And I have no idea where I saw that Rothbard wanted education to be forced. Maybe it was a joke I didn’t get.
]]>But (1) then you’re no longer advocating Stevenson’s view, or anything like it, since those views are universal claims about the meaning of the word “good,” or of sentences that use moral predicates.
Disjunctively, my theory implies a universal claim about the meaning of “good” and an epistemic claim about whether you can know a proposition is true, false, or a mere attitude.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think this really sounds dangerously like a way of getting out of arguments on the cheap, by refusing to even engage with what your interlocutor is saying, or to hold her to the rational standards that she herself indicates she wants to be held to.
I think it’s just the opposite. If some “ethical propositions” are mere attitudes, then the subject could no sooner disengage from an interpersonal argument as she could an intrapersonal argument. At all points in time, the subject has to keep aware of the possibility that her own ethical propositions may be mere attitudes. That provides not only incentive to engage in reasoned discussion, but incentive to do so in the most honest way imaginable.
From this perspective, engaging in reasoned argument is a win-win. Either the subject finds that part of her proposition is a mere attitude or she strengthens her proposition from another angle. Both actions are compelling and both serve the process of truth (which is, universally, a good).
No. Maybe it’s deceptive (a lie by omission), but not all forms of deception are fraudulent.
How did Rothbard justify enforcing education?
]]>I see it as a disjunctive. Some ethical views are cognitive (yours for instance). Some aren’t.
As you please. But (1) then you’re no longer advocating Stevenson’s view, or anything like it, since those views are universal claims about the meaning of the word good,
or of sentences that use moral predicates. And (2) I wonder whether you think that the people whose ethical utterances that you want to criticize agree with you that their own utterances are really just expressive outbursts without any cognitive content? Or do they think that they are in fact saying something which has cognitive content, which can be assessed as either true or false, and which can be used as a premise or conclusion in rational arguments? If I say that undocumented immigrants have natural rights and a conservative insists that they do not, I think he would be very surprised to find out that we actually aren’t disagreeing about anything (because I’m saying something with a truth-value, and she is just expressing a feeling, grunting something like Damn! undocumented immigrants!
). Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think this really sounds dangerously like a way of getting out of arguments on the cheap, by refusing to even engage with what your interlocutor is saying, or to hold her to the rational standards that she herself indicates she wants to be held to.
MBH:
Do you think it’s fraudulent for the man to just sit there — implicitly confirming their belief?
No. Maybe it’s deceptive (a lie by omission), but not all forms of deception are fraudulent.
In particular, you’ve stipulated that, ex hypothesi, he’s not trading on the misrepresentation (you said he’s not employing anyone; they just leave offerings), and he didn’t create the misrepresentation either (he was just sitting at home when people started showing up with offerings). Both tend to cut against requirements that are usually taken to be constitutive of fraud.
]]>I’m a cognitivist, not a non-cognitivist, about ethics (and value broadly), and I don’t think that Stevenson’s stuff on “emotive meaning” or “disagreements of interest” reflects how human beings actually deliberate; it seems a lot more like trying to force ethical discourse into a theory of how propositions ought to work than fitting your theory to the discourse it is supposed to explain.
I see it as a disjunctive. Some ethical views are cognitive (yours for instance). Some aren’t. And I don’t want to say that “non-cognitive ethical views are not ethical views.” I think you lose explanatory power that way. “Only Americans have natural rights,” is not just false. I mean, there’s a sense in which it’s just “rabble rabble rabble.” I want to preserve that framing for certain “ethical” propositions.
I don’t know if you’ve seen any of this but Julian Sanchez has a great series on “epistemic closure.” (Not in the sense Dretske or Nozick used it, but similar)
http://www.juliansanchez.com/2010/04/22/a-coda-on-closure/
Anyway, I think this kind of phenomena is a perfect example of ethics as attitude. But again, I see it as a disjunctive. Not all ethical propositions are mere attitudes. Those subject to epistemic openness are actual ethical proposition.
I don’t think that it would be just to force him to disabuse the other islanders of their confusions, if he didn’t create the situation and he isn’t doing anything coercive or fraudulent to sustain it. Do you disagree? If so, why?
Do you think it’s fraudulent for the man to just sit there — implicitly confirming their belief?
]]>The ethicist then is someone engaged in re-directing attitudes by falsifying beliefs. The attitudes themselves can’t be subject to critique (they’re not falsifiable) — only the beliefs that cause them are.
