“the praxeological result of A+B (where these are NAP violating acts/descriptions) seems always to be that the welfare analysis fails the pareto unanimity rule.”
The point that FlyingAxe raised was, what is the inhibition to the individual’s act on an individual level?
“So, why shouldn’t I steal the book (while encouraging the masses not to steal)? What principle on the individual level should prevent me?”
FlyingAxe will steal a book (an action). Then what consequence will befall him?
+1 z… BTW, welcome back (and where have you been?)
I think the word “heuristic” is very appropriate here. Lying would be a better example than stealing. It’s not against any libertarian principles to lie. But the fact is, people hate to be lied to and they tend to ostracize people that they feel have lied to them. And the other fact is that there are those times you had better lie to prevent other, greater problems from arising. On balance, honesty is the best policy… but knowing when and how to tell “polite lies” is also a valuable skill. So there is no simple “thou shalt not lie” (something which, by the way, the Ten Commandments do not say!) Cultivating the virtue of honesty takes care of the 95% of the time when telling the truth is the right answer. Those few times you might need to lie, or abridge the truth, or misdirect… well, that’s just 5% of the time anyway and you can think through those situations carefully when choosing the right course of action.
Note that there’s a Misean argument for not killing someone on an island. Instead of killing them, you could enslave them, benefiting from their productive capacity, or trade with them, benefiting from both their productive capacity and their capacity for innovation/invention. In the long run, the satisfaction gained from the extra bounty this brings to you would likely make up for whatever satisfaction you lost by not killing them.
One shouldn’t dim his car’s window more than 30% in MA, because if a cop catches him, he will get a huge fine. Does this mean that tanning windows above some government-dictated level is immoral?
I.e., imprudent does not immoral make.
As I mentioned before, I can have a set of rules for different situations. “If you want something, steal it, unless you’re likely to get caught.” People have multiple rules in their heads all the time. I consider lying to my wife (e.g.) immoral, but I don’t consider lying to a cop or a mugger immoral, if it’s done in self-defense from potential aggression (or lying to save someone’s life).
Nobody says: “You better not lie to a Nazi if he asks you if you’re hiding Jews, since once you’re used to lying, you will lie even in those situation when it may decrease your long-term satisfaction.” That’s just absurd. So, why should I say the same about stealing: “Don’t steal when you cannot get caught, since you may get used to stealing and end up getting caught”? Something like this sounds nice on pages of a philosophical book by someone like John Searle, but in practice, it sounds silly.
I don’t know how this applies to my example. I am trying to figure out why stealing a book in a store (if you cannot be observed) is wrong. If there is no obvious reason why it’s wrong, why should I have a guilty mind? Of course, I can feel bad for the storeowner, but that is a reason enough to prevent me from stealing a book – but not a good enough general rule to make it immoral (just because I dislike something emotionally, it’s not yet immoral; for instance, I dislike split-pea soup, while my wife things salmon is disgusting; neither of us thinks that the other eating the mentioned food is immoral).
Its wrong because you gain inaccurate information about the cost of producing/procuring a book, leading you to subsequently miscalculate (in an economic sense).
Well, when you’re dealing with a corrupting element within the social order (the State, a mafia gang, a bully, etc.), things get turned on their head. But I think that the difference between prudence and moral behavior is very small - morality (in regards to decision-making) is just prudence.
I think what you’re trying to get at is more of a philosophy of morality, which is of course independent of particular nettling issues like window-tints. My view is that we get to a philosophy of morality through the study of virtue. Moral philosophy - in my view - is just an exposition of virtue.
Hey, don’t knock Searle.
And you’re making my point. The only reason a person might even reflect for a moment before lying to the Nazis is precisely because he probably lives by the rule that honesty is the best policy in all other areas of his life. It is only when confronted with an extraordinary situation that he stops to reflect whether this heuristic moral principle applies to this particular situation.
And as for stealing, you’ve strawmanned my view - “Don’t steal (unqualified)… since you may get used to stealing and end up getting caught.” There’s nothing silly about this at all. Once, when I was really little, I stole a couple candybars from a grocery store. I felt bad about it but it also gives you a high… there’s definitely an addictive potential to stealing. Many thieves describe stealing as an almost orgasmic experience. Why would a very wealthy person like Winona Ryder do it? So, you’re playing with fire, on this particular issue.
Finally, I think the “capstone” of virtue is self-image - can you live with yourself? Even if I knew I could 100% scot-free get away with it, I would still feel bad unless the person was my mortal enemy or something. Sympathetic reflex. It’s just not right to take what isn’t yours and I wouldn’t want to go through life with that icky feeling that I’ve gotten ahead through a very conscious and purposeful exploitation of another. A lot of people don’t seem to have this conscience problem… oh well. That’s their loss, in my view. I think a robust capacity for sympathy is a key component of being human. Those who don’t have that are, well, soulless.
I think the big issue with this question, and a roadblock in a lot of these threads about morality, is that its framed as if its looking for one answer, but it’s really searching for something else. As a result, the answers provided are sort of odd half answers addressing both expectations.
I don’t think you want to know why you shouldn’t steal the book. That question assumes an agreed upon conception of morality that we can point to for justification. In other words, the kind of answer one would give to a question like that would be: stealing violates the rights of others, and as such, is an unjust act. It’s a simple answer for a simple question.
And the second question doesn’t fare any better. It’s phrased as if there is an agreed upon framework already in place. A perfectly good response might be that the unity of virtues requires that you can’t fully posses any virtue with aiming to posess them all. But what you want to know is why you should aim for any virtue in the first place. What you really want is for Clayton to essentially put forth the entire case for natural law and virtue ethics.
A while back, someone pointed out that you can’t win a debate arguing in favor of anarcho-capitalism because the burden of proof is too much – the amount of groundwork that needs to get laid down and agreed upon is tremendous (just think how long it takes to explain what money is to some people). I think the same problem applies to debating ethics. Putting forth a positive ethical theory not only requires laying out all the framework, but then filling it in with the content as well. Subjectivists and nihilists have an argumentatively simpler position which works to their advantage in the setting of an internet forum.
I’ve been thinking about this lately and I think it’s not as true as it might at first seem. One of the crucial issues with moral nihilism is that it tends to isolate a specific act and ask, point-blank: Is this act, in isolation from all other considerations, right or wrong?
The root problem here is a denial of causality, something that every form of nihilism is guilty of. The counterpoint is illustrated by these priceless quotes:
“What we do in life ripples through eternity” - Marcus Aurelius.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice” - Heraclitus.
Every action, every thought, every word, every condition, every state of affairs which swirls out from each and every choice we make in life has latent within it the million consequences which will revisit ourselves and countless others. Some of these consequences are administered by our own, often treacherous brain: feelings of guilt, remorse, regret, shame, grief. Some of them are administered by others in the form of revenge, ostracism, oppression, and so on. Some of them are administered by indifferent and implacable Nature herself. Judging choices without regard to their causal antecedents and consequences - as moral nihilism and deontological morality both do - is useless, at best.
So, the key point here is that moral nihilists need to be challenged on the issue of causality. How do they go about living their life while denying causality? Don’t they perceive any kind of contradiction in this?