Justice is an abstract concept

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Justice is an abstract concept

I love chocolates, I love freedom, I love mom, I love my dog, I love April in Paris, etc. When we abstract (disassociate from any instance) we remove the contingent (unpredictable). When I abstract all of this lovin I am left with that which is ?'necessary and sufficient' I am left with an emotion. When I attach this abstract idea of ?'love' to these other entities I have a specific instance of an abstract idea.

Is the emotion attached to each one of these abstract ideas exactly the same? I suspect no one knows or can know.

In "A Theory of Justice" John Rawls seeks to discover the essence of the concept ?'justice'. To do this he uses a technique he calls a "veil of ignorance". To discover the essence of justice one can, while covered by a veil of ignorance, discover what s/he feels ?'in the gut' just what justice means.

Under the veil of ignorance, like the juror who disregards something said in court at the command of the judge, the individual disregards their station in life to determine what principles they would desire a society to have. ?'Justice is fairness' is what the rational person chooses to enter if they knew nothing else about that society.

Like the example of abstraction with the concept love so the abstraction of the concept ?'justice' would yield ?'justice as fairness'.

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Sheesh coberst, I'm starting to think you should change your nick to Captain Obvious.

Is justice an abstract concept? Yeah, by definition...

You remind me of this song by Manu Chao...

Quote:

Me gusta la moto, me gustas tu.
Me gusta correr, me gustas tu.
Me gusta la lluvia, me gustas tu.
Me gusta volver, me gustas tu.
Me gusta marihuana, me gustas tu.
Me gusta colombiana, me gustas tu.
Me gusta la montaa, me gustas tu.
Me gusta la noche, me gustas tu.

Is the emotion attached to each idea exactly the same? Even without fully understanding the physical processes that give rise to emotion there seems to be a fairly straightforward answer...and that is that there are a whole bunch of different types of emotions we can have, and we are usually experiencing some combination of them at any given time...but without being able to easily describe a complex emotional state completely, we resort to abstract names for emotions, which may refer to primitive emotions or to certain combinations of emotions, but obviously not everything given the same general name has the exact same mixture underneath. Duh.

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You love chocolate. Well, I take it away from you and eat it. You will cry saying it is unfair and and call out for justice.

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Re: Justice is an abstract concept

coberst wrote:

To discover the essence of justice one can, while covered by a veil of ignorance, discover what s/he feels ?'in the gut' just what justice means.

Does Rawls say what happens after that? Having determined via the veil of ignorance what justice means, does Rawls opine about what one should do with this knowledge?

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Re: Justice is an abstract concept

Shapeless wrote:

coberst wrote:
To discover the essence of justice one can, while covered by a veil of ignorance, discover what s/he feels ?'in the gut' just what justice means.

Does Rawls say what happens after that? Having determined via the veil of ignorance what justice means, does Rawls opine about what one should do with this knowledge?

Yes, his book is well worth reading.

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Not only is justice an abstract term, it is also one of the most questionable, ranking high up there with words like god, heaven, hell, anarchy, communism and so on. Tons of ideas that are questionable when it comes to the exact truth of them.

I suspect that to most people justice means 'satisfaction'. Praticularly when it is the ego that has been bruised and demands justice.

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Cyracuz wrote:

I suspect that to most people justice means 'satisfaction'. Praticularly when it is the ego that has been bruised and demands justice.

Personally, i suspect that to most people justice means revenge. The retributive aspect of systems of "justice" is what seems to motivate most people, who holler about someone getting off, or not getting a long enough sentence of incarceration. Anciently, people had exact standards of what any particular individual is worth, and what you'd be obliged to pay if you harmed or murdered them. My reading of history is that for most people, "justice" is about retribution. It is satisfaction as you say, but what must be satisfied is the send of the proportion of the crime by those injured by the crime.

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Re: Justice is an abstract concept

coberst wrote:

Yes, his book is well worth reading.

That is reassuring. Can you give us a primer on what Rawls has to say about how one uses this knowledge?

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Re: Justice is an abstract concept

coberst wrote:

In "A Theory of Justice" John Rawls seeks to discover the essence of the concept ?'justice'. To do this he uses a technique he calls a "veil of ignorance". To discover the essence of justice one can, while covered by a veil of ignorance, discover what s/he feels ?'in the gut' just what justice means.

You have got to be kidding. Of all the idiotically mistaken readings of Rawls, that has to be the most idiotic. I'm sorry that you wasted all that time reading A Theory of Justice; clearly, you did not understand one word of it. I strongly urge you to stop posting threads where you expose your ignorance of Rawls and his philosophy, as there is the danger that some of the more impressionable here might take you seriously.

Anyone else who might be interested in learning what Rawls actually thought about the "veil of ignorance" and the "original position" should check here.

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Re: Justice is an abstract concept

joefromchicago wrote:

coberst wrote:
In "A Theory of Justice" John Rawls seeks to discover the essence of the concept ?'justice'. To do this he uses a technique he calls a "veil of ignorance". To discover the essence of justice one can, while covered by a veil of ignorance, discover what s/he feels ?'in the gut' just what justice means.

