From: jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Sat, 3 Sep 94 23:51:49 PDT
To: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Subject: Re: "Reputations" are more than just nominalist hot air
In-Reply-To: <199409040346.UAA17897@netcom14.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <199409040651.XAA07075@netcom14.netcom.com>
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> James Donald writes:
> > We already know what reputations are.  "Defining" them is going
> > to make them into meaningless nominalist hot air.

Timothy C. May writes
> James, I can only conclude you were in a bad mood when you wrote
> this, as surely the study of how reputations work, how they get
> increased and decreased, etc., cannot be a bad thing.

Hal wished to have answers to certain questions about reputations.

The questions he was asking have no answers.

If one provided answers to such questions, the thing that one is
calling a reputation would not be a reputation, it would be something
more formal, and more subject to centralized control.

Were such a definition generally accepted, this would have consequences
radically different to those that we desire.

I really do not want to digress onto the issue of nominalism and
legal positivism, which is seriously off topic, but a similar 
approach on other matters has led to the catastrophic collapse
of societies in the past, and I would claim that it is having
something of that effect in the present.

It is legitimate and desirable to ask such questions about
credentials.  To ask them about reputations is harmful and
dangerous.

You may ask:  How can a mere question be dangerous?

Answer:  Because some questions imply false definitions, and 
false definitions are dangerous.

To take an extreme example, consider the labor theory of value.

The labor theory of value defines what capitalists do (organize labor
so as to maximize value and minimize labor) as non existent.  It therfore
leads to the false conclusion that capitalists can be forcibly eliminated
without their functions being taken over by a totalitarian nomenclatura,
because the definition defines capitalists to have no function.

A nominalist definition of reputation, which was what Hal's questions
would necessarily lead to, would lead to analogous conclusions --
the need for a formal system of credentialing in cyberspace -- to
serve *in the place of* real reputations..

If such a system was to serve the function that reputations now serve
in the real world, it would lead to consequences very different from
those intended or desired by Hal.