Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> >Except violence wouldn't be violence if persons-bodies weren't
> >extinguished. You're too far over on the agent-structure spectrum
> >Carrol, issues of supervenience aside. It's precisely the
> >dehumanization and the institutional and or groupthink driven denial
> >that it takes place as a condition of inaugarating aggression that's
> >at issue.
>
> Excessive subordination & vague pronoun reference (what takes place
> "as a condition of inaugurating aggression" -- violence?) make
> communication difficult.
> --
> Yoshie
My own initial post was (more or less deliberately) fairly sloppy -- intended more to open the topic than to develop the argument carefully. But even as given, I think it calls for a more nuanced response than Ian offers.
"... violence wouldn't be violence if persons-bodies weren't extinguished." Fatal accidents wouldn't be fatal accidents if bodies weren't extinguished. I submit that (leaving aside the "agent-structure" spectrum) there is clearly a radical difference among the following (aside from the number of victims involved):
a. The depredations of a serial killer b. A death in a drunken brawl c. Murder of a clerk during an armed robbery d. Deaths resulting from (nighttime) machinegun fire in infantry combat
d1. Machinegunner is a consccript
d2. Machinegunner is a career marine
d3. Machine-gunner is a mercenary e. Hand-to-hand (bayonet) infantry combat (same variations as (d).
[Insert. 80 years ago Pound noted some of these distinctions:
These fought in any case
and some believing,
pro domo, in any case . . .
Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some from love of slaughter, in imagination,
learning later . . .
some in fear, learning love of slaughter;
Died some, pro patria,
non "dulce" non "et decor" . . .] f. Truman ordering the bombing of Nagasaki g. The pilot of the B-29 that dropped the bomb h. The mechanics who serviced that plane i. Congressmen who have over the years approved the u.s. nuclear program j. The poor saps who say yes to a Gallop poll on should "we" bomb Iraq k. Kennedy ordering a blockade of Cuba (the missile crisis) l. The gentlemen at the IMF deciding on a policy from which millions will die m. The executives at Mansfield (name?) who decided to suppress evidence of the lethality of asbestos
And so forth.
I submit that there is _Very_ little evidence that the overwhelming majority of humans have any tendency (personally) to "violence" (of the sort that extinguishes bodies). From the agent end of your spectrum, clearly agents exist who will decide in the abstract that in pursuit of various (structure-set) goals they will pursue policies that lead to huge violence. There is no evidence that agents exist to make such decisions outside a structure which generates the goals and the capacity to reach those goals.
All the evidence is that left to their own devices, a rather small scattering of agents will engage in violent behavior.
With extraordinarily rare exceptions, even the more violent tend to commit their violence only within a small range of contexts.
Carrol