Do you disagree with that?
Yes.
I’m a cognitivist, not a non-cognitivist, about ethics (and value broadly), and I don’t think that Stevenson’s stuff on emotive meaning
or disagreements of interest
reflects how human beings actually deliberate; it seems a lot more like trying to force ethical discourse into a theory of how propositions ought to work than fitting your theory to the discourse it is supposed to explain. Maybe you disagree, but I’d have to hear some arguments as to why you disagree.
Say that they work for him. Not because he employs them. They just do it because they think they’re supposed to (maybe one of the 99 convinced the others that he was god). They freely bring him the product of their labor, leaving nothing for themselves. He just sits there.
Then he’s not violating anybody’s rights.
Assuming that he understands the concept of rights, does he not have the responsibility to educate them as to what rights are?
Probably he has a moral responsibility. But I don’t think he has an enforceable responsibility of justice to educate anyone about anything. (I.E., I don’t think that it would be just to force him to disabuse the other islanders of their confusions, if he didn’t create the situation and he isn’t doing anything coercive or fraudulent to sustain it.) Do you disagree? If so, why?
Anyway. You’re changing the hypothetical rather radically now, and I don’t know to what argumentative point. Is this still supposed to have some application to government forcing people to buy corporate health insurance? If so, how?
]]>I think their take on ethics is substantially worse than their programmatic critique of metaphysics, which I think is misguided, but often interesting and offering many points of genuine insight. Insofar as it hits rocky shoals, many of those just are the failure of the critique to offer a sensible account of ethical utterances.
That’s true of the generic positivists. But as I read Stevenson, he doesn’t regard ethics as senseless like he does metaphysics. He thinks ethical utterances are attitudes rooted in belief. The ethicist then is someone engaged in re-directing attitudes by falsifying beliefs. The attitudes themselves can’t be subject to critique (they’re not falsifiable) — only the beliefs that cause them are.
Do you disagree with that?
You’d have to tell me what the island tycoon is actually doing to create the situation of negligence, and at least so far, your imaginary scenario hasn’t included any of that.
Say that they work for him. Not because he employs them. They just do it because they think they’re supposed to (maybe one of the 99 convinced the others that he was god). They freely bring him the product of their labor, leaving nothing for themselves. He just sits there.
Assuming that he understands the concept of rights, does he not have the responsibility to educate them as to what rights are? Or at least to educate them as to the self-defeating nature of 100% short-run sacrifice?
]]>But I do think their take on ethics is correct (at least Stevenson’s).
Well, O.K. I don’t. (In fact, I think their take on ethics is substantially worse than their programmatic critique of metaphysics, which I think is misguided, but often interesting and offering many points of genuine insight. Insofar as it hits rocky shoals, many of those just are the failure of the critique to offer a sensible account of ethical utterances.)
Maybe 0.1% of the time moral propositions are shaped entirely by reason. Usually they’re founded in an attitude or a cultural disposition.
I don’t know whether or not I agree with that, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the positivists’ stance on ethics. The positivist position has to do with the meaning (or linguistic character) of ethical utterances. Not with the psychological or sociological question of how they are formed.
If ethical utterances are genuinely cognitive (which is what the positivists usually denied), then whether or not they are formed by means of reason, they can be criticized by means of reason, and revised in light of considerations of reason. You shouldn’t confuse an account of how statements are formed with an account of what they mean; and you also shouldn’t confuse an account of how they are formed with an account of what sorts of considerations might later affect them. Beliefs which weren’t formed reasonably are nevertheless beliefs that may be abandoned or revised when put to the challenge of rational criticism.
The more logical approach would be to short-circuit the knee-jerk reaction through metaphor or jokes or unconventional situations.
Well, whatever. That’s a question of rhetoric, not a question of logic. But I’m pretty sure I’ve used a metaphor here and there and told a joke or two. My proposal for outreach isn’t just to go around saying I am an Anarchist!
and leave it at that. There’s a larger approach within which the self-identification is embedded.
Well, outside of politics, that makes sense.
By politics,
do you mean electoral politics?
If so, I think the fact that my strategy works better outside electoral politics (or the broader stupid shouting match of political debate
attached to it), than it does inside that stupid shouting match, is a significant point in its favor. My goal isn’t to win
that kind of debate
; it’s to encourage people to abandon it for another, more fruitful kind of conversation.
Would you say that the wealthy man on free-market island is negligent?
