As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’ve been on something of a break from writing here for the past few weeks (due partly to travel, partly to lack of motivation, and partly to wanting to spend some quiet time away from it). I don’t know whether I’ll feel like picking up on the rate of posting in the near future; I do know that I’ll probably be taking more time off about a month from now when I head off for summer work in New York (same thing as last year: I’ll be working for the Center for Talented Youth, TA’ing two courses in Logic for extremely gifted 12-16 year olds).

I’m trying to wean myself off posting Sorry I’m not posting posts; but my purpose here is a bit different anyway. While I may not have the drive to post much right now, I do at least have the energy to copy out things that people smarter than I am once wrote. Thus, I’ve been making some substantial progress in transcribing the third chapter of G.E. Moore’s Principia Ethica for online reading and citation. It’s not complete yet (Chapter III is one of the longest chapters in the book), but I am mostly keeping up a pace of a section a day or more; which means that if I keep a steady pace the chapter should be complete in under three weeks. (Knock on wood.)

Chapter III contains Moore’s extended treatment of ethical hedonism — that is, the theory that pleasure is the only thing good in itself (this is how Moore defines it, anyway; he claims that some hedonists might not agree to the formulation explicitly but that they have to rest on it at least implicitly for their arguments to go through). The first part of the chapter is an addendum to his treatment of naturalistic ethics in Chapter II: he attacks arguments for hedonism based on the naturalistic fallacy, using John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism as an example. (The case is mostly pretty convincing, although I think he is unfair to Mill toward the end and doesn’t adequately discuss Mill’s notion of goods that are desired as parts of happiness.)

That’s as far as I’ve gotten in my transcription of the chapter so far; but if you want a preview of what’s to come in the next few days, Moore goes on to consider whether hedonism can be defended on grounds of ethical intuitions, once defenses based on the naturalistic fallacy have been set aside. He argues no; this involves what I think are some of the best arguments in the book and a long consideration of Sidgwick (Moore’s ideas about the proper methods of ethical philosophy owe a lot to Sidgwick’s intuitionism; but Sidgwick thought that intuitionist methods supported hedonism, and Moore thinks they decisively refute it). Finally, he wraps up with some rather brief and unfair polemics against the two ethical schools that seem most commonly to be based on hedonist arguments–Egoism and Utilitarianism.

There’s a lot to complain about in the chapter, but also a lot to love; it’s certainly something that anyone engaging in ethics or moral psychology ought to read and engage with. Read, cite, and be merry!

Further reading

• GT 2004/12/19: One Moore for the free world: Chapter I of Principia Ethica is now online
• GT 2005/02/18: Philosophy Break

Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Some days it’s just too easy.

Accipite et bibite omnes: hic calix novum aeternumque testamentum est in sanguine meo…

The time for merely rasing questions is over. With new evidence from ailecia (2005-04-20) and Norbizness (2005-04-19), there can now be little doubt about the nature of the papacy of Benedict XVI.

Many people, like Echidne (2005-04-19), have raised questions about the newly appointed Vicar of Christ, Pope Benedict XVI (formerly Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger). Some take some comfort from the fact that he is old. I’m not so sure that will help, though; I have some serious questions about his papacy too:

A week ago over at the Mises Institute, Lee Wishing ran into a touchy ethical dilemma: it turns out that this year he will be netting $646, transferred from other people’s pockets to his, courtesy of the behind-the-scenes number juggling of TurboTax and the IRS’s refundable child tax credit for his family’s four children:

Line 43 of our 1040 shows that the tax on our income is $3,354. Line 51 notes that the child credit is $3,354 making the total credits, line 55, offset our tax liability.

But my zero tax liability isn’t the point of this story. I really have a negative tax liability. The federal government will not only return the money I had withheld during the year, they’ll be kicking in another $646, which is the difference between the total of the child tax credits on line 55, $4,000, and my tax liability of $3,354 on line 43.

Believe it or not, the federal government is going to give me $646 of your money. The formula on Form 8812–the Additional Child Tax Credit form–that determines I get an extra pile of dough is complex. I checked the calculation and it was correct. I called a tax accountant and he said it was correct.

But is it right?

My six-year-old daughter, Mary, asked me what I was writing about.

