Xx - praxeology



Philosophy Seminar:

Praxeological Foundations of Libertarian Ethics

Roderick T. Long



Mises Institute, 26-30 June 2006

I. From Praxeology to Ethics

Monday, 26 June

Morning session: 10:00-11:30

1. Objective and Subjective Value

Praxeology: conceptual truths about the nature of action

praxeo.htm

Two ways of grounding libertarianism in praxeology

One via economics (Mises, Human Action; Rothbard, MES): assume certain widely shared values (peace, prosperity, cooperation) and show promoted by libertarian social order, frustrated by statist intervention

Another via ethics: less fully worked out

classical eudaimonists (Ancient Greeks/Romans, medieval Scholastics eudaimonia)

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, begins: “Every art and every inquiry, and likewise every action and decision, seems to aim at some good.”

Mises, Human Action, begins: “Human action is purposeful behavior.”

(historical connection b/w ethical and economic ways: Austrian economics grows out of Continental subjectivist tradition that grows out of Scholasticism)

- classical eudaimonists: attempts to base natural law ethics on praxeology – but often with un-libertarian results

- modern libertarians: attempts to base libertarian ethics on natural law ethics – but often abandoning ancient foundation

Notable exceptions: Rand (V of S), Rothbard (E of L) – 2 of main influences

- dissatisfaction with Rand: in nonfiction (as opposed to novels) seems too consequentialist

Problem for consequentialism (all actions are, or should be, instrumental means):

Praxeology (Mises) shows (and Rand agrees) ends often require commitment to principles

But once genuinely committed, no longer consequentialist – kick ladder away

From within non-conseq. perspective, conseq. justification no longer acceptable

- dissatisfaction with Rothbard: seems to think content of justice/rights can be determined indep. of rest of morality

Unity of virtue

Ends must fit together (I’ll argue) into harmonious system – reciprocal determination between justice and other virtues

These lectures: not offering definitive, fully worked out system – contributing to project

Warning – my approach to praxeology (and philosophy generally): not so much linear deduction from axioms (though that’s certainly sometimes appropriate) as tracing network of relations and mutual determinations among concepts:

more like a spiderweb than a skyscraper

Praxeology: value subjective

so how can it ground ethics?

Explanatory vs. normative value-subjectivism

praxeology requires only explanatory value-subjectivism

Why Mises thought explanatory entails normative: internalism

praxeology entails internalism: ought implies can

internalism seems to imply normative subj. – but doesn’t

Mises (implicitly): obligations must be consistent with agent’s existing preferences/commitments, but since those could be anything, therefore subj.

Classical eudaimonists: conceptual constraints on preferences/commitments

Mises: praxeology only advises on means, not ends

Classical eudaimonists: instrumental vs. constitutive means

can be wrong not just about strategies for achieving end but about nature of end

deliberation about constitutive means: conceptual analysis rather than cause and effect

The unitary should

moral should? prudential should?

Sense in which deciding what I should do = deciding what to do

Evaluative terms involve endorsement: in calling X “good” we endorse X

(immoralist counterexample? change in meaning

& even immoralists: Satan “evil be thou my good,” Mr. Burns “excellent”)

Some conclude evaluative terms merely express endorsement, not true or false:

“X is good” = “hurray for X!”

“X is bad” = “X, yuck!”

but evaluative terms can enter into logical implications, merely expressive terms can’t:

VALID: INVALID:

1. Taking property without consent is wrong 1. Taking property without consent, yuck!

2. Taxation is taking property without consent 2. Taxation is taking property without consent

3. Taxation is wrong 3. Taxation, yuck!

So using normative terms commits us to referring to goodness, wrongness, etc. as genuine properties

Are these properties “objective”?

different meanings

Rand on intrinsic, subjective, objective

Intrinsic value: depends solely on object apart from valuer

Subjective value: depends solely on valuer apart from object

Objective value: depends on relation between object and valuer

(by contrast most philosophers by “intrinsic value” mean valuable as an end not a just a means)

Wittgenstein on pain: can be wrong about another’s pain, not one’s own

Intrinsicist explanation: basic fact about pain

W.’s objection: part of meaning of “pain,” not empirical discovery – nothing we can be wrong about counts as our own pain

