Cowen on Moral Intuitionism

The problem is that the very process of conscious ratiocination leads to a misspecification of many ideas and leads us to abandon strong intuitions for facile reasoning. The more Aspergery you are, the more you tend to be value clearly articulated mechanisms over the pull of socially powerful but fuzzy and seemingly contradictory impulses. Yes, it makes sense to understand the rational sources of these impulses, but too often intellectuals are content to abandon intuition for reasoning in an arbitrary and often foolish way.

Theft isn’t always wrong. If its the only way to feed your starving family, it can be morally justified.

By analogy taxation is not always wrong for similar reasons.

“Of course our intuitions often clash; but the wise intuitionist response isn’t to throw up our hands, but use further intuition – and empirical evidence – to reach a consistent and intuitively plausible conclusion.”

For some, the claim of moral intuitionism is just to avoid self-examining one’s moral tenants.

The doubts from the commenters should be answered after reading a few ethical intuitionist texts, such as Michael Huemer’s book “Ethical Intuitionism,” which Bryan has mentioned numerous times. The fifth chapter of the book is online and can be read here

RobertB, people do not simultaneously think taxation is both right and wrong. They may have an intuition that taxation is just, but also an intuition that theft is wrong. Caplan is arguing that the intuition that stealing is wrong is stronger, and the proponents of taxation do not adequately show how taxation differs from theft, which means we should also think taxation is wrong since taxation is theft and our intuition against theft is stronger than our intuitions about taxation.

Jason, intuitionists do not believe that our intuitions are inerrant, merely that we are justified in believing them. We presume them to be true unless further evidence comes in to discredit them. In that case, the intuition still constitutes evidence, but we cease to believe it because the evidence against it is stronger, which is itself grounded in intuitions.

Jeff, an intuition is exactly as you describe: the way something seems prior to reasoning. Intuitionists do not believe that intutions represent the end of moral reasoning, simply the beginning.

Doc Merlin, there is nothing about moral intuitionism that removes our duty to examine our intuitions to see how they may be in error.

Property is theft.

That’s easy: the state owns the land you live, move, and work on, and you pay taxes as rent. …  If people squat on your property, or even a huge property of some billionaire or a private corporation, you would have no problem at all with hunting them down …

So which is it? Is the land owned by the private corporation or by the government? Is your point that it’s owned by both? So they are co-owners? But then why is the private owner paying what you call “rent” to the state? Or are you saying that the private landowner is a tenant of the state and he is subletting the land when he rents it out? But then why isn’t the state charging him the market rate of rent? Instead, the state charges its supposed tenant some tiny fraction of the market rent for his property – which is, interestingly, similar to sales tax, which is also a tiny fraction of the sales price. Strange coincidence that, don’t you think? And yet you conclude that the state is the real owner of the land and the private owner is merely the renter. So, applying this to sales, is the state also the real owner of goods and services that are sold, seeing as it charges a sales tax? And what about tariffs that the state charges on imported goods? Does this mean that the state is the owner of those goods – goods which were created in a completely different part of the world? So does each state own the whole world?

So, no. The idea that the state is the “owner” of land is merely an attempt to justify taxation, and one which immediately dissolves into a mess the moment you prod it even lightly.

Now of course, you would argue that there is some essential moral difference between a private and a sovereign landowner, but now the ball is in your court to justify this distinction that to me seems rather scholastic.

The idea is incoherent and doesn’t fit the facts. The application to land is ad hoc, doesn’t fit the immediate facts (such as the fact that the state does not charge anywhere near the full market value to its supposed tenants) and doesn’t extend to other forms of taxation (such as tariffs on imported goods).

(Perhaps the link I’m sensing to AI is that it’s possible to be ‘too cognitive.’)

Constant:
Or are you saying that the private landowner is a tenant of the state and he is subletting the land when he rents it out?

In English-speaking countries, that is actually what any private landowner legally is. What is commonly called “owning land” under common law is in fact fee simple, i.e. you’re legally a vassal of the Crown, or, in the U.S., of the legally personified government (the “fee” part is just an alternative form of “fief”).

As for the income taxes, sales taxes, tariffs, etc., once you grant that the sovereign owns all the land, you must recognize his right to mandate any conditions he pleases for the people who wish to live there, roam around, do business, and bring stuff in and out, no matter how complicated and silly. Private landowners may impose all kinds of regulations and fees for people who want to live on their grounds or even just visit, and their difference from governments is one of degree, not kind. (Especially if they operated under Bryan’s favored anarcho-capitalist order!)

