The Justice and Prudence of War: Toward A Libertarian Analysis
Every time America goes off on one of its bombing or invading romps, resentment grows among the bombed and invaded. From this resentment sprout new threats to America's security. To protect against these threats, America engages in further bombing and invading, which creates still more resentment, which breeds still new threats, prompting still more bombing and invading, and so on ad infinitum. Mises's insight that interventions breed more interventions is as true in foreign policy as it is in domestic economy. And just as the logical endpoint of the cycle of economic interventions is complete socialism, so the logical endpoint of the cycle of military interventions is world conquest. FULL ARTICLE
Comments (107)
TGGP
So an increase in attacks on us is inevitable when we attack? Well, before 9/11 we intervened on behalf of Osama's comerades in the Balkans and declined to invade despite repeated al Qaeda attacks on us. After 9/11 we've invaded two countries (one of which had nothing to do with it) and done plenty to piss them off, but there have been no more attacks on U.S territory. The "cycle of violence" theory has little evidence behind it, it's just pap. Being an utter bastard has a good track record in suppressing opposition, which is why revolutions typically occur when the ruling regime loosens its grip on power. Call it morally wrong if you choose, but don't allow your ethics to cloud your understanding of how the world around you actually works.
Don't make yourself look like an idiot by claiming Osama was a "US client". You can read in al Zawahiri's "Knights Under the Prophet's Banner" what really went on with the "Afghan Arabs" during the war with the Soviets in Afghanistan. The C.I.A and I.S.I had plenty of local Afghans to do our dity work and the the Arabs that left home to fight there received enough support from other Muslims that they didn't need to work with the Great Satan. Everybody who was actually involved in these dealings and actually knows what happened has repeatedly denied the claims that there were links between the two groups. The people who claim there is such a link have no actual evidence or knowledge of what they claim, but just a falsehood that has been repeated so often gullible people have taken to believe it is true.
Published: September 20, 2006 8:14 AM
Manuel
Good article, except for one part where I completely disagree:
I disagree with the above because the distinction between restutution/retribution is arbitrary. It's all part of the punishment. Moreover, to limit (defensive) force only to evict from one's "boundary" and to the recovery of stolen/damaged goods still leaves things unaddressed. There are potentially further grievances that would not be corrected: perhaps psychological issues, lost income, scars.
If the victim is not allowed to pursue other options, then the criminal still comes out ahead. The victim's space was trespassed, yes, but the damage cannot be only limited to the physical effects of the crime. What about subjective value? Courts have traditionally recognized this and I doubt that libertarian courts would not.
Responsive force is not aggression. And this includes other things like defensive force, maybe preemptive force, retaliatory force, and force used to gain restitution as well.
Published: September 20, 2006 9:35 AM
Roger M
Impressive article. Thanks for boiling down the range of libertarian positions. One conclusion I drew from the article is that reason alone isn't enough to settle disputes among libertarians because the outcomes of the reasoning process are affected by the weight each person gives to different assumptions and analogies. Since a great deal of reasoning is done through analogies, the choice of analogy is critical to the argument and altering small details can dramatically change the conclusion.
Everyone will quibble with parts of the article, so here's mine:
"Since a libertarian polity's quarrel is with enemy regimes, not enemy peoples, it should adopt a strategy of covert operations and assassinations — as a substitute for, not a supplement to, conventional warfare."
History has shown this approach to be very inneffective. Can you count how many times people tried to assassinate Hitler, Mao, Castro or Hussein? Hussein tried to assassinate the first Prez Bush. But I guess no matter how often it fails (can anyone recall a success) libertarians will always defend it.
Published: September 20, 2006 9:54 AM
B.M.
There is no doubt that this is probably the biggest area of disagreement and debate amongst those who call themselves libertarians, as well as a big reason why some refuse to call themselves libertarian. I have to agree that this is a great article and I always enjoy reading the standing libertarian position on all areas, especially foreign policy / war issues. I, like Manuel above, have to disagree with idea that one is only morally justified in restitution and simple eviction. I will never cede my right to premption. If my neighbor and I hate each other and he is building a cannon to destroy my home, saying everyday "When I am done with this gun, I am going to blow up your house (or when I get nukes, I am going to destroy Israel), I am justified in stopping him. Additionally, when I make my subjective call that it is time for me to defend myself (not subjective if I have actually been attacked), I will not only destroy my neighbor's cannon, but I will kill him and his family, burn his house, and salt his fields. This will stop future neighbors from doing the same.
Published: September 20, 2006 11:42 AM
scottly burns
As for the post by 'TGGP' I believe Col. Bo Gritz
who trained Osama and others out in Sandy Valley,
Nevada which is south of Pahrump (where Art Bell
used to live and broadcast his Coast to Coast show) would have a word or two otherwise. Col.
Bo Gritz ran on the Populist ticket vback in the
early 1990's and I for one was one of his volunteers. I heard him talk on radio, and in person. But enough about this so called 'Pap',
talk to the Col.
Published: September 20, 2006 11:51 AM
David Gordon
Thomas More mentions the strategy of covert operations and assassinations in Utopia, Book II, "Of Their Military Discipline."
Published: September 20, 2006 12:09 PM
Roger M
"Thomas More mentions the strategy of covert operations ..."
Interesting. I haven't read it, so could you summrize what he says?
Published: September 20, 2006 12:26 PM
Albert Esplugas
Excellent article. I think that this kind of arguments have to be exposed more frequently. All too often pro-war positions are dismissed by libertarians without making explicit the reasoning, and the question of innocent shields / collateral damage or other issues (when is it justified / appropriate for the state to defend us since it retains the monopoly of force, or what alternatives are there...) are not so evident or clearly cut (at least to many people).
Published: September 20, 2006 12:39 PM
Roger M
"All too often pro-war positions are dismissed..."
Agreed! Many seem to think that the "all government is illegal so the war is immoral" argument should be the beginning and end of discussion.
Published: September 20, 2006 1:22 PM
Roderick T. Long
To TGGP: You make it sound as though U.S. intervention in Muslim countries only started, or perhaps only increased, after 9/11. What about the first Iraq war? bombing in Sudan? troops in Saudi Arabia? I really don't understand your argument here.
As for your denial of the former relartionship between bin Laden and the U.S., I'm puzzled as to why you think al-Zahawiri is a more reliable source than, say the British foreign secretary.
To Manuel: You say "There are potentially further grievances that would not be corrected: perhaps psychological issues, lost income, scars." I’m not sure what you mean in saying these "wouldn't be corrected." If you mean that on my view NO compensation is awarded for them, that's not true; compensation can be awarded for any damage you've suffered, including psychological etc. If you mean that on my view no COMPLETE compensation is awarded for that, well, that's because there are some damages for which no complete compensation CAN be offered; that's a flaw in reality, not in my theory.
To Roger M.: The amount of resources invested in conventional warfare is far greater than the amount invested in assassination, so it doesn't seem like a comparison on equal terms.
To B.M.: Nothing in my view rules out responding coercively to a threat; I regard threats as a form of aggression.
Published: September 20, 2006 1:23 PM
Manuel
My point is that what CAN be offered shouldn't be determined apriori, since this limits what the victim can ask in terms of compensatory damages beyond simply repairing the damaged property. For example, the court might recognize that this person is traumatized and order that some monetary damage be awarded. We both know that the suffering of the victim is subjective and that utilities cannot be compared, but the courts would necessarily make a ruling and these options (and not only money, perhaps there are other things available) should be kept open by default.
The flaw in reality that you mention is that the victim can never really be made whole again. This is true. But then, should we not try as much as possible to come close? Otherwise, we give the benefit of the doubt to the criminal, who gets away with a lot more.
Published: September 20, 2006 1:43 PM
Roger M
"The amount of resources invested in conventional warfare is far greater than the amount invested in assassination, so it doesn't seem like a comparison on equal terms."
What does money have to do with it? Are you saying that we could succeed at assassinations if we spent more money on them?
Published: September 20, 2006 1:45 PM
Curt Howland
On Assassination: One of the reasons that assassinations tend to fail is that they are done on the sly. Not just quietly, but covertly, because of not wanting the attempt to be traced back to the funding group. The attacks on Castro are a perfect example.
In comparison, the fast attack on Muammar al-Gaddafi (thank you, Wikipedia) in Tripoli was denounced repeatedly as an assassination attempt, but it certainly didn't have any of the subtlety of trying to smuggle in a briefcase with a bomb in it.
But this is a perfect place to mention Jim Bell's emotionally satisfying Assassination Politics, which overcomes the incentive problem with the usual flair of capitalism by making success be what pays rather than a salary for trying. Exactly like bounty hunting.
Assassination attempts, in my opinion, fail because they are not ongoing. People fail, and then give up. The point of making it a deliberate policy of "David vs. Goliath" defense, that is "aim for the head", is to mobilize the inventiveness of everyone involved to solve the problem.
The novel _David's Sling_ even went so far as to posit A.I. guided kinetic weapons dropped from orbit. No explosive, so little or no collateral damage. Just a smoking hole where the target used to be.
Published: September 20, 2006 2:07 PM
Roderick T. Long
To Manuel: I don't think I understand your objection. It sounds to me (please correct me if I'm wrong) as though you're saying "Damages shouldn't be limited to repairing the damaged property, but should include subjective costs as well." Well, sure, but that's just what I, too, said in my previous post, so why is it an objection to my view?
To Roger M.: More resources in general, including of course more money, but also more time/thought/effort/planning, yes.
Published: September 20, 2006 3:04 PM
Manuel Lora
My objection was really only about there being restitution only, as opposed to retribution. These are just convenient names for general punishment. A victim, for example, should be allowed to possibly replace the value or item stolen with a punch or a beating.
Published: September 20, 2006 4:05 PM
Roger M
"More resources in general, including of course more money, but also more time/thought/effort/planning, yes."
That's easy to say, very hard to do. I don't see how we could have done a better job of trying to kill Hitler, or Hussein before the last war, from what I've read of the attempts. We tried multiple times covertly, then just before the invasion, we used intel to try to bomb him.
Hussein had several decoys that he had forced to have plastic surgery to make them look exactly like him. He was very paranoid and had close family members as head of his security. No one knew where he really was. Getting intel on where he was going to be for any length of time was extremely difficult. Then, trying to coordinate that intel with an assassin was even more difficult, not to mention working with the Air Force trying to bomb him.
When assassination has failed so completely as a strategy, I don't see how you can say it would work if we tried harder. Where's the evidence?
Published: September 20, 2006 4:22 PM
JIMB
Mr. Long - It isn't only our interventions that create these problems. Other governments bear a significant share of the blame, as do impossible economic systems.
At least your article seems far more balanced in approach than some recent libertarian anti-war articles: Frankly, we could post Ahmadinejad's speech to the UN right up here on Mises.org and there would be no disagreement with some libertarians on the face of it, and perhaps cheering over at lewrockwell.com. The reality of what Ahmadinejad wants of course, is anything but libetarian.
Here's his speech, btw:
http://www.un.org/webcast/ga/61/pdfs/iran-e.pdf
If we properly balance the centralization of power toward big states by reservation of powers to small states, don't you find it alarming that libertarians are, by argument, against any sort of belonging to any state -- and that might be (in the end) used as a launching pad for a one-world government despite the wishes of libertarians?
Published: September 20, 2006 4:49 PM
Roderick T. Long
To Manuel: "My objection was really only about there being restitution only, as opposed to retribution. These are just convenient names for general punishment. A victim, for example, should be allowed to possibly replace the value or item stolen with a punch or a beating."