Subjectivist explanation: artifact of linguistic conventions

W.’s objection: we could change what word means but so long as it means what it does we can’t make access to our own pain fallible

Rather than saying objective in Rand’s sense (grounded in relation) he’d say it’s not grounded in anything – logical fact

good similar

Agent-relative or agent-neutral?

more tomorrow afternoon – but briefly:

praxeology seems to imply agent-relative

actual use of normative terms seems to imply agent-neutral

For classical eudaimonists eudaimonia seems agent-relative (each has own)

but your eudaimonia and mine necessarily harmonise: agent-neutral?

Monday, 26 June

Afternoon session: 2:00-3:30

2. The Praxeological Case for an Ultimate End

Greeks: for an ultimate end (eudaimonia – happiness, flourishing)

Hobbes’ argument against an ultimate end

achieving ultimate end would leave no desires unsatsified

but all action is motivated by dissatisfaction

therefore ultimate end would be cessation of all activity

Aristotle: eudaimonia “all by itself makes life choiceworthy and lacking in nothing” – but also defines it as a life of virtuous rational activity

Hobbes’ 2 mistakes from Greek perspective:

1. action expresses dissatisfaction with way things would be if not act – not necessarily with way things are (act to change vs. act to maintain)

Orpheus strumming on lyre – keep activity going

2. instrumental vs. constitutive means

Orpheus notes not strategies for bringing about separate end, one note not means to next

So ultimate end not praxeologically impossible

Now show praxeologically required

Means get value from ends – which, if they too are means, in turn get value from ends

So there must be some final ends

But do these combine into a unified and overarching end?

Trade-offs: want both A and B, can’t have both – deliberate

Deliberation is an action & must have an end

Not A (because delib. might favour B)

Not B (because delib. might favour A)

Not A-and-B (because that’s assumed impossible)

Not A-or-B (one could choose randomly, no need for delib.)

End is something like: maximizing preference-satisfaction: MaxPref

(this description will need revising but OK for now)

Deliberation essential feature of the lives of rational agents

If you have a more minimalist conception of rationality, OK, then this applies only to the deliberative subset of rational agents – but I’m going to use the more robust notion

So MaxPref is an end of all rational agents

Moreover:

Choosing A expresses a preference for A over any rival option, so

Choosing A expresses a judgment that A advances one’s MaxPref, so

Whatever one chooses is chosen inter alia as a means to one’s MaxPref

So MaxPref = eudaimonia

Or does it?

Weaker form of Hobbesian objection survives:

eudaimonia “all by itself makes life choiceworthy and lacking in nothing”

but pursuit of MaxPref involves trade-offs: A & B, we can’t have both

Possible answer:

includes not everything worth wishing for but everything worth choosing

But if something is currently unattainable, does it thereby become no longer worth choosing?

If yes (accommodationism), eudaimonia is too easy: if I’m trapped at bottom of well I’m happy

Socrates & Stoics thought that way but not Ari & Theo

anyway we often aim at what we know to be presently unattainable

If no (utopianism), if it includes whatever is in principle attainable, eudaimonia becomes unattainable in practice – and so cannot be the ultimate aim of action since we cannot aim at what we know is impossible (or even overwhelmingly improbable)

Possible answer:

direct vs. indirect objects of choice: I can choose to be in Paris by choosing to do what I believe will have a good chance of getting me to Paris

Eudaimonia = neither everything worth wishing for nor everything directly choiceworthy but everything worth striving for

Still have problem of well: if nothing I do can make my getting out likely, have I then achieved my MaxPref?

Treat on-alert tension/readiness as form of striving

This avoids accommodationism – but does it support utopianism? Tense readiness about everything?

The fact that something desirable is in principle possible is a prima facie reason to strive for it: this gives some support for utopianism

The fact that something is not immediately attainable is a prima facie reason not to strive for it: this gives some support for accommodations

No good reason to give all weight to one vector and none to the other

Construct compromise between resignation and all-pervasive longing

Content of ultimate end not fixed – we construct it through practical reasoning

If some desirable end I’m not striving for suddenly becomes attainable, content of MaxPref expands

No need to be frustrated if I can’t live to be 1000 but if it became norm

Is Hobbesian objection now completely dead?

