From: sals@florimel.uchicago.edu (red-head fancier)
Subject: Re: [misc.activism.progressive] Clinton Office Requests Comments
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 02:50:19 GMT

In article <1jks1tINN3tt@armory.centerline.com> mrh@centerline.com (Mike  
Huben) writes:
> In article <SLAGLE.93Jan20003058@sgi417.msd.lmsc.lockheed.com>  
slagle@lmsc.lockheed.com writes:
> >In article <1jf4ceINNpfd@armory.centerline.com>, mrh@centerline.com  
(Mike Huben) writes:
> >> In article <1993Jan18.060428.13963@midway.uchicago.edu>  
sals@deirdre.uchicago.edu (red-head fancier) writes:
> >>>I tend to dislike  the notion of communtities having rights because I  
> >>>question the foundation of where they come from. How do communitites  
have  
> >>>any rights not derived from the rights of individuals? ....
> >
> >> You didn't quite say this, but to say that communities can't have any  
rights
> >> except those derived from the rights of individuals is the fallacy of
> >> composition.
> >
> >...  The fallacy of composition is an
> >assertion that the properties of the parts necessarily adhere to
> >the whole...
> >Your misapplication of it, however, arises from an error
> >in fundamental formal logic.  If the assertion were made that
> >because individuals have certain rights that therefore communities,
> >aggregations of individuals, must necessarily have these same rights,
> >then you would be correct in invoking the fallacy of composition to
> >refute the claim.
> 
> Let's rephrase and group the sentence (hopefully without changing the
> semantics):
> 
> If individuals (don't have a right) then communities (don't have that  
right).
> 
> Hey!  Look!  The fallacy of composition!
Why is this necessarily a fallacy!!!!!! 
Let's look at this from a mathematical perspective. Let f  be a map from  
A, what rights derive from, to the set of individual rights, let's call it  
B. Let g be a map from B to C, the rights of groups. Examine f composed on  
g and you have the rights of groups derived from the same basis as  
individual rights, yet if x, some right, is not an element of B, the set  
of individual rights in not an element of g(X) the set of group rights.
This is a compostion, but no fallacy.
igorous, rather than an overview of my position, omitted.]
 
> >But the prisoner's dilemma
> >does not exemplify anything whatever about the fallacy of
> >composition.  
> >
> >> Separated individuals are not faced with the dilemma, and can't
> >> even play the game.  As soon as they are together, the game
> >> emerges.
>
Yep, it shows how composition CAN lead to fallacy,however because a  
composition can lead to fallacy does not mean that all compositions lead  
to fallacy, i.e. truth of a proposition does not implie the truth of the  
converse. . BTW where I mentioned individuals not an individual. I was  
questioning the existence of group rights, not the ability of people to  
work together. The prisoner's dilemma (at least from what I can gather  
from your posts)  refers to people working together not to the existence  
of group rights. I agree that rights are meaningless without other people,  
but that does not impli that there are group rights. 


> >Human social behavior is not any kind of technology.  Your
> >statement is a categorical error.
> 
> Definition 2 of technology from a Random House Webster's College  
Dictionary:
> "the application of knowledge for practical ends".
> 
> By this definition, to the extent that human social behavior is learned
> (not innate), it is technology.  Technology is not limited to hardware.
> 
> >And before you try to show
> >that communities are organisms subject to natural selection,
Interestingly enough Hayek makes a similar point in The Fatal Conceit,.  
That is that communities do evolve. (as a matter of fact, I am an  
evolutionary
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