Okay, we do disagree then. To go beyond restitution to retribution is to use force above and beyond what is required to protect/restore your rights. The use of force above and beyond what is required to protect/restore your rights is aggression. Calling it a form of restitution seems rather Orwellian. It may be true that nothing would subjectively restore the victim as well as beating the aggressor would. But it might equally be true nothing would subjectively restore the victim of a pickpocketing as well as beating the aggressor to death would. So the mere fact that X would subjectively restore the victim does not entail that X counts as restitution.
To Roger M.: Saddam Hussein used to drive in an open car through streets of citizens who were firing off their guns into the air from their balconies in celebration. (Imagine a U.S. President doing that!) In light of the fact, there would seem to have been opportunities. As for the decoys, how many of them were killed by would-be assassins? The U.S. wasn't interested merely in assassinating Hussein; they wanted to take over the country. The failed bombing of his palace was incidental to an armed invasion. The effort devoted to assassinating Hussein was never more than a fraction of the effort devoted to conquering Iraq.
To JIMB: Certainly, I never said U.S. intervention was the only cause. But I do think it's one of the chef causes.
I don't understand the argument in your last paragraph.
Published: September 20, 2006 6:10 PM
TGGP
I had never heard of Bo Gritz before, but a quick check with Wikipedia gives me the impression that he's a conspiracy theorist nut. There is no evidence that Osama has ever even set foot in the United States.
Why do I trust Zawahiri more than the British foreign secretary? Zawahiri was actually there. If Cook actually cited some evidence he'd be more than just another ignorant repeater of an urban legend. But he didn't and he isn't.
Causation can be hard to establish (some philosophers even doubted there is such a thing), but while correlation is not causality I prefer to see a demonstration of at least that (marginal changes with respect to time, not noticing snapshot coincidences) before believing causation. Something like this. Keeping the subject on Israel, if attacks on them had decreased after Oslo, I'd be more willing to trust the wisdom of doves. As it is they increased substantially. Say that wrong is wrong regardless, or that their response is "disproportionate" (I suspect that the western way of war has been so succesful because of its aim for total victory in a consequential battle and disregard for proportion), but don't tell me crap about it without anything to back it up other than the "circle of violence" cliche. Even if today Germany and Japan retaliated for our massive bombing and occupation of them, I still wouldn't take your claim too seriously considering the huge time lag.
I was getting a sense of deja vu writing now, and then I remembered it was because I wrote similar things when the topic came up here at the Mises Blog before.
Published: September 20, 2006 11:24 PM
Keith
I think your argument presumes that everybody accepts basic libertarian premises. There are people who care nothing for the rule of law, equally enforced or otherwise. Even when there's argeement to follow the rule of law, there can be differences of opinion on what the law is or should be. When there's no agreement on what the law should be, then how can it be applied equally?
I think we have to ask the question: Should I stand by idly while my neighbor's property or life are threatened or attacked, just because it isn't my property or my life being threatened or attacked? Whether the perpetrator is the petty thief next-door, or the zealot on the other side of the world, I think its a question that needs to be considered.
Personally, I rarely like the "its none of my business" answer.
Published: September 21, 2006 6:08 AM
David White
Mr. Long writes: "From a libertarian point of view, an interventionist foreign policy is a dead end."
I would say, rather, that from a libertarian point of view, ANY foreign policy is a dead end for the simple reason that foreign policy, per se, is the exclusive domain of the state, the minimum definition of which is a territorial monopoly on the use of force.
And since such a monopoly cannot be morally justified, it follows that the state is inherently immoral. So, then, are its every act, especially since its acts can only be funded through the confiscation of wealth -- i.e., through taxation -- which is accordingly theft. Thus is every state constantly engaged in a kind of cold war with society, whether it's engaged in a hot war or not.
Furthermore, given that (hot) war is defined as "armed conflict in which two or more nations, states, factions, or peoples fight each other," and given that the world is made up entirely of nation-states, it follows that war is the exclusive domain of the state and is accordingly unjustifiable. Which is to say that there is no such thing as a just war; there is just war.
Thus, the only way to end war is to end the state, which every individual is morally justified to defend himself against, doing so by whatever means he deems necessary, including the guerilla tactics otherwise known as "terrorism". Better, however, that all individuals simply withdraw their support of the state by engaging in the civil disobedience that Thoreau recommended, with the understanding that the state is, in reality, the "lone woman" that he said it is.
Published: September 21, 2006 9:01 AM
JIMB
David - Would a successful ending of nation-states bring about a world state?
Is confiscation of wealth always immoral, or is it just immoral if it is in the service of an immoral law?
Mr. Long - How can you legitimately focus (and thus remove the context of action) exclusively on the U.S. if there is a thinking, calculating, moral actor on the other end?
Published: September 21, 2006 1:08 PM
quasibill
JIMB,
I don't claim to speak for Long, but I don't treat either side differently. I treat them equally before my moral judgment. One side (your "other side") has people that intentionally violate rights. They are evil, and I condemn them for it.
The other side (to you, "our" side), at the very least knowingly violates rights of innocent people - hence the euphemism "collateral damage". Since I actually believe that the definitions of murder developed under the common law are very just definitions, that makes "our" side a 3rd degree murderer. Not as evil perhaps as the 1st degree murderer on the other side, but then again, not exactly someone I want to commend.
In the end, modern war by a state is just wealth re-distribution and social planning on a higher scale. The state steals the value of innocent lives in order to produce some dubious social goal like "security" or "stability", at the same time it is stealing money from its own citizens to finance these wars. Of course, those who have positioned themselves to be connected to the war spending end up making out like bandits, while the rest of the country (if not world) suffers through deprivation.
Any serious libertarian would decry such social engineering wealth re-distribution. To support such ventures merely makes one another stripe of socialist, happy to make others pay for what he values...
Published: September 21, 2006 2:28 PM
David White
JIMB,
You ask, "Would a successful ending of nation-states bring about a world state?"
The logical end of statism is a world state, which the powers that be are hell-bent on creating, not through disintegration but integration, as with the EU, the North American counterpart for which is already in its preliminary planning stages -- http://www.spp.gov -- complete with its own currency -- http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=15017 -- to replace the soon-to-be-worthless dollar.
So the answer to your question is no, and where we need to begin is with the disintegration of the American state via a return the sovereignty of its constuent states, as I fully expect will happen (and sooner rather than later).
"Is confiscation of wealth always immoral, or is it just immoral if it is in the service of an immoral law?"
Confiscate means to "take or seize (someone's property) with authority." Thus, while you have no moral authority to break into my home and steal my property at gunpoint, I can with complete moral authority (i.e., in self-defense) confiscate your gun.
So no, confiscation of wealth (property) is not always immoral, as it depends on whether it's done through aggression or in self-defense.
Published: September 21, 2006 2:52 PM
JIMB
David - Here's the problem if I'm not mistaken: libertarianism has not considered the restraining influence on the centralization of power by the existence of states themselves. What if libertarianism would result in dismantling smaller states so that a world-state will arise?
Wouldn't you argue that dismantling the smaller states in the Union would give the Federal Government more power? Why not the same for a world state?
In addition:
1- libertarianism proposes no force-using authority
2- but authority will occur because it is necessary for lawful society (to the extent that those in society will not commit violence, those willing to dishonor contracts and commit violence are disproportionately favored, i.e. evil gains)
3- dismantlement of the current authority will then cause the rising of a new authority
4- IMO, libertarianism has not considered the implications in point #3.
Published: September 21, 2006 3:06 PM
JIMB
David - I should ask what is "aggression" -- is intentionally, although non-violently, damaging another person "aggression"?
Example of the issues: I might strike a person (forbidden in libertarian ethics) and incur far less serious damage than non-violent action (allowed in libertarian ethics) spreading lies damaging a man's reputation, or lying about a murder defendant resulting in his incarceration or execution.
Quasibill - Don't motivations play a key role in the morality of "us" versus "them" even though the actions of both sides result in casualties?
Published: September 21, 2006 3:22 PM
happylee
As much as I tend to enjoy Professor Long's articles, this one left me uninspired.
First, why use "she" as opposed to the more universal "he"? Are we all warm-n-fuzzy and gender neutral now?
Second, Dr. Long sallies forth to his conclusion like some mario brother character in a video game. One minute we are examining wherefrom concrete rights, and then - poof - we conclude "libertarianism supports a right to use force in self-defense." Really? Later we happily jump from "we can use force" to "but it has to be proportionate" without a hint of any justification for the latter (or how this proporitionality is be measured and by whom). (Manuel Lora points this out in his post, and Dr. Long's response is arguably correct, but he gives us no reason why his answer must be correct.)
Third, reasoning by analogy is always a dead-end because it is dependent upon commonly accept ground principles. In the artcile there is no "praxeological" reason to support the conclusion reached by Dr. Long (Hoppe's argumentation ethic provides this answer, but the article skips this potential source). Some say put on velvet gloves and gently nudge the trespasser of the property; others say a little more force is okay; and still others say that a body bag is always an appropriate means of disposing unwanted trash, etc. What conclusions will be reach by examining examples #1, 2 and 3?
Finally, Dr. Long does not address a very important issue that has been raised before in this blog in response to a post by Lora(http://blog.mises.org/archives/005449.asp#comments): Who exactly will we turn to to arbitrate or judge disputes arising from putative violations of rights (however defined)? The answer cannot be juries or judges or any agent of the State. It also cannot be the village elder or some other quasi-state substitute. Why? Because the critical issue of consent exists. (And for those of you who argue "oh, insurance companies will take care of it..." my humble response would be "what if I withdraw consent after the act that gave rise to dispute but before judgment is entered?") Examining the question of wherefrom the right to evaluate/judge, etc, others actions should shed some light on this issue; otherwise, in the end it will always come down to force.
And so it goes with warfare.
As Dr. Long points out very clearly (and convincingly), we can't delegate to the State that which we don't have as individuals. So the answer to the war question must be found there.
Published: September 21, 2006 3:27 PM
Brian Drum
JIMB,
libertarianism proposes no force-using authority
This is simply not true, and repeating it over and over again will not make it so. Pacifism proposes no violence whatsoever. Libertarianism proposes no such thing. Libertariansim simply rejects the legitimacy of aggressive violence (murder, assault, rape, robbery, etc). Is this not clear from Prof. Long's article?
Published: September 21, 2006 3:31 PM
JIMB
Brian - I am using Rothbard's work(s) as the definition for "libertarian" -- it is true that it is anarcho-libertarian, but I don't think the decision to argue it from that view is arbitrary.
Can you briefly describe a coherent practical society using the broader definition of libertarianism that you've noted? (I assume you'd want to include how the enforcing authority remains limited, how such an authority can forcibly prevent, if at all, damaging non-violent acts - such as lying under oath or drunk driving, etc.)
Published: September 21, 2006 3:58 PM
David White
JIMB,
I'm talking about dismantling the larger state and devolving power back to the smaller ones, not dismantling the smaller states and further centralizing power in the larger one. Yes, the trend would seem to be toward the latter, given the present European Union and the proposed North American Union, with these as precursors to a World Union (ugh!). But as we are not yet two decades removed from the collapse of the Soviet Union, it serves as precedent for the former.
Furthermore:
1. Libertarianism does indeed propose a force-using authority, i.e., individuals authorized by right to use retaliatory force against initiatory force.
2. A society organized around the non-aggression principle (preferably formerly, via a contract signed by all would-be members) would allow the market to provide a court and penal system perfectly capable of bringing those who violate it to justice.
3. A territorial monopoly on the use of force would be impossible in such a market-oriented society.
4. Libertarianism has and will continue to consider the implications of point #3 (e.g., Hoppe's "Democracy: The God That Failed.
Lastly, aggression is not limited to physical violence, as it can come in the form of non-violent hostility (e.g., telling vicious lies about another person), in which case that person, or his/her defender, would be entitled to use retaliatory force. For instance, try telling people that my wife is a whore.