No – eudaimonia may still seem impossible since no life can realistically achieve all objects of striving

but accommodationist vector gives us reason not to conceive/construct eudaimonia as something unattainable, while utopian vector gives us reason not to renounce all striving

gives us reason to interpret MaxPref as something both containing everything worth striving for and consistent with ongoing striving

content of striving itself comes under construction

one’s life can be good even if much that one spends it striving for is never achieved (comfort for anarchists)

Stoics think we should aim at trying to achieve X without aiming at achieving X

I claim that’s praxeologically impossible – but they’re on to something

Stoics right that value of striving is not reducible to value of end

It’s not striving unless it aims at end beyond itself – but it might be valuable for own sake too

Adam Smith contra Hume on super-accurate pocket watch

My solution: degrees of eudaimonia – not just closer to / farther from eudaimonia (orange is redder than green) but genuinely having it in varying degrees (one shade of red is redder than another)

Redefine MaxPref (as promised):

minimum threshold (partly context-relative) of things worth striving for

below that, one fails to achieve MaxPref at all

above that, various levels

if you’re at a lower level striving for a higher level, you’re striving for more of a good you already have, not something outside it

the striving itself may be part of the content of the lower level

achieving it may be at the higher level

Tuesday, 27 June

Morning session: 10:00-11:30

3. Free Will: Two Paradoxes of Choice

1st paradox:

Newcomb’s problem

Transparent box contains $1000

Opaque box contains either $1 million or nothing

Choice: take opaque box only, or both boxes

Predictor has placed $1 million in opaque box IF AND ONLY IF she has predicted that you will take only the opaque box

Two-Box Argument: it’s already there or not

One-Box Argument: if you’re so smart why aren’t you rich?

My claim: genuine antinomy, both arguments decisive

Reject common assumption: that the choice situation is possible

Two-Box argument shows that we cannot coherently aim to bring about something we think is already past and settled – no backward aiming

One-Box argument shows that if we can aim at A, and B necessarily covaries with A, then we can aim at B

Moral: we cannot coherently aim at A if we think A covaries necessarily with something already past and settled (even if we don’t know which way it’s settled)

1st upshot: objection to any view that identifies MaxPref exclusively with pleasure or subjective state/feeling (relief of felt dissatisfaction)

buying life insurance / writing a will NOW is a means to

our loved ones doing well LATER (after we’re dead)

which cannot be a means to our feeling satisfaction NOW (on pain of backward causation)

(could buying be a means to pleasure NOW?

If so, we’d have to prefer magic pill for $50 to policy for $100

but we don’t have to)

2nd upshot: no causal determinism

if determinism were true, then my actions would necessarily covary with past causal states of universe

I could form preferences about these past states and so by One-Box argument could aim at them – which per Two-Box argument is impossible

So can’t consistently regard self as determined

2nd paradox: Socratic Paradox

choosing X expresses preference for X

preference for X expresses judgment that it’s worth choosing

so we can’t choose something we think is not worth choosing

so nobody can knowingly/voluntarily do wrong

problems:

- clashes with obvious facts of wrongdoing

- clashes with free will established by Newcomb’s problem

Solution to 1st: Aristotle’s distinction between possessing and exercising a judgment

we can have conflicting judgments of what’s choiceworthy – any action embodies a judgment – but other judgments may be possessed & not exercised

Solution to 2nd: desires that motivate action are internal, not prior, to action

(prior motives necessary but not sufficient)

Further upshot: no innate preference patterns

preferences in praxeological sense embodied in action

thus if actions are free so are preferences in that sense

What about preferences in the sense of tendencies/impulses?

they can exist without specific actions but not without overall patterns of action; so we have control over these too

moral 1: degrees of time-preference, risk-aversion, etc. cannot be innate

moral 2: since by changing actions we can change tendencies/impulses, habituation is a priori

Tuesday, 27 June

Afternoon session: 2:00-3:30

4. The Moral Standpoint

Other-concern: why should I care about anyone’s eudaimonia but my own?

