Inseparable subjectivity - Part 4: Response to inseparable subjectivity

Part 1: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/10/inseparable-subjectivity-part-1-bundle.html

 

Part 2: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/10/inseparable-subjectivity-part-2.html

 

Part 3: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/11/inseparable-subjectivity-part-3.html

Part 4: Response to inseparable subjectivity

So there are two objections, one about the legitimacy of the distinction between Person(2a) and Person(2b) and one about the causal role of Person(2a). We can describe each objection like so:

Objection 1: Inseparable subjectivity

In Part 3 I said:

“Imagine the feeling of being judged. It's a sharp pain, which makes it vivid and easy to imagine. Is it possible to separate the feeling of being judged from the subjectivity? No. The experience is necessarily experiential. There is no pain floating around out there without a person to feel it. Pain is by its essence felt. Likewise, there is no subjectivity floating around out there without other properties characterizing that experience. Subjectivity is by its essence a particular kind of experience. So for a painful feeling, like being judged, you can't have the pain without the subjectivity, and you can't have the subjectivity without the pain. The subjectivity is replete and inseparable.

 

But if a person per se is identical to their subjective properties . . . then any criticism or praise directed to the ugly or admirable aspects of the subjective property are directed to the person per se . . . 

 

If this is right, and if our choices come with a subjective property (the quale of making a choice), then we are our choices, just as we are our pains and pleasures and any other subjective property. If by ‘person’ we mean a collection of subjective properties that all have the same subjectivity in common, then our experiences (including experiences of making choices) are straightforwardly part of us.

 

Far from eliminating free will, this might provide the very resources to build an account of how free will works! Namely, that . . . because a*) our choices are caused by our phenomenal choice, and because b) wherever there is phenomenology there is personhood, therefore c*) our choices are caused by our personhood (i.e., by us). So d) the goodness or badness of the consequences of our choices reflects the goodness or badness of the phenomenal choice that caused them, which just is to reflect the goodness or the badness of the personhood that caused them.”

Objection 2: Pure subjectivity plays a causal role in choices

We first must distinguish between the pure subject as an abstraction versus the subject as a concrete first-person property. Abstract properties are not causal. So it’s trivially true that the abstract self does not play a causal role. But when it comes to praising and blaming persons, we are praising and blaming real, concrete persons, not abstractions. We praise and blame you, not the concept of you. Because persons are concrete and causal, we must, as Objection 1 gets at, treat “pure subjectivity” as concrete and causal (more precisely, there is no such thing as personhood qua “pure subjectivity”; all personhood is concrete). As mentioned in the previous post:

 

“If I have stressful experiences, and those stressful first-person properties cause my body to produce stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, then the ‘pure subjectivity’ of being on the receiving end of experience actually does play a role in causal relationships. Plus, presumably pure experiences cause me to remember having those experiences. So pure subjectivity causes memory. Furthermore, memories reveal patterns that affect future actions. By remembering the pain of touching a hot stove, I avoid touching hot stoves in the future. So by causing memories, not only does pure subjectivity play a causal role, but a causal role with respect to our actions.”

 

“Pure subjectivity” here really refers to concrete first-person properties that are passive in the sense of not being those first-person properties that directly correspond to the making of choices. If the badness of Y reflects the badness of the cause of Y, and if these passive first-person properties play an indirect causal role in bad actions, then the badness of these bad actions caused in part by these passive first-person properties reflects to that degree the badness of these properties, and thus reflects to that degree the badness of the personhood corresponding to these properties. So even “passive” subjectivity is blameworthy and praiseworthy, and thus the personhood that corresponds to this subjectivity is not only praised or blamed, but praised or blamed in a direct, immediate way. That is, because you are your experiences, the goodness and badness of the consequences of your experiences—experiences that are directly or indirectly involved in your making choices with good or bad consequences—directly reflect the goodness or badness of you.