Published: September 21, 2006 5:07 PM
Roger M
Philosophers have been trying since at least Aristotle to create a system of ethics based on reason alone, and have generally failed. Dostoevsky, Camus, Sartre and many modern philosophers have concluded that without God, no morals can exist. So libertarians shouldn't feel badly that they have difficulty accomplishing something at which greater minds failed.
Here's the problem with a totally reason-based ethic: You can only claim that violators of the ethic are unreasonable, not that they are immoral or unethical. Such judgements assume a position of authority over others when an ethic created by one group of humans has no authority over another group who has their own ethical system.
As for enforcing the ethic, you only have the right to dismiss the violator from your society, for the ethic is merely a means to resolve conflict within a community of like-minded people. You have no right to punish, especially with capital punishment, a violator or to take revenge upon one, because your ethic confers no authority upon you to do so.
The lack of authority to punish violators is the main reason modern philosophers concluded that real ethics can't exist without God. Only God has authority over all humans. If we can show that a particular moral principle is rooted in God's will, then we can claim that the ethic extends to all people and we can claim the authority to enforce it.
Published: September 21, 2006 5:07 PM
David White
Roger M,
Excellent point, as long as everyone can agree on which God we're talking about and what, exactly, he is saying. According to what I read in the history books and see every night on TV, however, this is easier said than done. Indeed, is there a greater cause for murder and mayhem than the unreason of religious faith?
Published: September 21, 2006 5:14 PM
JIMB
David - Thanks.
Consider, society A is a moral upstanding territory and society B isn't. Suppose further that since B isn't moral, evil people gain power and (they are evil, remember) and they quickly use force to spread more evil. I submit it is a matter of time before B attempts to invade A.
Why? Because evil cannot exist except at the behest (confications of the property and production) of the good. Evil is destructive, against the natural order - in fact it is a rebellion against the natural order (very Biblical, btw). That means, even starting from a good moral standpoint, a strong defense will be necessary against evil - both within and without, not a disaggregated and undisciplined approach to the use of force. A strong "national defense" is as essential as an internal moral ethic.
However, it's worse than that. Since the greatest spoils will come to those using violence first, evil will likely offer a share of the spoils for conversion by people in society A.
So I think immorality should be argued and fought against with all vehemence because what is at stake always and ultimately is who is to use power, with an eye as to whether we are becoming (in our attempt at ideal justice) bad people. In a sense I see anarcho-libertarianism (and some other forms of libertarianism) yielding huge benefits to evil - and evil won't stay non-violent.
Thoughts?
Published: September 21, 2006 6:17 PM
Roderick T. Long
To TGGP: The source to which you link looks to me like an attempt to apply mathematized models to human action. As an Austrian I am skeptical of such models and am more confident of hermeneutical ones.
To Keith: "I think your argument presumes that everybody accepts basic libertarian premises." I don't understand this. My article was about how to respond to rights-violations without committing rights-violations ourselves. So obviously my article presupposes that there are rights-violators out there; otherwise the question would be moot.
"There are people who care nothing for the rule of law, equally enforced or otherwise." Well, yes. Those are criminals and aggressors. Dealing with them is what we're talking about.
"Even when there's argeement to follow the rule of law, there can be differences of opinion on what the law is or should be. When there's no agreement on what the law should be, then how can it be applied equally?" That's what courts are for, no?
"Should I stand by idly while my neighbor's property or life are threatened or attacked, just because it isn't my property or my life being threatened or attacked? Whether the perpetrator is the petty thief next-door, or the zealot on the other side of the world, I think its a question that needs to be considered." But I never said you shouldn't help defend other people, whether across the street or across the world, against aggression. All I'm saying is that you shouldn't do it in a way that violates rights or makes other people more likely to violate rights.
To David White: "Furthermore, given that (hot) war is defined as 'armed conflict in which two or more nations, states, factions, or peoples fight each other,' and given that the world is made up entirely of nation-states, it follows that war is the exclusive domain of the state and is accordingly unjustifiable." I don't understand this. That definition doesn't confine war to states; it says states OR factions OR peoples .... So ruling out the legitimacy of the state doesn't settle the legitimacy of war one way or the other.
"aggression is not limited to physical violence, as it can come in the form of non-violent hostility (e.g., telling vicious lies about another person), in which case that person, or his/her defender, would be entitled to use retaliatory force." Some libertarians would agree with this (e.g. Herbert Spencer), but Rothbardians would reject it (and I do reject it) as a denial of free speech. Spencer argued that your reputation is your property. But it can't be; your reputation exists in other people's heads, which you don't own.
To JIMB: "How can you legitimately focus (and thus remove the context of action) exclusively on the U.S. if there is a thinking, calculating, moral actor on the other end?" I'm not aware of having focused exclusively on the U.S. My article was about the morality of warfare in general.
" 1- libertarianism proposes no force-using authority
2- but authority will occur because it is necessary for lawful society (to the extent that those in society will not commit violence, those willing to dishonor contracts and commit violence are disproportionately favored, i.e. evil gains)"
This makes it sound as though libertarian anarchists reject any legal institutions that use force to protect rights, enforce contracts, adjudicate disputes, etc. If that's what you mean, it's a misunderstanding. Apart from a few pacifist anarcho-libertarians like Robert Lefevre, there is an enormous anarcho-libertarian literature on how legal institutions and forcible protection of rights could function in an anarchist society. For some relevant links see praxeology.net/anarcres.htm.
"3- dismantlement of the current authority will then cause the rising of a new authority
4- IMO, libertarianism has not considered the implications in point #3."
There's likewise been quite a bit of workmdone in anaercho-libertarian literature about how to prevent a new state from arising. Again, see the link above.
"I might strike a person (forbidden in libertarian ethics) and incur far less serious damage than non-violent action (allowed in libertarian ethics) spreading lies damaging a man's reputation, or lying about a murder defendant resulting in his incarceration or execution." Assuming that you mean "cause" rather than "incur," I would distinguish lying to damage a person's reputation from lying in a murder trial to secure a false conviction; in the second case I would say you're contributing to an unjust coercion even though you're not using force yourself, so lying in that context is a rights-violation. It's true that for Rothbardian libertarians (some other libertarians disagree, but I'm a Rothbardian on this point) merely hurting someone's reputation is not a rights-violation; and I agree that this means that some evils that are not rights-violations may be worse than some evils that are rights-violations. But the distinction between evils that may be fought with force and evils that must not be is not that the first kind of evils are always worse; rather, evils involving force may be met with force while evils involving non-forceful methods must be fought with non-forceful methods (which may be extremely effective, incidentally).
"I am using Rothbard's work(s) as the definition for 'libertarian' -- it is true that it is anarcho-libertarian, but I don't think the decision to argue it from that view is arbitrary."
Brian's definition isn't "broader" than Rothbard's. Anarchist libertarians do not reject the use of force. Nor do they reject laws, courts, contract enforcement, military defense, etc. What they reject is rights-violating ways of supplying these, and in particular the monopoly State. If any of this is a surprise to you, check out once again the link above.
To happylee: "First, why use 'she' as opposed to the more universal 'he'? Are we all warm-n-fuzzy and gender neutral now?" "She" is fairly standard among academic philosophers now. The reason for it is that as things now stand, "he" tends to reinforce the implicit tendency to treat male humans as the default case of humans. The feminist case for avoiding "he" when speaking of humans generically is analogous to the libertarian case for avoiding "we" when speaking of our government and its actions.
"One minute we are examining wherefrom concrete rights, and then - poof - we conclude 'libertarianism supports a right to use force in self-defense.' Really?" This makes it sound as though I gave no argument. But in fact I gave two. Here they are in summary form:
1. Rejecting legitimately enforceable claims amounts to rejecting rights.
2. It's absurd for libertarians to reject rights.
3. Therefore, it's absurd for libertarians to rejecting legitimately enforceable claims.
1. If there's no right of self-defense,, then libertarians have to say that an aggressor has the power to decrease a victim's domain of moral authority.
2. It's absurd for a libertarian to say that an aggressor has the power to decrease a victim's domain of moral authority.
3. Therefore, there is a right of self-defense.
If you find these arguments unsound, which premise(s) do you consider false, and/or which inference(s) do you consider invalid?
"Later we happily jump from 'we can use force' to 'but it has to be proportionate' without a hint of any justification for the latter (or how this proporitionality is be measured and by whom)." No hint of justification? Well, here once again is the argument I gave, in summary form:
1. If defensive force is not subject to a proportionality requirement, then it would be legitimate to kill a toddler to prevent it from stepping on your toe.
2. It's absurd to say that it is legitimate to kill a toddler to prevent it from stepping on your toe.
3. Therefore, defensive force is subject to a proportionality requirement.
Once again, if you consider this argument unsound, please identify the false premise(s) and/or invalid inference. But don't say I gave no hint of justification.
"Third, reasoning by analogy is always a dead-end because it is dependent upon commonly accept ground principles." I don't recall giving any argument by analogy. (The toddler example is a counterexample, not an analogy.) But what if I did?
What is wring with reasoning based on "commonly accept[ed] ground principles"? It's not the only kind of argument there is, but if its premises are true and its inferences are deductively valid, what's the problem?
"In the artcile there is no 'praxeological' reason to support the conclusion reached by Dr. Long (Hoppe's argumentation ethic provides this answer, but the article skips this potential source)." I didn't use Hoppe's argument because I think it's unsound, for reasons I've explained previously. But now I see why you think I didn't offer any arguments. You think nothing counts as an argument unless its premises are self-evident. For my case against that claim, see my review of Yeager's book. Can an argument for rights be made from self-evident premises? I hope so; my recent Mises seminar discussed my preliminary efforts in that direction. But so far no such argument (in my opinion) has been discovered; and fortunately, no such argument is needed in order for libertarianism to be justified.
"Who exactly will we turn to to arbitrate or judge disputes arising from putative violations of rights (however defined)? The answer cannot be juries or judges or any agent of the State. It also cannot be the village elder or some other quasi-state substitute. Why? Because the critical issue of consent exists." Judges and juries do not presuppose a state. And the right to defend rights by force includes the right of a legal institution to defend rights against people with mistaken interpretations of rights.
To Roger M.: "Dostoevsky, Camus, Sartre and many modern philosophers have concluded that without God, no morals can exist." That would come as news to Sartre, who was both an atheist and a moral theorist.
"Here's the problem with a totally reason-based ethic: You can only claim that violators of the ethic are unreasonable, not that they are immoral or unethical. Such judgements assume a position of authority over others when an ethic created by one group of humans has no authority over another group who has their own ethical system." I disagree. To be unreasonable is to reject the authority of reason. In calling them immoral it's the authority of reason, not one's own authority, that one is invoking.
"The lack of authority to punish violators is the main reason modern philosophers concluded that real ethics can't exist without God." But most modern philosophers do not believe any such thing.
"If we can show that a particular moral principle is rooted in God's will, then we can claim that the ethic extends to all people and we can claim the authority to enforce it." As Thomas Aquinas noted., showing that God willed something wouldn't give it any authority unless we also showed that God's will was reasonable (a problem theologians traditionally solved by identifying God with reason personified).
Published: September 21, 2006 6:23 PM
JIMB
Roger - I think modern philosophers have decided (arbitarily) that the method of science leads to "truth" and "objectivity" (something that doesn't live up to it's own standard as it cannot be confirmed by science, btw) but other things don't.
But because scientific thinking involves unthinking participants with immediate effects while moral ethics involves thinking participants and more distant effects doesn't mean the cause and effect isn't real for moral choices.
Add that to the very real issue that as corrupt humans, we cannot have the right attitude toward sin or immorality.
So the idea that there isn't a universal morality I think is false - as we in America are painfully finding out (alternative marriages, etc.)
