From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Date: Fri Jun 20 2003 - 18:45:39 MDT
rhanson@gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) writes:
>Yes, of course Bayesians can disagree about values, about what
>they want to have happen. Whether this lets them disagree about
>who some property "belongs" to depends on whether we are talking
>about values, who do I wish it would belong to, or facts, who
>in fact owns the property according to some set of legal rules.
I can understand Bayesians holding different values, but I don't
understand how that enables disagreement. What stops them from rephrasing
their differences along these lines: the values that the Cherokee people
want to maximise are best served by killing any white man who claims to
own the land, and the values held by the group of white men who want the
land are maximised by killing the Cherokee (I changed the value differences
a bit to make it easier to describe them with less ambiguity and to make
it clear that I'm assuming no compromise involving a monetary payment would
eliminate the dispute).
One possible answer I thought of was that nothing requires them to
notice that they are using "belongs" in ways that are ambiguous and
inconsistent. I'm having trouble analyzing this. If I assume that they
believe values can't cause Bayesians to disagree, they should deduce from
the apparent disagreement that something such as an ambiguous word is
causing the disagreement, and they should correct it by speaking more
precisely. But if instead I assume they believe values CAN cause Bayesians
to disagree, it's unclear whether they have to notice the ambiguity.
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter McCluskey | "To announce that there must be no criticism of http://www.rahul.net/pcm | the President, or that we are to stand by the | President right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic | and servile, but morally treasonable to the | American public." - Theodore Roosevelt
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