Reply: Insofar ‘you’ picks out something abstract

Can essential properties be abstract? Not only yes, but this must be the case, because identifying essential properties requires abstraction. What gives rise to essential and non-essential properties in the first place is the act of bundling – bundling properties under labels. There’s a bundle of properties referred to by the word ‘mountain’, a different bundle of properties referred to by the word ‘lake’, and so on, for every word. Essential properties are those properties that make or break your inclusion within a label. Where a mountain is located is non-essential; you can have mountains in Colorado, Mexico, Mars; your location won’t get you kicked out of the mountain club. But your size will: too small and you will be called a hill. When does a mountain become a hill? No one knows and it doesn’t really matter. Words are vague. What matters is how people react to what you say. If you point to an average-sized mountain and say, “That’s the biggest hill I’ve ever seen!”, you will be promptly corrected that it’s an average-sized mountain. Conversely, if you point at a hill and call it a tiny mountain, you will be corrected that it’s a hill. A similar conversation could take place about rivers versus creeks, and so on. Often, with a bit of thought, we can abstract out one or more of the make-or-break properties of an object. If something does not produce heat, then whatever it is, we will not consider it to be a lit bonfire, lit furnace, or any lit object. So producing heat is an essential property of lit objects.

So could my essential property be abstract? If everyday objects have abstract essential properties—and indeed if the very notion of an essential property depends on abstracting out the properties that explain why an object falls under a particular label—then I don’t see why not.

When I experience pain, the subjective property identical to me is present. When I experience happiness, the subjective property identical to me is also present. But my pain and my happiness are not the same thing, despite the shared subjectivity. So it cannot be that both properties are identical to me, as then they would be identical to each other, and what could be more certain than that pain and happiness are different? So ‘me’ must pick out a subjective property that my pain and happiness share. To understand the difference between pain and happiness, while acknowledging what they have in common – me – I have no choice but to abstract out the shared property and consider it in the same way I would consider the abstract property producing heat shared by bonfires and furnaces.

But do ‘I’ and ‘me’ in fact pick out such an abstract property? If I were strapped to a device and tortured, day and night, for years and years, my existence would be perfectly, and unfortunately, real to me. Even if no one knew I was there, I would know. Even if I lost the ability to form memories, the “first” moment of pain, repeated again and again, would still be undeniable. Even if I made no choices, even if my pain caused no effects, other than perhaps the morally irrelevant effects of releasing stress hormones in my body, I would still be there, there in the pain. So I cannot deny that there is a sense of the concept of me that does not depend on a) Anyone else’s existence or awareness of me, b) On me making choices, or c) On me having any memories. A person can inspect their own moments of pain and abstract out what unites them. A person can observe the stark contrast between the moments of pain and moments of happiness and see that the same thing unites both. I am not my happiness; I experience happiness. I am not my choices; I experience my choices. I am not my pain; I experience pain. Of course Ben’s pain is essentially felt by Ben, just as this bonfire is essentially producing heat. And just as this bonfire is not equivalent to producing heat, neither is Ben’s pain equivalent to felt by Ben. Just as producing heat is what unites lit objects, felt by Ben is what unites Ben’s experiences. ‘I’ picks out this felt by me property. It sounds like a circular definition: <Ben> is <felt by Ben>. This is exactly what I expect, because my essential self is a phenomenal thing, and phenomenal things can only be defined circularly, because words can only gesture to phenomenal objects. It’s more accurate to say <Ben> is <feeler> (or: <experiencer>) where <feeler> picks out a particular feeler that we label <Ben>. So <Ben> is <feeler> is really the tautology <This feeler> is <this feeler>, and <Ben’s pain> is <felt by Ben> means <Pain felt by this feeler> is <felt by this feeler>. So the essential self is the first-person felt property abstracted out from the entire phenomenal property.

If the essential self is an abstract, non-causal property, then it immediately follows that the self does not stand in causal relations, and so the essential self cannot be attributed to be the cause of anything, even if the non-essential self is the cause of many things. But a) Surely these phenomenal properties are caused to exist (they don’t exist necessarily) and b) Surely these phenomenal properties cause (if we grant mental causation) some things, like choices, or at least bodily processes (like crying, panic attacks, or inducing stress hormones).