Published: September 21, 2006 6:37 PM
JIMB
TGGP - Thanks for the response. It must be pretty hard to read a long string like this. I've read some of the libertarian works you've indicated. I'll give the rest a read.
--Jim.
Published: September 21, 2006 7:03 PM
David White
Roderick Long:
1. Practically speaking (since the state is all-pervasive today), war is entirely state-based, whether within or among them, and thus cannot be justified, while self-defense AGAINST the state is ALWAYS justified, as the state is inherently aggressive.
2. If libel and slander do not constitute aggression, then let me exercise my right of free speech by letting everyone know that you are a wife-beating, child-molesting, c**ksucker who has embezzled large sums of money from your employer in order to fund al Qaeda and...
Published: September 21, 2006 8:27 PM
Peter
Roger M - and perhaps JIMB, too - should read the Pope's recent speech on the relationship between reason and religion. Are you a Moslem, Roger? :)
Published: September 21, 2006 9:30 PM
Mark Brabson
As a Deist myself, I am fully aware that we CANNOT Know God's or (goddess/god, Kami's, etc) will. We MUST work from reason.
I do like one aspect from the Wicca/Witchcraft path, that being the last line of their rede:
"An ye harm none, do as ye will"
Damn fine starting point for Libertarians.
Published: September 21, 2006 10:01 PM
JIMB
Peter - I've read it. Very excellent I think -- although I was already aware of the arguments. Said in shorthand: You've no reason to believe your mind unless God made your mind to fit with reality. Rationality doesn't start with a belief in man's greatness, but first his submission to a higher standard.
I'll jump in here, perhaps rudely because the comment wasn't addressed to me, as the subject of Islam comes back to the moral discussion in this string. I do think, whatever the conclusions one might have about Islam, we need to have some humility in considering it. The last people to ask whether a tradition should be removed are those that see no reason for it (G.K. Chesterton made this argument). I think Islam has survived for a long time. That is not a statement of agreement, as I believe Muhammed's practices violated natural moral law and ethics, but that we should not dismiss human actions and traditions lightly without full understanding.
That goes especially (I assume this is going to be read by libertarians) for those believing we should institute privatization and broadening of what constitutes marriage. It just may be that this social institution is essentially important to the cohesion and the continued progress of society - on the same level as "murder is wrong" perhaps the natural order demonstrates limited expression of sexuality in exclusively heterosexual monogamous marriage is fundamentally right and necessary.
Conservatives sometimes have the worst sounding arguments while their opposition sounds great (it seems a lot simpler - having no real standard to meet - to argue for wrong positions than to argue for right ones). I think we should follow Hayek's arguments concerning tacit knowledge and tradition.
Published: September 22, 2006 5:19 AM
Keith
Qoute from Mr. Long: "That's what courts are for, no?"
What court presides over wars?
'You can't serve papers on a rat.'
Published: September 22, 2006 6:55 AM
Brian Drum
I think a great amount of the head-butting that occurs whenever the topics of morality and rights come up for discussion may be due to the failure to realize that no 'rule' (moral or otherwise) is 'self-applying'. Prof. Long has written on this, and if anyone has not yet read his article it is available here.
The whole point, as I see it, is that there is no need for ONE definitive set of moral rules that everyone MUST follow. In an anarchic society there is no single central authority of what constitutes right and wrong. There is no 'Ministry of Morality'. Why would it be so bad to have a multitude of segregated (voluntarilly) communities/societies each which possessed its own particular set of generally accepted norms that regulate the behavior of its members?
Published: September 22, 2006 8:28 AM
TokyoTom
Professor Long, thank you for an interesting article. I need to spend more time digesting it, but please allow me to make two comments.
First, it seems to me that your essay could benefit from adding a discussion of the libertarian awareness of very gross rent-seeking that may influence both a decision to go to war and the effectiveness which a war may be conducted. Many defense contractors are doing quite well on the interminable war on terror, and there is a political and social elite that is certainly profitting, despite the grave cost to our long-term interests and the effect on our Treasury.
Although voters seem to be coming to their senses, the Republicans achieved clear political gains from bringing us to war, and continue to persuade many that the Democrats cannot be trusted to defend America.
Second, from a theoretical standpoint, if we see international relations as a sort of free-for-all in a Hobbesian state of nature, that seems to me akin to the discussion of homesteading; viz., the matter of conflicts between individuals over acquiring and defending resources.
This parallel seems to be particularly relevant in the context of conflicts over international petroleum resources, with respect to which these two 70s issues of The Libertarian Forum make interesting reading.
Your further comments on these points would be appreciated.
Respectfully,
TT
Published: September 22, 2006 8:37 AM
TokyoTom
The two issues of The Libertarian Forum I meant to refer are here:
http://mises.org/journals/lf/1973/1973_08.pdf
http://mises.org/journals/lf/1975/1975_02.pdf
Published: September 22, 2006 8:39 AM
Roger M
David:"Indeed, is there a greater cause for murder and mayhem than the unreason of religious faith?"
Yes there is. Atheist Marxists murdered an estimated 100 million people in the 20th century in the, Nazi Germany, the USSR, China, and Cambodia.
Roderick:"That would come as news to Sartre, who was both an atheist and a moral theorist."
And Camus pointed out his hypocrasy, but Sartre couldn't live within his own system.
"To be unreasonable is to reject the authority of reason." That's an innovation! Where did reason get its authority? You may be thinking of natural law theory in which philosophers believed that we could determine God's will through reason, in which case God lends His authority to man via reason. But reason without God has no authority over man because it comes from other men.
"But most modern philosophers do not believe any such thing." So. Then maybe they're hypocrites like Sartre. It's not unusual for philosophers to say they believe one thing and do something else. Francis Schaeffer made a career pointing that out to them.
"As Thomas Aquinas noted., showing that God willed something wouldn't give it any authority unless we also showed that God's will was reasonable (a problem theologians traditionally solved by identifying God with reason personified)."
Historically, theologians have identified reason, God and morals as one and the same. God's will and reason would never conflict by definition. Morality issues from the character of God. They have believed that we could use reason to determine God's will because we are created in His image and so have the capacity to reason like Him, although that capacity is severely limited and flawed in comparison. That's why revelation was so necessary.
Peter, I haven't read the Pope's speech on reason and religion but would like to. Is it on the internet? No, I'm not a Muslim. I'm Baptist.
Published: September 22, 2006 8:54 AM
JIMB
Roger - The pope's speech : http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=46474
Brian - I think I get your point (a rule really isn't because people will apply it differently and understand it differently), except for two objections (incidentally, the counterargument to anarchic libertarianism which the paper doesn't address is that it works only under a common moral ethic anyway - because evil doesn't remain non-violent, so the institution of an agreed but properly limited-in-scope ethic is not just an arbitrary choice, but necessary)
1 - we ** are ** empathic humans, so we do have a pretty good idea what other people mean by "do unto others as you would have them do to you" or "Love God (thus goodness and rationality and rightness) with all your heart, mind, and soul and love your neighbor as yourself".
2 - Other rules are very explicit (for instance the Christian position on marriage).
Published: September 22, 2006 9:54 AM
Brian Drum
incidentally, the counterargument to anarchic libertarianism which the paper doesn't address is that it works only under a common moral ethic anyway - because evil doesn't remain non-violent, so the institution of an agreed but properly limited-in-scope ethic is not just an arbitrary choice, but necessary
JIMB, what do you mean by a "common moral ethic"? In particular what do you mean by 'common'? If by common you mean shared by a group of people that choose to associate with each other that I agree completely. A common set of norms is required for a society to maintain itself. However, if you mean that everyone, even non-members of the society, must agree on a common set of rules, then I would have to disagree because I don't even think that is possible.
You keep coming back to the concern that evil will always exist and will not play by the rules. But why is this a problem? How this an argument against anarchy? This is a problem with nature, not anarchy. Why can't societies defend themselves against evil without coercively obtaining the assitance of non-members?
Published: September 22, 2006 10:35 AM
David White
Roger M,
Commuism (Marxist, Lenonist, Maoist, whatever) is a secular religion.
Hitler was a Christian.
Published: September 22, 2006 11:27 AM
Roderick T. Long
To David White: "Practically speaking (since the state is all-pervasive today), war is entirely state-based, whether within or among them." a) I was interested in analysing the issue of warfare as such, not just as confined to our particular, hopefully temporary, period of universal statism. b) And even in the present context, it makes sense to ask whether or not we should lend strategic support a state's actions (e.g. calling the police if you're attacked, even though you're against a governmental monopoly of protection).
"If libel and slander do not constitute aggression, then let me exercise my right of free speech by letting everyone know that you are a wife-beating, child-molesting, c**ksucker who has embezzled large sums of money from your employer in order to fund al Qaeda and..." Certainly you have every right to do so. Doing so may violate various moral obligations, but not the legitimately enforceable ones. (Of course in a society without libel and slander laws, people would tend to take such accusations with a much bigger grain of salt.)
To JIMB: "You've no reason to believe your mind unless God made your mind to fit with reality." But you have to use (and therefore trust) your mind first in order to understand and accept that argument. So if you didn't already have any good reason to trust your mind, that argument couldn't give you any such reason, being no stronger than the reasoning on which it's based. That's why the authority of reason cannot derive from anything external to reason.
"I think we should follow Hayek's arguments concerning tacit knowledge and tradition." Fine, but remember that for Hayek the fact that something has survived counts in its favour only to the extent that its survival is the outcome of competition. If no competition among ways of doing things is allowed, then the case for tradition is greatly weakened. (Mill likewise makes this point here and here.)
"the counterargument to anarchic libertarianism which the paper doesn't address is that it works only under a common moral ethic anyway - because evil doesn't remain non-violent, so the institution of an agreed but properly limited-in-scope ethic is not just an arbitrary choice, but necessary." No system, anarchic or statist, can work unless there's a fair degree of moral consensus in society, at least at the general level of most people most of the time endorsing cooperation over aggression in most cases. But given one and the same set of people with their mixtures of good and evil, different legal/constitutional arrangements will produce different outcomes because the incentives are different. What anarchist theory claims is that for any given mixture of good and evil in a population, the incentives of an anarchist set-up will tend to produce safer outcomes than those of any rival set-up.
To Keith: "What court presides over wars?" Whichever court is most able to. Which court that is and how able it will be depends on circumstances. Anarchist theory suggests courts will have an easier time achieving such ability under anarchy than in a statist set-up, but even under statism it happens.
To Brian Drum: Thanks for the plug. I don't think what I said about self-applying rules, though, rules out the existence of some general moral principles applicable to all cultures.
To TokyoTom: Quite true about rent-seeking. That's part of what I meant when I said the bit about: "Under a government, the people who make the decision to go to war are not the same people as those who bear the greatest burden of the costs of the war; and so governments are much more likely than private individuals to engage in aggression. Thus it's a mistake to model a nation-state as if it were a single individual weighing costs against benefits. It's more like a split personality, where the dominant personality reaps the benefits but somehow manages to make the repressed personality bear the costs."
To Roger M.: "Camus pointed out his hypocrasy, but Sartre couldn't live within his own system." But what grounds have you for claiming Sartre was hypocritical?
"But reason without God has no authority over man because it comes from other men." The authority of reason doesn't come from other people, or from anything outside reason. There can't be any authority beyond reason, because, as noted above, any argument one gives for recognising some external authority as the basis of reason's authority presupposes the authority of reason to begin with (otherwise one would have no reason to accept the argument). Hence reason's authority is axiomatic; one can't deny it without implicitly presupposing it.
"Historically, theologians have identified reason, God and morals as one and the same." Exactly. They recognised that they couldn't coherently treat God as a final authority unless they identified God with reason. Thus they implicitly admitted reason's necessary status as a final authority.