Agent-relative vs. agent-neutral value; praxeology seems to favour agent-relative

Why not endorse “master” values for oneself (and one’s friends if any), and “servile” values for everyone else?

Existing evaluative terms seem agent-neutral: they express both our desires for ourselves and our recommendation to others (and contra Nietzsche, this is true, I claim, even in cultures with official double standards b/w insiders/outsiders)

But couldn’t we revise them?

We could use moral terms differently, but then they would be different terms (different meanings)

But could we abandon our terms/concepts in order to avoid their normative commitments (as we do with racial epithets)?

Some favour consistency argument: if I regard my pursuit of my MaxPref as legitimate for me I must regard your pursuit of your MaxPref as legitimate for you

Problem: weak vs. strong universalizability

Weak universalizability: I regard you as one sports team regards another – your aims are OK but not binding on me

With sports there’s a background of shared norms that licenses this, but need it be so? how get from weak to strong universalizability, from agent-relative to agent-neutral norms?

(Rothbard, Hoppe presuppose strong universalizability rather than establishing it)

Socrates, Aristotle, Hume, Smith all stress need to admire oneself – which means to value same traits in oneself as one values in others

Hume and Smith: base strong universalizability on natural sympathy: innate tendency to see ourselves from another’s standpoint

Objection: too psychologistic; like basing economics on empirical evidence

We have lots of natural tendencies: why follow that one?

Need conceptual argument

Why strong universalizability is not dispensable:

Rational agency requires language: not just means of communication but vehicle of thought

but communicative dimension essential: speaking language involves acquiescing in essentially sharable norms (Elvish, Klingon not private languages)

Some thinkers (Habermas, Hoppe) try to construct the content of moral/political norms directly out of norms governing language

This approach neither promising (language norms too permissive) nor necessary

What’s crucial is not content of linguistic norms but their agent-neutral character

Once agent-neutral value is on the table the evaluation of options from an agent-neutral standpoint is always available

Recognizing a category of value commits us to integrating it with our other values: what cannot be agent-neutrally endorsed cannot be part of MaxPref

We must construct eudaimonia so that no fundamental conflicts between two persons’ flourishing (i.e. no conflicts not in turn licensed by agent-neutral considerations) are possible

If self-value determined other value: master morality, crude “egoism”

If other-value determined self-value: slave morality, crude “altruism”

Reciprocal determination: civilised morality

Does conceptual defense mean natural sympathies irrevelant?

No: might mean only beings with natural sympathies capable of rationality

Generate utilitarianism? No – already seen problem for conseq.

Wednesday, 28 June

Morning session: 10:00-11:30

5. An Aristotelean Ethics of Virtue

Conceptually, being an agent is a way of being a living organism

It’s part of the concept of a living organism that it has needs/interests

Since each of us is identical with a living organism we must regards its needs/interests as our own

Some thinkers (Spencer, Rand) try to construct the content of eudaimonia out of biological needs/interests alone

This approach neither promising (risk life?) nor necessary

Biological needs/interests play a role in determining other values but determination is reciprocal: Aristotle, Seneca

Our goal is not just life but life as kind of being we are (human)

If our goal is to live a human life, and life X is more human than life Y, then life X is more our goal than life Y

Better a shorter more human life than a longer less human one

How can there be degrees of humanity? Isn’t a life human or not?

analogy with size: having it is all-or-nothing but it then comes in degrees

Rationality takes precedence over other aspects

Hierarchy of biological needs/interests determined by what is most fundamental/explanatory

Hence need to see justifies using ears/nose to carry glasses, contrary to their natural function: the function of the whole takes precedence over subsidiary functions (similar story explains why neither “libertine” giving in to every sexual impulse nor “conservative” disdaining nonreproductive sex is mandatory)

Why for humans that’s rationality etc. rather than “selfish gene” reproduction: examples: Peacekeeper missile, Frankenstein monster

But other goals are included

Cicero: hierarchy of four roles: human nature, individual nature, social role, chosen; each can trump next

