[lit-ideas] Re: Paying taxes for months on end
- From: "Phil Enns" <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2005 08:20:00 -0400
John McCreery writes:
"Phil's blowing smoke consists of (1) equating power with legal
authority ..."
Nope. I was only speaking of police powers and not equating it with
legal authority but that the powers of the police are given by the
authority of government. What authority gives police its powers except
the authority of the government?
"(2) insisting that 'right' has no meaning different from power in this
sense."
Again, nope. To say 'the police have no right to ...' is semantically
equivalent to 'the police do not have the power to ... ' Instead of
making some general comment on the relationship of 'right' to power,
something I have not and would not do, I have focused exclusively on
these two sentences. Ironically, my initial argument was against the
move that John now attributes to me.
John continues:
"Like Tweedledee and Tweedledum he can make his words mean whatever he
chooses."
Funny (in an odd way, not ha ha funny - for Paul), but I have been the
one insisting that words cannot mean whatever we choose, a delusion
afflicting Judy. So, instead of making the move John does, that is in
talking about 'right' or 'power' in some general way, I have tried to
focus on how we actually use these words. Again ironic how the argument
I have been making, that we need to look at how we actually use words,
is taken to mean the exact opposite. What John is objecting to is the
claim that there are linguistic conventions for determining whether word
usage is proper or not.
John concludes:
"He must, however, IMHO produce an account of revolutions in which
revolutionaries are not legally empowered to make the demands for whose
sake they overturn a regime, yet, nonetheless, appeal to their 'right'
to do so and achieve their objectives without the exercise of "power" in
clearly extralegal senses."
Obviously, here the use of the word 'right' does not mean the same thing
as it does when we are talking about police powers. I don't need to
provide an account for every use of the word 'right' in order to attempt
to understand what the sentence 'the police have no right to ...'. To
think otherwise is to think that every use of the word 'right' (even
'Turn right up here'?) must share some common element. It is this
typically philosophical mistake that I have been objecting to all along.
So, IMNSHO, to produce the account John would have me produce would be
to make the mistake I have been struggling against.
Sincerely,
Phil Enns
Toronto, ON
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