Now of course, it’s not my intention to develop this into an elaborate political theory. My point is that identifying taxes with theft while at the same time recognizing the right of private landowners to charge rent requires postulating some special difference between the two, and the intuitions of most people aren’t going to follow this distinction. (Just like it requires a rather special mental switching ability to feel injustice when illegal immigrants get deported but not when trespassers and squatters get kicked off of private land.)

Hmmm. Lots of reasons why moral realism and ethical intuitionism are poor avenues for conflict resolution.

I’m a quasi-realist at best, observing that ethics’ origins are subjective, its ends are intersubjective, and limitations, objective. We get furthest, I suppose, by examining the limitations of the whole ethical project. “Intuitions” range from subjective desire to control self and others in particular ways, to the end of providing a universal standard based on disinterested perspectives on conflict resolution.

Crucial to the project of sorting out the many, many strains in the ethical emprise is making the right distinctions on every level of the concept grid, from particulars to generalities.

So. Is taxation theft?

Well, taxation is a form of expropriation. Theft is a form of expropriation. We should see why one is often held to have positive normative weight, and the other prohibition-worthy.

One can’t decide such issues to general satisfaction without a complete theory of social causation, a fairly complete model of the social order – and its variations, contingent on different norm sets. And results of same.

So, considering most people do not want to do this work, the provisional judgment must be “one can’t decide such issues to general (mutual? universal?) satisfaction.”

Plenty [of differences between taxation and ordinary theft are] on the table, from “Society could not otherwise survive” to “People should pay for what benefits them” to “Taxation solves a mild free rider problem.”

I’m sure society would survive fine, if the government closed down the only people I would miss are the trash collectors and the water works — both which the market could provide as well as it provides electricity, cable, and Internet.

As far as people paying for what benefits them, that would be a user fee — that’s different. Paying a “tax” on gasoline that pays for the building and maintenance of the roads I use isn’t really a tax.

I don’t see how taxes can solve a free rider problem — it seems to me they promote it. Unless we believe that government adds efficiency to the provision of services, the only reason for the government to provide a service with tax revenue is to gather resources from all of the people who don’t use the service. Otherwise, we’d all just pay for it ourselves.

The rent is not just property tax! Income tax is a form of rent as well, payroll tax, etc. The state, being a landowner, can charge any form of rent it wants.

You are not a serf, but as your workplace is owned by the state, the state takes a cut of the proceeds. Yes, it’s a large cut, but if you don’t like it, find a different state!

“I am sorry but you have failed to make a convincing argument that taxation is not theft. When 50% one’s earned income is taken from you after you reach a certain level of income without your consent you can’t call the action anything but theft.”

Well, yes, you can call it taxation. Which, to most of us, is quite obviously not theft.

Our intuition against theft creates a moral presumption against taxation.

This seems empirically wrong. It would imply, for instance, that Scandinavians are more tolerant of being robbed than are Americans. That story might flatter us as libertarians, but it does not seem particularly true.

In general, when people use theft as a metaphor, they are not commenting on the amount of force being wielded, but, rather, on an underwhelming value proposition. If I say, “What Safeway charges for eggs these days is highway robbery,” my interlocutor understands that I’m not actually claiming to have been mugged by the cashier. Likewise, when people complain about taxation, most are voicing an objection to being taxed too much in relation to these services they are provided.

Theft is a thick moral term: saying that x is an act of theft presupposes that it is wrong. So to say that taxation is theft is to say that it is wrong. But no one, including the libertarian, should find anything compelling about this. After all, if someone thinks taxation is moral, then they should obviously not say that taxation is theft. And it is not hard to shore up this position: though taxation involves taking money from a person, if one thinks a form of taxation is morally permissible then one should think that in taxing its citizens the state does not take what is RIGHTFULLY another’s. That money is rightfully the state’s, and not the citizens’. Repeated libertarian mantras prevent many from seeing that this second position is actually quite sensible. Some of these points are argued for in Thomas Nagel and Liam Murphy’s book on the morality of taxation.

Sheetwise,

Obviously there are lots of thick moral terms, including the ones you list. What is your point? Please spell it out for me. Thanks