Published: September 22, 2006 11:30 AM
Roger M
JIMB, I read the Pope's speech and found it very impressive. I have a small quibble with his view of the Reformation and reason, but that's to be expected. This is a very important quote from the speech:
"Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate." And we might add those derived from the ethics of argumentation.
Published: September 22, 2006 11:39 AM
Roger M
Roderick:"But what grounds have you for claiming Sartre was hypocritical?"
Camus claimed Sartre was hypocritical because both new that under atheism no morals are possible. It caused a major fight between them.
"Hence reason's authority is axiomatic; one can't deny it without implicitly presupposing it."
Nonsense! Reason is just a tool and like any tool it can be misused.
"They recognised that they couldn't coherently treat God as a final authority unless they identified God with reason. Thus they implicitly admitted reason's necessary status as a final authority."
You have it completely backwards. All prominent theologians, Catholic and Protestant, have viewed reason is an attribute of God; God is not an attribute of reason. Reason derives its authority from its association with God. Without God, reason has no authority whatsoever. It becomes just another tool we can choose to use or not.
I forgot to add Nietche to the list who great philosophers who denied the possibility of morals without God.
Published: September 22, 2006 11:52 AM
Brian Drum
Roger,
If no morality is possible w/o revelation then how are we to decide which diety's revelation to go with?
Published: September 22, 2006 12:29 PM
Brian Drum
Roderick,
It seems that a very common objection to anarchy is that there must be someone/something handing down a set of norms that everyone must follow, and w/o such an entity society would collapse into barbarism. By citing your rule-following article I had hoped to bring into the discussion the idea that there can be no supra-societal entity that issues rules that are some how magically followed by everyone.
Published: September 22, 2006 12:36 PM
Roderick T. Long
To Roger M.: "Camus claimed Sartre was hypocritical because both new that under atheism no morals are possible." Yes, I know what Camus said, but the question is whether he was right.
"Nonsense! Reason is just a tool and like any tool it can be misused." Well, one can of course fail to reason correctly. But if one does, one's results don't have the authority of reason, because they weren't actually reached by reason. But so long as one does reason correctly -- where by "correctly" I mean not "in accordance with some standard external to reason" but rather "in accordance with the standards internal to reason itself" (e.g. the laws of logic) -- one's reasoning does have the authority of reason itself. In that sense, reason cannot be "misused."
And once again, my argument for the claim that reason’s authority is internal to itself is that any argument for recognising some authority beyond or superior to human reason would itself be an argument, i.e., a piece of reasoning; thus no one could construct or understand or accept such an argument unless they already accepted the basic rules of logic, etc., and regarded them as authoritative. Hence one's acceptance of the authority of reason is always presupposed by, and so must always be prior to, any argument for any other authority.
"You have it completely backwards. All prominent theologians, Catholic and Protestant, have viewed reason is an attribute of God; God is not an attribute of reason. Reason derives its authority from its association with God. Without God, reason has no authority whatsoever. It becomes just another tool we can choose to use or not." The theologians I'm talking about, including Aquinas, in effect identified God with reason and being rather than making reason and being properties of God. Hence for Aquinas reason without God would be nonexistent rather than non-authoritative; reason can never be non-authoritative.
That is why the Gospel of John says "God was the Logos." ("Logos" means "Reason," not "Word"; the author is borrowing from the Greek philosophers, who likewise identified God with reason/logos.) That is why St. Paul says the Gentiles knew the law. That is why Aquinas rejected the view that God makes things right by willing them. That is why Grotius was able to say that natural law would still hold even if per impossibile God did not exist.
To Brian Drum: "It seems that a very common objection to anarchy is that there must be someone/something handing down a set of norms that everyone must follow, and w/o such an entity society would collapse into barbarism. By citing your rule-following article I had hoped to bring into the discussion the idea that there can be no supra-societal entity that issues rules that are some how magically followed by everyone." Yes, I certainly agree with that. I was just grumping because I thought you were going beyond saying that to saying that it ruled out any universal principles of morality.
Published: September 22, 2006 1:20 PM
Roger M
Brian:"If no morality is possible w/o revelation then how are we to decide which diety's revelation to go with?"
The idea is that morality without God is not possible, not that morality without revelation is impossbile. Revelation makes it easier to determine morality, but you're correct in that the next question is "which revelation?"
Natural law theorists, who also believed that God was necessary, were attempting to derive morality through reason under the assumption that God is reasonable and gave us the ability to reason. So they used reason as a tool to understand God's will, assuming that God's will and what is best for mankind to prosper are the same things.
If you read some atheists like Richard Dawkins, you'll find that many of them even question the validity of reason. Reason assumes that man's mind is independent of nature, that is, that we have a free will capable of analyzing the world around us. But as evolutionists point out, what we think of as reason and free will are nothing but the outcome of millions of chemical reactions. Therefore, we're not independent of nature and don't have a free will. Those chemical reactions have been predetermined by millions of years of evolution. While we think we are reasoning, what we call reason may be just a survival mechanism that may no longer be valid. Also, they question whether we should trust these chemical reactions. They may be deceiving us.
Early science, on the other hand, was developed by devout believers, such as Newton, who believed that the operations of the physical world could be discerned with reason because they believed reason is an attribute of God. Other religions, such as Islam and Hindu/Buddhism, don't see the world or God as rational, but arbitrary, which is why they lagged behind in modern science for so long.
Published: September 22, 2006 1:31 PM
Reactionary
Roderick,
I don't see how you get reason to lift itself by its own bootstraps. If logical reasoning compels the conclusion it would be immoral to steal a car, I can simply disregard it. And when you say (correctly) that even then I am engaged in reasoning, you simply demonstrate reason's complete relativity, which is why reason is the process, not the substance.
Would not reason per se compel the conclusion that there is nothing inherently immoral about homosexuality, polygamy, working on the Sabbath, etc.?
Published: September 22, 2006 1:48 PM
Roderick T. Long
To Roger M.: The problem with Richard Dawkins' view is not that he's an atheist, but that he's making a mistake that both theists and atheists can make. He thinks the authority of reason derives from something superior to reason; but he thinks this superior authority is natural selection rather than God. But the atheistic version of this mistake is just as much a confusion as the theistic version; whether the external authority is natural or divine doesn't change the nature of the problem. Because Dawkins' argument for this conclusion is itself a piece of reasoning, and so couldn't undermine our trust in reason without undermining our trust in the argument itself (and thereby removing our reason for undermining our trust in reason).
Published: September 22, 2006 1:51 PM
David White
Roderick Long:
1.a. War's primary definition is explicitly statist, so along with its practical reality war can be examined theoretically as a purely statist phenomenon -- i.e., as a form of conflict unique to states.
1.b. Police action is not military action, being community-based not state-based. And while I would not hesitate to use the police if needed, I would only use the state for strategic purposes if, say, a government grant would further my business endeavors (like the one my company got to turn incinerator ash into building materials). That is, I will take whatever the state gives me (e.g., patent protection) but only because it takes so much from me elsewhere, first and foremost being the wars that it endlessly engages in in the name of "national defense" -- http://mises.org/daily/1358
2. My reputation is not only my property; it is my most important property. And if others try to damage it, this is no less an act of aggression than physical violence. To believe otherwise -- i.e., that one's reputation is the property of other people's minds and that one therefore has no right ot defend it-- is sheer nonsense.
Published: September 22, 2006 2:19 PM
Roger M
Roderick:"He thinks the authority of reason derives from something superior to reason..."
From where does reason derive its authority, then? Reason doesn't exist as an entity separate from man; it's part of us.
Without God, reason has its origins in man. No man enjoys authority over another man in the matter of morals, so it seems logical that reason has no authority over another man either. By placing moral authority in reason, you haven't solved the millenia old problem, you've only muddied the waters.
Reason is simply a tool that man uses, along with experience, to determine the truth. Essentially, you're asking us to elevate a tool of our own creation to the position of a god. That smacks of what the Bible calls idolatry.
Published: September 22, 2006 2:21 PM
Brian Drum
David White,
There is no way for 'your' reputation or anyone's reputation to be property. Where is it? Is it a thing? When you say reputation you mean the mental image that other's hold of you. It is a mental construct. You have no direct control over it. You may do your best to convince people that you are great guy, but ultimately their perception of you is completely up to them. How can something that you can't touch and have no ultimate control over be regarded as your property (or anyone else's)?
Published: September 22, 2006 2:31 PM
Reactionary
Brian,
It is something more easily demonstrated in the breach than the observance. For example, I may falsely claim that a company's product causes brain damage, or that a day care employee is a child molester. This is why the common law allowed recovery for defamation. For policy reasons, this protection is not extended to matters of opinion or simple insults.
Also, the law allows recovery for damage to your feelings in certain instances, in the recognition that emotional injury can be as real and debilitating as a physical injury. Again though, we do not allow this for picayune matters but the distinction is purely a matter of policy, not because we don't recognize a person's right to their peace of mind.
Published: September 22, 2006 2:46 PM
Jesse McDonald
Reactionary: Rationality is part of the definition of "human", as the term is used in praxaeology, economics, and (libertarian) natural law. Natural law deals with interactions between humans; if a conflict exists between two irrational entities, or between a rational and an irrational entity, human natural law does not apply. Incidently, this is the basis for ethical self-defense and retribution: the presence of aggression implies that the other entity does not consider itself bound by human natural law, and thus the rules that would govern behavior between two humans do not apply (at least to the extent of the aggression).
You can choose not to conform to natural law, but must realize that the alternative is "might makes right." Those who do not follow natural law do not receive protection from the mutual recognition of its precepts. People are perfectly free to abandon reason, but will thereafter be treated as one would treat an animal or a machine, not as one would treat a fellow human being -- not because they are evil, unethical, or immoral (they can't be; those ideas only apply to humans) but because reason is a prerequisite for human social interaction and thus for existance as a human being. To attempt to argue against that is self-defeating, since the detractor would simply be providing additional evidence for the necessity of reason. (Prove me wrong: demonstrate that my argument is invalid without employing reason!)
Roger M: I think you're partially right here; I wouldn't have called it the "authority of reason" myself. Whether reason has its origin in man or a basis in a higher being, it is the fact the humans can agree on rational arguments (or at least on the fact that they disagree) which allows them to use reason to resolve interpersonal conflicts. If two people are willing to accept a common rational derivation of natural law -- or the opinion of a third party applying their version of the same -- they can resolve their conflicts peaceably within the confines of that system of natural law. If not, the only "resolution" available is the result of a raw, animal-like power struggle, with serious costs for both sides -- the loser, for the obvious reasons, but also the winner, who no longer has the benefit of the social division of labour or the law of comparative advantage.
Published: September 22, 2006 3:02 PM
Roderick T. Long
To Reactionary: "If logical reasoning compels the conclusion it would be immoral to steal a car, I can simply disregard it."
True. But likewise if God orders you no to steal a car, you can disregard him too. You can always disregard any authority; that doesn't show that what you've disregarded isn't an authority.
"And when you say (correctly) that even then I am engaged in reasoning, you simply demonstrate reason's complete relativity" - But that's not what I say. If it's really true that "logical reasoning compels the conclusion it would be immoral to steal a car," then any process that gets you to disregarding that conclusion is not logical reasoning (and so lacks reason's authority).
"which is why reason is the process, not the substance." It sounds like you agree with Hume's view that reason can only evaluate means, not ends. But I agree with the majority of philosophers and theologians prior to the 18th century that reason can evaluate ends also. For some of my reasons, see my aforementioned Yeager review.
"Would not reason per se compel the conclusion that there is nothing inherently immoral about homosexuality, polygamy, working on the Sabbath, etc.?" Yes, I agree; there is nothing inherently immoral about homosexuality, polygamy, working on the Sabbath, etc. Obviously I disagree with Aquinas about this. But Aquinas disagrees not because he thinks God makes these things wrong by forbidding them -- for that would mean that before God decided to forbid them there was nothing wrong with them, which in turn would imply, blasphemously in Aquinas' views, that God issues commands capriciously and for no good reason -- but because Aquinas thinks (while I don't) that there is something immoral about these things independently of God's will.