You have got to be kidding. Of all the idiotically mistaken readings of Rawls, that has to be the most idiotic. I'm sorry that you wasted all that time reading A Theory of Justice; clearly, you did not understand one word of it. I strongly urge you to stop posting threads where you expose your ignorance of Rawls and his philosophy, as there is the danger that some of the more impressionable here might take you seriously.

Anyone else who might be interested in learning what Rawls actually thought about the "veil of ignorance" and the "original position" should check here.

I see no significant disagreement between my post and your reference. Perhaps you could help us by clarifying the matter.

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Re: Justice is an abstract concept

coberst wrote:

I see no significant disagreement between my post and your reference. Perhaps you could help us by clarifying the matter.

You said in your post that, according to Rawls:

"To discover the essence of justice one can, while covered by a veil of ignorance, discover what s/he feels ?'in the gut' just what justice means"
The "veil of ignorance," has nothing whatsoever to do with feeling justice "in the gut." Indeed, Rawls believes that people can come to an agreement on what "justice" means through reason, not through any kind of gut instinct. The "veil of ignorance" is, to put it very simply, a device whereby people in the "original position" determine what would be best for society without taking their own special interests into account.

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Re: Justice is an abstract concept

joefromchicago wrote:

coberst wrote:
I see no significant disagreement between my post and your reference. Perhaps you could help us by clarifying the matter.

You said in your post that, according to Rawls:
"To discover the essence of justice one can, while covered by a veil of ignorance, discover what s/he feels ?'in the gut' just what justice means"

The "veil of ignorance," has nothing whatsoever to do with feeling justice "in the gut." Indeed, Rawls believes that people can come to an agreement on what "justice" means through reason, not through any kind of gut instinct. The "veil of ignorance" is, to put it very simply, a device whereby people in the "original position" determine what would be best for society without taking their own special interests into account.

The metaphor ?'justice is fairness' cannot be derived through reason, it is like all assumptions; it comes from the inner sense that it is correct. Just as philosophy as a search for comprehending reality is dependent upon the assumption that reality is orderly and can be comprehended by reason. This metaphor is an assumption that is reached when disregarding one's social status and looking for what all humanity can agree to be true.

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Re: Justice is an abstract concept

coberst wrote:

The metaphor ?'justice is fairness' cannot be derived through reason, it is like all assumptions; it comes from the inner sense that it is correct. Just as philosophy as a search for comprehending reality is dependent upon the assumption that reality is orderly and can be comprehended by reason. This metaphor is an assumption that is reached when disregarding one's social status and looking for what all humanity can agree to be true.

And your point is...?

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Pardon the digression, but if something can be known 'in the gut', doesn't that imply that the knowledge is physical? That it is not an abstract derived from thought, but a biological preference?

Do you believe in such things? I am not sure I do.

This 'gut feeling' we all have sometimes is not a sixth sense, as I see it. Nor is it something we're born with.

In earlier discussions with some of the same participants as in this thread, I've argued that reason alone does not paint our world-picture. There is emotion involved where our reason fails to encompass, around the edges of reason, filling in blanks and bridging voids between the knowns, so that the total image is one of coherency and apparent calm.

So in many ways to say that we can know justice 'in the gut' is to trust to faith just as it would be if we were to leave the whole matter to god.

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Cyracuz wrote:

Pardon the digression, but if something can be known 'in the gut', doesn't that imply that the knowledge is physical? That it is not an abstract derived from thought, but a biological preference?

Do you believe in such things? I am not sure I do.

This 'gut feeling' we all have sometimes is not a sixth sense, as I see it. Nor is it something we're born with.

In earlier discussions with some of the same participants as in this thread, I've argued that reason alone does not paint our world-picture. There is emotion involved where our reason fails to encompass, around the edges of reason, filling in blanks and bridging voids between the knowns, so that the total image is one of coherency and apparent calm.

So in many ways to say that we can know justice 'in the gut' is to trust to faith just as it would be if we were to leave the whole matter to god.

All domains of knowledge rest upon some form of assumptions. Philosophy, it appears to claim, thinks it does not do so but that is for another discussion.

Our first conscious contact with assumptions probably occurred when we took Geometry and started with axioms such as "a straight line is the shortest distance between two points".

The natural sciences assume the world is knowable, quantifiable, measurable, etc. Theology assumes the existence of a caring God and the reliability of the written word. Every domain of knowledge is limited by its assumptions. The assumptions distort and limit the world of enquiry for that domain of knowledge.

Our intellectual worldview is filled with assumptions. I think that one task of intellectual maturity is examining our closely held assumptions, which in many cases are carried over from our childhood. Track down your ideologies and examine the assumptions upon which they rest would be a good way to overcome a boring Sunday afternoon.

What assumption does one make in the name of patriotism? I am inclined to say that patriotism is ?'love of country'. I must assume that my nation deserves my love. I must assume that love can be a rationally induced emotion. I assume I my not know what I am talking about here.

Cognitive science has in the last three decades developed empirical evidence that sounds very convincing to me that these ?'gut feelings' that are also called assumptions are the result of accumulations of experiences. The theory or paradigm is called ?'conceptual metaphor'.

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Justice is an abstract concept

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