I explained the concept: I just filled out our tax forms and I learned that the federal government will be giving us money that doesn’t belong to us. They will be taking it from other people and giving it to us.

That’s not right! said my first-grader.

Eight-year-old daughter Sarah was listening. I don’t like that. I mean, I don’t like that the government is going to take money from other people and give it to us, she said sadly.

Gosh, that’s clear thinking. But the tax system blurs clear thinking.

— Lee Wishing, Mises Institute (2005-04-05): 1040 Plunder

Blurs it enough, I guess, that Lee doesn’t come to any resolution by the end of the article, even with young Mary and Sarah’s prodding. However, I wrote my friend Dr. Anarchy for advice, and she pointed out that there is a simple solution to Lee’s problem. Lee’s worried because the federal government took money from other people against their will, and now they’re giving some of it to him. What to about the double burden of a guilty conscience and $646.00 he doesn’t deserve?

Simple. I’ll take it.

I am one of those unfortunate taxpayers out of whose pockets Lee’s $646 was taken. He can solve his problem by sending $646.00 to me, Charles Johnson. I’d be glad to send copies of the 1040s to prove my net liability to the Feds over the past few years: this year I’ll be coughing up $156 in taxes and fees. Last year I paid about $350 all told. My forms for 2002 are back in Auburn, but I am sure that I rendered at least $140 of tribute to the federal government. So by sending me, Charles Johnson, $646, Lee can not only solve his ethical dilemma and save face in front of his young daughters, and help out someone who (as you might guess from the low bills) would be glad to get the money back, he can also make his own contribution to rectifying the injustices of Leviathan.

You might say that any other taxpayer has just as good a claim to Lee’s $646 as I do. True, but Lee can’t afford to pay them all, and $646 is all the restitution he’s on the hook for–the rest of his tax refund is just getting his own money back. Why not try to distribute it evenly between all the net tax recipients? There’s hundreds of millions of them; trying to split $646 between all of them would mean that, effectively, no-one gets any of their expropriated money back on the margin. But by giving it all to me, Charles Johnson, Lee can ensure that two people are restored to a state of libertarian justice: he won’t have his expropriated gains anymore, and by giving the block of money to me I’ll be set back to where I was before I paid out taxes for the past 3 years. What’s so special about me specifically? Well, I could use the money, and it was my idea. The rest of you can find some other net tax recipient with a guilty conscience and homestead a claim to your money from their surplus.

What an opportunity for Lee: he’s just $646 away from libertarian justice. I’m glad to help him out. It won’t take any ballot boxes and it won’t take any political parties; all he needs to do is join a nonviolent direct action against State expropriation. I gladly accept credit cards, cash, or electronic funds transfers.

Happy Tax Day.

Just a reminder: today is Tyrannicide Day, the commemorations of the nearby assassinations of Czar Alexander II on March 13th, 1881 (124 years ago Sunday, give or take the relevant calendar adjustments), and Gaius Julius Caesar on March 15th, 44 CE (2,048 years ago today, give or take the relevant calendar adjustments).

It’s worth remembering in these days that the State has always tried to pass off attacks against its own commanding and military forces (Czars, Kings, soldiers in the field, etc.) as being of a piece with terrorism against civilians. This is, in fact, what virtually the entire record of so-called terrorism attributed to 19th century anarchists was: direct attacks on the commanders of the State’s repressive forces. But that just ain’t terrorism. I think there are plenty of reasons–strategic reasons, not moral reasons–to criticize the strategy that lay behind the assassinations of Czars and Princes in the late 19th century, or for that matter the assassination of Julius Caesar, but the fact that the brutal absolute monarch of a monster State lay dead at the end of it is not among them.

The fact that someone puts a crown on his head and wraps himself in the bloody robes of the State does not make him anything more than a person just like you or me, and the same principles of just self-defense apply when it comes to the crowned heads of Europe as apply to some freelance thug on the street. The right to challenge the princes and potentates of the world as fellow human beings, subject to exactly the same moral principles as you and I and anyone else, has been at the core of every movement for human liberation in history. And thank God for it. That’s something worth commemorating a lot more than, say, the births of a couple of jerks who got themselves selected as President.

Beware the State! Celebrate the Ides of March!