Aristotle: intellectual vs. emotional rationality

The Aristotelean Mean determined by human-ness

Two ways of going wrong: overstressing (the subhuman way) or understressing (the superhuman way) our animal nature & vulnerable embodiedness

cowardice, rashness, bravery

stinginess, prodigality, generosity

intemperance, insensibility, temperance

etc. (justice next session)

Prima facie content of prudence determined by biological needs, but standing in reciprocal determination with other virtues

Moral in passing: if Aristotelean Mean rules out both too much & too little, no “supererogation” or actions “beyond call of duty”

“too much to ask” presupposes morality/prudence clash

Unity of virtue: can’t have one virtue (fully) without having all others because what one virtues requires isn’t settled apart from others

Example: bravery and justice – mutual determination

Clash of virtues would violate “ought implies can”

If we integrate prudence and benevolence, self-concern and other-concern are integrated w/ total value system and thus with each other

Just as between two persons, so within one person: not “no value conflicts” but “no value conflicts not in turn endorsable by a higher value”

Aristotle bravery/fear example, Karen Stohr bad news example

Determining virtuous action like any other skill (driving, writing): there may be some precisely statable rules but they don’t exhaust content of virtue

principles of action always involve tacit element

(Hayek: because no system can be complex enough to represent all the principles it follows.

Wittgenstein: because any statable rule apart from application underdetermines its application.)

II. From Ethics to Liberty

Wednesday, 28 June

Afternoon session: 2:00-3:30

6. Justice, Rights, and Consequences

Justice: virtue concerned with rights (legitimately enforceable claims)

Justice/rights can’t depend wholly on utility:

If they did, justice would be solely a producer’s good

Praxeology shows: benefits of justice depend on treating it as consumer’s good

Justice/rights can’t be completely independent of utility:

Unity of virtue

Must be in reciprocal determination with prudence and benevolence

So self-interest and others’ interests enter into specification of justice

But also vice versa

Virtue ethicists sometimes write as though the content of justice is entirely determined by whatever is needed to promote a society of virtuous persons (Den Uyl: “demand-side” ethics)

They forget that virtues also constrain what can be done in promoting virtue (Den Uyl: “supply-side” ethics)

Person P1 has a right to be treated in manner M by person P2 =

1. P2 has an obligation to treat P1 in manner M

2. It is permissible for P1 (or P1’s agent) to force P2 to treat P1 in manner M

So the existence of rights depends both on what’s permissible for people qua rights-holders and on what’s obligatory for people qua rights-respecters

Constraints on possible content of justice:

a) strong universalizability creates presumption of equality which forcibly subordinating others to one’s will seems to violate

b) dealing with others through reason/persuasion rather than compulsion where possible embodies rationality not just in means but in end and so is more human

These support obligation 1.

What supports obligation 2?

Aristotelean mean: willingness to initiate force is subhuman deviation, unwillingness to defend oneself is superhuman deviation

Further consideration: no virtue completely expressible in statable rules; yet Aristotle, Hume, Smith all note justice more rules-y than other virtues (Smith: grammar/style). Why?

Obvious consequentialist reason: wise judges, predictability

But can we find non-consequentialist reason?

Self-directed activity is central to agency and functioning: dependence on decisions of potential interveners affront to dignity

Rights of rationally impaired/incapacitated (young children, comatose, insane, dead)? Agent: what rights-holder would consent to (as best as can be determined) if rational faculty not impaired/incapacitated

(Moral in passing: no animal rights because no rational faculty to impair)

Why not paternalism: any less than fully rational choice counts as impairment?

Because this denies free will

While justice is non-consequentialist it is in reciprocal determination with consequentialist aspects of virtues like prudence and benevolence; so considerations of utility can play legitimate role in specifying content of justice (e.g. when unclear in which direction to develop libertarian principles, appeal to utility appropriate)

But utility can’t trump everything because determination runs both ways:

Content of virtues determined by people’s interests, but content of people’s interests also determined by virtues

Content of justice also specified by custom: driving on right vs. left

Thursday, 29 June

Morning session: 10:00-11:30

7. Property, Land, and Contract

If people have a right not to have force initiated against them, there cannot be any other rights: because if there were, since rights are enforceable claims, the enforcement of those rights would be legitimate initiatory force

So property rights, if any, can be justified only as expressions of, not additions to, the one right against aggression

but how can your grabbing some external object count as force against me?