No. When I mentioned negligence, I didn’t mean to suggest that I did consider this negligent; that’s just another category of rights-violation, which doesn’t come under conventional uses of the term aggression.
In this particular case, negligence requires some specific kinds of positive actions by the person said to be negligent, and specific direct harms caused by the failure to discharge basic minimal cares. It’s not something you can do just by sitting in your study doing nothing, nor is it some kind of free-floating obligation to save people from certain kinds of harm. You’d have to tell me what the island tycoon is actually doing to create the situation of negligence, and at least so far, your imaginary scenario hasn’t included any of that.
My view, thus far, is that as you’ve specified it, the tycoon is being immoral — specifically, the tycoon is being uncharitable, flinty, or callous — but not yet violating anybody’s rights.
]]>But if this is true, well, so what? I think logical positivism is wrong, as a theory of language (and in other areas). Hence, it tends not to have much impact how I think about how to use terms.
I think it’s wrong too. I agree with Popper that, in trying to kill metaphysics, the positivists overplay their hand and end up unable to separate metaphysics from epistemology. But I do think their take on ethics is correct (at least Stevenson’s). Maybe 0.1% of the time moral propositions are shaped entirely by reason. Usually they’re founded in an attitude or a cultural disposition.
So what? Well, that means that you set yourself a virtually impossible task by trying to directly confront something that’s pre-conscious (at least in politics). The more logical approach would be to short-circuit the knee-jerk reaction through metaphor or jokes or unconventional situations.
On the surface, it sounds like it might be a bad metaphor for how the brain is supposed to work, and one which depends on both a confusion of brain states with language-use, and also a confusion about the relationship between mental attitudes and the recognition of facts. But I’d have to hear more before I know exactly what to say.
It’s actually a reference to the positivist way of viewing the world — specifically the kind of statements that Wittgenstein wants to discard by the end of The Tractatus. The world is all that is the case is like saying that only the lights on this grid which are lit-up are relevant. It’s a reference to relevant activity more than to brain states.
When I call myself an Anarchist and say that I want anarchy, the reaction is, often, to ask me how I can believe in anything so violent and crazy. But of course that means that the conversation starts right where it needs to start…
Well, outside of politics, that makes sense.
[S]howing that they are liars rather than merely being confused doesn’t much change my attitude towards them, or towards the need to expose the problems in the way that they use language.
That’s fair.
There may be ways to violate rights without committing aggression. I think there are a few — in particular, through fraud or other actionable forms of deception, or through negligence.
Would you say that the wealthy man on free-market island is negligent? And that his negligence violates the rights of the other 99? If so, why isn’t avoiding negligence intrinsic to justice?
]]>I think Obama (and his inner circle) are logical positivists […]
Maybe. Certainly, positivism has had some historical influence on the broader intellectual culture. And these days you often see that influence more in political and legal circles than in philosophy departments. But if this is true, well, so what? I think logical positivism is wrong, as a theory of language (and in other areas). Hence, it tends not to have much impact how I think about how to use terms.
I’m sure you would agree that a word like !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;anarchy’ has a tendency to light-up attitude structures rather than a network of facts.
Don’t be so sure. I don’t even know what this means. On the surface, it sounds like it might be a bad metaphor for how the brain is supposed to work, and one which depends on both a confusion of brain states with language-use, and also a confusion about the relationship between mental attitudes and the recognition of facts. But I’d have to hear more before I know exactly what to say.
In any case, if you’re asking whether the word anarchy
makes people react passionately, sometimes at the expense of reason, that’s true. But I think that passionate reactions, even mistaken reactions, are often an aid to dialectic rather than a stumbling-block, when there is a deep confusion in need of being exposed and confronted. There’s a reason that people think of bombs and Mad Max when they think of anarchy. Not because that’s what no rulers
means (in their mouths or in mine), but because they’ve habitualized a fallacious inference from the breakdown of social control to the breakdown of social order. My purpose is to invite that confusion in order to make it obvious, and thus to disabuse people of it. When I call myself an Anarchist and say that I want anarchy, the reaction is, often, to ask me how I can believe in anything so violent and crazy. But of course that means that the conversation starts right where it needs to start — with a discussion of the difference between social order and social control, and how anarchy intends to achieve the former without the latter, by means of consensual order and spontaneous harmonization.