Sure, just as there are things that cause bonfires and furnaces. That doesn’t change the fact that producing heat is one of the essential properties of lit bonfires and lit furnaces. This particular heat from this particular bonfire is causal – it causes the surrounding air to heat up. And this particular heat was caused by chemical properties giving rise to combustion, and so on. Likewise, this particular subjective property—a bundle of properties surrounding the state of being sad—causes the body to produce tears. And this particular subjectivity was caused by a  particular brain in such and such state, and so on. Just as this particular heat is inseparable from the other properties of the bonfire, this particular subjectivity is inseparable from other properties of the phenomenal property. To get one property, or bundle of properties, you need the other. To get the particular heat from the bonfire, you need the particular wood, and so on. To get the particular subjectivity, you need the particular feelings of sadness, and so on.

So the inseparability between particular essential and particular non-essential properties is nothing new, a feature of all objects. When identifying the property that is essential of an object, that requires abstracting out the property the lack of which precludes your inclusion under the label being considered. When the label being considered is <(lit) bonfire>, I see that lacking producing heat precludes your inclusion under the label. While producing heat considered in the abstract is an abstract property, that doesn’t mean the heat of this bonfire right here is abstract. Particular heat is concrete, being both caused by various other properties and causing changes in properties outside itself. This concrete, particular heat is inseparable from other concrete particular properties whose existence are co-dependent with the heat.

When the label being considered is a pronoun like ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘you’, and so on, I find myself abstracting out the property of subjectivity – of having a particular, unique, first-person experience. If something possesses a particular subjectivity that we can only gesture toward with the word ‘me’, then that thing is me. If something lacks that particular subjectivity, then that thing is not me.

While this might sound like the contradiction of a “universal particular”, the word ‘particular’ here picks out specificity, just as other abstracted properties refer to something more or less specific. The issue is distinguishing between my subjectivity, which all my phenomenal properties share (and thus is multiply instantiated), and subjectivity in general, which all persons share.

While a specific subjectivity considered in the abstract (i.e. divorced from other phenomenal properties) is an abstract property, that doesn’t mean this particular subjectivity right here is abstract. Particular subjectivity is concrete, being both caused by various other properties and causing changes in properties outside itself (allowing for mental causation). This concrete, particular subjectivity is inseparable from other concrete particular properties whose existence are co-dependent with the subjectivity.

So bundling seems to work differently for ordinary objects versus persons. Different objects can share essential properties. But different persons cannot share essential properties. Only different phenomenal properties that share the same subjectivity can share essential properties.

Reply 2: Insofar ‘you’ picks out something concrete

You might reject the idea that essential properties for particular objects can be abstract. Sure, in general, an object cannot lack producing heat and still be a lit bonfire. But when it comes to this bonfire right here, it’s not enough for this bonfire to produce just any heat, and certainly it can’t be producing the heat of some other object. To be included under the reference this bonfire right here, you must produce this heat. In other words, we have universal, abstract essential properties for abstract objects, and particular, concrete essential properties for concrete objects.

So if I am convinced that my essential self cannot be something abstract, but must be concrete, then I cannot accept that my essential properties are abstract. If it’s true that wherever you find my phenomenal properties, you find me, then it’s true that wherever you find my phenomenal properties pertaining to emotions, pains, joys, sights, rememberings, making choices, and so on, you find me. Because subjectivity is inseparable from other phenomenal properties, and because I am my subjectivity, it follows that I am my phenomenal properties. So I am my happiness, my pain, and so on. This runs into the objection that happiness and pain cannot be the same, but set that aside for now. My essential self must not be abstract, as that would mean my essential self does not stand in causal relations. But surely I was caused to exist, and surely I cause other things to exist (unless we want to parse out meanings of ‘I’ and suggest that ‘I’ is being used to mean one thing in one context and another thing in another context).

Even still, I don’t see how this rescues moral responsibility. The collection of first-person properties that a person has is incidental to factors beyond their control. It’s painfully obvious to me that someone who wins the lottery at 18 years old and spends that money improving themselves and removing sources of stress in their lives will turn out much differently than that same person who doesn’t have access to those privileges and is forced into miserable conditions for years on end. The psychology of the two persons is radically different, and the activities they in fact spend their time on are radically different. So it’s not morally interesting that a person would have one set of phenomenal properties versus another, when we can so easily imagine that set radically changing by a few simple changes to the person’s circumstances that they could not have controlled for.

