Here, I call on EconLog readers to try to change my mind!
Let me start this out with a proverbial throat-clearing on what we all know are the well-worn difficulties of changing someone’s mind. Doing so is often very difficult, and people are reluctant to change their mind. And we’re all biased to believe we are all more open-minded than we actually are. That said, I do think I’m better than most at being willing to change my mind, even on very fundamental issues that have major life implications. Two examples – for a significant fraction of my life, I was a quite devout and believing Christian. But I am now an atheist, because I encountered a variety of arguments I found convincing and thus changed my mind on the subject. (This also makes me somewhat skeptical when people say things like “it’s pointless to debate religion, nobody ever changes their mind,” because I certainly did, and I know many others who have as well, for the same reasons as me.) Second, I used to have such a meat-heavy diet that I was pretty close to people who abide by the so-called “carnivore diet” today. But I read Michael Huemer’s debate with Bryan Caplan over ethical vegetarianism, and I stopped eating meat that same day, because I found Huemer’s arguments far more powerful and convincing than Caplan’s. I felt no difficulty with abandoning my lifelong religious beliefs or fundamentally altering my diet and lifestyle once coming across persuasive arguments that were contrary to my own views at that time.
So, here’s a few things I believe to be true that are, I think, controversial enough that a number of readers would dispute. Now, I’m not asking you to try to adjudicate the issue in the comments here – there’s only so much one can do in a blog post or a comment. Instead, if you disagree with my take on something, what would you hold up as the best, strongest, most persuasive account for the opposite view – an argument you’d personally be willing to sign off on? Depending on what comes through, I’ll pick one and read it, and might turn my reaction into one of my multi-post in depth reviews.
With that stage now set, here’s a few ideas I have in mind.
- Moral realism – the idea that there are objective moral facts about what is right and wrong, independently of what anyone thinks about them. That is, if Nazi Germany had won WWII and gone on to conquer the entire world, and all subsequent generations had been raised to believe that the Holocaust was a great good, it would still be the case that the Holocaust was wrong. While this isn’t exactly an unpopular view of mine (moral realism is the majority view among philosophers, after all), there’s still enough disagreement out there to make it worth exploring. If you incline towards moral antirealism, what book or article or essay do you think makes the best case?
- There is nothing morally special about the state. By this I don’t mean state action is never justified. What I mean is that there is nothing that justifies coercion by the state that does not also equally justify coercion for an individual. If a situation doesn’t justify coercion on the part of an individual, it does not justify state coercion either. Again, this does not mean that justified state action is an empty set – because justified individual coercion is also not an empty set. But the two sets are equal, or so it seems to me. Additionally, I reject what Jason Brennan calls the “special immunity thesis” in favor of the “moral parity thesis.” That is, the actions of the state are to be evaluated by the same moral standards as any other person or organization, and can be justly resisted on the same basis. If you disagree and believe that the justness of coercion depends not on the circumstances creating the justification but rather on who is doing the coercing, what’s the best argument you know supporting this? Or if you believe that agents of the state enjoy a special moral immunity against being resisted when acting unjustly, what argument do you think makes the strongest case for this?
- Equality of outcome has no intrinsic value. While there might be instrumental benefits to equality of outcome, the benefits are instrumental only. Of course, being “merely” instrumentally beneficial doesn’t mean something is unimportant. But still, equality of outcome has no value in and of itself. Imagine one world of vast, crippling, and equal poverty, and another world where nobody suffers from any poverty but some are better off than others. Someone who believes in the intrinsic value of equal outcomes could still accept that the second world is better overall – they might allow that the intrinsic value of equal outcomes is outweighed by the instrumental value of eliminating poverty. But they would still have to argue that there is at least some sense in which the first world is better, even if the second is better overall. To me, there is no sense in which the first world is better – equality of misery and suffering doesn’t create an offsetting good by virtue of its equality. But if you do think that there is real, intrinsic value on equal outcomes, what is the best argument you can point me to?
- There is no coherent concept of aggregated decisions or preferences. That is, phrases like “we as a society have decided” such and such are at the very best a misleading shorthand, and at worst are fundamentally incoherent. There is no meaningful sense in which individual decisions can be aggregated into an overall social decision, or individual preferences somehow average out to a meaningful social preference. But perhaps you disagree, and believe that there is some deeply meaningful concept of social preferences. If so, tell me who makes the strongest argument for that case and where I can find it.
I’ll leave it at these four for now, but if this proves fruitful I may try this approach again. Commenters, have at it!
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Jul 16 2024 at 10:36am
“That is, if Nazi Germany had won WWII and gone on to conquer the entire world, and all subsequent generations had been raised to believe that the Holocaust was a great good, it would still be the case that the Holocaust was wrong. ”
Indeed, but just an historical footnote:
“I also want to speak to you here, in complete frankness, of a really grave chapter. Amongst ourselves, for once, it shall be said quite openly, but all the same we will never speak about it in public.”
“This is an unwritten and never-to-be-written page of glory in our history” — Himmler Before Senior SS Officers in Poznan, October 4, 1943
Indeed there is an alternate history novel entitled ‘Fatherland’ where the protagonist finds evidence of the Holocaust in the 1960s after a victorious Nazi Germany had concealed the evidence.
I’d suggest even the Nazis knew it was wrong.
David Seltzer
Jul 16 2024 at 11:05am
Kevin: Per #4, I agree the term “aggregate” is misleading as it implies all preferences or decisions are captured. That said, I think the closest to preference unanimity is reflected in equilibrium pricing in a dynamic market economy. If there is an aggregate preference for anything, I suspect it’s for knowledge and information. A Google search yielded the following. I have included the abstract. I don’t think I’ve changed your mind but, instead, given you another perspective.