To David White: "War's primary definition is explicitly statist" - But why treat this as the primary definition? I prefer John Locke's account.
"To believe otherwise -- i.e., that one's reputation is the property of other people's minds and that one therefore has no right ot defend it-- is sheer nonsense." Where does your reputation exist, if not in other people’s minds? So how is it possible to claim ownership over your reputation without thereby claiming jurisdiction over other people's minds? If you reject the conclusion as "nonsense," the burden falls upon you of showing which premise is wrong and/or which inference is invalid.
To Roger M.: "Reason doesn't exist as an entity separate from man; it's part of us. Without God, reason has its origins in man." Our capacity to reason is dependent of us, but the content of reason is not. 2 + 2 would still equal 4 whether we existed or not. X's being Y and Z would still entail X's being Z whether we exited or not. Our capacity to reason is our capacity to follow out these necessary relations, but we don't create those relations. Neither does God create them; If there's a God, he couldn't make 2 + 2 = 4, and he couldn't make atheism true. In this he's restricted not by an external force but by his own nature as being/reason/truth/goodness personified.
Published: September 22, 2006 3:19 PM
Roderick T. Long
I wrote above that God couldn't make 2 + 2 = 4. While in fact I think that's true too, what I meant to write was that God couldn't make 2 + 2 = 5.
Published: September 22, 2006 3:22 PM
David White
Brian Drum:
My reputation is mine (no italics), not because I have control over what other people think of me but because I have control over the actions that are all that other people have to base my reputation on. If I have never beaten my wife, but someone says that I have, then there is a clear disconnect between my actions and the perception thereof. Insofar as what that someone has said does not come with any proof (innocent until proven guilty), then my accuser is essentially robbing me of that which is vital to my life in society -- i.e., to my very identity.
After all, all the Talmud says,
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am for myself alone, who am I?
Published: September 22, 2006 3:37 PM
David White
Roderick Long:
My reply above to Brian Drum is also my reply to you.
Published: September 22, 2006 3:43 PM
Roderick T. Long
It doesn't answer my question, though. Which premise(s) and or inference(s) of my argument do you challenge?
Published: September 22, 2006 4:04 PM
Roger M
Roderick:"God couldn't make 2 + 2 = 5."
Couldn't He? Ask a Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim. My understanding of the orthodox version of these is that God can act, and often does, in an arbitrary manner, so that sometimes 2+2=5.
"we don't create those relations. Neither does God create them..."
So I guess you're saying that the laws of physics are eternal and uncreated. That's typical materialism. I happen to believe that God created them. But are you saying that the laws of physics somehow gave birth to concepts of right and wrong? It seems to me that you can't say that some act is right or wrong in a materialist universe; everything just "is".
"Our capacity to reason is our capacity to follow out these necessary relations..."
So? Reason is still a part of man, as you wrote, it's OUR capacity. You give the impression that ethics are a matter of discovering the rules of the universe much as we have discovered the laws of physics. How wonderful it would be if it were that simple! Not much debate goes on today about the law of gravity, but a lot of debate takes place on ethics, even among libertarians.
You should ask yourself why we even have ideas about morality. Can we attribute any concept of morals to animals? Do we call it murder when a lion kills another lion? Or when a lion kills a man? Again, with a materialist view, no act is good or evil. Survival alone is the measure of how animals act, and according to the materialist worldview, it's how we humans came into existence. If a more powerful animal can kill a weaker one and take his food, so much the better for the survival of the species. Try to develop a morality of property from that!
Jesse:"If two people are willing to accept a common rational derivation of natural law ...they can resolve their conflicts peaceably within the confines of that system of natural law."
Exactly! Reason allows us to form communities and get along. But, as I wrote earlier, that doesn't confer authority on the code developed. It's nothing more than a housing covenant. A person has to agree to follow the covenant or he can be banished from the community. But such a covenant doesn't give members of the covenant the right to punish non-members, or punish members in any way beyond banishment.
For example, if I'm not a member of your covenant and I steal something from one of your members, your covenant doesn't give you the right to arrest and jail me, because your covenant doesn't apply to me. Outside the covenant, or between differing covenants, the strong rule. According to evolution, the rule of the strongest is best for survival of the species.
But even within the covenant, should I murder another covenant member, nothing gives the other covenant members the right to punish me by any means other than banishment because the covenant is just a means to get along. The covenant has no authority beyond enforcing membership. That is the problem with reason-based ethics without God.
Published: September 22, 2006 4:21 PM
JIMB
Roderick - i.e. can there ever be a situation in which reason isn't the primary trusted authority?
Yes and No. Consider: If reason points to greater perfected reason (i.e. if reason is an essential nature of God), it is not violating it's first authority. Also, if reason points to external observed criteria that validates that perfected authority of reason (my perhaps inaccurately stated argument), it also isn't an "external authority"
Published: September 22, 2006 4:21 PM
Roger M
PS, Why do we form societies to reduce violence and aggression? It's the rule in nature. Why shouldn't it rule with humans? Why is aggression wrong, based on a totally materialistic view of man?
Published: September 22, 2006 4:24 PM
Jesse McDonald
Roger M: I think I agree with your wording, but probably not your full meaning. I agree that the covenant (assuming you mean natural law) doesn't grant any rights with regard to punishing non-members, and that the covenant has no inherent authority -- it's just a mutual agreement between two or more individuals to promote peaceable interaction. However, I would say that nothing prohibits the infliction of any sort of punishment on non-members, either -- only the covenant prevented that, and non-members are not bound by or protected by the covenant. As you said (I think), "Outside the covenant, or between [members of?] differing covenants, the strong rule." (Covenants aren't capable of action, so I assume you were refering to the members.) Violating the covenant by murdering another member would (typically) place you beyond its protection; the covenant grants them no right to punish you, nor does it need to; they already have that right by virtue of your status as an outsider and their own strength as an organized entity.
Of course, one can agree as part of a covenant not to aggress against outsiders as a condition of membership, but then the agreement is with other members of the covenant, not the outsiders themselves. It doesn't really affect my position.
Published: September 22, 2006 5:13 PM
Brian Dum
RogerM,
2+2=4 is not a law of physics. It is not some hypothetical empirical statement about reality. We can know that 1+1=2, 2+1=3, ..... simply by our knowledge of what it means to 'do something then do it again' or the act of repetition. It is not possible to undo this fact of reality. If 'God' were to 'say' that 2+2=5 then the '+' would no longer be what you assume it to be, that being the ordinary arithmetic operation of addition. (Another plug for Prof. Long: Wittgenstein, Austrian Economics, and the Logic of Action)
You say ask a Hindu, Buddihst or a Moslem about what God can do. Well which one is right??? How are we to decide. Which God do we choose, or is it simply enough to claim that some God somewhere said so?
Published: September 22, 2006 5:58 PM
averros
Please, enough of that theist nonsense that without God there cannot be morality.
I do not believe in God, never believed, and most likely never will - unless someone provides a good proof of His existence. But I do have morals, and I can reason. And I can empathise with feelings of believers (my girlfriend is).
If you don't believe in my existence, you're welcome to the loony bin. Otherwise, I'm the proof by existence that God (and/or belief in God) is not the source of morality.
Published: September 22, 2006 10:55 PM
JIMB
Averros - If the source of creation, order, reason, beauty, and morality are from God's essential nature as expressed in the universe and in man, then it is a valid argument to say that it is belief that makes one moral.
It seems to me that good things can exist independently of evil, but that evil cannot exist independently of good: evil (being destructive of itself) must rely on the constructive power of good.
If there could be any evidence for God which we could in our fallen and ignorant state still observe, those observations seem to be a good start.
Published: September 23, 2006 8:03 AM
RogerM
Jesse:"I agree that the covenant (assuming you mean natural law) doesn't grant any rights with regard to punishing non-members, and that the covenant has no inherent authority..."
I wasn't relating the covenant to natural law. Natural law in my mind refers to the effort to discern God's will for mankind by means of reasoning about what is best for man based on man's nature. Natural law philosophers assumed that God created man and wanted him to prosper, so we could learn about God's will, to some degree, by studying man's nature and what caused man to "flourish." Natural law had authority because God was assumed as the author; the theorists weren't creating law, just discovering God's law via reasoning.
The covenant example I gave was meant to portray the attempt to arrive at morals through reasoning without God. It can work to a limited degree, but it carries none of the authority of natural law.
Averros:"Please, enough of that theist nonsense that without God there cannot be morality."
No one has argued that, least of all me. This discussion is about deriving moral principles through reason. The question is whether or not without God we can logically derive standards of behavior that apply to all people. The great philosophers have concluded no, you can't, because morals imply authority and no man has authority over another man. All you can say about reason-based, atheistic morals is that a violator is unreasonable, not immoral.
You bring up a completely different issue: Why do atheists behave morally when they are being inconsistent with there atheistic beliefs? For some reason, man can't live without morals. so atheists are forced to live divided lives, affirming morality on one hand and denying their possibility on the other. That was Sartre's problem and why Camus and he fell out. Camus tried to live a life consistent with atheism and without morals and he tried to demonstrate such a life in his literature. Sartre couldn't live like Camus. So he chose to live a divided life, rational about atheism, irrational about morals.
One of the great mysteries about mankind is why we have notions of morality at all. Survival of the fittest, according to evolution, served the species well for millions of years. Why suddenly abandon it when we could walk upright? Where did such ideas come from?
Brian:"You say ask a Hindu, Buddihst or a Moslem about what God can do. Well which one is right???"
The question isn't quite as hard as it might seem. Natural law philosophers pointed the way: Study human nature; then decide which religion fits best and allows us to live whole lives, not divided lives as atheists must live. Some good guides are the writings of Francis Schaeffer and Ravi Zacharias. In my personal journey, I chose Christianity because it is most consistent with human nature. We can live by its principles without living divided lives.
With such a short summary I'll do injustice to Hinduism/Buddhism and Islam, but here's why I rejected them: Orthodox Hinduism/Buddhism, not the popular variety, assert that our existence is not real, but a dream. As a result, morality and reason are figments of our imagination. Does that mean Hindus and Buddhists are immoral people. Not at all! Like Averros, they choose to live divided lives, saying one thing is true while living as if it's not true.
In Islam the world is real, but morality doesn't issue from God's character. Morality consists of arbitrary commands from God. In orthodox Islam, Allah is so sovereign that he isn't bound by his own laws and he regularly violates them in order to prove his sovereignty. Also, no free will exists in Islam. Every act, every word spoken, Allah had already written them down before the creation of the world. (Makes you wonder why Muslims don't question why Allah has blessed the West with wealth and power while cursing and punishing them for over three centuries). Allah even punishes moral people and rewards evil ones in order to demonstrate his sovereignty. Popular Islam teaches that good people will enter Paradise and evil people Hell, but orthodox Islam teaches that Allah will send many good people to Hell and evil people to Paradise just to prove his sovereignty.
With Christiantiy, I can not only fulfill my desire to act morally, but I have a logical reason for possessing moral notions and I can live consistently with my philosophical beliefs.
Published: September 23, 2006 9:33 AM
David White
Roderick Long:
The notion that because one cannot control the thoughts of others, one's reputation is not one's own is nonsensical. One might as well argue that one's house is not one's own because an arson could burn it down or that one's car is not one's own because it could be stolen.
This is why libel and slander constitute aggression, as they constitute a form of theft -- specifically, theft of one's identity.
Published: September 23, 2006 9:59 AM
David White
And to return to your main argument, since Randolph Bourne was correct when he argued that "War Is the Health of the State," and since the state is inherently immoral (being by nature an aggressor), it follows that all of its wars (hot or cold) are immoral as well.