If I’m right, then they’re not confused. They deliberately misrepresent the non-conventional meaning of certain words
Well, whatever. I’d need some evidence to be convinced of this claim about their motivations, but even if true, showing that they are liars rather than merely being confused doesn’t much change my attitude towards them, or towards the need to expose the problems in the way that they use language.
I would agree that if the stated aims were achievable without coercive means, then any coercive means would disqualify the stated aims.
Well, OK, but that’s not what I said. I said that the coercive means as such disqualify the stated aims, regardless of the presence or absence of consensual alternatives. Of course, most people would prefer, ceteris paribus, consensual to coercive means, where both alternatives are available. My point is that even if ceteris is not paribus — even if, in fact, there is no way to realize a goal except through coercive means — then it is still immoral to realize it through those coercive means. There are very few things in this world that are worth trying to achieve by any means necessary.
100 people inhabit an island with no outside contact. One of the 100 is wealthy. The other 99 are on the brink of starvation. The wealthy man states that he does not care about the 99 dying — even though he has plenty to feed everyone. He will not consent to provide food. How is his passivity not a form of aggression?
I don’t know what justifies your rhetorical question here. Certainly not an argument that you’ve given. If we can presume (although you don’t specify it) that the wealthy man in your example came by his wealth honestly and consensually in a free market, without robbing anyone else, then what he’s doing in your made-up thought experiment is not a form of aggression because he’s not doing anything that commandeers any other individual’s person or property. In fact, I think it’s obviously the case that merely withholding consent can’t be aggressive; that’s just not what the word aggression
means. There may be ways to violate rights without committing aggression. I think there are a few — in particular, through fraud or other actionable forms of deception, or through negligence. Other people, who don’t accept libertarian theories of justice, often think that there are many more ways of violating rights — because they believe, among other things, in a set of positive individual or collective rights that I don’t believe in. Maybe you believe in such rights; but you’d have to give me some reason to believe in it, too, if you expect me to go along with this kind of argumentative maneuver.
In any case, to return to the imaginary situation, as you’ve described it, what the rich man on the island is doing is certainly vicious. But I hold that it’s vicious on grounds other than a charge of aggression or injustice. Justice isn’t the only virtue.
All that said, what does that have to do with the quote you were responding to? It doesn’t have much connection either with the real world (where the relationships between rich and poor are radically different in causes, structure, and effects than on your imaginary free-market island), or with the claims that are typically made by gradualists (which hardly ever have anything to do with localized cases of emergency, and have everything to do with recommendations for large-scale, medium-term policy, intended to affect millions of people regardless of local situation and to last for years or even decades). To try and apply a thought experiment like this to my comments about thick libertarianism and gradualism would seem to require auxiliary premises which would make for both a much less empirically plausible form of thick libertarianism, and also a much weaker form of gradualism than what most gradualists want to advocate.
]]>Well, on questions like this I tend to take things from a Socratic perspective.
I think Obama (and his inner circle) are logical positivists — more in the Stevenson mold than Ayer. They treat moral judgments as attitudes ?@c3;a0; la Ayer while recognizing those judgment’s capacity to — when shaped by reason — represent reality ?@c3;a0; la Stevenson. I’m sure you would agree that a word like ‘anarchy’ has a tendency to light-up attitude structures rather than a network of facts.
…[T]he confusion to be confronted is the pervasive but deeply confused notion that social order requires social control…
If I’m right, then they’re not confused. They deliberately misrepresent the non-conventional meaning of certain words. They do so to avoid lighting-up the attitude structures that would shut-down any real possibility for serious dialectic.
I don’t think that [Chomsky’s] position is that it’s self-defeating. I think his position is that under present conditions it’s impossible.
And he says if it did happen, under present conditions, “it’s just a gift to the corporate-state power sector.”
I also believe… that even if such invasive legislation did realize its stated aims, it would still be immoral to realize those aims by such coercive means.
I would agree that if the stated aims were achievable without coercive means, then any coercive means would disqualify the stated aims.
I happen to think that the kind of arguments that you’d need to add to thick libertarianism in order to justify gradualism are morally indefensible.
100 people inhabit an island with no outside contact. One of the 100 is wealthy. The other 99 are on the brink of starvation. The wealthy man states that he does not care about the 99 dying — even though he has plenty to feed everyone. He will not consent to provide food. How is his passivity not a form of aggression? Doesn’t that passivity require the 99 to take from the wealthy man? In what sense would you consider that ‘theft’?
]]>