The geometry of consumer preference aggregation∗
Fedor Sandomirskiy (California Institute of Technology)†
Philip Ushchev (ECARES, Universit´e libre de Bruxelles)
Abstract
This paper revisits a classical question in economics: how do individual preferences and
incomes of consumers shape aggregate behavior? We develop a method that reduces the hard problem of aggregation to simply computing a weighted average. The method applies to populations with homothetic preferences. The key idea is to handle aggregation in the space of logarithmic expenditure functions. We demonstrate the power of this method by piq characterizing classes of preferences invariant with respect to aggregation, i.e., such that any population of heterogeneous consumers with preferences from the class behaves as if it were a single aggregate consumer from the same class; piiq characterizing classes of aggregate preferences generated by popular preference domains such as linear or Leontief; piiiq describing indecomposable preferences, i.e., those that do not correspond to aggregate behavior of any non-trivial population; pivq representing any preference as an aggregation of indecomposable ones. We discuss connections and applications of our findings to robust welfare analysis, information design, stochastic discrete choice, pseudo-market mechanisms, and preference identification.
johnson85
Jul 16 2024 at 12:54pm
Moral realism – the idea that there are objective moral facts about what is right and wrong, independently of what anyone thinks about them.
There are no objective moral facts because there is no objective right and wrong outside of a higher power. If our existence is just an random occurrence of atoms arranging in the right way some 13+ billion years ago such that around 3+ billion years ago and then some incredibly lucky alignment of molecules randomly organized into self replicating order that then though evolution happened to evolve into sentient beings, how can you extract a moral objective value out of that? “Survival is the most important value and so whatever survives is not just fit but morally right” is no less or more an objective moral value than “whatever results in people that look like me getting the best/most resources is morally right” or “whatever gets me the most resources is morally right” or “whatever results in the greatest number of individual organisms is morally right, so whatever maximizes the amount of bacteria on the planet is morally right” or “whatever minimizes suffering is morally right, so killing all life on earth is the highest moral aim”.
If you agree on an objective definition of moral right and wrong, then you are just short circuiting the question to begin with and making it a statement that provided you agree on an objective standard of what is morally right and wrong, something can be determined to be morally right or wrong.
It’s not particularly persuasive to most people to say that if there is a higher power, there is a moral right and wrong because the higher power defines it or dictates it, but conditioned on it being true, it at least makes logical sense to claim that there is an objective moral right and wrong.
Monte
Jul 17 2024 at 12:06pm
Excellent defense of a premise (there is no objective right or wrong outside of a higher power) with which I personally agree.
From a non-ethereal standpoint, however, Christopher Boehm, in his book Moral Origins, argues that humans developed a conscience some 45,000 years ago as a hunter-gatherer society and from which a moral code evolved and was subsumed into what we recognize today as modern jurisprudence.
If Boehm is correct in his assumptions – that morality evolves (or devolves) with time – so, too, would moral absolutes. We must then reject the proposition of moral realism.
Laurentian
Jul 18 2024 at 2:19am
How exactly does one decide that morality and moral absolutes have evolved? Opinion polls? Polling certain philosophers? NYT and WaPo editorial boards? SCOTUS decisions?
And does this mean that eventually individual rights and laissez faire economics will be one of those outdated moral absolutes.
Monte
Jul 18 2024 at 1:34pm
That’s a question that (presumably) only folks like Boehm are equipped to answer. For better or worse, I’m married to the antiquated idea that morality is endowed by a Creator and exists independently from any evolutionary context.
Lets hope not. It seems to me that these “moral absolutes” haven’t quite reached their evolutionary peaks and those they’re in competition with are fast becoming extinct.
Phil
Jul 18 2024 at 6:19pm
Existence is not governed by random arrangements of atoms, it is governed by natural laws (as well as psychophsyical laws, which govern consciousness). Why should we accept only some types of laws and require the existence of a higher power for moral laws? I don’t see the asymmetry.
johnson85
Jul 22 2024 at 12:28pm
Because physical/natural laws are testable. If the theory of gravity is wrong, somebody can prove it because things won’t happen the way the theory predicts.
You can’t test moral laws without agreement ahead of time on what is moral or at least how morality is to be determined. There is nothing that makes the death penalty obviously moral or immoral. People that make a claim that it is one or the other are relying on some subjective standard (unless there is a higher being that dictates/defines the standard) to judge the results of the death penalty against.
Phil
Jul 23 2024 at 7:07pm
Something’s lack of testability doesn’t entail its non-existence. You can’t test the existence of a star too many light years away for us to ever observe its effects, but it still exists. Obviously a tree indeed makes a sound even if no one hears it.
You might reply that we have no rational reason to believe in such a star (even if it exists), and in the same way we have no reason to believe in the moral facts. But here you might be confusing testability and falsifiability. The moral laws are not falsifiable. But neither is the existence of God or the hypothesis that you are a brain in a vat experiencing a simulation. But those hypotheses have implications we may or may not observe, rendering their truth more or less likely. Similarly, we can reason about the likelihood of the truth of objective moral facts by consulting our moral intuitions, considering moral divergence and convergence etc.
Phil
Jul 18 2024 at 7:08pm
Existence isn’t a random occurrence of atoms; it is governed by natural laws (as well as psychophysical laws, which govern consciousness, and modal/logical laws, which govern reason). Why should we accept some laws but require a higher power only for moral laws? I don’t see the asymmetry.
Monte
Jul 19 2024 at 4:31pm
From an intelligent design perspective (which, of course, evolutionists reject out of hand), it has been argued that evolution is strictly a biological process. As such, it doesn’t work as an explanation for how we form objective moral values. If evolution is behind our ability to think morally, then it’s behind every thought we’re capable of forming, in which case we’re not actually reasoning beings. Rather, we’re just moist, soul-less robots reacting to external stimuli.