I will return to this topic of personhood at a later point. I think the bottom line for me for now is that:

 

1. Pronouns are ambiguous, and I see different bundles of properties picked out by words like ‘you’. The illustration of the sleepwalker shows this. ‘You’ can refer to: You(1a): The private experiences of others about you; You(1b): Your public properties that cause others to have experiences of you (and causes you to have experiences of your public properties); You(2a): Your subjectivity that unites all your phenomenal properties; You(2b): The properties that distinguish one of your phenomenal properties from another (assuming subjectivity is in fact separable).

2. There are other distinctions we could make: You as in your body; You as in the location of your visual field; You as in some combination of above meanings.

3. There’s an unmistakable sense of self that remains even when you remove 1a and 1b. Because the properties of 2b cannot be identical to each other (happiness cannot be the same thing as pain), and yet you are identical to yourself, you cannot be 2b either. So that leaves 2a as the essential self. When I engage in the abstraction process for identifying that property the lack of which precludes something’s being referenced by the word ‘me’ (the same abstraction process for identifying essential properties for any object), 2a comes out as the essential property of me. The torture device illustration shows this.

4. But I’m not sure about the exact relationship between concreteness and abstractness, between those and causality, between essential properties and concreteness, or what abstraction really is and how to tell when it is occurring. Countless other questions are left open, like the nature of mental causation, the nature of causation more broadly, the nature of properties, existence, and facts more broadly, the relationship between properties and time and thus the relationship between mental properties and time, how personhood survives through time, how personhood relates to eternalism versus presentism theories of time, and how this Bundle Theory of the Self and properties relates to substance dualism, neutral monism, or other monisms (versions of physicalism or versions of idealism), or to property dualism and arguments for and against property dualism (or arguments that property dualism entails this or that view about substances). Thus far I've basically assumed a substance nihilist position. There are objections to bundle theory / substance nihilism more broadly that have yet to be addressed as well. There are many alternative views of the self, that the essential self is a non-physical substance, that it is a physical substance, that it is a brain, that it is an animal or organism, that it is a partition of God's necessary mind, that it is a weakly emergent thing via a panpsychist interpretation, that there is no concrete self at all via an epiphenomenalist interpretation, and probably a dozen other views besides.

Anti-anti-philosophy proved in five seconds

 Do you care about justification? Yes = you care about philosophy. No = bye.

Anti-philosophy proved in one word

 money

Evan Fales on problems with the Bible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_6b8bRUdds 

 

1 hr 14 - Creation Ex-Nihilo

 

Evan Fales mentions that Creation Ex-Nihilo, a doctrine of classical theism, is not as supported by Genesis 1:1 as Christians have historically thought. It's arguable that the more accurate translation is not that God created the heavens and earth, but that God is creating the heavens and earth (or as I've heard it, fashioning, implying pre-existing material).

 

1 hr 16 - Imago Dei

 

Fales claims that Paul says that the image of God is something humans lost, except Jesus, due to original sin. (If this is accurate, then doesn't that mean Paul repudiates the immaculate conception? If Mary is without original sin, then Paul should say Jesus and Mary are the only humans who've kept the image of God.) Fales claims that Paul says that while man is made in the image of God, women are made in the image of man. I'm not sure that's the correct interpretation of 1 Cor. 11:7. If that verse does imply that the Imago Dei doesn't apply to women, but only to men, then that sounds strange and misogynistic. But Paul has egalitarian verses elsewhere (assuming the authorship is indeed Paul in those cases).

 

"These are not clear and perspicuous. The Bible itself is a defeater of many aspects of Christian faith in which people presume that they know what God's Word is, and there's good reason, from the Bible itself, to believe that they do not." 

 

1 hr 27

 

Evan Fales suggests that if we give a skeptical theism response—like that of Stephen Wykstra—then that leaves us clueless as to the balance of goods and evils that God aims for. If God can allow massacres, genocides, mass deception, disease, starvation, and so on, then all bets are off. God can allow basically anything. For all we know, God could allow Christianity to develop as an enormous hoax. But if I have to admit that this is possible, then this provides an internal defeater for Christian belief, says Fales.

 

Fales suggests that Ezekiel 20 and Isaiah 55 suggest that God would be capable of this. I'm not exactly sure what Fales has in mind, but my guess is the following:

 

Isaiah 55 says (NRSVUE):

"so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
    it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose
    and succeed in the thing for which I sent it." 

