesitates and is very introspective and self-questioning...most people would be after such a vision. ;)
But while I can bring evidence and you can bring yours, neitehr of us are "wrong" in the sense that our statements are the equivalent of 2+2=49. I might charge your claim with being faulty, or that its even invalid, but you are still entitled to your opinion, and that opinion must carry some degree of validity unless you break an artistic or in-script axiom; if your argument is based on your assertion that Hamlet turns into a zombie at the end and starts slicing off heads because Mick Jagger appeared to sing "Paint It Black," sorry, YOU'RE WRONG! :D
But aside from that, yes, art is subjective.
However, it is for us, each of us, to create for ourselves a certain "self-axiom" of interpretation, that is, our own ideas of what each thing is,
Now, philosophy is inbetween art and science, which makes the issue of compromise all the harder. Its not science, but there ARE general azioms which, generally, we can except as being necessarily true...its certainly been challenged, and decently, but generally "I think, therefore I am" holds up relatively well as a philosophical axiom that needs to be acknowledged before you go much further, as while it CAN be doubted and even possibly refuted--though the second one I disagree with--really, if you do...well, you can't prove anything now, you can't even prove you exist, it'd seem, so now you're stuck, you're done, so it's generally best to just accept that aziom, however much you agree with it, and move on from there. For instance, I myself don't agree with hardly anything else Descartes says, but I find that you won't get very far without that little tidbit, so I'll take it and move on, leaving Descartes to his endless Cartesian Circle.
By the same token, ideas such as "good," "evil," and that sort of thing are largely based on perspective, and so we get art's subjective nature to counterbalance science's analytic, logical process.
But while we may view things subjectively, we cannot view things subjetively and expect that to be THE best answer, Take my Hamlet example again--we can certainly compromise on our interpretation of "Hamlet," but that won't lead to an "ultimate" understanding of the work...which, on the whole, is alright, as until you start to bring philosophy BACK into art and literature and turn this all back on itself, you really don't need any "ultimate" or, to use the key word, "best" interpretation of the work...
You DO, however, need the "best" answer in science, as that's the ONLY answer that's actually THE answer in science.
So, taking into account political systems and the question of anarchy and freedom, we may observe that this IS a philosophical issue...the question is, is this a question that leans more towards science or art in nature? A more artistic, speculative, subjective question would be, say, "What is the meaning of life?" Art really applies here more than science, as science can't tell us what the "meaning" of something is, just the absolutes of how it works, and art can't tell us absolutely how things work, but rather what the meaning of said works mean.
Science is the equivalent to the lines in the coloring book, and art the 124 Crayola box of crayons.
So, as we keep bringing science and, the key word, "nature"n into our discussion of anarchy and freedom and government and authority, I'd submit that this philosophical question leans more towards science's influence on philosophy, and thus must have some sort of "best" answer that exists in its own right, not via compromise.
Olidip back online...
- still i've read of Irish Catholic Buddhists aswell, who see a way of reconciling the two belief systems because Buddhism is less about 'telling you what to do' and thus being less prescriptive easier to integrate with other religions...)
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