Evolutionists, OTOH, have identified 4 different types of consciousness: phenomenological, access, creature, and self. Out of the 4, they claim the phenomenal state comes closest to explaining the interconnect between consciousness and morality based on the sensory perceptions of pain and pleasure. However, the relationship is tenuous and there is very little philosophical consensus on this score.
Phil
Jul 20 2024 at 8:28pm
One might argue that humans developed a faculty of reason via evolutionary processes, which enables us to discern the moral laws in the same way we can discern mathematical or modal/logical truths.
Monte
Jul 21 2024 at 6:17pm
This is one of several rival theories among neuroscientists and philosophers still in contention. The question remains: Is morality exclusively an evolutionary process, a social construct, divinely inspired, or an interplay of all three?
I can’t argue from pure reason, but in the absence of complete evidence or logical proof, I cling to the notion that “there is no objective right or wrong outside of a higher power.”
Stan Patton
Jul 22 2024 at 2:04pm
On moral realism, just a triplet of 2m videos that beeline to the most important clarifying details of this discourse.
Moral antirealism/irrealism doesn’t mean morality isn’t real, and we have to be very careful about “Whiff World” thought experiments (which subtly appeal to our stances):
https://x.com/StanRockPatton/status/1783574954472272084
The stratification that appears on bootstrapping broadly-held & strongly-felt cares & concerns can create contexts where a moral debate has stance-independent answers. This is the “root confusion” of the metaethical debate:
https://x.com/StanRockPatton/status/1802375141348798591
Moral realism falsely presents as an elegant theory when in fact it requires controversial earmarking to cash out:
https://x.com/StanRockPatton/status/1800933094805193160
steve
Jul 16 2024 at 2:54pm
3) Will mostly agree except that when outcomes are especially divergent we should be pretty skeptical about it being some sort of “natural” outcome. Through history that has mostly been the result of nepotism, rent seeking, bias, corruption, collusion, etc. Those most invested in or benefiting from the status quo will be most vigorous in claiming that none of those things exist or dont apply to them.
Steve
Richard W. Fulmer
Jul 16 2024 at 5:17pm
Will Durant and George Will in one breath said that they were atheists and in the next admitted that civilizations collapse when their people lose their faith. Atheism doesn’t seem to “work” at scale.
And, contrary to “The Fable of the Bees,” neither does immorality. The fable, much beloved by libertarians for reasons that escape me, depicts a world devoid of morals in which everyone is working to cheat everyone else. It all works famously until the bees “get religion,” and then it all falls apart.
But, of course, the whole premise is ridiculous. No system based on immorality could possibly work. Who would trade with another if he knew with certainty that he would be cheated and be left worse for the exchange?
John Adams once said, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The truth of his statement is, today, being demonstrated before our eyes.
nobody.really
Jul 16 2024 at 11:19pm
In support of this thesis, I’ll offer six citations:
Alexis Henri C M Clerel Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone
Robert Putnam et al., The Upswing
NYT, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/13/magazine/robert-putnam-interview.html?searchResultPosition=1
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royptb/367/1589/657.full.pdf
NYT, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/16/opinion/trump-shooter-radicalization-men.html
After traversing some US states in 1831, Tocqueville marveled that Americans were both abnormally individualistic and also prone to spontaneously form groups. Tocqueville concluded that Americans were motivated by “self-interest, property understood.” People seemed to demonstrate both bonding human capital (a/k/a tribalism) and bridging human capital (a/k/a the kinds of inter-group cooperation celebrated by Hayek).
In Bowling Alone, Putnam argued that the US had lost a lot of social capital since 1965—especially bridging capital. And in The Upswing, Putnam traced this pattern from about 1890 to the present. During the Gilded Age, the US experienced enormous wealth disparities, political assassinations, and a “boy problem”—that is, an abundance of disaffected young men, no longer needed on the farm, causing trouble. This prompted the growth of the Progressive Era, when people spontaneously formed groups—the Boy’s Club, Big Brothers, the Boy Scout, and country clubs—wherein young men could bond, have fun, and receive a modicum of social indoctrination. In the absence of pro-social indoctrination, lonely young men are prey to other indoctrination—notably, by cults/the Nazis. By many, many measures, social cohesion grew until about 1965. Thereafter these measures of social cohesion plateaued or reversed, and have been falling ever since. (Ironically, the Civil Rights Movement did not cause social cohesion; it was caused by it—and maybe contributed to its collapse?) In his NYT interview, Putnam argues that we need a new Progressive Era, creating new opportunities for boys (predominantly) to gather in pro-social ways.
The Royal Society published an article striving to explain the rise of bigamy laws. Nearly every society was known, at one point, to embrace polygamy—recognizing the prerogatives of high-status men to monopolize the disproportionate share of women. How would societies ever shed such a prerogative? Once again, societies need to address “the boy problem.” The article argues that bigamy laws have the effect of shifting the supply of women down the social ladder of men, thereby helping to “domesticate” what would otherwise be a dangerously destabilizing population. Through group rivalries, societies that had adopted bigamy laws would be able to out-compete societies that hadn’t.
Finally, there’s a NYT editorial conjecturing about the lonely young man who shot Donald Trump. As far as anyone can tell, the guy didn’t have much of an ideology. He just felt aggrieved and had a gun.
The thrust of all these authors is that there are larger dynamics of social cohesion that cannot be understood merely on the basis of individual competition and autonomy. Yes, religious edicts such as bigamy laws arguably impinge upon autonomy—but violent street gangs impinge more. Libertarians much choose their poison.