1. if not, a world where anyone could grab all your food whenever your back was turned would count as non-aggressive, straining the concept

2. if needed, consequentialist considerations can specify that concept of aggression should be constructed to include theft

How can I be so related to some external object that your appropriating it counts as appropriating me?

How am I related to matter I’m made of? I own it, since others can’t appropriate it without appropriating me

But I wasn’t born with all this matter: I incorporated it, made it a tool of my ongoing projects

External objects similar: clothes/fur, house/shell, etc. (body = project also) – homesteading creates quasi-extension of body: relation to external objects analogous to or extension of relation to own matter

Projects can survive death: rights of bequest

Lockean proviso: enough and as good?

Locke’s argument: world initially common resource – residual common right (reply: humanity hasn’t homesteaded world)

Schmidtz’s argument: homesteading alters others’ rights: needs justification (reply: every time I inhale)

Possible unity-of-virtue defense of Schmidtz’s argument: interpreting homesteading as needing justification has better consequences (reply: Schmidtz himself shows no significant difference between proviso and no-proviso except in emergencies)

Consequentialist considerations: the poor

3 means (start own business, work for another, seek charity)

why all 3 work better under libertarian property regime

So what about emergencies?

Consequentialist considerations favour making exceptions in emergencies

refusal to kill an innocent person to save life seems appropriate

but refusal to steal food to save life seems a disproportionate sacrifice

but then restitution is owed (more about restitution this afternoon)

What about non-transforming use?

doesn’t become extension of me

you can’t interfere with my ongoing use but you can use in other ways

What about surrounding you with my property?

easement

What about creating a nature preserve?

taking (non-coercive) steps to prevent development counts as homesteading

Degrees of trespass (D. Friedman on flashlights and air molecules)

1. ordinary background conditions

2. fact that fuzzy boundaries of rights get specified by consequentialsm or convention doesn’t mean rights themselves are

Is land special?

1. Land is uniquely scarce (Carson)

reply: in long run it’s not scarce (galaxies full); in short run it’s scarce but so is everything else

2. If land is private then all land could be owned and landless enslaved (Spencer)

reply: easement

3. We can own improvements in land but can’t own land because we don’t create it (Paine)

reply: we don’t create the matter that anything is made of including our own bodies; you can create a thing without creating every part of it

also Marcus on means of action

4. We can’t own land because its economic value largely created by community (Kropotkin, some Georgists)

reply: my own economic value largely created by community too

Public property (unorganized public: Rose, Schmidtz): can acquire by homesteading or gift

Indian land rights:

transforming use: property of tribe

non-transforming use (hunting ground): easement (use need not be literally continuous)

restitution? more this afternoon but short answer: over time the claim shifts from restoration to compensation

Abandonment: when ceases to be part of ongoing project

innocent squatters: limit to what one can do to enforce rights (swallowing ; also see next session) – with time goes from immediate eviction to gradual eviction to compensation

Carson on absentee landownership: rental counts as abandonment

reply: why isn’t renting a project?

Carson’s counter-replies: residual common right (reply: see above), land specially scarce (reply: see above), better on consequentialist grounds (reply: Carson himself shows without govt. aggression, land no serious prob.; also many would choose on consequentialist grounds to rent even if homesteadable land were available)

Intellectual property?

If I create idea, I own that idea in my brain; but if you make a copy of it in your brain or in your external property I have no claim on those

Conseqentialist objections? a) go both ways, b) historically exaggerated, c) substitutes available – contractual or merely suasive

Spencer’s bed: non sequitur

Contracts: Because no rights besides right against aggression, contractual rights must be interpreted consistently with that

Conditional transfer of title; reverts to owner if condition not met

objection (Kinsella): why think conditional transfer is possible? (reply: consequentialist consideration – same reason as for thinking unconditional transfer, as opposed to abandonment, possible)

objection (Kinsella): shouldn’t it have definite owner at all times? (reply: no problem so long as who can do what when is specified)

Problem for interest on unsecured loans?

