[MG] Legitimation in Votorola practice

[Michael Allan]

Hi Ned,

Re your critique of Votorola as a decision system: a misassumption:
Votorola is not a decision system. It produces no decisions. The
validitation practice (topic of this thread) produces no decisions.

> Your paragraph above shows me that my understanding is very unclear
> regarding what you mean by the term "validation practice". So, until
> my understanding has improved sufficiently, I will forego using the
> term.

Here's the definition and the context:
http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/validity_seeking
http://zelea.com/w/User:Test-62-ZeleaCom/G/p/vohall#Validity_seeking
If you can reply to my earlier questions, or have questions of your
own, we can carry on from there.

Or can anyone else answer?  Is this validation practice (validity
seeking) itself valid?  Is it one to which all possibly affected
persons could agree as participants in rational discourses?

Please forward if you know a forum that's suitable.

> (Regarding the "which listserv" question: I am subscribed to the
> Metagov list, and have only seen what has appeared on the Metagov
> list, and responded to the Metagov list. My apologies if my remarks
> barged into fuller versions of the conversation occurring on other
> lists. :^)

Sorry, I wasn't being clear.  This thread is cross-posted.

Mike


Ned Conner said:
> Hi Mike,
> 
> (Regarding the "which listserv" question: I am subscribed to the Metagov 
> list, and have only seen what has appeared on the Metagov list, and 
> responded to the Metagov list. My apologies if my remarks barged into 
> fuller versions of the conversation occurring on other lists. :^)
> 
>     Mike: First I need to be sure I understand your reply. You seem to
>     allow that, even if there's just one validation *principle* (suppose
>     D), there can easily be multiple validation *practices*. No single
>     practice is likely to suit everyone under all possible
>     circumstances. One person's choosing practice B, therefore, does not
>     *in itself* mean that he disagrees with others choosing C, nor,
>     insofar as it affects him, with the practice of C itself. To each
>     his own. Is this true?
> 
> Your paragraph above shows me that my understanding is very unclear 
> regarding what you mean by the term "validation practice". So, until my 
> understanding has improved sufficiently, I will forego using the term.
> 
> I want us to have a global democratic social system. (It appears to me 
> that we are headed toward having a global social system in any case, so 
> that the choice is to either bury one's head in the sand of designing 
> and implementing local community systems and let the global arrangements 
> happen by "accident", or to actively work to design and implement the 
> global arrangements.)
> 
> There are three possible foundations for democracy (I would be delighted 
> if someone could add more):
> 
>     * consent (veto)
>     * popularity (voting)
>     * rational discourse (recursive proposing)
> 
> I take Habermas to be suggesting that we use the third of these as the 
> basis for our new global democracy. I heartily agree.
> 
>     D: "Just those action norms are valid to which all possibly affected
>     persons could agree as participants in rational discourses."
> 
> The Votorola decision system uses the second of these (popularity, 
> voting) as its foundation. This makes it unacceptable (to me, for 
> numerous reasons) as a public decision system to be used (even as just 
> one of many) in the new global social system.
> 
> (The policy to use Votorola in the new social system would be an action 
> norm. I would be a "possibly affected person" -- decisions made through 
> Votorola and then implemented might affect me, and to have Votorola 
> operating in the social system might affect me, by affecting the social 
> system. Thus, the action norm to use Votorola would be valid only if I 
> agreed to the use of Votorola. I do not agree.)
> 
> (I now know better than to list all the reasons that I find Votorola to 
> be unacceptable in this email. When I give long lists in listserv 
> emails, only a couple of items at best get responded to, and all the 
> rest are ignored and then lost as time and the listserv move on. 
> Listserves are lousy platforms for conducting *useful* rational 
> discourse: listserves can't handle (receive, organize, present) 
> cumulative networked evolving complexity. Every time someone tells me in 
> the middle of a discussion that "this matter was discussed on the 
> listserv years ago", I roll my eyes. What fun, to be continually 
> reinventing wheels rather than standing on the shoulders of giants. We 
> could be collaboratively *creating*. Instead, we are just chatting. I 
> keep trying to draw people into using networked editable wiki pages as 
> the platform upon which to conduct rational discourse, so far without 
> much success. Not sure why. Perhaps we should engage in some rational 
> discourse to determine what platform would best serve engaging in 
> rational discourse. -- And also, I am willing to bet that that topic has 
> been discussed before on the listserv ... :^)