Mark
Jul 17 2024 at 12:14am
The fact that the most successful societies in the world have also been the most secular (and many of them have been mostly non-religious for decades now) doesn’t bode well for this thesis. It’s not clear to me though what moral precept necessary for civilization is even positively correlated with religiosity, let alone necessitates it. Even most religious people get >90% of their morals from their social milieu rather than from their religious texts, and when the two conflict, the latter usually wins.
Richard W. Fulmer
Jul 17 2024 at 3:19am
Rome wasn’t destroyed in a day.
Laurentian
Jul 17 2024 at 5:55am
But shouldn’t laissez faire economics be more popular than ever? And shouldn’t people be much happier? And shouldn’t the secular types be the happiest and most libertarian types?
Sort of like how urbanization is supposed to make people libertarian yet the New Deal didn’t happen until after the US became a majority urban country and the urban areas and urban politician were enthusiastic New Dealers.
Mactoul
Jul 17 2024 at 8:10am
Decades are too short a time. Judgement of societal success needs generations.
Since, as we are told, there is a lot of ruin in a nation.
NotAtWork
Jul 16 2024 at 7:05pm
On #1
Maybe “Book of Job” or “The Myth of Sisyphus”?
My (mis)interpretation of these is that – even if objective moral facts exist, we mere mortals are incapable of knowing (understanding, defining, judging, recognizing, observing, etc.) what those are.
People who agree that moral “truth” exists could still disagree on the content or degree of confidence in that truth. This seems indistinguishable from a world where objective moral facts do *not* exist.
I find this compelling because it is consistent with many other ideas from economics. A silly example – maybe there exists an objective “fair” price for a bottle of water, but that doesn’t matter if no one will buy or sell at that price.
Phil
Jul 18 2024 at 6:27pm
> People who agree that moral “truth” exists could still disagree on the content or degree of confidence in that truth. This seems indistinguishable from a world where objective moral facts do *not* exist.
This reasoning doesn’t work. People can, and do, disagree on the content or degree of any type of truth (empirical, metaphysical, mathematical etc.). This doesn’t mean that truth doesn’t exist!
For example, many murders go unsolved. But that doesn’t mean there is no objective fact of the matter about who is the murderer. Our world (and all possible worlds actually) is entirely distinguished from a world where objective facts about murderers do *not* exist!
Mactoul
Jul 16 2024 at 9:50pm
#2
Justice is exclusive to the state. The state can hang a murderer but no individual can.
nobody.really
Jul 16 2024 at 10:17pm
Chuang Tzu (circa 550 – 250 BCE)
17th century protest against English land enclosure
Bob Dylan -“Sweetheart Like You” (Infidels)
nobody.really
Jul 16 2024 at 10:05pm
2: Should we evaluate the choice to use force against the state differently than the choice to use force against an individual?
Joe orders me around, and punches me if I don’t do what he orders. This burdens me. I resist him with force, and prevail. Now I can do my own thing.
Joe was the leader coordinating our military defenses. Thanks to my insubordination, we now have no coordination; every guy just does his own thing. As a result, we are easy prey for the next invading force led by a guy who can maintain coordination and discipline in his ranks. As a result, now I’m twice as burdened as before—as are all the other soldiers I was fighting with, and our families.
In short, the merits of the decision to resist Joe’s coercion may vary depending on Joe’s role in maintaining cohesion within my group a/k/a Joe’s leadership. Of course, if you don’t recognize the existence of leaders and groups (and their role in resisting domination by other groups), then you might not see any distinction here. But people who do recognize the existence of groups and leaders might draw a different conclusion. If you recognize the need for coordination within your group, you will likely recognize the need for some degree of leadership. And leaders will require some degree of discretion–that is, tolerance and cooperation/subordination from followers that these followers would not grant to non-leaders.
More generally, Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory argues that nearly all moral theories recognize a role for authority (as well as a role for resisting its abuses), because humans evolved in tight-knit hunter-gatherer societies engaged in group rivalries (and not merely individual rivalries). For further exposition, please see Haidt’s Righteous Mind.
Kevin Corcoran
Jul 17 2024 at 12:28pm
Hey nobody.really,
This doesn’t quite cover what I was getting at. In your example, you cite a case where your resistance to Joe’s coercion has large negative consequences for society because your resistance disrupted some hugely important social function Joe carried out as an agent of the state. While there may be prudential or consequentialists reasons to avoid resisting Joe’s coercion in that case, it still doesn’t get at what I’m describing.
Consider, for example, the case of Moe. Let’s say Moe orders me around, and punches me if I don’t do what he orders. This burdens me. I resist him with force, and prevail. Now I can do my own thing. But Moe, it turns out, was an unusually brilliant computer security expert that kept nefarious terrorists from hacking into a (privately owned and operated) nuclear power plant. Due to my forceful resistance of his coercion, he is unable to perform his job and terrorists hack into and cause a meltdown of the nuclear reactor, causing, let’s stipulate, the same level of overall social damage as in your scenario.
What I’m looking for is specifically an argument that says you while can justly resist the coercion of Moe because he’s a private citizen, it would be wrong to resist the coercion of Joe because he’s an agent of the state. It seems to me that you can either justly resist both (because deontology, or whatever), or neither (because consequences, or whatever). If, as you seem to suggest, we ought not to resist unjust coercion in cases where doing so would lead to a breakdown of social order, then that would seem to apply whether the unjust coercion was private or state sponsored. What I’m looking for is an argument where the “state sponsored” element is the deciding factor, rather than merely a correlate for some other condition that makes the difference. Perhaps, as you suggest, resistance to unjust state coercion in modern societies may be more likely to bring about huge negative effects than resistance to unjust private coercion. That would mean that the conditions under which we ought not resist unjust coercion are more likely to apply to actions of the state. But it does not demonstrate that the act of resisting unjust coercion on the part of the state is wrong due to the fact that the state was the one doing the coercing, in and of itself.
nobody.really
Jul 17 2024 at 5:59pm
Who qualifies as a government agent for purposes of question #2?