 

When someone speaks the truth, they don't know how people will respond. Speaking the truth is good for its own sake, meaning that even if people respond poorly, it still makes sense to speak the truth.

 

But when someone speaks for the purpose of generating an effect, then they don't care about the truth of what they are saying as long as it generates the desired effect. It appears that God is saying here that God speaks power, not truth, in this way.

 

Since God knows for sure that speaking the truth will not convince everyone, in what way will the words of God accomplish God's purpose?

 

So these are some ways the Bible provides defeaters for Christian belief. 

Craig on the problem of evil

"When you consider the extent and the depth of human suffering in the world, whether it is due to natural disasters or to man's own inhumanity to man, then I think we have to admit that it is hard to believe in God."

 

-William Lane Craig

 

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-4/excursus-on-natural-theology/excursus-on-natural-theology-part-28-the-problem-of-evil

Dual economy system

An idea that has popped into my head a number of times goes like this:

 

* Have two economies, one planned and one free.

 

* For the planned economy, the government provides food, clothing, shelter, and other goods and services deemed essential for basic survival (basic medicine, electrical, plumbing, water system, sewer system, distribution of goods, public transport, gas, car maintenance, cell phone service, internet...).

 

* To opt into government products and services, you must pay credits for them.

 

* You earn credits by working jobs related to these essential services. One credit = One labor hour.

 

* Access to government services requires paying a monthly credit fee. Shelter could be 20 credits per month (5 hours a week). Food is 4 credits per month (1 hour a week). And so on.

 

* The idea is that by working something like 15 hours a week, you can have all of your essentials covered. Food, clothing, shelter (including maintenance), utilities (clean water, heating, cooling, plumbing, and electricity), internet, phone, transport (car repair, public transport, gas), and at least basic medicine if not full on healthcare would all be included within those essentials.

 

* People who are disabled, sick, or struggling can receive credits for free from people who donate. This simplifies charity and takes a lot of the guess work out of trying to decide which charities are worth giving to, how much one should give, etc. Very simply, just work more than the 15 hours a week that you need to cover your own basics, and donate credits to a public charity bank. This provides free credits to people in need who, for whatever reason, are running out of credits (perhaps because of needing sick days).

 

* Homelessness is avoided easily because you only need to work a few hours a week to access government housing. Plus, charity credits would prevent those who are struggling from being evicted from government housing.

 

* You can also bank extra credits for your own sick leave or for general paid leave. Though at only 15 hours a week, I don't expect many people needing vacation. In theory you could work many hours and amass a large number of credits, and... retire, more or less.

 

* A single payer healthcare system could be designed along these lines too. You pay credits into the healthcare fund when you are healthy and withdraw them when you are sick. This will depend on how healthcare is handled. I'm thinking that over the counter medicine, preventative care / family physician appointments w/ checkups, diagnostics, and basic prescriptions like pain meds and anti-biotics would fall under the government essentials. Basic dental care like yearly check ups and cleanings and cavity fillings could be included. Yearly eye appointments could be covered as well. More serious and specialized care and surgeries, and perhaps emergency care, would be covered under the open economy.  Credits have a cash value. To prevent a few people from bankrupting the entire fund, actuarial science could be used to create caps on how much a person can withdraw (similar to banks and liquidity risk). So for credit-based insurance, you pay credits into the insurance each month, and if you need specialized or emergency care, you get credits up to a cap that are cashed out for your medical bills. You could have the insurance mandated similar to the Affordable Care Act where everyone is required to pay at least a minimum number of credits into the fund.

 

* Many people search for jobs but are rejected. Because the work is (usually) simple, and in constant demand, good work would always be available to those searching. And the rewards you get for the work are generous, increasing motivation. The idea is that with so many more people working than would be otherwise, many hands make light work; that's why it only takes ~15 hours a week to cover these needs per person.

 

* These services are very basic and designed to just cover survival. So government housing, food, and clothing would be not glamorous, fancy, customized, marketed, or anything like that. They would be designed to just cover the basics with zero fluff or fancy. If you want something more customized or with more personality, you will have to look to the open economy.