So again, there is no such thing as a just war; there is just war.
Published: September 23, 2006 10:04 AM
Sergio Méndez
I have a couple of questions for Mr Roger:
1- Who said that the "great philosophers" have concluded we cannot derive morality from reason alone? Which Great philosophers?
2- Even if it was true that ALL "the great philosophers" have concluded that you cannot derive morality from reason alone, that means it is true?
3- Where do you get that Camus criticicez Sartre for attemping to found morals on pure secular bases? Actually Camus did the same in his philosophical work. The struggle between the two was related in a completly different topic, namely the support for stalinism in Rusia and the algerian liberation movement...
4- Since you claim that morality is "derived from authority", how do we know -granting that God exists for the sake of the argument- that God´s authority is moral on itself? How do you know -without falling in a falacious circular argument- that God is a moraly perfect being, or even, MORAL at all?
Published: September 23, 2006 2:42 PM
Peter
Roger: it's nonsense like that "divided life" rubbish that makes me think you are actually, clinically, insane. Get some help, man!
Published: September 23, 2006 10:10 PM
RogerM
Sergio,
1. I should have said the great philosophers of the late 19th and 20th centuries, particularly Nietzsche, Camus and Sartre. I included Dostoevsky as a philosopher because his novels are about the impossibility of morals without God.
2. You're right. It doesn't make it true. As Roderick wrote above, most modern philosophers of ethics don't believe it's true. Does that make it not true? The reason it's true is that no man has moral authority over another man. Only someone greater than man to whom man is responsible can have that authority. So if a man derives some rules for behavior through reason, he may legitimately call a violator of those rules unreasonable, but he can't call him immoral. Neither man nor a man's reasoning has authority over other men.
3. I got it from a book by Francis Schaeffer, who was well-accounted with both Camus and Sartre. Yes, the dispute between them had to do with Stalinism and Algerian liberation. Do you know what the dispute was about? Sartre was trying to inject morality into the discussion and Camus argued that Sartre was being a hypocrite about his atheism.
4. That's a very good question. If He's the God of Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims, we don't know that He's moral. In fact, He often acts in an evil way in Islam. Only the Judeo-Christian God claims to be moral.
The next question you should ask, and you may have been thinking it, is if the Judeo-Christian God is so moral, why does so much evil exist in the world?
My first response to that question would be that without God, the only ethic we can derive from a materialist universe is survival of the fittest, in which case all that we call evil is no longer evil unless it hinders the survival of our species.
The second answer is that philosophers trying to reason from a materialistic universe have not been able to explain why we think some things are evil and other not, let alone why so many people are evil.
Finally, the answer from the Bible is that God allows evil as punishment for our rebellion against Him and His moral code. God created mankind and gave us a free will. We used that gift to rebel against Him, so He distanced Himself from us and has let us have our way. Our punishment was letting us do what we want to do. Some people choose to commit very evil acts.
Published: September 23, 2006 10:13 PM
Peter
Strange; the Judeo-Christian god is the Muslim god!
Published: September 24, 2006 12:10 AM
Brian Drum
"Neither man nor a man's reasoning has authority over other men."
Roger, if you really believe this then why are you not an anarchist?? Don't you know that Jesus was? :)
Published: September 24, 2006 11:02 AM
JIMB
Peter - Why do you say that? I see Muhammed and Jesus representing shocking opposites in morality.
Published: September 24, 2006 11:31 AM
Peter
I can't help what you see, but learn a bit about Islam. They believe God will send four great prophets to carry his message to mankind - the first was Ibrahim (Abraham); the second was Ise (Jesus); the third was Muhammed, and the fourth is yet to come (presaging the end of the world). Their god is the same god as yours. [Oh, and by the way, he acts in evil ways in the Jewish and Christian religions, too!]
Published: September 24, 2006 7:08 PM
David White
Peter:
Not that I believe in either one, but how can the Christian god be the same as the Muslim god if the latter had no son?
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/introduction/wasiti/taimiyah_5.html
And why the endless murden and mayhem over gods whose existence cannot be proven and who steadfastly refuse to show themselves?
But of course where assumptions cannot be questioned, reason is on a fool's errand.
Published: September 24, 2006 7:55 PM
RogerM
Brian:"why are you not an anarchist??"
I'm pretty close to one. I see anarchy as having a great deal of potential, but still theoretical, which is why I think we should proceed with caution. But anarchy is just a further step towards individual freedom, not a moral code. That's why I have to part ways with anarchists who scream that all governments are illegal and immoral and so taxation is theft and war is murder. They can't support those conclusions with their logic. As I have written, all they have the right to say is that government is unreasonable.
Published: September 24, 2006 8:24 PM
Peter
David: Christians recognize their god as being identical with the Jewish god, and Jews don't say their god had any son, either. [There have also been Christians who didn't believe Jesus was god/son of god, too; e.g., the Arians]
Published: September 24, 2006 8:43 PM
greg
RTL> To Manuel: "My objection was really only about there being restitution only, as opposed to retribution. These are just convenient names for general punishment. A victim, for example, should be allowed to possibly replace the value or item stolen with a punch or a beating."
Okay, we do disagree then. To go beyond restitution to retribution is to use force above and beyond what is required to protect/restore your rights. The use of force above and beyond what is required to protect/restore your rights is aggression. Calling it a form of restitution seems rather Orwellian. It may be true that nothing would subjectively restore the victim as well as beating the aggressor would. But it might equally be true nothing would subjectively restore the victim of a pickpocketing as well as beating the aggressor to death would. So the mere fact that X would subjectively restore the victim does not entail that X counts as restitution.
Restitution, if it means to simply replace/repair/recover what was "taken" is simply too weak a treatment. After all, if a criminal only had to worry about when he/she got caught, then there would be no reason to not be a career criminal since the worst that can happen is to have the victim recover the goods. Because after all, a criminal doesn't always get caught and will end up making a fine living aside from the few cases of getting caught and only giving the goodies back occasionally. So there must be a going past of simple replace/repair/recover. It is true that the punishment must be commensurate. If one steals a loaf of bread, then a recovery plus another loaf of bread, and covering at least a bit the recovery costs seem reasonable to me. Rothbard covered this in The Ethics of Liberty, and for my part his take seemed reasonable.
Published: September 24, 2006 10:32 PM
JIMB
Peter - The way I see it, the three propositions you've listed are false. According to Christianity, we have two sources of information about God: general revelation: we can see the difference between good (power of creation) and evil (parasitic and destructive) because we were created in God's image even though we are fallen, and specific revelation (contrary to Islam): Jesus Christ.
Conrary to Islamic beliefs, Jesus said "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (Joh 14:6). Jesus specifically denied any other savior - and he claimed he was God: "Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?" (Joh 14:9).
There is a straight line from the Old Testament (God setting up the pieces so that he could send his son Jesus as the incarnation of his spirit), and ultimately the appearance of Jesus and the sacrifice of Jesus as the payment for man's sin. There is also an entirely different ethic for salvation as compared to Islam: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." (Joh 3:16)
I.e. there was NO way for man to become saved by his own works because God's standard is too high (however real conversions do cause good works -- if they don't it is likely the conversion wasn't real).
The line is bifurcated at Muhammed -- a separate religion, which contradicts Christianity at nearly every turn. It literally cannot be the same religion. The appearance of the "perfect man" is more likely the appearance of the Anti-Christ, not the appearance of a man from God (Then if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or 'There he is!' do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. (Mat 24:23-24)).
As far as God doing evil - it is man that is at fault for the evils of the world. God is acting according to his nature by submitting to his own standards (order, reason, justice, free will, mercy). We reject those standards (seen in natural law morality), and introduce disorder, irrationality, injustice, coercion for evil, and cruelty. As a result, part of the judgement of God is to limit our power by changing natural laws ("the wages of sin is death..." Rom 6:23).
Original sin is a compelling explanation of the condition of mankind -- Essentially all great philosophies try to perfect man (they are all aware something is wrong with him) - but none say man cannot self-perfect -- In my experience, no other religion adequately addresses the root sin of man: his pride.
Published: September 25, 2006 12:11 AM
JIMB
David White - All thinking is presuppositional -- i.e. ALL thinking starts with an ultimate assumption. In fact, all worldview philosophies can be boiled down to three main factors (1) what is the ultimate reality (2) What went wrong (3) How to fix it.
Example: Marxism: ultimate reality is material (the dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis), what went wrong is private ownership, how to fix it is to eradicate private property and let the state "fade away".
Christianity: ultimate reality is God, what went wrong is sin (especially pride: the original sin of the Devil and of man), how to fix it: believe Jesus as the son of God paying the price for sin.
Humanism: Ultimate reality is nature / matter, what went wrong is unreason, how to fix it is through reason (man self-perfects).
etc.
Published: September 25, 2006 12:20 AM
Peter
The appearance of the "perfect man" is more likely the appearance of the Anti-Christ, not the appearance of a man from God
Eh? I must be missing something here - this "perfect man" thing is a Christian, not an Islamic belief.
As far as God doing evil - it is man that is at fault for the evils of the world. God is acting according to his nature by submitting to his own standards
Man is at fault for god ordering the merciless execution of masses of innocent people, child abuse, plunder, slavery, etc., etc.?
"And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he was destroying, the LORD beheld, and he repented him of the evil" (1 Chr. 21) - there, it clearly says (a) god did evil, and then (b) he repented.
Here's a good one: "And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them." (2 Kings 2) - Your god apparently thinks it's a good idea to tear little children to bits for calling someone "bald head"!
Published: September 25, 2006 12:56 AM
Mark Brabson
This would probably be a good time as any to bring up the fact that Mohammed was a pedophile. Betrothed a girl at six years old and was documented to have had sex with her at nine years of age. Little wonder why Islam treats women like garbage to this very day.
Nope, this is not a defense of Christianity or Judaism, both of which are indefensible. Islam is equally indefensible.
I will only accept arguments from reason, not from God, god, goddess, Allah, Kami, Zeus, etc.
Published: September 25, 2006 2:13 AM
Mark Brabson
Speaking of pedophiles, let's see what our dear departed buddy, the Ayatollah Khomeini had to say on the subject:
"A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However he should not penetrate, sodomising the child is OK. If the man penetrates and damages the child then he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl, however does not count as one of his four permanent wives. The man will not be eligible to marry the girls sister."
That little gem is from one of the dear Ayatollah's books. Neat little religion, Islam.
At least in Judeo-Christianity, they were just engaging in father/daughter incest.
Sigh. Religion is not just the opiate of the masses. It's the pot, LSD and valium of the masses as well.
Published: September 25, 2006 2:27 AM
David White
Peter:
"Christians recognize their god as being identical with the Jewish god, and Jews don't say their god had any son, either. "
My point exactly.
And by the way, this is precisely why pledging allegiance to "one nation, under God" is so absurd (never mind the equally absurd "indivisible" part), as it serves religion only insofar as it serves the state. And since the state sees ITSELF as God, aligning it with some amorphous, undefined notion of the divine suits its purposes to a T.
Published: September 25, 2006 7:29 AM
TGGP
The difference between Islam relation to Christianity and Judaism and the relationship of Christianity to Judaism is that Islam posits a sort of "Bible conspiracy" in which in the original, Islamic, religion that god had his prophets deliver has been distorted. For example: the Koran states that Jesus was never crucified, the Jews merely claimed they had done this to make themselves look powerful and duped Christians into following along. The Christian bible contains many books from the Hebrews in the Old Testament, but the Koran scatters bits and pieces selected from its predecessors. It is assumed that readers are already familiar with many biblical stories, so they are not repeated, but there are denials that certain things occurred, often in the form of quotations from Jesus that he never claimed to be God. The reason for this difference is that Christianity emerged as a Jewish sect but was then made gentile-friendly by Paul and his followers. Islam arose from a pagan area and had fewer connections to those other religions.