A: Let’s say Moe is incapacitated, resulting in the meltdown of a nuclear reactor, harming third parties. But unlike the scenario with Joe, the harmed parties can simply bring suit against the nuclear company for compensation, right? Private actors, private remedies, problem solved.
But maybe the nuclear plant kills people, or the nuclear company goes bankrupt, resulting in a lack of effective private remedies. This scenario illustrates the weaknesses of libertarianism and the need for state protections against market failures such as externalities and insolvency. The STATE should have established these protections, including requiring the firm to have protections against terrorists (as, I believe, US laws do). In this case, Moe would IN EFFECT function as a government agent. He wouldn’t exist exclusively to promote the private interest of the plant’s owners; his role exists to defend the interest of unknown third parties a/k/a “the public.”
B: Consider the opposite hypothetical: Beau, a public employee who paints lines on the parking lots of county office buildings, orders me around and punches me when I resist. Should the fact that a county comptroller signs his paycheck deter me from using force in my own defense? No. But this begs the question, does Beau really qualify as a government agent for purposes of question #2? His role seems entirely analogous to private roles; the fact that he paints lines on government-owned parking lots rather than privately-owned lots does not seem relevant to this analysis.
C: I have to wonder that all these hypotheticals really miss the larger point about the need to recognize the need for leaders to exercise a modicum of discretion even when it intrudes upon our autonomy—an intrusion we would not continence if a non-leader were to behave likewise.
From time to time my dad would tell me to shut up “because I SAID SO.” I didn’t like it, but I complied. Then I encountered my kid innocently asking the neighbor questions on a topic that I knew was highly sensitive. To preserve my family’s relationship with the neighbors, I had to discretely tell my kid to drop the line of questioning “because I SAID SO.”
No, my kid didn’t think I was acting as a government agent—but she did think I wielded authority and, rightly or not, respected that authority. She would not have complied if her sister had similarly demanded silence from her. I wonder if this (not-)hypothetical example better illustrates the distinction?
Mactoul
Jul 18 2024 at 12:13am
I wonder if Moe’s punching action is legal.
Also a critical facility, even if private, may have plenty of state-sanctioned coercive powers. Like private airlines.
Kevin Corcoran
Jul 17 2024 at 12:30pm
Oh, and before I forget, I have indeed read Haidt’s book. It’s a good book, but it also doesn’t answer the question I was going for.
nobody.really
Jul 17 2024 at 3:32pm
Again, perhaps I completely misunderstand the point you are addressing in question #2.
Haidt argues that various moral foundations frequently recur in moralities throughout the world—including the authority/subversion foundation. I would think that having some theory about why people have this moral foundation would be relevant to addressing question #2.
Mark
Jul 17 2024 at 12:05am
#1 seems to me like an axiomatic position on your part, rather than something that could be debated. Can you even in theory conceive of a universe existing in which there are no moral facts? If so, how would one be able to differentiate between whether one lives in such a universe vs. one where there are moral facts? If you can’t imagine such a universe, then it seems more like a foundational axiom than a conclusion reached by logic.
Picking an example that inspires more or less universal revulsion obscures rather than illuminates the question, because people habitually conflate the subjective emotional experience of revulsion with abstract moral truth. To really tell if you have a good reason for being a moral realist, first assume someone who doesn’t share this subjective emotional response to what you believe is immoral. How would you rationally persuade such a conscience-less person that they should not do certain things or should do other things, or should grimace at certain acts while approving of others, without appealing to self-interest? If there are no persuasive arguments that don’t presuppose this subjective emotional response, how can one meaningfully distinguish morality from the mere subjective emotional experience of morality?
Jim Glass
Jul 19 2024 at 6:05pm
Sure. One without humans. In fact that’s been our actual universe for 13 billion+ years.
Mactoul
Jul 17 2024 at 8:07am
2. Defense of the state
Self-perpetuation being the first concern of any state, virtually nothing is forbidden to that end.
Scott Sumner
Jul 17 2024 at 5:43pm
“the idea that there are objective moral facts”
I’m with Richard Rorty; I don’t believe there are any objective moral facts, or even any objective scientific facts. But I do believe there are moral facts, that these moral facts are just as true as many scientific facts, and that these moral facts are very important.
I just don’t see them as objective facts. They are beliefs about the world.
Mactoul
Jul 18 2024 at 12:06am
I wonder how you (and Rorty) would treat propositions of the sort that typify objectivity such as
” Temperature outside is 25 C” or
” I weigh 66 kg”
Laurentian
Jul 18 2024 at 2:10am
Interesting, if there are no objective moral or scientific facts then how do argue that neoliberalism, prosperity and free trade are good and Putin and murder are bad? Or how does one figure out if the economy is in good or bad shape?
Scott Sumner
Jul 18 2024 at 12:28pm
Come back to me when you have a coherent, non-circular definition of “objective”.
robc
Jul 18 2024 at 3:19pm
Objective is an unnecessary qualifier for facts. All facts are objective.
Laurentian
Jul 18 2024 at 4:52pm
Well how would you debate a protectionist over the merits of free trade? Is there no objective way of defining what “free trade” and “protectionism” are and no objective way of measuring that it is good and that protectionist arguments are false?
Also how can you be a neoliberal if there are no objective facts?
And I’m not sure you can have “experiments in living” if you can’t define what those experiments are and the parameters for success.
nobody.really
Jul 19 2024 at 7:53am
I suspect Scott Sumner is making an appeal to skepticism.