 

* This system prevents capitalists from exploiting workers. If an open economy job becomes toxic or exploitative, the worker can simply quit and survive fine on just 15 hours a week worth of work. This provides serious pressure on jobs to offer fair compensation, to not be bullsh**ty, to offer meaningful work, to provide a good work environment, and to treat the employee with respect.

 

* Very importantly – this system prevents abuse. If a teenager is abused at home, he can move out at a measly 15 hours a week. Same with abused spouses.  

 

* This system prevents the alienation of labor. Your government labor is tied directly to the survival of yourself and others. No bullsh** jobs!

 

* This system promotes art, because it allows artists to easily support themselves while pursuing their art.

 

* This system prevents underemployment. At any time there are many people who are able-bodied and able-minded and could provide for society in a variety of ways. But with our current system, employment is an all-or-nothing deal. Either you don't work at all, or you work grueling hours and sell your soul. There are many stories of people who can and want to work but send out countless applications only to get nothing back. That's because labor is extremely expensive, and companies are encouraged to either not hire or only hire when they know they can get a deal on the labor (I've also heard that employment listings are dishonest but that might have been moreso in the PPP loan era, but I digress).

 

* The open economy accomplishes a number of things.

 

A) It provides goods and services that the planned economy doesn't offer. For example, government rations probably wouldn't include beer. So if you want beer, you'll need cash. More complex services, like specialized healthcare, would be privatized within the open economy. If you want to upgrade your living situation to a nicer apartment or a house, you'll need cash.

 

B) The open economy allows for individual freedom and autonomy, both in doing business as a business owner and as a customer looking for products and services the government doesn't offer. If you want, you can operate entirely outside of the planned economy. So there's still plenty of room for innovation.

 

C) The open economy provides products and services that compete with the government. This prevents the government from being monopolistic and allows for greater customization and potentially increased product / service quality for the customer.

 

D) Specialized jobs, like lawyers, doctors, engineers, and so on, require intense training and work schedules. These professionals do not have the means nor desire to work the 15 mandatory hours to partake in the government economy (in some cases professionals will do some moonlighting, but it's not expected). And we as a society do not want to force a pediatrician to abandon their more essential pediatric duties to do some plumbing on the side. So we need the open economy to provide for those individuals who work specialty jobs that take precedent over the more basic work they would be doing otherwise.

 

In theory, these professionals could still avail themselves of the government services. They would just have to exchange some of their cash from their salary for credits and use those credits to enter the system. Or, even more simply, credits could be offered as part of their compensation package, or the government could treat certain open economy work as essential and give dual credit.

 

* The credit value of labor could be dynamic. More specialized and yet essential government jobs, ones that require certification, for example, could grant more than 1 credit per labor hour.

 

* Many government jobs would still give a salary. For example, access to air travel would probably not be included under the survival essentials. But the government still has an interest in regulating air travel. So these regulation jobs would be part of the open economy and pay a salary. Political jobs would be considered specialized and part of the open economy.

 

* Maybe instead of a "gold standard" there could be a "credit standard" backing up cash to control for inflation and to keep the value of cash stable and fair relative to the credit. Cash could only be printed according to how many credits are being issued. The free market decides how much a credit is worth in cash.

 

* A challenge for this system is the value of labor. One hour of work as a licensed septic tank engineer is not the same as one hour of work as a trainee in janitorial duties. 

 

* One approach is to have the two currency system as described above. Another option is to totally separate the two economies. Credits represent participation in essential jobs, but do not necessarily represent value. If you think the value of your work is more than participation, then you are encouraged to seek work in the open economy. On the other hand, if you are an artist whose work has little economic value, then you can easily support yourself by helping build houses for 15 hours a week while pursuing your art.

 

You could get dual credit for working essential jobs but in the private sector. So a septic tank engineer working for a private company could apply to a government program and receive not only a salary through the private company, but credits as well. Same with jobs like specialized healthcare. For folks who work in non-essential roles, like entertainment, they will have to either work an extra government job on the side to support themselves or support themselves entirely through cash. Credits are tied to you as a person and cannot be bought or sold. Credits expire after X months (3 months on a tighter model, or up to 12 months on a more liberal model), encouraging consistent work. Retirement would have to come from the open economy (or children could support their parents through charity credits). Credits perhaps could be donated in limited capacity. For example: you can give to blood relatives or to legal guardians / dependents. And you can give to a general charity that randomly distributes charity credits to those with qualifying disabilities / illnesses.