Published: September 25, 2006 8:29 AM
JIMB
Peter - I don't want to be rude, but I'll have to ask you to be more complete in your analysis. For example, the closing prayer of Ahmadinejad: "...O mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace."
Since Islam rules by violence, this is a call for a one world government united under Islam and under one man.
My response to evil is twofold:
(1) The nature of evil destroys innocence, it is arbitrary, capricious, unjust, chaotic, destructive. It is that force which we introduce daily by wrong thoughts, which affect wrong attitudes and wrong actions. We ask that God remove the effects of sin and call for God to sit under judgment. But sin affects innocent people - that is the nature of it.
(2) If we could see the future of a person's present sin, we might judge very harshly for it: for instance, if we could see the end of Stalin's great pride (30 million dead) we might seem to outsiders to unjust. God sees the end of sin. He has at times chosen to act contrary to what we see as justice.
God limits much of his own action to our choices. So first we must lose our own pride and second we must spend our energy combatting evil (a positive duty to others).
The verses you give are unfortunately a testament to lack of context. Here's the context of the first:
And David said to God, "I have sinned greatly in that I have done this thing. But now, please take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have acted very foolishly." And the LORD spoke to Gad, David's seer, saying, "Go and say to David, 'Thus says the LORD, Three things I offer you; choose one of them, that I may do it to you .... So the LORD sent a pestilence on Israel, and 70,000 men of Israel fell. And God sent the angel to Jerusalem to destroy it, but as he was about to destroy it, the LORD saw, and he relented from the calamity ...."
(1Ch 21:8-15)
Note that "evil" is better translated "calamity" in the context. Here are the notes:
H7451; From H7489; bad or (as noun) evil (naturally or morally). This includes the second (feminine) form; as adjective or noun: - adversity, affliction, bad, calamity, + displease (-ure), distress, evil ([-favouredness], man, thing), + exceedingly, X great, grief (-vous), harm, heavy, hurt (-ful), ill (favoured), + mark, mischief, (-vous), misery, naught (-ty), noisome, + not please, sad (-ly), sore, sorrow, trouble, vex, wicked (-ly, -ness, one), worse (-st) wretchedness, wrong. [Including feminine ra’ah; as adjective or noun.]
Published: September 25, 2006 8:47 AM
JIMB
Mark (and Peter)- The Death of Kevin Carter ...
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Articles/kevin_carter/sudan_child.htm
Belief in oneself as a moral actor (pride) and thus in one's reasoning as pure, can be an even greater opiate, don't you think? After all, one's morality profoundly affects what one accepts as truth: i.e. to a anti-Semite, a self-consistent belief system like Naziism can be very logical.
Published: September 25, 2006 9:01 AM
Mark Brabson
If one is a moral person, than that is certainly a plausible situation. That is why I am a Deist and take an amoral worldview. That is, what doesn't harm another is perfectly fine. I don't have a moral worldview, so my perception of truth is untainted.
Which goes to show, that ridding ones self of religion is not enough. You must at the same time rid yourself of all personal morality, which is nothing but "your" perception of how other people should behave. Take an amoral viewpoint, live and let live.
Published: September 25, 2006 2:41 PM
David White
Mark Brabson:
Being akin to the non-aggression principle and thus to libertarianism, "live and let live" is a moral viewpoint, albeit a somewhat hazy one.
Published: September 25, 2006 3:02 PM
Roger M
Mark:"Take an amoral viewpoint, live and let live."
That's not really amoral. Amoral means without a moral code at all. That's what Camus was trying to do. In an amoral system, I can help the old lady across the street, or I can push her in front of the bus and both are equal in the sense that neither is good and or bad, since categories of good and bad don't exist. But no one can live a truely amoral life because everyone prefers existence to non-existence and sees existence as good and non-existence as bad.
Published: September 25, 2006 3:18 PM
Roderick T. Long
To Roger M.: "Ask a Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim. My understanding of the orthodox version of these is that God can act, and often does, in an arbitrary manner, so that sometimes 2+2=5." Actually it is a matter of dispute within Hinduism and Islam, just as it is a matter of dispute within Christianity, whether or not God could make 2 + 2 = 5. (Orthodox Buddhists do not believe in God.) In any case, I was talking about what a God could do, not about what anyone happens to believe a God could do.
"So I guess you're saying that the laws of physics are eternal and uncreated. That's typical materialism." Actually, believing that the laws of physics are uncreated doesn't necessarily imply materialism. (The above-mentioned Buddhists, for example, believe the laws of physics are eternal and uncreated, but are not materialists.) However, that's neither here nor there because I didn’t say anything about the laws of physics. I'm talking about the laws of logic.
"You give the impression that ethics are a matter of discovering the rules of the universe much as we have discovered the laws of physics." No, the laws of physics are discovered empirically. I think ethics is more like both logic and economics -- it's a priori rather than empirical. (Though I do think the contrast between the empirical and the a priori is less severe than has often been thought.)
"Not much debate goes on today about the law of gravity, but a lot of debate takes place on ethics, even among libertarians." Likewise there's a lot of debate about economics. That doesn't invalidate the claim that economics is a priori. Why not say the same for ethics?
"You should ask yourself why we even have ideas about morality." Because we have reason.
"Can we attribute any concept of morals to animals?" No, because they don't have reason.
"Why do we form societies to reduce violence and aggression? It's the rule in nature. Why shouldn't it rule with humans?" Actually forming societies to reduce violence and aggression is the rule in nature too. See Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, for example.
"The question is whether or not without God we can logically derive standards of behavior that apply to all people. The great philosophers have concluded no, you can't, because morals imply authority and no man has authority over another man." Which great philosophers? Obviously there's been serious disagreement among philosophers about this. Most lists of "great" philosophers will include both a) many philosophers who didn't believe in God but thought morality was possible anyway [examples include Epicurus, Mill, Spencer, Sidgwick, Moore, Sartre, Habermas, Rawls, and most moral philosophers today], and b) philosophers who did believe in a God of some sort but thought the authority of morality had little or nothing to do with God but was based on reason and/or human nature instead [examples include Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Grotius, Spinoza, Hutcheson, Smith, and Kant]. The notion that no god means no morality is the offspring of the union of atheism and voluntarism, not of atheism alone. But most theologians historically have not been voluntarists anyway.
"Survival of the fittest, according to evolution, served the species well for millions of years. Why suddenly abandon it when we could walk upright?" Cooperative modes of behaviour are more conducive to survival than conflictual modes. See Spencer or Axelrod.
"Orthodox Hinduism/Buddhism, not the popular variety, assert that our existence is not real, but a dream. As a result, morality and reason are figments of our imagination." Actually orthodox Hinduism and Buddhism come in many forms, not all of which say this. (Vedanta and Nyaya, for example, are both orthodox Hinduism, but Vedanta regards the world as illusory while Nyaya does not.) In any case, from the claim that life is a dream it doesn't follow that morality and reason are illusory. It might matter morally what you do in the dream (as indeed they think it does), and the dream might have a logical structure.
"Morality consists of arbitrary commands from God. In orthodox Islam, Allah is so sovereign that he isn't bound by his own laws and he regularly violates them in order to prove his sovereignty. Also, no free will exists in Islam." Again, that depends what you consider "orthodox" Islam. Certainly many respected Islamic religious teachers have taught doctrines contrary to what you describe here; see this book.
To David White: "The notion that because one cannot control the thoughts of others, one's reputation is not one's own is nonsensical. One might as well argue that one's house is not one's own because an arson could burn it down or that one's car is not one's own because it could be stolen." But that wasn't my argument. My point was not that we can't control others' thoughts but that we don't have the right to, even if we could. By contrast, whether or not we can prevent an arsonist from burning down our house, we would have the right to prevent him.
To Greg: "After all, if a criminal only had to worry about when he/she got caught, then there would be no reason to not be a career criminal since the worst that can happen is to have the victim recover the goods." a) Since the criminal must not only restore the object but also pay damages, it's not true that under my system the criminal who's caught is no worse off than if he hadn't stolen. b) In any case, I don't think justice should be decided on purely utilitarian grounds.
Published: September 25, 2006 4:33 PM
David White
Roderick Long:
The argument that we don't have the right to control other people's thoughts, even if we could, is beside the point, since mind control is not what I'm talking about. Rather, I'm talking about about our AGREEMENT on the right of a home-owner to defend his home against arson, applying this same logic to libel or slander -- i.e., try to "burn down my identity" and I have the right to defend myself against your doing so.
After all, what if I launched a website accusing you -- with doctored photos, documents, and the like -- of the nefarious deeds I specified above? Do you honestly believe that I would have the right to do so and that you, accordingly, would have no right to defend yourself against me?
Published: September 25, 2006 5:06 PM
Peter
Roger: Speaking of being amoral, have you ever read Is God a Taoist? by Raymond Smullyan? Last time I looked for it online (a few years ago) I only found a short quote, but the whole thing is now here!
Published: September 25, 2006 10:11 PM
Peter
David White: what do you mean by "defend yourself"? If someone goes around saying "David White is a child molester", you certainly have the right to "defend yourself" by refuting the allegation - you don't have the right to "defend yourself" by putting a bullet in his head.
Published: September 25, 2006 10:30 PM
averros
RogerM:
> You bring up a completely different issue: Why
> do atheists behave morally when they are being
> inconsistent with there atheistic beliefs?
That is precisely what I call "the theist nonsense" - simply because morality is perfectly consistent with atheistic beliefs.
Yes, there's a purely materialist explanation for existence of altruism and morality. It is simply a good survival strategy for the genes (in case of altruism) and for the memes (aka "the culture") in case of morality.
The paradox of a self-interest leading to cooperation even to the extent of self-sacrifice seems to be there only when you have an obsolete notion of survival of individual organisms as the sole driver of evolution.
The modern evolutionary theory has successfully resolved the paradox by establishing that the units of biological evolution are individual genes, not organisms. The extension of the same idea to memetics explains why morality is the necessary element of any culture. Simply put, societies which didn't have moral ideas in their memesets were displaced by those societies which did.
(The evolutuionary approach to the sociology also explains the existence of amoral memesets, such as collectivist - these are parasites, needing the moral host to survive).
Published: September 25, 2006 11:12 PM
JIMB
Averros - And self-sacrifice? How is that fit with evolution? Unless I am missing your point, it seems to me that would have been selected out by now.
Natural physical laws are an astonishing immaterial reality: why should an apple fall to the earth in a way which we can understand (mathematics)? Why follow immaterial laws? -- Even material isn't "material": it is a form of energy.
I'd have to confess materialism sounds more to me a philosophic denial of anything outside of our ultimate understanding (i.e. the scientist as god), rather than a reasonable evidence-based philosophy.
Published: September 26, 2006 12:39 PM
Greg
JIMB> why should an apple fall to the earth in a way which we can understand (mathematics)?
I don't get it. The apple falls to the ground because trees grow out of the ground. Right? I mean, where else would it fall to grow another tree?
JIMB> Why follow immaterial laws? -- Even material isn't "material": it is a form of energy.
While we did have to cover the mass-energy equivalence topic in engineering school, I don't remember it ever being represented as you have put it. No modern physics text I have ever perused has said that material is not material. Can you elaborate?
JIMB> I'd have to confess materialism sounds more to me a philosophic denial of anything outside of our ultimate understanding (i.e. the scientist as god), rather than a reasonable evidence-based philosophy.
I think most people don't spend their time trying to prepare a good case for the non-existance of the easter bunny because their best guess is that it would be a waste of time. Since time is a scarce resource, folks pick their battles.
Published: September 26, 2006 7:11 PM