Perhaps I could make a statement about “facts,” and how they have a quality of “objectivity.” But I don’t have access to such facts. I merely have some faulty senses, a faulting capacity for reasoning, and a faulty capacity for memory. At BEST I might conclude “I think, therefore I am.” But even that statement requires me to rely on my reasoning which, as I mentioned, is faulty. So can I call that statement an objective fact, or not?
Perhaps I could choose to call “facts” things that I strive to test with my senses and analyze with my reasoning. But even here, I would need to make some decision about how much testing to do, through what mechanisms, etc. I observe that I feel cold today. So can I now say that it’s a fact that global warming is a myth? After all, that’s a conclusion I could draw based on (meager) sensory data and (faulty) reasoning—and that’s the test for a fact, right?
I could strive to refine my efforts to gather sensory data, employing increasingly sophisticated tools. I could strive to improve my method of recording, organizing, and retrieving data so that I minimize my reliance on my faulty reasoning. I could strive to refine my efforts at analyzing data, using increasingly sophisticated math. But HOW sophisticated must I be? The choice of the degree of sophistication—taking three measurements and averaging the results, for example—strikes me as a judgment call. Can anything based on a judgment call qualify as an “objective fact”?
Then there’s the challenge of schema:
Thomas Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolution (1962), Chap. 10, “Revolutions as Changes of World-View.” So if I were socialized to see stars as chinks in a dome through which the light of heaven emerges, that’s what I’ll see. If I’m not socialized to draw a distinction between blue and green, I won’t. True, I could refine the process of identifying colors by using the Pantone Color Systems, which subdivides colors into a vast number of categories. But even here, I could find a shade that reflected a blend of two adjacent categories. Moreover, the problem goes beyond socialization: The Pantone systems focuses solely on the visual spectrum—where “visual” refers to conventional understandings of human perception along wavelengths. So the Pantone system could let me describe the shade of the flower I see to a very high degree of precision, but ignores the fact that the flower also has ultraviolent qualities that insects can see, even though I can’t. So when I report the color of a flower using the Pantone systems, have I reported an “objective fact,” or data biased by my choice of tools?
In sum, I know my sensory apparatus and reasoning will give me biased results because I will tend to see what my culture and limited sensory apparatus tell me to look for, and to ignore everything else. Now, perhaps I’m just being obsessive about ever more trivial details, like the distinctions between adjacent Pantone colors. But consider: I live in a world with both opportunities and threats (hope and fear). Will this person attack me? Will this person be a good employee or sex partner? Data would help me make decisions to respond to these opportunities and threats—but data collection/analysis is expensive and may expose me to the vary threats I fear. And remember, I NEED to make judgments about the people I encounter—the lives of myself and my progeny depend upon it—so I don’t have the luxury of withholding judgment. So I tend to rely on data I can collect cheaply and safely—say, at a glance—and then extrapolate from that data to the conclusions I need to draw regarding opportunities and threats.
What data is that? At a glance, I can make a judgment about your race, age, gender, physical abilities, social class—but not, say, your blood type. Is it any coincidence that societies develop biases around race, age, gender, physical abilities, social class—but not blood type? (Western societies develop biases around hair color: the fiery redhead; blondes have more fun; etc. Asian societies? Not so much.)
Thus, even if I were to make an “objectively factual” conclusion about a person’s age, subconsciously I will likely also project a lot of beliefs about people of that age onto that person. This complicates the idea that a statement about a person’s age (or other “suspect categories”) can be “objectively factual.” And from my perspective, this challenge to objectivity is not trivial.
Phil
Jul 18 2024 at 7:15pm
If there are no objective facts, then the proposition, “there are no objective facts,” cannot itself be an objective fact; it is tautologically false. Further, the proposition, “all facts are not objective, they are beliefs about the world,” if true, would be an objective fact; again, the statement is tautologically false.
Lance S. Bush
Jul 21 2024 at 6:41pm
I’m a bit puzzled at this remark. Wasn’t the other person claiming that there were no objective moral facts?
Phil
Jul 23 2024 at 7:11pm
OP said there are neither moral facts nor scientific facts. I suppose I jumped the gun by assuming he thinks there are no facts at all, but I’m not sure what kind of fact doesn’t fit into either category. Metaphysical? Logical? Is it like Bishop Berkeley where only ideas exist?
Phil
Jul 18 2024 at 7:02pm
3. Let there be two worlds A and B which are initially identical.Suppose that in both worlds, wealth distribution is wholly just in the Nozick sense, such that each holding is acquired either in accordance with a just initial acquisition or with a just transfer.
Now suppose that in world A wealth is distributed approximately equally and in world B wealth is distributed unequally (I stipulate here that some random event occurs differently across the worlds to cause the divergent equilibria, despite the agents being identical in both worlds and putting forth the same efforts). Let total wealth (and population) be the same in both worlds.
I think it is extremely reasonable to think that for a given personal wealth level X (or across the integration of all possible wealth levels x), most people would prefer to live in world A than in world B. If this is the case, equality of outcome is intriniscally preferred, so it has intrinsic value.
One might reply that the general preference for A over B demonstrates only subjective intrinsic value, not objective. But for most axiologies, the number of things that have objective intrinisc value is limited; for example, on hedonist utilitarianism only one thing has objective intrinsic value. Some people think objective value doesn’t even exist. By being intrinsically preferred, equality of outomce is both subjectively intrinisically valuable and either objectively intrinsically valuable (on preference utilitarianism), or as close as possible for the class of things to which it belongs.