 

* At any time there could be a gap between what the government promises and what it delivers. For example, the government promises everyone shelter, but there might not be enough housing to deliver on this promise. Ways this could be addressed: A) The government contracts out work from the open economy to address the housing shortage, or buys out houses / apartments on the open market and marks them as government housing. The government taxes the open market and uses the tax money for this. B) The government prioritizes work towards building new housing, offering extra credit incentives until output stabilizes with demand. And C) The government can increase the credit cost of shelter, encouraging people to either split rent, live with parents, or pay for open economy shelter with cash, freeing up government housing.

 

* On top of all the social safety benefits that this system would provide, you could still have a cash-based universal basic income along the lines of what Yanis Varoufakis recommends. Have a Universal Company that owns a public equity trust. To enlist your company on the public stock market, you must give 1% of total preferred stock to the Universal Company. When dividends are paid, the Universal Company gets cash and disperses it as a universal basic dividend to all American citizens 18 and older. In our current crony capitalist system, profits are privatized and losses are public. A universal public dividend helps amend this: Now profits are public too. This provides massive stimulus to the economy, especially since this cash would largely count as disposable income since people's basic needs are met through the 15 hour a week program. This also helps prevent companies from getting away with rampant greed, lowers inequality, increases individual freedom, and mitigates exploitation.

 

No idea how viable any of this is. At least this could make for an interesting set up for a story. 

 

Really, I just want to have credits like in Star Wars 😁🤓

On the criteria of best philosopher

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN0sl_jQ3Mg

 

An interesting criterion could be how deeply a philosopher changed their mind. (Which happens to indicate another criterion: How many comprehensive systems for competing worldviews could the philosopher hold in their mind at once. A philosopher who can articulate a comprehensive naturalistic worldview—complete with objections and responses—is not as impressive as a philosopher who can articulate both a comprehensive naturalistic worldview and a comprehensive Christian worldview complete with objections and responses.)

Per the book A Companion to Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand, by Graham Oppy and Nick Trakakis, JJC Smart was a Christian when he was appointed at the University of Adelaide, but became a thoroughgoing atheist materialist at some point. He would have been at least 29 years old, potentially indicating a deep change of mind. But I don't know how deep Smart's Christian worldview was prior to converting, or how difficult the conversion was.

If I'm not mistaken, William Rowe had a similar late-and-thorough conversion from Christianity to atheism, and so did contemporary philosopher Felipe Leon.

Because philosophy is, at its core, the love for truth above all else, I feel like those philosophers that represent philosophy the best are those who most painstakingly give up prior beliefs for the sake of truth. Camus says in The Myth that "Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined." There's something special about that person who is willing to undermine themselves and sacrifice their deepest self-conception and their most desired beliefs for the truth, committing a sort of metaphysical death and rebirth in the process. So if you especially weigh this criterion, then these philosophers are the best.

But this criterion has at least two problems: One, as already mentioned, it's difficult to know which philosophers changed their minds and how thorough and painstaking was the change. Two, the virtue works both ways: an atheist who painstakingly becomes a Christian would too be a best philosopher. I think that fairly characterizes C. S. Lewis. But I wouldn't consider C. S. Lewis to be a good philosopher at all, mainly because he got just about everything wrong. More specifically, C. S. Lewis a) Did not create a systematic philosophy; b) Left many important philosophical problems unaddressed; c) Of the philosophical problems he did address, did not address them in a comprehensive or sophisticated way (like arguments for and against the existence of God, for example); d) Failed to address serious challenges to Christian belief; e) Especially failed to solve the problem of evil, not that any theist ever could.

 

(Note: by painstaking I don't just mean painful, but taking pains, evoking the image of someone carefully, slowly, meticulously, and thoroughly thinking through the issues, gradually leading to a hard-fought change of mind. But I also want to evoke the image of someone wrestling with the issues in a deeply honest, personal, and, yes, agonizing process of metaphysical death and rebirth.)