Distinguish legitimacy from enforceability

Fractional-reserve banking (Rothbardians): two titles to same item, contrast with bailment?

reply: “two titles” ambiguous, contrast with bailment illusory: risky warehouse case

Rothbardians’ counter-reply: list as asset or not? (reply: risky warehouse again)

Slavery contracts?

1. can’t abandon oneself

2. can’t surrender one’s own obligation of self-defense

3. can’t surrender one’s own duty to make decisions

4. can’t relieve others of their duty not to aggress

Service contracts? specific performance vs. money damages

Immoral (but not unjust) contracts?

Goods vs. services

Duty not to fulfill contract (but then damages)

Duty to interpret as fulfillable where possible

Spooner on law (killing Scots, just compensation): apply to contracts

also Cornell example

Thursday, 29 June

Afternoon session: 2:00-3:30

8. Punishment and War

When is retaliatiory violence permissible?

libertarian options: a) never, b) defense/restraint only, c) defense/restraint plus restitution, d) defense/restraint plus restitution plus punishment

Already seen problem with option (a)

Also, absolute pacifism = no rights (no enforceable claims)

Shylock’s Principle vs. Portia’s Principle,

Principle of Proportionality: I (or my agent) can invade your boundary only so long as doing so is a) necessary to repel you from my boundary, and b) not morally disproportionate to the seriousness of your boundary-invasion

This licenses at least (b)

If you don’t give my property back (or its nearest equivalent) you’re still in my boundary (umbrella case): this licenses (c)

But can’t justify (d): imprisonment (or even, in very unusual cases, execution) OK as defense/restraint but not as punishment

Objection (Kinsella): one who has used force has shown he thinks force is OK and so can’t consistently object to being punished

reply 1: one who peacefully says he is in favour of force has also shown he thinks force is OK

reply 2: wrongness of my punishing you depends on facts about your nature and mine, not just what you could consistently assert

Objection: some crimes cannot be fully compensated for (reply: how does punishment help? Indiana Jones)

Objection: rich will commit crimes freely (reply: Barnett on returning the check, Sade on king’s pardon, Icelandic case of selling claim to compensation)

Objection: free to kill those without heirs (reply: homestead rights to compensation)

Property restitution: over time the claim shifts from restoration to compensation (Cicero vs. Annas) – why?

New holders innocent and of long standing, their claim increases; heirs of former holders never had it, their claim weakens; proportionality kicks in

Innocent threats: intention irrelevant except as affects proportionality

What about abortion?

Is a fetus a rights-holder?

Does a fetus have an (impaired) rational capacity? ambiguity/levels of capacity: language-speaker, unfertilized/fertilized

Suppose late fetus is a rights-holder: innocent threat, Principle of Proportionality

Innocent shields/collateral damage:

baby strapped to sniper’s chest: OK but depends on:

1. small extent of collateral damage (just one baby)

2. high probability that shooting sniper will stop him

3. great extent of contribution stopping sniper makes to ending threat

4. absence of less dangerous alternative strategy for stopping sniper

Real-life wartime cases of c.d. very diff.

Do these restrictions make war more difficult to justify than consequentialist considerations would warrant?

Threat from regimes, not people: assassination and covert ops a better response (not endorsing Codevilla here)

Friday, 30 June

Morning session: 10:00-11:30

9. Culture and Liberty

Does libertarianism require widespread acceptance of certain cultural values?

- one extreme: yes, very specific set (e.g. Rand)

- another extreme: no, equally consistent w/ any (e.g. Block)

Me: generic universalism, specific pluralism

Charles Johnson on forms of thickness:

charleswjohnson.name/remarks/2005/12/28/narveson

Entailment thickness: lib. directly entails value X

Application thickness: value X is necessary to see how to apply lib.

Instrumental thickness: value X is causal precondition for implementing lib.

Grounds thickness: value X is entailed by best reasons for lib.