Kurt Schuler
Jul 18 2024 at 7:44pm
On #4, philosophical objections to aggregation don’t prevent decisions from happening in practice. There is such a thing as a scientific consensus even if the objectors are more passionate than the mainstream. There are also better and worse ways of making decisions in a group. (Worse: one person decides for everybody with no consultation. Better: majority vote. Better yet: Majority vote only on a limited set of issues that seemingly cannot be resolved through trade or other voluntary interactions.)
Jim Glass
Jul 19 2024 at 1:55am
It would help to have some actual-use examples of people really saying such to know what they are talking about that you object to. I can imagine the phrase being used in politics or sociology.
In politics I can imagine three meanings but have seen only two actually expressed. “We as a society have decided: (1) that the winner of an election carries the day, so the Tories and French Right can go home and suck eggs”. Not profound, but true enough. (2) “that we will all follow the social contract of our constitution, the losers accepting the result (instead of this) peacefully and continuing as respected members of the polity, waiting their turn”. Long ago I saw Margaret Thatcher speak powerfully about this to her Tories, saying that as a democratic inevitability the other party must in time come to power, and her people in power then should remember to treat them accordingly for the long-term good. This is an important lesson for leaders to teach, ‘respect the social contract’, lest losers attack it and try to rip the constitution apart.
As to (3) a politician claiming ‘this election result best represents the aggregated preferences of every individual voter’, I’ve never heard anyone say any such thing, likely because it would be as incoherent as you state, I agree with you about that. But I also don’t see the benefit of refuting what nobody says. So I suspect that I am dumbly missing your point, so … example?
As to sociological behavior “we as a society have decided” I think could be much more credible. But that covers such a broad scope, again, example needed for focus.
Mark
Jul 19 2024 at 2:02am
One of the strongest argument for theism is Ed Feser’s book ‘Five Proofs of the Existence of God’ (‘proof’ is used as a philosophical term for an argument in which conclusions follow from premises). Feser was an atheist who became a theist during his PhD reading the likes of Aristotle and Aquinas, and his modern formulation of their arguments is much more readable–broken down into a narrative + line-by-line syllogism format. Definitely worth a read.
Jim Glass
Jul 19 2024 at 2:29am
Let’s look at humanity’s attitude through all its history towards mass killings, atrocities and slavery. If these are truly objectively morally wrong, we’d expect our ancestors to have noticed this and generally thought so. all the way back to the beginning. How blind could they be to a real objective morality?
As to mass killing, the Holocaust is a very special evil for several reasons, but its historical scale is not one of them. Even in WWII, estimates of how many the Japanese killed go as high as 30 million. (Somehow that goes neglected.) Before that…
Julius Caesar reputedly killed 1 million Gauls and enslaved another 1 million (twofer!) — 2/3rds of the entire population — and wrote home to Rome to brag about it to gain political popularity. It worked. To this day he’s a hero in novels, movies, HBO series, on Netflix … When the Romans finally got to Carthage, population 400,000, they went through it killing everyone, burnt it down, and sold the 50,000 survivors into slavery. Through the 2,000 years since most commentators have opined, “Yes, that’s how you do it!” … Genghis Khan and his Mongols killed 40 million people, 10% of the world’s population — reducing humanity’s carbon footprint enough to lower the world’s temperature(!) … When Basil II of Byzantium defeated a Bulgar army he took 8,000 prisoners, blinded them all, leaving 1 in 100 with one eye to lead the rest home. Etc. The list of mass murders and atrocities is unending. And through all history observers to it all have generally said, just as per Julius, ‘Yes! Great job!’
There is a good explanation for it. Evolution has cooked into all the #1 rule: Survive to have progeny that survive. For humans in a world that is anarchic (no law or “police”) and zero-to-negative sum economically, this means be strong enough to use violence to protect your stuff, take other people’s stuff, eliminate people who are your enemies today and potentially in the future, and *importantly* deter others from attacking or resisting you, so you win without a fight! The very best!! This means being SEEN to be brutal and ruthless when you do fight. That provides positive returns for rule #1. So it deserves praise. How can something so necessary for Rule #1 be immoral? (It’s all standard game theory. See Mearsheimer on the international order today.)
Slavery, the same. It existed through all time on all continents. Clearly it was generally deemed fine. Aristotle, who was big into ethics and politics, had no problem with it as it was part of the “natural order”, for without it there could be no civilizations. The “surplus labor” (as we’d say) from slaves in ancient near-zero sum economies was necessary to pay for armies to fight, build city structures, have law courts, education, arts, etc. How could what was so necessary for civilization be immoral?
So how did mass killing, atrocities, and slavery suddenly become so dreadfully immoral in our time? Aristotle, smart guy that he was, put his finger on it 2,300 years ago, saying that ‘when statues would do the work of men…
The industrial revolution arrived to provide our needed surplus labor from machines. Suddenly, human economies became positive sum. Rule #1 remained as always, but the way to satisfy it reversed to become: Peace, Cooperation, Freedom. Now the opposites of these became immoral. Slavery, an evil outlawed. The word “genocide” appeared in 1944. And here we are today, with the world still gradually making the conversion.
A cynic might say all this means: “What is moral is what’s good for me.” I’d say no, rather, “Objective morality may be real, but is a luxury good”. Voices have expressed moral concerns such as ours throughout the ages, but only as a minority, for the world was very poor. Rule #1 always dominates in the world of the time. I’d guess “Objective Morality” exists and ranks somewhere from Rule #2 to Rule #12. I don’t know really, it depends on what I see on social media that day.
Anyhow, that’s my story to influence your mind, and I’m sticking to it.
Jim Glass
Jul 20 2024 at 2:04am
“Julius Caesar reputedly killed 1 million Gauls and enslaved another 1 million (twofer!) — 2/3rds of the entire population”
That was 2AM writing. To be accurate, he claimed that, although it was probably closer to 1/3rd of the population. He may also have exaggerated those numbers too, for his own benefit.
The point for this discussion though is that it *was* to his benefit to maximize the numbers he killed and enslaved and the percentage of the population he wiped out. If there is any “objective morality”, universal to all humans, that condemns mass murder, slavery and genocide, the Romans missed the memo about it. His claims totally worked to his political advantage and he was lauded for them ever after. Which says what about the objectivity and universality of morality?
Jim Glass
Jul 19 2024 at 10:06pm
If I understand your position correctly, I think it contradicts the fundamental function and nature of the state.
Imagine a book club: everybody has to read a book, talk about it weekly chapter by chapter, then work together to write a paper, report, whatever by a deadline — for a reason that matters, maybe an important grade or job assignment. Also imagine that everybody is yakking over everybody else, contradicting, cutting others off, so no work is getting done as the deadline approaches. The situation is literally “anarchy”, no rules. All will lose on deadline day.
Then some of the group members get upset, organize and decide to end the nonsense. They propose that from now on there will be a chair for every meeting (perhaps rotating), with a secretary taking notes. The chair will recognize one person to speak at a time, in sequential order. If disagreements arise the secretary will note each person’s position, then all will move on, no arguing. Any who break the rules may be disciplined or expelled — forfeiting credit for themselves on deadline day. After some negotiating among the full group, details of all rules are put in writing for all to sign to eliminate possible future disagreement. The few most liberty-loving anarchic addicted-to-yakking individuals resist, but finally sign on too — no choice.
The book club has formed “a state”, a micro-state. There is a social contract, written constitution and laws, executive, and ability to punish or expel any who violate its constitution and laws. The state has arisen by “emergence”, evolving spontaneously in reaction to the needs of its individual members under the environmental pressure of the deadline. The *explicit* purpose and function of the state is to force reduced conflict and violence among its members so they can better coordinate to meet their objective, and all win on deadline day.
Clearly this state can use coercion to punish/expel an individual whose behavior by its rules is noxious enough to deserve it. But can one individual use coercion to punish or force the expulsion of another whom he personally deems extremely noxious? No. That violates the state’s constitution — and if one individual could use coercion against another, the latter could retaliate, sides be chosen, the whole arrangement blow up, pre-state anarchy returning, and all losing. So the individual simply is *not* justified in using coercion as the state can. No individual is.
Up to full scale: Pre-state societies are massively violent — state societies are massively less so. Why? Looking at today’s tribal societies, Jared Diamond explains how in the anarchic, near zero-sum, “no law, no police” world, with Rule #1 survival at stake, the prime mechanism for administering “justice” is violence, then violent retribution and revenge, spreading and reverberating through clan and tribal violence across generations. Vengeance Is Ours…
States replace endless cascading personal violence with state justice. Violence is slashed and positive-sum cooperation rises as a result. Indeed, that is why states are spontaneously “emergent” among peoples — just as with the “book club state” only with massive amounts of blood, death and economic welfare at issue.
So, no, individuals do not have equal justification to use coercion and violence as does the state. Far from it. The idea contradicts the state’s basic nature and function, and the cause of the emergence of the state’s existence: To reduce coercion and violence by individuals and replace them, when justified, with state action. Don’t take your tire iron out and go after the guy who cut you off in a fit of road rage, no matter how entirely justified you are. Call the cops.
Jim Glass
Jul 21 2024 at 1:29am
Of course, states also serve functions beyond reducing violence.
A state can justly use coercion to have traffic all drive on the same side of the street, and even switch sides at the same hour of the same day, No individual can use coercion to do that, justly or unjustly.
As to such coordination matters the state can justly, beneficially use coercion in situations where it wouldn’t at all be justified for an individual to do so, if only because the attempt would be absurd (or crazed loner vigilantism.)
The relationship between the state and individual isn’t symmetrical, which makes the state special, in its own special way.
Lance S. Bush
Jul 21 2024 at 6:38pm
Regarding #1: I think moral realism is a nonstarter as far as positions go: every version of it strikes me as trivial, false, or unintelligible. I don’t favor any particular philosopher’s case against realism, but I myself routinely argue against it. I don’t know how easy it’d be to present a sustained case against it in short form, but what I’d start by saying is that I don’t think there are any good arguments for moral realism and if you believe there are I’d be happy to discuss them. So, at the very least, I think there’s no good positive case in favor of moral realism. Second, I think moral antirealism is routinely misrepresented and that moral realists often rely in practice on rhetoric and misleading characterizations of antirealism to give the false impression that antirealism is especially unappealing or implausible.
Regarding what you say in characterizing it, you say: “That is, if Nazi Germany had won WWII and gone on to conquer the entire world, and all subsequent generations had been raised to believe that the Holocaust was a great good, it would still be the case that the Holocaust was wrong.”
This is not a good way of characterizing moral realism, because such a remark is consistent with moral antirealism. Moral realism is the view that there are stance-independent moral facts. An antirealist is someone who rejects this claim. But an antirealist can (and I do) hold that the Holocaust would still be wrong regardless of the situation you describe because when I say that it’s wrong I’m saying it’s wrong with respect to my standards. I don’t think moral truth is determined by whoever happens to be culturally ascendent at a given time or within the framework of some hypothetical. That strikes me as a very peculiar type of antirealism that has more in common with realism than with my views.
The problem is that I don’t endorse any books or articles that sufficiently make a case against realism or for antirealism. I have a blog and YouTube channel, both called Lance Independent. I could recommend something from one or both, though I’d also be happy to speak with you directly or discuss realism here or elsewhere.
Comments are closed.