Conjunction thickness: value X is good and so is lib

some plausible candidates: rationality, toleration

Sciabarra: “radical” & “dialectical” libertarian tradition: political/economic/psychological/cultural

19th-century libertarians: state oppression part of interlocking system with nonstate forms of oppression (racial, sexual, managerial)

General aversion to dependence/conformity, and to some people having dominant say over others’ lives, not entailed by libertarianism but affiliated with it via application/instrumental/grounds thickness

Re grounds thickness:

Sometimes said libertarianism includes only non-aggression and its entailments, not any of the reasons (economic, ethical) offered for accepting non-aggression

But that would thin out libertarian literature pretty quickly

Two mistakes re nonstate, non-initiatory-force forms of oppression:

ERROR THAT TEMPTS STATISTS: ERROR THAT TEMPTS LIBERTARIANS:

1. All forms of oppression are rights-violations. 1. All forms of oppression are rights-violations.

2. There are non-initiatory-force forms of oppression. 2. There are no non-initiatory-force rights-

violations.

3. Therefore there are non-initiatory-force 3. Therefore there are no non-initiatory-force

rights-violations. forms of oppression.

In both cases, challenge premise (1).

Implications e.g. for workplace

Justice, negative beneficence, positive beneficence (Spencer)

mistake to think the difference is one of seriousness

some non-rights-violating acts (systematically undermining confidence) may be worse than some rights-violating acts (stealing a grape)

different response lies not in greater seriousness but meeting force evils w/ force & non-force evils w/ other methods

Statists think this is indifference because they have great faith in force methods and little faith in non-force methods

Can be room for “political” action outside of state & force

“market will take care of it” – but we are the market: activist entrepreneurship

Friday, 30 June

Afternoon session: 2:00-3:30

10. An Anarchist Legal Order

Legal system = institution or set of institutions providing dispute resolution in systematic orderly way

3 functions: judicial (adjudicating disputes: core of legal system), legislative (determining rules of adjudication), executive (securing compliance w/ result of adjudication)

State = organisation claiming, and in large part achieving, forcibly maintained monopoly, within given territory, of these legal functions, and particularly use of force in executive function

Forcible monopoly clashes w/ equality in authority, prohibition on subordinating others

Locke: legislative, judicial, and executive defects of anarchy

Why these all apply to states but not to anarchy

- legislative: both states and anarchies have competing conceptions of justice – both must resolve via checks/balances

markets: more uniformity (Law Merchant)

states: incentive to overproduce laws equivalent to absence of known law

- judicial: good case for third-party arbiter but inference to state commits fallacy of composition

In fact only anarchy avoids judge in own case

- executive: Locke confuses organization w/ monopoly

state actually harder to defend against

Objection to anarchy: use of force needs constitutional restraint

Reply: sure, but what kind? Not paper restraint but checks/balances

Constitutional restraints don’t exist indep. of what they constrain

Objection: functioning market presupposes functioning legal order

Reply: and vice versa – they arise together

Objection: no final arbiter

Reply: Platonic vs. realistic finality

anarchy lacks Platonic, but so does state

state has realistic, but so can anarchy

Demand for guarantee involves magical picture of the State – incantation

Strategies for getting there: taking over the state (whether by election or by revolution) vs. bypassing the state (educating, building alternative institutions, encouraging withdrawal of support, mass civil disobedience)

Voluntaryists (Watner, McElroy, G. Smith) and Agorists (Konkin) often suggest that takeover is inherently illegitimate:

Moral arguments – voting & holding office involves exercising and/or sanctioning unjust power

reply: infiltrating Death Star

Pragmatic arguments – a) power corrupts, b) we should be trying to shake people loose from the statist paradigm, c) bottom-up strategies generally more effective than top-down, d) specifically: if majority are libertarian don’t need to impose liberty from above, if majority aren’t libertarian imposing liberty from above won’t work

reply: these arguments are better, and largely right

anarchist political program is only one that doesn’t require seizing reins of power: La Boétie

but during final decline of state, advisable to have some people on the inside in case statists lash out harmfully in desperate – and as final decline approaches it will be easier to get our people in

And in the meantime voting can avert some harms

Economic argument against voting?

Equally good argument against writing a libertarian book, article, or blog post

Contributing to public causes neither irrational nor a perfect duty, but an imperfect duty

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